Warfare & Tactics

Which is not a fundamentally broken design like the Privateer thing was. The Privateers used it to turn large portions of hi-sec effectively into NPC-null because they wardec'd dozens of corps/alliances.

Allowing the person that you wardec, to bring in unlimited allies can't be abused in the same manner. Because those allies can make a choice as to whether or not to enter the conflict, it can't be forced on them (although they might be tricked into doing so).

It provides an interesting risk to being the aggressor corp in a hi-sec wardec - now you'll need to know whether that organization has friends, or the means to hire mercenaries.

(I'm not saying that it won't ultimately need to be limited / balanced in some fashion. Such as making the "bring in ally" contract costing 50M ISK, or by limiting the number of ally contracts that you can have running in some fashion. Perhaps a new skill under Corporation Management that the CEO has to train. But I don't see it as being completely broken as planned.)

lol @ getting good fights from hisec pilots

Just fly out in the goddamn lowsec, there are good fights to be had every night and you don't have to spend a penny on wardecs. Sometimes you don't even have to find a fight, it finds you!

EDIT: I read shari's post from another thread and it's obvious that she has flown a lot solo in lowsec, so take my words with some salt.

As far as i see this now, there won't be so dramatic changes.

The price rises, okay. Everything gets more expensive, plexes were at 300m some month ago, now they are near 500.

But, instead of calculating the price like XX ISK + XX ISK per member, it should be:

difference between Corp A (agressor) and Corp B (target)

The bigger A and the smaller B, the more expensiv it should be to declare war.
Perhaps even the actual killboard should be a reference to calculate. That would make it unattractive to declare war on small mining-corps or R&D-corps.

I also see no problem with allies. The defender probably has done good political work, why should'nt it be possible to get help from the friends.
And the agressor - if he finds another corp which also declares war to his target, were's the problem?

thats the issuse with decs u think if u give a good fight that the war will never end. no. if u dont fight i dec u for longer. thats when i start to grief. give me 7 days of damn good fights and i wont have a need to dec u forever since after said period of time i will have to go and grind some isk to cover the loses during war.

now if u were to fight for 7 days and said corp still kept the war goin then there is an understandable reason y u dont want to fight. i mean who wants to fight when they are tired? i know i dont.

Oh you will get absolutely no argument from me that the Privateer model was utterly broken. But the thing is, unlimited allies only for the defender breaks the war system. Because the aggressor will be quickly drowned in a sea of free "mercs" joining the defenders side. Don't think there are many people that are going to pay 20mil+500K/member per week to be blobbed out like that. And there are going to be TONS of free "mercs"... and if I'm still playing after Inferno (and that's a big IF at this point), I'm gonna be one of them. Cuz all other limited hi-sec PvP is effectively dead.

Well, CCP has done something right when people from both sides of the fence are whining

I've been around the block a few times with war decs. I used to run a corp, and we'd dec corps with offlined towers for luls and candy - reaping billions in killmails and loot. A couple of times we would dec and the tower would come online; one time it resulted in a 50 man RR blob coming to assist a 5 man corp. Nothing in the wardec changes will afect the social engineering (or lack of intel) required to see small hisec industrial alt corps get defended properly by their mains' corporations. If the industry alt corp gets decced, nowadays the ally function will just allow the allies to join the war afficially and remove the hassle of having to deal with neutral RR in this situation.

Other times we would dec industrial alliances, and pew pew them. They would pull the quickfade, corps would drop like fleas from a dog, members would all join alt corps, blah blah. You watch a 350 man alliance decced by a 50 man corp shrink to a 80 man alliance in 48 hours, yes it is hilarious and worth the 150M ISK. Were we blueballed? Yes. Did we want fights we didn't get? Yes. Did we cop counter-decs which were hilariously ineffective? Yes. Will this change with the new mechanics? No, and I don't care.

Second point, war is necessary for conducting warfare on the logistical architecture and supply lines of your enemy. If two nullsec aliances are flailing away at each other then often professional merc griefer hisec corps get engaged, often for billions of ISK per week, to choke off the supply lines of the foe. This results, these days, in clouds of RR alts propping logon trapping proteus' or tengus on key gates in the supply pipe, and of course all the market hubs being camped. The end result is the nullsec guys shop on alts, which is an annoyance, or access hisec via wormholes, which just takes time.

