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Changes to war mechanics
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Hannott Thanos
Squadron 15
#1 - 2012-03-29 11:12:59 UTC  |  Edited by: Hannott Thanos
Dev blog was up for a bit, then taken down. No discussion thread about it.

Edit. Dev blog back up. This can be closed now

while (CurrentSelectedTarget.Status == ShipStatus.Alive) {

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Hannott Thanos
Squadron 15
#2 - 2012-03-29 11:13:39 UTC
Hello capsuleers,

The main feature work for Team Super Friends for Inferno is redesigning the War Declaration system (you know, Inferno being war themed and all). We’ve already made great progress (which I will outline below), but as Inferno is slated for May, we still have a way to go. This means that there will be some speculations and ifs and buts in here, as it remains to be seen how far we can take this for now.

The first question we asked ourselves is why touch the war dec system at all? Isn’t it functioning fine? The answer to that is yes, and no. The system is not broken, it’s not useless (though underutilized) and it does what it’s supposed to do (allow people to fight legally in hi sec). But things were not absolutely peachy.

The most immediate issues were the ways in which players could shield themselves from the threat of war. This comes in two main forms – war shielding and war shedding. War shielding is having alt-corps declare war on you to make it extremely costly for other corporations to dec you. By manipulating the retract option and when the war dec bill is due, you could keep cost at minimum for yourself. War shedding is joining a phony alliance after being war decced and then leaving the alliance, leaving the wars behind. This makes you safe 50% of the time, meaning your hi sec POSs are completely immune.

Apart from fixing these, and some basic usability issues, we also took a long hard look at the underlying concept for the war dec system; asking ourselves such questions as: who is it for? Is it for large alliances wanting to extent their nullsec wars to empire space? Is it for hi sec entities for settling their differences? Is it to make it easier for people attacking other people that don’t want to fight? Should it be a career path for corporations or even alliances? All or none of the above?

Out of these speculations we came up with a few guidelines, which can be summarized as follows:

Tighten the war system, so it becomes clear how wars start, proceed and end.
Make war progression (i.e. how everyone’s faring) more visible, both for strategic and status reasons.
Make fighting wars a viable career path for dedicated mercenary corps.

So what are some of the changes you will see in Inferno? I will list a few of them, which should give a good indication of what to expect, but as always, with Inferno still almost two months away, things can change.

Change the war dec cost formula so that the cost is no longer increased by the number of wars target corp is in. Instead, the cost is modified by the number of players in target corp.
Have wars move with you when you enter/leave alliances. If you are engaged in a war that you declared, you cannot join an alliance until that war is finished.
CEO/Director can now war dec, no more voting.
Wars can no longer be automatically retracted. The surrender option is streamlined (no more meeting in same station) and can involve formal concession of ISK. It also means these entities cannot war dec each other for a time period.
Wars have a weekly cycle, at which time the aggressor can choose to prolong (at ISK cost) for another week or end the war. As long as the aggressor is willing to pay for another week, the war can go on for a long time.
Wars are tracked, with all losses shown in a War Report, viewable by all participants. This lists clearly all losses on both sides in the war. To get this to work properly, we’ve (with help from Game of Drones) added everything to the market and fixed a few items that didn’t have a price (like Titans), with the price being based on material ingredients. Here is a mockup of the war report. This is a work in progress.

while (CurrentSelectedTarget.Status == ShipStatus.Alive) {

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Hannott Thanos
Squadron 15
#3 - 2012-03-29 11:13:47 UTC
All corporations will now have a war history, which shows the wars they’ve been in and how they fared (ISK loss on both sides). This might also be viewable on a character level (i.e. see the character’s war history).
A defender corp in a war can call an ally to their aid. The ally then joins the war on the side of the defender. To facilitate this we’ll add a ‘mercenary marketplace’ to the contract UI, where corps can find each other (defending corps can advertise they’re looking for an ally; mercenary corps can advertise their availability). Joining as an ally is a formal contract and can involve transfer of ISK. Once you’re an ally, you’re committed to the war until it ends.

It is our hope that the changes outlined here will serve to make wars a more engaging, fulfilling and fun experience for all. As always it is very difficult to create a system that supports legal PvP in a one-size-fits-all manner, as people have different playstyles, needs and expectations. With the changes currently in the pipeline we do realize that wars become a bit more hardcore and harder to avoid. But the line that is being drawn in the sand here is that if you’re in a player run corporation, then war is something you must be prepared to tackle. The ally system and the surrender with enforced peace do give options beside just duking it out (or docking for a week), but if you absolutely do not want to be war decced, then the only option right now is to be in a NPC corp. This is not an optimal solution and we might iterate here in the future, but this is the direction we’re taking right now.

