Warfare & Tactics

Mission imbalance between the factions is something that I assume will be hard to sort out.

Quick fix for risk/reward - Tie mission running payouts to Tier2 and have them ignore warzone control.

Then when you have time come back and rework FW missions.

I fully understand the idea. I just think it's crap is all, and doesn't actually impact anything we're trying to address. If you want to reduce mission income, then reduce mission income. This mechanic just adds a back-assward way to ensure that folks have an even easier time maintaining tier level than before. It does nothing to balance missions across factions or disincentivize farming or risk averse activity.

Amarr missions definitely do not need t3s. They are fine in Caracals.

I think a good compromise would be that some missions be kept/made doable in stealth bombers, across factions. Others will require something bigger.

I advise people keep warping frigates into my alts' missions without looking at the caracals to check if either have rapid lights.

There are some ingenious ways to catch them. Not that I have caught them that way. I have been the one caught though.

Ok. I'll take this one.

I'll start with something that everyone seems to agree with. Each of the Racial Militia's missions need to be equal in difficulty. I personally believe this should be achieved by simply removing all Racial EWAR. Removing all missiles and replacing them with turrets instead. To allow all of these missions to be attempted in Stealth Bombers. (Keep Reading, don't freak out yet till you hear my reasoning.)

There seem to be two separate camps with decent overlap.

Camp 1: Faction Warfare Missions provide too much LP for too little Risk. This is amplified by the ability to do them in stealth bombers, and by their scaling rewards at high tier levels. Missions should only be accessible by high skill ships and/or have their LP payout nerfed.

Camp 2: Faction Warfare missions are decent and fairly balanced as they are now. Running them in fancier ships can be more efficient then running them in Stealth Bombers. Limiting Stealth Bombers would also be limiting them to new players. Other then changing them to be racially equal, missions should remain easy.

Before I state my position, and the reasons behind it, I will say this. I funded the first two or so years of my EVE career solely on the reward from FW Missions. I used those rewards to fund, what I think, is a very decent PvP and FCing Career. So note this and try to point out any outright Bias which I might have that openly clouds my judgement.

As I briefly stated above. I believe Faction Warfare Missions should be soloable in stealth bombers when decently fit and flown. BUT, because these missions provide no benefit for or against the tier level(barring donations from mission running, which is shadowy and hard to prove at best) their reward should be set to the base Tier 2 level and disconnected from the Tier system all together.

It is too easy/ not risky enough/ too ISK efficient to run missions in a bomber

This is very difficult to address correctly with a forum post, but I'll try and keep it brief.

Why must a level 4 Faction Warfare mission have the SP pre-requisite of, at least, a Faction Cruiser? The arbitrary reason usually given is that, because it currently is not enough Isk vs Reward to fly a stealth bomber to earn the amount of LP it currently does.

Ok, then. Lets take your average level 4 High Sec Mission, and your average Level 4 Faction Warfare Mission at the base Tier 2 level rewards.

High Sec Level 4
Required: A minimum of a BS at low SP and a BC at High SP. Required training to get to BS level ships skills with weaponry can take a minimum of 10 days. With 20 days allowed for miscellaneous skills a level 4 can be successfully completed with a month of SP training. I know because I personally could do Level 4's when I was only a month old, albeit fairly slowly.

You must kill all the rats and accomplish whatever miscellaneous stuff is needed for you to complete the mission. Mission time: Bad Skills about 30 minutes-1 Hour. Good Skills 30-15 Minutes roughly. Salvaging and looting in a BS can take an additional 10-20 minutes.

Reward: Loot/Salvage/LP/Isk rewards can net you approximately 30-40 million for a decent mission.

Risk: None, like literally none. If you don't overpimp your mission boat with Faction Mods without Buffer gankers will leave you alone. Smart play means its also hard to lure you with things like duels etc. Rats trying to kill you is also extremely unlikely because of the buffer provided by ships gives you ample time to warp out.

Faction Warfare Level 4

Required: Can be run with a stealth bomber with relatively minimal skills. Using EVE Mon and an alt with no skills whatsoever. It takes approximately 30 days to fit a Stealth bomber with all T1 modules of a standard bomber fit. Note that this is T1 Modules, which severely limits your ability to finish the missions.

You must kill a up to 7ish rats(ca't remember the exact number of Indys) or a couple reloads worth of torpedoes for the twp structure killing missions. For Level 4's these can take anywhere from 10 minutes to 1 hour at the extremes depending on the mission.

