EVE General Discussion

I didn't bother to respond in depth because the premise of your statement is unreasonable. If a wardec put the attacker at the disadvantage they wouldn't be so popular. But I'll respond to the underlying issue.

Wardecs are done primarily for three reasons:

1. You want to be able to legally kill assets or ships in highsec. These are typically declared against relatively defenceless industry corps. This is where my experience is - it is hugely lucrative.

2. You want easy kills from unsupported solo pilots at trade hubs or pipes. These are typically declared against huge alliances to increase the chances of harvesting the daft.

3. You actually want to fight another corp. I can't remember the last time this actually happened outside of RvB.

The reason a deployable structure which can be attacked to end the war dec would be a good idea is because there is currently no practical way to force a fight with highsec wardec corps. They just dock up. This would give a small indy corp a way (likely via mercs which would be healthy) to attack the dec itself.

Sure, it would make a declaration against a capable alliance risky. So what?

FYP.

You can't make a horse drink. Thus the balance about wardecs is about how many players CCP wants to lose because of them.

Make wardecs too harsh, and PvErs will quit. Make them easy to evade, and PvPrs will complain.

Oh, you mean to say that taking the watchlists away has caused there to be a higher number of war decs like everyone said there would be? Say it ain't so.

Is this another example of people asking CCP to do something that they think will give them an advantage, then being surprised when the people it was meant to disadvantage adapt and make it backfire hilariously?

All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.

In reply to a couple of things you said.
We love fights. If you're a war target and want to set up a fight just contact one of us. We would love a fleet fight.
Are you talking about mercs or pirates? They aren't the same thing.
You don't have to add us to red. War targets are clearly marked in local.
I'll make 40 jumps through high and low to get a target. If you're at war you aren't ever safe unless you're docked. So feel free to watch our kill board but if you are out, I'm hunting you! Distance doesn't matter to me.

This is great

I'd much prefer a solution that involves people being out in space shooting each other. Paying an NPC doesn't create content, paying a merc (or trying themselves) does.

The idea with the structure in space is IMHO a good one because a wardec destroys the normal routine of the wardecced corp while the attacker does what he always does: PVP. With this structure within the attackers home system they too have to watch out. If the structure is destroyed the money for the wardec goes to the winner.

If you make a formula which takes the ships people fly into account for calculating the fee it would even out. If you attack a industry corp it will be very expansive because they are flying miners/freighters. If you attack some mercs it will be cheap because they fly combat ships. Salt with size and age of the corp members and you get a formula that will easily pitch mercs against each other while "fighting" industry corps will be very expansive. And with the structure it might even be profitable for the defender to hire mercs to destroy it because you get rid of the wardecc and you get a lot of money. Corps that have 300 wardec running will have to defend 300 targets.......
Of cause you would need to get back the watch list or maybe you get a heat map of the decced companies activities.

This will sort out the people that dec for a fight from the people that dec just for a gank and dock if the gank isn't guaranteed

Easiest way to fix this right now would be to change the cost mechanism. The price should start at 100 million ISK, and double every consecutive week of war. After the conclusion of the war in any manner, the last paid fee would remain as the "starting price" of any future war declarations, and decay slowly each following week. Additionally, the fee must be paid 3 days in advance. This tackles multiple issues that currently make war declarations so profitable:

Pointless "war" can be maintained perpetually. A single player could run one mission a day, for a week, and earn 50 million ISK. With a few hundred players, you could easily maintain war declarations on a few hundred corporations, by playing less than an hour a day. This lacks any logic as a war should have some sort of objectives; obtaining ISK through destroying ships, taking down POS', and so on. With an exponentially increasing cost to maintain war, fruitless war is deterred.

The cost of war to aggressors is always less than the cost of war to a defending non-PvP corp. This is factoring in opportunity costs, such as how much ISK you could be making if you were to mine or run missions rather than hiding in station. The aggressors pay a fee of 50 million ISK to potentially blockade an arbitrary number of players from earning any ISK for a week, on that specific character. If the defending corp decides to fight back, the aggressors can safely dock up and still be inflicting implicit costs, due to forcing the defending corp to engage in activities other than their usual. These are just a few examples of the many scenarios where the aggressors simply come out on top. Increasing the cost of war in any way would better balance the equation.

No decision making required to press the red button. Mercenary corps have the luxury of a full 7 days to determine if a carebear corp is worth pursuing. This is not factoring in that there is no pressure to make the decision in that time span, because you can just wait out an additional 2 days to declare war again. Moving the deadline for war renewal back would force aggressors to actually have to decide whether the war is profitable and risk the cost doubling, rather than shrugging away the question until the last day comes around with no penalty.

Wardecs used to cost 2 million isk, a subset of players demanded that the prices were increased to the current level in order to curtail the activities of merc corps; CCP obliged and it backfired on the people who demanded it.

The result was that the smaller merc corps banded together in order to be able to afford the cost of wars and carried on killing the greedy, the lazy and the feckless. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth and rending of stuff when the changes didn't give rise to a curtailment in the activities of merc corps, instead making them stronger and more organised.

Incidentally, the same thing happened with gankers, as mechanics have changed and made their chosen profession more difficult to maintain, they have become stronger and more organised.

TL;DR your approach has already been tried, and it has been found wanting. The easily predictable result of CCP implementing such change would be the rise of merc super corps against whom there would be no defence.

Be careful what you wish for.