EVE General Discussion

And if I have an off-week where nothing works and I am blobbed every time I undock, you'll have a bail out fund ready to supply me with cash?
Cutting missions that much opens up an entirely different can of worms, best not go there. If it comes down to the only balancing being done is tweaking payouts then the two "professions" should be roughly equal in performance .. but .. I am with Hans when he says that the ceptor/bomber is not the core issue but rather the extreme safety (read: skewed risk/reward ratio) that it represents.

That was the reason why I suggested including the entire commander spawn in the mission target pool as they could theoretically still be done in a bomber but it will multiply the time required by a factor of five or more making it much more efficient to use an appropriate ship and taking the safety hit.

Now, if only CCP would treat mission tanking the same as plex tanking and declare using non-militia personnel a 'No No' we could at least get rid of the neutral ceptors being used as scouts and tanks both

That is what I am saying. If you had been in the plexing game for as long as I have you'd know that there are just sometimes you cannot enter a plex, let alone space, without getting 4-5 people on your ass in an instant. One could of course "go deep" and ninja a load of plexes but is that really a mechanic you/we want .. and what happens if CCP adds some kind of notification system that we have both advocated in different forms?
Also, keep in mind that the plan is to make plexes less of a solo-frig affair (or did I misinterpret the presentation?) so "running some plexes" might not even be viable without some serious ISK to begin with.

Read it again, I said that time would increase if a person flat out refuses to leave his precious bomber. Current missions can be done as fast or faster in a HAC (PvP/DP Sacrilege is awesome!) but the risk is a lot higher I think you'll agree .. bombers are omni-present because they offer near 100% safety with only a marginal time-to-complete hit compared to alternatives.

But we digress, question was about NPC eWar rebalancing.

I do not believe that it is in Eve's interest to start making 'special' NPCs to solve "our" localised issues with NPC eWar .. better would be to do as I suggested earlier or remove eWar from them entirely until such time the eWar mechanics themselves are revamped and the PvE side of things can be factored into the design from the ground up as it were.

I haven't run them in a sacrilege I should give it a try. I haven't really looked at them much. What is a pvp/dp fit? What dps can you get with this fit? I run missions in a drake and its not too much risk either. I really don't think there should be that much risk in doing pve. Not if we are going to compete with other pve like high sec incursions.

As far as your idea to make missions take longer I think that will be a much bigger problem for the side that can't field many numbers. The side that has the numerical superiority will be able to mission all they want. The other side will constantly be chased out of missions.

As far as the plexing goes and giving a notification I think that can be overcome. At least you can pretty much plex in any system. Where as missions give you specific systems and you need larger ships.

A few things should happen if plexing is to be the main way to get lp:

1) The amount of the reward for smaller plexes has to be substantial. Minor versus major plexes should not have the disparaty of level 1 missions and level 4 missions. That way if a larger force does come you can still get substantial lp by choosing your ship type in a way that helps you best.

2) They should allow you to dock at stations in enemy territory. That way you can keep your ships there (see above the importance of being able to choose the plex to break up blobs) and force fights where the blobs can't get you easilly.

3) Don't create some sort of "frontline" preventing people from plexxing all over the map. A blob may go a 2 jumps to chase a destroyer out of a minor plex but they won't go 8 jumps. If you have a different sized ships spread out in the faction war territory you should be able to run plexes without getting blobbed. The idea is if someone is out that way in a destroyer already they can go and fight you for the plex. But there should never be a situation where one or 2 large orgnized fleets can shut down the outnumbered sides ability to do any plexes.


I really think CCP should push this plexing mechanic as the main way to make lp in faction war. To the extent the missions give such huge lp rewards they won't get there. Unless they are nerfed, missions will be farmed - either in hacs or sbs it doesn't really matter. CCP needs to make the move to having plexxing be the primary source of income. It may be painful at first to not get so much lp from missions but if they want to make the switch to a pvp centered faction war it has to be done. If issues arise with that they need to deal with them as they come.

When you say "dungeons" I assume you mean occupancy plexes. I haven't heard "dungeons" used since faction war first came out. You must be talkign with ccp and therefore picking up their lingo.

As far as the amarr goes we deal with target painters.

This then translates as too much damage to absorb and have a pvp fight at that same time. About a week ago I was running an open major plex and had to warp my drake in at 100. A neutral showed up in a drake wanting a fight. But by the time we closed the distance to get a disruptor on we were both pretty much trying to warp out due to the rat damage. No fight, chalk another one up for the npcs.

I know this is just one story, but rats work to prevent pvp in these plexes in several ways. Consider that if an actual minmatar came that we would need to have like 2 or 3 drakes to fight his single drake in this plex. Will he realize this? Will he warp his drake in on 2 or 3 enemy drakes? What if we had the rats cleared out? How would he know this?

Npcs just make it so one side needs to have a much larger gang to be competitive yet the defending side won't know the situation. Result: no fights.


IMO they need to be toned down - or even eliminated. Perhaps for other races they are irrelevant. I don't know.

As far as the missions go if you are referring to the Amarr having it the worst in terms of just stealth bombers then I have to disagree: the Gallente have it the worst. It is 100% impossible to solo a mission in a stealth bomber. Period. If you have a couple of accounts or if you have a buddy in a speed tanking ship then you can, but between the ECM and missiles (full damage at any range) it's not possible to fit a bomber for both. This is (IMO) why 1: Gallente LP is worth more isk and 2: why you almost always see solo Gallente mission runners in Ishtars, Gila's, or a Tech 3 (usually Tengu's).