Reward: At the base Tier 2 level. The Average Payout for a Level 4 is 20kish LP plus a couple million ISK per mission. This can amount to anywhere from 30Million Total Isk to 60 Million Total ISK depending on the market values of LP. Obviously the extremely high payout of 90K LP at Tier 4 is too large of a disparity to be ignored, which is why I insist it be dropped to base Tier 2 Rewards.

Risk: Exponential. Route takes ten jumps usually, at minimum, most of them through Hostile Space. All the missions are run in Hostile Space. Specifically for bombers the risk for being killed by the rats is also fairly high. Even when fit with an MSE and flying defensively, you are paper thin. Not to mention your defensive options are nil. I have seen enterprising people kill Stealth Bombers in noob frigates. And, Stealth Bombers, while having a moderate agility advantage over bigger ships, must keep orbiting. All ships, no matter the SP must keep an eye on local and D-scan to prevent ambush.

Because of word limits I'll give a follow up post.

Hi I was doing fw (farming warfare) almost 2 years and left some months ago but I still have 2 bomber mission farming toons for minmatar, caldari and amarr.

Tbh it is okay to do these missions in bombers. The interceptor buff made these missions really hard and I was hunting mission runners myself with interceptor for great fun. With Kronos updates and no possibility to cloak in missions any more CCP already nerfed facwar missions a lot.
Main issue is the total imbalance.

1.) Minmatar missions are waaaaaay to easy. I mean okay they are pvp wise really hard because amarrian pvpers hunt them like mad but minnies have really the easiest missions of all factions. Amarr npcs are slow, have sh.. tracking and use tracking disruptors vs bombers^^
2.) Amarr missions have a good balance atm. What makes them quite easy is that minnie militia is bear militia and so amarrian mission runners barely get hunted by pvpers. The target painters and the speed of the npcs is really hard sometimes.
Amarr missions are fine.
3.) Caldari missions. Well the damps hurt. The gal npcs have almost no range so you can even orbit at 30km quite safe plus gal rats lack hitpoints somehow. In comparison to minmatar rats (amarr missions) the gal rats melt like ice in the sun.
4.) Gal missions. Never did them cause rumours say they are not doable in bomber.

Conclusion: Make caldari slightly and minmatar missions A LOT harder to be on par with amarr. Gallente missions...well I am not expert on that.

This!

There is plenty for a new player to do in FW if they just want to farm, uhh I mean pve. You don't expect someone who's just finished their trial account to be out doing L4 missions in highsec, so why should people expect to join the militia and straight away be doing L4 missions and soloing large pieces in their multistabbed noobships? Especially as new players shouldn't be losing ships that are so expensive they need L4 mission rewards to replace them. Ok, sure it would be more efficient, but you gotta start at the bottom. If they were made harder it would also put a dampener on the farmers that sell standings too.

Simyaldee -

We get what you're saying, we just disagree.

I disagree that there is any significant risk of loss to NPCs for using bombers in Minmatar or Caldari missions. With minimal SP and brainpower, that risk is basically zero.

I also feel that the disparity between the assets at risk in your examples - BS vs. SB - is also part of the problem. Noone has an issue with people using HACs or T3s or BCs for L4 missions - proper fits run in the 150-400m+ range. The issue is with being able to complete them in 40m ships with essentially zero risk of loss.

L4 missions, of any kind, should demand a certain level of investment in SP and ships to run well. L4s should require you to put a reasonable level of assets at risk, and have a reasonable risk of loss, compared to the rewards given. This is true for every mission type that I know of. For 3/4 of the factions, this is broken with respect to FW missions.

I vehemently disagree that L4s should be soloable with low SP (or high SP!) characters in stealth bombers. The risk / reward is completely out of whack.

I find it baffling to suggest that plexing is not an alternative to missions for FW. I have literally never done a mission, and yet I was able to PLEX and pay for all my ships in FW after the first month. A single novice plex gives you ~10mil isk for 10 minutes (@ T2). My solo frigate fits at the time, with 1-2 months of SP, was a Rocket Kestrel that costs 6mil ISK and Condors that cost 5 mil ISK. New pilots aren't in huge need for large amounts of ISK just because they can't fly larger ships.

Once you can fly destroyers, very very easy to do, you can fight in small plexes and take them. My most flown Destroyer fit costs 8mil ISK. that means one small plex nets me almost two of these fits.

FW is very new pilot friendly. The presence of novice plexes, the LP system, the militia mechanics, the lower tier missions. Just because new players wouldn't be able to run level 4's doesn't mean they wont't play or won't be able to contribute to fleets, fights, or general militia presence.

There ya go. That's not the intention of the missions. If it were, then Gallente missions would be soloable by small ships.