Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Just some quick thoughts regradng the War Dec system in the era of citadels. This is more brainstorming than fully fleshed out. Something for CCP, CSM, and the community to consider.

I would like to see a system that would only allow declaring war on those corporations / alliances which have a Citadel.

Also the attacker must have a citadel as well. Their citadel should be within a certain number of jumps distance from the corporation citadel they are declaring war against. (Perhaps the requirement could be within the same region.)

The attacker could attack any sized corporation / allaince, however the defender could ally themselves with any other corporations / allainces up to the number of players which are in the attacking corporation / alliance. Perhaps with up to 5% over total for the defenders.

The war would end at a predetermined time (unless continued payment is made - though perhaps this can be revisited as well), or whenever either side's citadel is destroyed.

The War Dec timers could be adjusted or perhaps the Citadel invulnerability timers could be adjusted for those who are in a war with one another to fit better with the War Dec timer.

If the winning side decides within 24 hours to put up a citadel in the system where they destroyed thier opponent's citadel then the losing side cannot put up a citadel within 5 jumps of it for at least one week.

Stopped reading when you said you can only dec against targets with citadels.

Holy **** no.

How is this a problem for you?

And.... ?

How is this a problem for you? Or the game?

Just about every corportion (outside of very small ones) aspires to put up a citadel or one of the other upcoming structures.

Um no. Not every corp aspires to put up a citadel. My corp doesn't. We may consider negotiating the use of one or more. Maybe...

Under your idea:
- We'd have pocos, but you couldn't dec us to attack them.
- We'd use citadels, but because we never own one we could never be attacked ourselves.
- If you destroy the citadel we are using, we just negotiate the use of another citadel. No big loss for us.
- We'd have drill platforms, observatories and industrial arrays, but you couldn't dec us to attack them.
- We would be obnoxious neighbours by taking all the local resources but you couldn't attack us.


Decs are about more than attacking people for their assets. And corps provide more benefits than deploying assets.

While were at it, here are some MORE controversial ideas for changes to War Decs.

Mining ships while in the system where the owning corp's citadel exists are OFF LIMITS and will still receive CONCORD protection if they are at an asteroid belt or an NPC station. If they begin to target any ship of a War Target they become a valid war target. (Mining ships turn off target back).

Industrial ships / cargo ships, are off limits while at any gates or NPC stations (even outside of their systems) and will still recieve the same CONCORD protection they would normally receive, except in any systems where their enemy posses a citadel.

A new siege structure can be placed in the war target's system (on grid with the citadel) to negate these rules. However the war target can attack and destroy siege structures.

While I don't like every idea here there are some interesting ones and some that made me laugh.

Another would be that if you declared a war mutual neither side has to pay fees for it and the war doesn't end until one corp surrendered which would cost a fee.

You are a little premature as the ecosystem for the new structures is just getting started. There are many more classes of structures to be released, and iterations done on Citadels, before we see the impacts these have on the game.

But in principle, I don't have an issue with this (you do mean all structures, not just citadels right?) with several caveats. The main one being that being in a structure-less corporation should be equivalent to being in the NPC corp. All corporation benefits should be tied to structures, and all unique corporation benefits (like taxes, declaring war and maybe shared hangers) should be tied to owning your own structures. You should only be able to share/rent out services currently available at NPC stations while owning a structure would provide the most desirable bonuses, and hopefully in the future, additional bonuses to corp members to make players want to use them. Structure-less corps would be indistinguishable from the NPC corps then aside from a name, chat channel and logo and thus equivalent to what we have now.

The second major caveat is that the war itself is not tied to any structures. This has been hashed out to death, but giving one side a way out to make their structures invulnerable is way too powerful tool for the largest entities in the game who can just brute force their way out of any war removing any responsibility for them to actually defend their own structures in highsec. Besides, in an age where structure bashing takes over 7 days, it would be impossible under the current mechanics to end a war early and I don't expect that to change for the remaining structures. If you lose your war-enabling structure, you can no longer declare any further wars of course (and if that was your last structure you are also immune to wars when the current wars run out) without deploying another war-enabling structure.

I won't comment on your CONCORD-enabling tweaks as they are inane - the game needs less arcane rules on highsec aggression not more. To that end, another option is to just remove wars altogether and make all structures (and eventually capital ships) attack-able in highsec but generate a suspect flag. This is a more drastic change that some CCP devs have been bandying about, but would enable content to develop more naturally instead of through the artificial gate of the war declaration mechanic. That is probably a discussion for another thread though.

But back to the OP. So while I do sympathize with your desire for a social corp, turning wars into a silly and contrived game of capture the flag isn't going to make them better, but rather would just kill them. However, I do see some possibility to use structure-based wars if we also have structure-based corps. Remember though, you are intended to have to defend your stuff and compete for resources in New Eden. I think there should be a place (like a structure-less, social corp) for new players and those not wanting to compete to splash around in sandbox, but any competitive activity that is effecting the greater economy must be at risk to other players.

That's what it looks like.

Famous idea.

You sure about that?