Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Was reading one of the recent "wars are broken" threads in War & Tactics, and one of the people had a decent idea of letting the defenders win by simply winning the ISK War, then at the end of the week, "winning" gets the defender the ISK that was paid to dec them. IMO, that's good on the surface, but it has the potential vector of encouraging blobbing style tactics.

In order to deal with that possibility, make the ISK War weighted on pilot damage percentages, similar to how Incursion payout is weighted to fleet sizes. I'm NOT saying that "a fleet must be X pilots in order to get maximum value for a WT Kill" ... but rather that your "Adjusted ISK Destroyed Value" is calculated based on how the fleet damage spread was.

(please be nice here, it's been forever since I've done stats)

1. Grab damage done by each pilot and drop off one pilot that ONLY threw a point on the target (i.e. 0 damage). If more than one pilot did 0 damage, choose one randomly.
2. If remaining pilots on the KM > 1, then calculate the mean damage done. If all pilots are within 1 standard deviation of this, then kill is worth whatever the war report says. If a pilot greater than one 1 and less than 2 standard deviations from the mean damage, then their contribution drops to 50% of their damage. If a pilot is 2 or more standard deviations off, then their contribution is worth nothing.
3. KM value has a lower bound -- for the purposes of this post, I used "top damage dealer", though something else may be more fitting.

So, if you have for example, a 300m KM, and 11 pilots involved.

- Pilot 1 does 82%damage
- Pilots 2-10 do 2% damage each
- Pilot 11 is the point (and does 0 damage so not counted)


- Mean Damage = 10%
- Standard Deviation (assuming I'm doing this right ... stats was forever ago, and this is such a small sample size) = 25.3% (25.29822)
- Pilots 2-9 are within 1 standard deviation of the mean, so their contribution counts (total = 18%)
- Pilot 1 is past 2 standard deviations, so his contribution is zero.
- Rule 3 comes into effect, and is worth 82% of the KM value (246M)


Same KM, but with people all over the place:

Pilot 1 - 12%
Pilot 2 - 15%
Pilot 3 - 20%
Pilot 4 - 3%
Pilot 5 - 10%
Pilot 6 - 5%
Pilot 7 - 16%
Pilot 8 - 3%
Pilot 9 - 4%
Pilot 10 - 10%
Pilot 11 - 2%

Mean damage = 9.0909...%
Std Dev = 6.16% (6.155559)
1 Std Dev = 3.64 to 15.96% (Pilots 1,2,5,6,9,10) = 56% * 1 = 56%
2 Std Dev = 0 to 3.64 AND 15.96 to 22.12% (Pilots 3,4,7,8,11) = 44% * 0.5 = 22%
Adjusted KM = > 78% * 300m = 234M

Initially, this is applied to ships. Structures and deployables (e.g. POS / MTU / etc) aren't included.

TL;DR -- Giving "win" conditions to "Defenders" is a good thing, especially if they can be balanced to some degree.

I agree with a win condition for the defender. I don't agree with your proposed idea though.

wow, a whole 50 mil...to share between my entire corp for a week of risking their stuff?

If they are purely motivated by isk, they can drop corp, make 50 mil in a short days grinding with much less risk, then rejoin corp.

yes to defenders being able to win. But not for isk. By far the most sensible reward would be just ending the dec early.

Some form of capture/control/bash or other territory mechanic. its concept only and not ironed out in detail because im waiting to see what CCP have in store for sov. Maybe something can be stolen from or inspired by what ideas they have for null sec territory.

Im not looking to turn war decs into a territory based mechanic though. Simply borrowing 'triggers'. I.e.

- Aggressors must anchor structure to make outgoing decs
- Structure takes fuel (this acts like part of the war dec cost)
- Typical additional costs per dec and typical dec rules apply
- Has a reinforce mode like most structures
- Structure is destroyed or offlined, all non-mutual outgoing decs end 24 hours later.

So what this does:

Attackers dont get a set period with which to bide their time, picking and choosing their fights. They cant play guerrilla warfare all week. If they dock up, or otherwise dont play an active role in their own wardec, defenders can attack the structure and end the dec.

