Assembly Hall

I agree with alliances being allowed into faction war. Nothing stops an alliance from dropping a super cap blob or bridging T3's onto a FW fight anyway. Just make it so alliances that participate in FW cannot hold sov. PvP without sec status loss is nice, and I think there should be more ways for those in FW, to be able to engage without sec status loss (of course, if there is friendly fire cause sec status loss).


The proposed change regarding ratting instead of the current system has some good/bad things, I'll expand on this:

The Good:

Having to kill rats would eliminate alts being able to AFK cap plexes. Ratting would create incentives to spread out (assuming the VP/Influence you earned went to your corp/alliance's benefit instead of your faction as a whole). Corps would go out and carve out thier own slice of the pie, creating more small gang opportunities than just having a each side in a blob living 2 jumps from eachother.

The Bad:

It's ratting, plain and simple. It's still a PvE activity. The core problems that exsist with the current system will persist in this new system, you'd still have rats jamming/damping people out and people bringing ships/setups suited more towards killing the rats than killing your opponent. Going offensive (and defending your systems that are being attacked) would require people to "live" in a system and rat. There are other issues as well. Having played other MMO's, an issue would arise with people "last hitting" an NPC, if the killing blow determined who the victor was, I could forsee people flying nanoy arty ships trying to last hit the NPCs to win even if they don't really have a field presence. If it was determined it was whoever hit the rat first you still have the same issue as nanoy sniper ships will simply "tag" the last rat and run away. The king of the hill system we have now forces people to fight, they have to go to the button and hold it or lose time.

It takes away from the 'feel' of faction war. It should feel like a war between empires, not killing pirates (the majority of EVE has killing pirates, ratting in nullsec, missions in highsec, as the available content). From the moment someone starts playing EVE until much later (if they ever stop) they're shooting pirates. It seems a bit monotinous.

The proposed change doesn't fix some of the current issues that we have now, and perhaps creates more. If someone wants to rat they can just warp to an asteroid belt.


Orbiting buttons for long periods of time is annoying, having people who use untrained alts who just run away is annoying.

I have a suggestion for the alts as far as offensive plexing goes:

If the rats spawn and arent killed (say theres 1 initial wave, and the 2nd wave spawns, if all npcs from the previous wave were not eliminated, then the timer stops, regardless if the attacker is within capture range). This could work to eliminate alts from just speed tanking and then warping off if you try to stop them. This proposed change runs into some hitches when running majors/some medium plexes as the npcs don't die as fast. I think should this be implemented, that the HP of elite NPCs and battleships be reduced to a point that if someone brought an 'appropiately sized ship' to the plex would be able to dispatch the NPCs and not have buildup as waves spawn. Reducing the HP the NPCs would also make clearing them out easier should there be a fullspawn. Often times I see just a mass buildup of NPCs and a hardly noticeable presence from actual players from the otherside. It's annoying to have to kill so many npcs before you can engage someone in a small scale fight or a 1v1. FW plexing should be more about PvP and not PvE. I'm at a loss over what to do about using alts to defensive plex though.

Orbiting the button:

It's really annoying to have to sit on major plex for nearly 40 minutes after pushing the enemy out at the last second, who may not return at all. However, some of the best fights I've had have come from this, because, as you wait, both sides rally up what they can and go at it. This is great. Orbiting a button for 40 minutes with nothing to do is not so great. Here is my proposal:

Rather than have the spend the entirety of the time an opposing plexer spent to undo their work before you can even begin to capture the plex from a "neutral" position, they only have to spend 5 minutes (that is unopposed) to undo the work. This 5minute timer could be a teal (or whatever color timer) below the "overall" timer that we have now. You could call it dismantling presence or whatever. If a hostile gets within capture range while the defender is running the timer, the overall timer is paused like the current mechanics employ, however, the "dismantling presence" timer is reset. Here's an example:

A gallente major facility is under attack by a caldari fleet. The caldari have been on the button for about 15 minutes before being forced away. The "overall" timer (the one we have now) reads 35 minutes. Gallente now hold the button and both the 35 minute timer and the 5 minute timer right below it reading "dismantling caldari presence" are running. It now breaks into two scenarios:

Scenario 1: Gallente hold the field, the caldari buzzed off. Rather than spend the entirety of 35 minutes, the 5 minute "dismantling presence" timer runs to 0, reseting the overall timer to a "neutral" state, meaning the state it were when it was opened, now the timer runs in the gallentes favor for another 20 minutes and they only had to spend 25 minutes rather than 35 minutes capturing the plex.

Scenario 2: Gallente hold the button, but the caldari are still around, they're sniping, nanoing around, etc. The 5 minute dismantling timer is running but a caldari gets within range and resets it (the overall timer is only paused until only one side occupys the capture range), and they continue fighting over the plex.

(More below)...running out of room.

That's all I have for you now X gal, make revisions as you see fit to your proposal, I think the spawning mechanics need addressed for this proposal though. Here's a link to a post in another "fix fw thread" where I think i've highlighted an issue as the "nothing to do syndrome". I think you being a US TZ player as well you may be able to relate to this somedays:

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=9833&find=unread

We are just looking at differnt goals. I want to make fw plexxing into a pvp activity. Hence the rats are eliminated and the *players* are notified where they need to fight.

Your plan puts an emphasis on the rats and therefore you are making it more of a pve activity than it is already.

Both are valid perspectives.

Its my view that eve already offers plenty of opportunities to shoot rats if that is what you want to do. I can do high, low or null sec missions, fw missions, incursions, sleepers in wormholes belt rat etc. etc. So for players who want to spend time shooting rats, eve has plenty of mechanics to offer.

But for those who want small scale pvp... Well there really is nothing.

I think by adding a mechanic that encourages frequent, quality smalll scale pvp eve would add something that it sorely lacks.

I was just in plexes a few minutes ago. The rats were quickly overwhelming the tank on my pvp ship. If I want to do plexes I need to either get with a gang or fit for pve. (albeit that was in a medium plex and I was just in a rifter - but even if I had a my rupture the rats in the medium are bad enough that I can't fight another cruiser while tanking the damage)