As far as EWAR currently is in plexes (and by extension missions), it is not so much a matter of trying to balance certain missions or plexes for certain types of EWAR as much as I believe it is a matter of the fundamental TYPES of EWAR. Take for instance damps and ECM. With damps, if you are setup for close range (no matter the ship or weapon) you will ALWAYS have a chance to lock without using sebos where as with ECM it doesn't matter what your range, shiptype or weapon is, if you are jammed you are out of luck. No shooting for 20 seconds (if you are lucky).

That said, should CCP decide to actually change how ECM works (either by duration, frequency of jam, or some way to "un-jam") the entire point of this could be made moot, however, without knowing their plans a more effective way of making the field even might be to forget about the racial EWAR and stick with just one thing: the proposed weapon disruptors. By having EWAR affect ALL types of weapons affected at least a little (regardless of range or weapon type) without affecting the the players ability to complete the mission based on tanking (TP's), locking range (SD's) or ability to lock (ECM) you make the playing field even. Is this the best solution? Not likely, you almost certainly see one or two types of ships being used for all of them (in current solo-type formats) and it may favor certain racial ships over others still but at LEAST it would be even across the militias instead of having certain factions more "mission friendly" than others.

Side note: If CCP switched to weapon disruptors, I would also suggest it would then be alright to have a smarter AI, one that actually switches targets from time to time (like incursions) to make dual boxing with a SB and Inty less feasible an again, force players to use groups or bigger (more expensive) ships.

That is my opinion on the question directly, however, I would honestly say that if CCP were to have missions remain in their current form, the Gallente style (ECM, damage at any range) would be best. Why? I believe it would take a HUGE number of mission farmers out of the militia because the risk-reward gap would be greatly balanced. By extension LP prices would rise, militia numbers might become more representative of the actual number of PvP pilots, and it might take some of the load off trying to put LP in more places than missions (for which I am in favor of BTW).

Just my two cents.

Regarding not being able to dock in enemy controlled systems, if the problem is people don't want to "lose" ships in contested areas there are a few reasonably simple compromises.



1) Continue to allow Pods full access to dock at these stations, which would then allow you to undock your ship but no access to re-dock unless you go back in a Pod. This seems the simplest solution.

2) Add a system where as the Faction NPCs "flee" the systems as they fall, your stuff gets auto-evacuated to a new system, so all your ships and hangar contents get relocated to a different system, possibly in .5 space. You can place a delay timer on it so it takes a few days to get your stuff back, and place an ISK cost on it by having it start Impounded requiring your to reimburse your faction for the otherwise "free" logistics.

For me the problem is not really getting your stuff out. I can have alts do that.

From my perspective the main problem is that this will create a sort of front line that can be completely covered by whichever side has more numbers at the time. The side with fewer numbers will be able to do very little. That will make for allot of dull nights.

Now that we *can* dock in occupied systems the outnumbered side can still store plexing ships of various sizes in the back alleys and do plexing if we want. A blob or 2 simply has too much ground to cover and would have to split up into smaller gangs to cover the territory.

Since I like frequent small gang pvp I sort of like how it is now. People who like less frequent but larger fights might prefer this change.

If this change goes through I may just join faction war every now and then to get lp from whatever faction delivers lp easiest. The rest of the I time I would be in a neutral pvp corp so I can have access to different sized ships when and where I need them.

*shrug* just don't keep your most precious shinies in contested systems, just some PvP-worthy cruisers and BC and as long as systems can't be flipped in a matter of hours, there shouldn't be a big problem. And if you really need it back, like I said, just contract it to an alt or use a courier. Or better yet: help taking back the system.

The whole concept of people evacuating a system that is about to be flipped even offers cool gameplay opportunities. I remember that back in the day ATUK had some of its best fights against XETIC, that kept denying us combat at every turn, if we went after the people evacuating the conquerable stations likely to be flipped by Five blobs in the upcoming weekend.

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In EVE it's always incredibly hard to get your enemies to fight you if they don't want to. Evacuations are one of the few moments where you can actually force your opponent to face you in a pitched battle and commit. Taking down structures is another common one, but that isn't nearly as much fun.

One thing that would sure that systems aren´t flipped very quickly is by adding a hurdle for the last ´push´.

Like in the way for Incursions take a final 40-men fleet to finally close is down. Personally I really think CCP should add something like that to FW as well. Like needing at 30-men fleet to defeat the commander of the opposing NPC faction's fleet, but perhaps with a little less incoming DPS then Incursion MOMs so the site allows for player fighting without the NPC murdering one side.

The side with less people will have more ability to fight if the time it takes to flip a system is shorter. If the time it takes to flip a system is longer the side with the larger force will just be completely dominant and the side with fewer people will have nothing they can do.

I don't know how ccp could express their love of blob warfare, and intent to erase any form of meaningfull small gang pvp, better than:

1) limitting the field of battle to a few frontline systems by denying docking rights in the back water systems

2)Forcing longer timers before a system can flip so you can't accomplish anything with a hit and run type force, and

3) adding large consequences.

This is a recipe to make fw like the civil war style warfare we have in sov null sec. Everyone get in your ship and go to the battlefield system line up and shoot the primarys which go in alphabetical order.

I'm all for consequences as long as they do not prevent me for fighting in the war short of joining a large blob. I hope ccp considers Susan's post where she suggests that there could be different levels of occupancy so its not an all or nothing thing.

If CCP wants to maintain any semblence of small gang pvp in faction war they will make it so small gangs can have an impact in a short time so that both sides won't always have time to form up a large blob and roll out on their own time. They will also allow the relevant systems to be spread out so 2 or 3 blobs can't cover all the relevant ground. If it is going to take more than several hours to accomplish anything, then one blob will actually be plenty.




The second idea in that post is a great idea. I hope ccp considers that. As for the rest, well, not so much.