All those times a 3 man corp decs a 200 man alliance just to ambush soft targets in frigates can be swiftly ended should the alliance decide to do something about it.- Dec become less one sided, and more meaningful.

Mercs have something to do for defenders other than watch market hubs. In fact, a merc payment can be set-up to transfer the moment the structure is taken down. Or denied if they achieve jack **** ('no win no fee' can be a thing).- More meaningful merc contracts. Less scamming mercs.

I like this... like it a lot.

What about from the attacker side though? I mean otherwise, they can permadec their WTs (not that it's a bad thing, but they should get a victory condition too).

If the war-dec system is basically just a fee to engage in high-sec ganks that CONCORD don't care about sure.

Let's stop calling them wars though because it really doesn't apply in the majority of cases.

This isn't going to solve anything. Most corps will still turtle up or just drop corp and reform and will never even try to go for the bonus or for the target structure. The few that do try to stop the war, will just be wardecced by multiple attacking corps if the attacker is determined enough.

The only way to fix wardecs is to make the corp want to defend them. More things like POCOs that are valuable to the corp, but cannot be taken down after a wardec. Something like a series of deployables that are moderately expensive and take some accumulated effort from the corp (to prevent drop/reform being the optimal strategy) that give bonuses to mining, missioning and industry, but are vulnerable once the dec starts. Then corps would be forced to defend these assets or lose them, and the corp itself would have some persistent value.

Otherwise there is still no incentive to actually defend a corp over just dropping to an NPC corp which will always been the easiest as long as corps have so little value over an NPC corp.

In which case, nothing lost for 'most corps'. But for some corps they can end decs before they are due by working together, being organised and proactive and basically playing the game rather than docking up for a week. My proposal only adds to a defenders options, and some defenders are quite capable of doing it if they choose. Especially with the allies feature. It takes nothing away from existing mechanics.

Theres also nothing wrong with multiple corps deccing. They all have to pay the cost, they all have to fuel their structures, they are all just as vulnerable. What may be the problem here is corp hopping, which should be nerfed for attackers as well as defenders.

could be as simple as a cool down between hops to player corps (but dropping to NPC corp can be done anytime, your just in an NPC corp for 7 days after that)




Theres no reason this cant be done at the same time.



Your suggestion alone provides no incentive for the aggressors to do anything either. They can war dec corps/alliances much more powerful then thamselves and simply wait in station for a soft target to present itself. They have a week after all. And in the mean time defenders have normal 'activities suspended' and are on 'full alert' for the whole week, or more. It can be exhausting and morale destroying.

Why does the attacker need an incentive? If they do nothing, they lose the wardec fee and there is no loss to the defenders.

Eve is a sandbox in which there can be many reasons for a war. This proposal grafts on a "PvP battleground" mechanic onto what is suppose to be a tool to disrupt your enemy, and for the sole reason to enable them to get out of the war. It is the defenders who are earning ISK so it is the defenders who have to take the risk that someone will try to stop them. Letting them out of wars breaks one of the main purposes of them if wars are now consensual or avoidable. (Yes, I know the drop-fold mechanics render them partially broken already).

If your corp is too fragile to function under wardec then it shouldn't exist. I do however think that if you don't want this responsibility (or the rewards that come with it) you should be able to form a "corp-lite" that is exactly like a NPC corp in mechanics but with a player name and channel so you do have a way to opt-out of wardecs but retain the social connection of a corp.

^^ This.

Introducing "structures" and/or arbitrary "victory" conditions is, in my opinion, the bane of gaming in general (look at SOV and Faction Warfare).

It basically says, "anything you do does not matter unless you can achieve X condition".... which also means that any tactics that do not work to achieve "X condition" are pointless.

In other words... it forces certain combat styles over others rather than let the situation develop organically (where everyone is trying to counter the counter of the counter).


The biggest problem is that all this talk about "what should war mean" is that it is wholly subjective.
People who declare war want to kill things (whether they want "sporting" kills is a matter of debate, but not a call anyone can make).
People who avoid wars want to be left alone and do their own thing without losing anything valuable (regardless of how many "carrots" you place in front of them).

There ISN'T a middle ground between these two. And if you try to force a middle ground people will just find ways around it or stay on their extreme corners refusing to budge.