Finally, here are a few Q & A from the Fanfest and CSM feedback that will hopefully clear some things up.

Q: A declares war on B. B enlists help of ally C. Can A now bring in D? Or is this option only limited to the defender? And if A brings in D, is D at war with A and C, or just C?
A: Only the defender can call an ally. There is no limitation to how many allies he can call. The ally counts as being at war with the aggressor corp.

Q: War dec cost, number of aggressor wars.
A: The number of wars the declaring corp has still modifies the cost.

Q: War dec cost, target corp member modifier?
A: The war dec cost formula will not take aggressor size into account and will not count trial account members in target corp. But the formula is constantly being revised, so nothing is set in stone.

Q: Mercs can't escape war?
A: That's true and the same goes for the aggressor - entering a war is now more of a commitment and not something you can hop in and out of at a whim's notice.

Q: Can mercs be in more than one war?
A: Yes, as long as later employees are fine with hiring somebody spread thin (corp war history, which includes ongoing wars is pubic).

Q: Limit on number of wars?
A: No, apart from the increased cost of war deccing many.

Q: How long will wars last?
A: As long as the aggressor pays every week and no one surrenders (or no surrender offer is accepted), then a war can last forever.

Q: Wars last for max 2 weeks?
A: No. At the end of EACH week, the aggressor chooses.

Q: What about mutual wars?
A: We're still debating what to do about mutual wars, so I didn't include any info on that here.

Q: What about corp-hopping?
A: We're adding tracking in the backend to track this. How we will then display it in game is undecided, but we do have stories in the backlog for the character war history to show if the character left a corp at war. We also want to have it cost a little to corp-hop during a war. We're also looking into not allowing you to join a corp you've left during a war while that war is still ongoing. We're also exploring some limitations to joining and leaving a corp on the fly.

Q: Corp at war joining an alliance
A: Only aggressor corp is banned from joining an alliance (this is so alliances can't use a corp to dec an alliance and then join to get the whole alliance into the war, there are a few other edge cases). A decced corp can join an alliance and will transfer it's wars to (and from when leaving ) the alliance.

Q: Neutral parties in a fight?
A: This is part of crime watch and not handled specifically by the war system. RRing someone in a legal war fight in hi sec adds a Suspect flag. This won't solve RRing as such, so maybe something more needs to be done, but this is what we're planning for Inferno.

Q: Easier to see war targets?
A: We're not making any changes to this at this time.

while (CurrentSelectedTarget.Status == ShipStatus.Alive) {

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Hannott Thanos
Squadron 15
#4 - 2012-03-29 11:15:07 UTC
http://content.eveonline.com/www/newssystem/media/28060/1/war_report-08.png


http://content.eveonline.com/www/newssystem/media/28060/1/new_killmails-02.png

while (CurrentSelectedTarget.Status == ShipStatus.Alive) {

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Decus Daga
Unfit for Duty
#5 - 2012-03-29 11:16:33 UTC
Thanks for posting, its going to be interesting to see how it works out. Definatly will bring out more merc corps i believe!
Jake Warbird
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#6 - 2012-03-29 11:18:28 UTC
Thanks for poasting. I still have my doubts though,I guess it will work itself out as time goes on.

Sugar Von MurdererTits : Jake Warbird gets my vote for most intriguing and attractive male character in Eve.
Hiram Alexander
State Reprisal
#7 - 2012-03-29 11:21:58 UTC
Thanks for posting, I was trying to post about it as well, but every time I clicked 'post' it flipped out on me.
Hiram Alexander
State Reprisal
#8 - 2012-03-29 11:34:48 UTC
A vanishing Dev Blog wrote:
Q: War dec cost, target corp member modifier
A: The war dec cost formula will not take aggressor size into account and will not count trial account members in target corp. But the formula is constantly being revised, so nothing is set in stone.

Although trial accounts won't be counted towards the costs, I still want to know if ~inactive~ accounts will be factored in..


And in regard to the killmails...
A vanishing Dev Blog wrote:
To get this to work properly, we’ve (with help from Game of Drones) added everything to the market and fixed a few items that didn’t have a price (like Titans), with the price being based on material ingredients.

