Warfare & Tactics

With the coming of Retribution we will be getting some lovely new toys. Everybody is excited about the new pocket fleets. A brave new world where no ship is left behind and skill matters more than skill points.

No one should be more excited than we servants of empire. Faction warfare is surely what these changes were meant for. Where in null sec people will still say 'lol augoror' and blap your ass lickety spilt, in faction warfare we have the opportunity for a more beautiful game. Well formed gangs will be protected from hideous overships and strategic play will rule the day.

But this will only happen if we fight for territory; if we fight for plexes. I have a dream! But it's not coming true. Please, please, please make it happen people. And if you don't think it will, say why not, and say what needs to change.

Thx.

Did you get a fight doing it? That's the problem.

You won't remember mate, but people used to actually fight for system occupancy rather than just flipping it back and forth. Those plex fights, where people were restricted to certain ships types and had to re-tool for different plexes were some of the best I've had in eve.

With the new hulls they will be amazing, if, they happen at all.

Logistics encourages people to think rather than simply throwing pppppppppp v ppppppppp. Regardless please stick to the op. To summarise:

Plex fights were good. They could be really good come 4th December. Can we have plex fights again? If not why not? What can we do to fix it?

I disagree that logi breeds blob. The few times I have seen a hub flipped, it either involves supers from Amarr militia, or a guardian-supported RR BS fleet from Minmatar (although, I will qualify this with "I am sure someone dropped supers on the Amarr back in the day"). Either way, fights over the hub itself seem mostly gone because the guys with a tie to the system that's being lost are going to be evaccing hulls to avoid the lockout, and the flippers are more worried about welping the hub in a sane length of time than trying to catch the losers.

I also disagree that a couple of Augorors will breed a real blob. I mean...the rep output isn't enough to preserve the logi buddy you have from any real DPS, is hardly enough to preserve your DPS ships anyway, and it is yet to be seen whether you can make them capstable and functional like an Ironclad guardian.

Will they get used, FOTM style for the first while? Yes. Will this be true of the logi frigates? Yes. Will you see blobs of frigates and dessies rolling around with organic logi Yes. This of course being a good thing because when Fweddit's 20-man thrasher blob rolls through there's not many people who would go up against them right now in a smaller gang of dessies. Post-Retribution, someone will try it out with the logi frigs.

The T1 logi cruisers will find a niche because they appear to be effective, less expensive than the real logis, and good for small gangs of 4-8 DPS ships and 2 logi's. That is hardly a blob, its a gang, and it promises to be fun. For real blobs, they will be valuable swing-hitters for logistic work, but if you deploy enough to really sort your defense you will be lacking offense. A blob of 40 guys half of who are logi cruisers isn't that fearsome (especially if it's Eve Uni as we know it will be; 20 Blackbirds, 20 Ospreys, good to go!)

What is holding FW back in my opinion is more the OGB alts which allow a static player to camp plexes in ships which punch twice or three times above their weight, which gets very boring very quickly, so no one engages them and the situation gets rather tired. Whenever CCP brings the nerf bat onto this will really address alt proliferation and allow small gangs to attack certain other players faction fit pimped cruisers with the booster on the field. You'll get most of the benefit with all of the risk you should be taking for paying two subs and only ever risking nything with one.

We fight for sovereignty which the plexes are. Why would anybody strive to bring some golden age because every day you log to game, you have to choose between "Not having to move your stuff out" and "good fight". Do 0.0 blobs bring "good fights" when they are on structure grinds?

I just dont see why anyone would want good fights in this kind of heavy farming enviroment we already have in FW and the reason is simple. There is too much isk at stake.

Golden age of FW already happened and it was the 1st battle for Verge Vendor. After that it's been on steady decline.

+1

The station docking mechanic in FW is the absolute worst idea ever implemented.

Keep in mind, part of our "new toys" will be a revamp of plex mechanics to encourage fighting. In particular, moving the warp in closer to the button should help. We often won't warp into a roughly equal fleet because they have had a chance to "set up" within the plex, and jumping in on them would be suicidal.

But also, I think the plex fighting is just starting. We have been getting some amazing fights in the US timezone, using the plexes to help dictate the terms of the fight. Of course, we also use them as an out from a fight we know we can't win, which forces opponents to downship if they want a fight.

While it may not be quite a "golden age," I think the PVP in FW right now is pretty damn good, and has a lot of potential to be amazing when the player base adapts fully to the new meta.

So far:

- Station lockouts are bad
- LP as a motivation is bad

I don't agree that defensive placement is too much of a advantage, should be easier to break with new ewar and logi.

For myself, as I have said elsewhere, plex fighting has no meaningful purpose for gangs and I think this needs to change. Other than to get a fight why would you bother. Some sense of shared purpose needs to be fostered.

Lp is a great motivator. Isk is *the* primary motivator in this game.(as far as a mechanic ccp can use to motivate) It is a good way to help people pay for the ships they will hopefully start losing if this becomes are real pvp mechanic. But the system should be meaningful.

Here is my view on what will fix faction war:

I would like the the original inferno tier system but toned down. Instead of tier 5 being 75% discount maybe make it a 60% discount. But keep it so there is no lp for d-plexing and keep it where there is no reason to join a side that just did a tier 5 cashout because you will have just missed the boat.

The cashouts gave goals instead of this forever grind we have now. Perhaps the time between cashouts should be longer or shorter. I really don't care, but that could easilly be accomplished by changing the vp per plex. (yes i said vp not lp. vp is how much a system is contested per plex)

As for the other changes I would still recomend that they make plexing a pvp game as per my signature. But if they must have npcs I like what hans has proposed and what ccp is doing. Must kill them all etc. Another key is to start notifying us when plexes are attacked and a form of timer rollback. But these notifications and timer rollbacks will not be good if the war is lopsided. And unfortunately because they chose a lopsided financial system that sort of ruins the whole thing.

To the extent people say that there is no advantage to winning under the old system if everyone can hit tier five, I would say that if your side currently has over 50% of the systems you get full lp for pvp and a 50% bonus (over pre inferno rates) to the lp you get for missions. If your side has under 50% of the systems then you get half the lp for pvp and only preinferno pay for missions.

Plus the side that hold the majority of systems over a 12 month period would get some other perk. Perhaps an economic one like an additional item in the lp store, or just improve a unique item (make amarr plates or eg, minmatar shield worth buying) Or it could be a non-economic one like a statue in the fw system that was held by the militia long enough. The statue could be of the person who got the most kills or the most vp or the ceo or the corp with the most kills or vp or it could be a statue of all 4 or whatever. Other sorts of swag for winning could be an increase in your factions corporations in the war zone. So if minmatar win some of the carthum stations might become boundless stations. There are plenty of options.

The idea is that there would be very short term goals like capture this plex. Medium term goals like achieve a tier 5 cashout, and long term goals like memoralize our achievments permantently in the game through continued dominance. Because these goals all have different timelines people would always have more to fight for. The game would be economically balanced as long as everyside could achieve tier 5 cashouts.

If they did this and one side still couldn't hit a tier 5 cashout then they could do some tweaks like reduce the vp for d-plexing. Or they could say you can't start plexing a system for a set time after it flips, or if you do, you don't get as much vp. Which option would depend on the specific reason why a certain faction was unable to achieve any tier 5 cashouts.

FW doesn't need to be economically lopsided to make it meaningful.