Increasing the cost of such wardecs won't deter the mercs. Allowing someone to pay to surrender, depending on whether it's set by toons in alliance, or must be via negotiation, may actually favor the defender in this situation. For some power blocs 2B-10Bn ISK is nothing to pay to get a wardec dropped. Mercs and griefers may start deccing nullsec alliances just to blackmail them to go away and extort protection money. Nothing wrong with this

The allies functionality will, however, see coalitions of alliances in nullsec begin to work as a cohesive force. If your buddy alliance gets decced you can respond to the war as an ally and go fight. But honestly, nullsec alliances usually just stay in null and let the dec run its course, so few people will probably make use of this feature

The major discussion is about the nooby corps full of inexperienced players who get decced by so-called 'griefers'. The wardec changes won't stop this, it is true, and yes it will result in extortion rackets, some informal and others, perhaps formal (ie; pay me 50M ISK per month or I dec you for ever amen). This requires people who start corps and populate them with broke-ass inexperienced noobs to actually know what they are doing.

What do I mean? Well, for a start, CEO's of such corps full of missioners and carebears often don't actually teach, mentor or train their members. Without doing this, you take your tax and have unprepared nubs who quit your corp or the game when you get picked on within 2 weeks of forming. Some stay and fight but then become bankrupted (and yes, it is pretty lame fighting faction fitted 100MN tengus with rifters) and demoralised. But in the end, anyone starting a corp as a CEO should probably learn to run a corp, which is more complicated than spamming recruitment channel for 23 hours a day

For instance, while Sudden Buggery handed out decs, we also got our own set of decs. We had tactics to avoid fights and still make bulk ISK in hisec, without resorting to palying on alts. This involved ramrodding people to the skills for jump clones, organising people to mission properly in various regions and doing it cooperatively, forcing the WT's to trudge 40 jumps to get to you, only to JC off across the map. Ratting and exploring in Aridia for a week, and PVPing in lowsec, instead of playing station gaymes. Or just AFK cloaking in Amarr for 7 days en masse. Surviving 2 weeks vs griefer corpswithout a loss, well, it was par for the course.

Being decced isn't the end of the world. With the allies functionality, it requires the CEO having a smidgin of social skill. I know it is a preposterous idea thinking MMO players can communicate with other humans, but really, if you are in a nooby corp of noobs and get decced, you better learn social engineering to level 5 and find some allies. Going all Chicken Little isn't the way to do it

Think the last 2-3 wardecs i got, there was no fighting at all, we got decced, kept playing and at some point the war was over, without ever shooting a single time. The attacker should be forced to take action. And camping jita 4-4 in a completely different time zone is is not my definition of action.

Also most highsec elite pvp corps somehow fail to engage should you use something bigger than one covertor, they tend to dock up instantaneously in their faction battleships. Well needless to say without 5 neut guardians per vindicator nobody is undocking anyway.

I would have been happy if everything neutral assisting a player involved in a war in highsec gets blown up by concord instantly. I dont mind remote rep, but commit them to the fight from the beginning, also joining/leaving corps win war should have a timer for both sides, make it 3 days or so that both sides need to commit.

No fun in getting wardecced, just to see the corp that decced you is abandoning their corp for another corp, of cause leaving one or two member in the original corp to keep the wardec up. This does tend to be annoying as you cant press the A for Awesome-Pilot in the HUD then, at least not without feeling a little bit bad.

A 3-5 min docking timer in war would be nice too...f**k station games.

First, I would like to thank the Mega Alliances for making it very expensive to war-dec them. War-dec is for little people, not big people.

A war-dec'er engages in war-dec trash talk:


Well, since Vladmir earns ISK at at least five times the rate of a new player, I can see how he would have an easier time dealing with identical losses. Of course, the losses AREN'T identical.

Vladmir has more experience than the new player so he knows if he is going to lose or not and will dock if he will lose... and knows about safe spots, watching local channel and dozens of others tricks.

And his higher SP makes his ships 20 to 40 percent more powerful than the same ship played by a new player.

Oh, and his is better at managing combat to.

And Vladmir corp has worked together longer than the newbie corp has. Much better coordinated.

And his ships ARE better than the newbie corp.

Basically, I have no idea how a newbie corp could give Vladmir a good fight. In fact, I know that it is impossible for them to give him a good fight any more than a 7 year old could give an adult a "good fight"

So, since Vladmir isn't looking for a "good fight" what is he looking for?

Confirming that the thought having having my 1vs50 highsec dec's back is making my pants tight.

I was losing the faith with all the carebear whinging over the last 12 months, this should (I hope) bring back some of the Eve of 3 years ago :)

And for the record I go to low sec blah blah

Mmmm.... You should do a search for "The Taxman Chronicles" and you'll see what a "newbie corp" can do. The stories are slanted from a certain perspective, but are quite up-front and accurate in regards to how things play out in a typical small-scale war. "Newbie corps" can give as good as they get. Granted their is none of the douchebaggery that you will find in most wars (blobbing attackers, faction ships, neutral RR, etc) so it's far from a perfect example. But "noobs" can still bring the good fight.