If I kill something with a mineral cost of 1bil, and go back to view that mail after a while (say, after that periodical measurement-change is made for insurance costs, etc.) is it possible that the kill will now be valued at, say, 1.5bil - or in other words, will the price be hard-wired into the mail itself, or dynamically generated at 'view'...?
Eternum Praetorian
Doomheim
#9 - 2012-03-29 11:36:17 UTC
I think I found my new EVE Career for the new year Big smile

[center]The EVE Gateway Blog[/center] [center]One Of EVE Online's Ultimate Resources[/center]
Ciar Meara
PIE Inc.
Khimi Harar
#10 - 2012-03-29 11:39:12 UTC
I tried commenting about it but couldn't.

The changes do seem pretty straightforward, the only two questions I had where the mutual wars and if there would be a cap on the size of the payment for bigger corps (lets say 150 million a week) to make sure 200+ man corps wouldn't be undeccable.

The marketplace seems like a nice touch, I for one would like to see a similar marketplace for individual kill rights (to buy and sell).

- [img]http://go-dl1.eve-files.com/media/corp/janus/ceosig.jpg[/img] [yellow]English only please. Zymurgist[/yellow]
Jada Maroo
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#11 - 2012-03-29 11:43:50 UTC
A cap (or even free) to cost on mutual wars and a progessing cost on non mutual wars would be the best balance of letting people use the new killboard features and also not allowing one corp to continuously rape another in perpetuity.
Hannott Thanos
Squadron 15
#12 - 2012-03-29 13:00:51 UTC
Bumping this up and above all the Mittens crap. Hope you new ppl find it interesting

while (CurrentSelectedTarget.Status == ShipStatus.Alive) {

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St Mio
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#13 - 2012-03-29 13:06:27 UTC
The new KM and Wardec windows look very very nice. +1 to Team Super Friends
Hannott Thanos
Squadron 15
#14 - 2012-03-29 14:01:58 UTC
Wow, so much spam in general chat, second page in a few minutes.
Friendly bump again.

while (CurrentSelectedTarget.Status == ShipStatus.Alive) {

     _myShip.FireAllGuns(CurrentSelectedTarget);

}
masternerdguy
Doomheim
#15 - 2012-03-29 14:06:41 UTC
If we have a in game formal way of settling wars for isk how are we going to scam mining corps out of the isk and fight them anyway?

CCP hates pvp.

Things are only impossible until they are not.
Pahineh Amelana
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#16 - 2012-03-29 15:32:12 UTC
New system is already broken from the get go.


Cost associated to players within a corp = Alts being dumped into corps to buff numbers + costs.
(I own 8 accounts, most people no a days own 2-3 accounts do the math)

Defenders calling for help / no help limit = Bait Corps will become even easier to use
(IE you use a bait corp to get the dec, call in your own war corps)



I would write more but it would appear pointless since the idea made it to fanfest, and is now in creation mode.
Ammzi
Dreddit
Test Alliance Please Ignore
#17 - 2012-03-29 15:53:48 UTC
http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=28542

Dev blog is still there, or did you mean the thread?
This "new and improved" system is no worse nor better than the current one.
It's a fail before it is even launched, this coming from one of the largest corporation in EVE.
Hannott Thanos
Squadron 15
#18 - 2012-03-29 19:03:45 UTC
Ammzi wrote:
http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=28542

Dev blog is still there, or did you mean the thread?
This "new and improved" system is no worse nor better than the current one.
It's a fail before it is even launched, this coming from one of the largest corporation in EVE.


The devblog was up for a few minutes, but was taken down. Now it's back up :)

while (CurrentSelectedTarget.Status == ShipStatus.Alive) {

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adam smash
Department of Gub'nent Welfare
Harkonnen Federation
#19 - 2012-03-29 19:17:52 UTC
Broken, fucks the small guys... sounds like anyone now can just dec 20 small corps... pay almost nothing... and run around picking off targets...

SWEET nice work CCP...

Pushing us harder to blobs....

Also love to know how this is gona change the decing anyways... if it is based off size... you will end up with one huge HS alliance like say dec shild... but everyone staying making the costs crazy... OR everyone in NPC corp...

One or the other.

Also makes large alliances like immune... who can afford to dec test or goons other than test or goons...

What fail...

From the start it should have been aggessor size vs aggressed size for cost...

This way it would cost a butt ton of isk to dec a small group with a large group but groups of about the same size could dec eachother on the cheap... as well as small guys could pick at the large alliances...

Perfect... no... pvp corps could still wreck indy corps of the same size but it is a hell of alot better than the curret fail they want to do.
Nova Fox
Novafox Shipyards
#20 - 2012-03-29 19:25:04 UTC
Back tot he drawing board is the only reason why I see it taken down unless its website fail.

Dust 514's CPM 1 Iron Wolf Saber Eve mail me about Dust 514 issues.
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