Warfare & Tactics

Good point. This is a problem with offensive too. Perhaps no LP for either until a system is contested, but full LP for offensive and half for defensive once it is contested...

The ebb and flow of FW could forever stop if these changes take effect. As Shalee said who will want to join a losing side? FW is already broken and bleeding people. This docking issue could be the death blow.

The changes are not all bad. LP for kills and capturing plexes are a great ideas. Having a bonus for controlling systems is also a nice idea. It gives the Winning side a reason to win. The losing side has the plus of more systems to plex in. Seems all well and good to me.

One thing I see playing out over and over is this.

Small Amarr fleets goes to capture a few plex.
Minnie fleet gets intel and camps out gates with fast tackle
Minnie fleet goes to push Amarr out of plex.
Amarr fleet has to keep bouncing safes or try to run a gate taking a few losses.

I know some people will think that is fair. But many of us have chosen to play in FW for these reasons. The ability to undock, go a jump or two, get a fight, dock up and log off. Why would anyone who plays like that stay in FW. It seems these changes push more people away than they keep or draw in.

I was going to try to talk my peeps into letting non-station systems flip so we can farm them. Maybe we can upgrade them, lol.

The importance for defensive plexing will be:
1. Home systems
2. Mission systems
3. Systems with stations near mission systems. (these will be staging systems to attack mission systems)
4. Others.

I'm still kinda on-the-fence about the reset issue. I don't think it'd be even remotely fair if CCP goes ahead with full lock-outs. Also with how easy/fast it is to flip systems at the moment it'd kind of be a joke to just start lock-outs with no reset. If there's going to be a reset there really needs to be no lock-out and an improved system flipping mechanic (and plenty of warning beforehand so people can move to "safe" systems if they want to).

I don't believe that full lock-out from stations is a good idea though. It's just too restrictive (especially if CCP still want FW to be noob friendly).

The station-services denial... absolutely!

Station-guns... certainly on any of the militia stations (TLF/24th stations etc.), but not neutral ones.
That will give new peeps some confidence that they can actually undock from their home station and then go out into the warzone. It'll limit some aspects of station camping and will draw the fights out into space (because if they only hang around their own station they won't have anyone to shoot... unless it's bigger stuff or fleets with logi. It adds the risk that if they don't defend their systems, then they'll have to suffer their own station's guns. It'll of course make it a bit unbalanced in the enemies favour as they'll be able to camp their "new" station and have station-guns on their side if they flip the system. Some very clear undock warning-messages for people leaving an "enemy owned" station will be necessary... otherwise a lot of frig's are going to die horribly.
Of course if you choose to live in a neutral station then you're open to being fully camped-in, etc.


There's no need to make it like null-sec. But adding some limited restrictions that are in the same vein as null mechanics would also further that idea that low-sec is a stepping-stone to null-sec (even if the majority of low-sec residents don't see it that way).

It's called high sec, though with all the pies in my militia (and if Bad Messenger lays seige to Villore again) I suspect our last-case backup system will be Aeschee or Pellile.

Edit: Maybe CCP should add a cluster that connects Oyanata to Turnur ?

ring of doom is the Seiside/Auga/Amamake/Dal/Lantorn/Vard cluster.

http://evemaps.dotlan.net/map/Amarr_VS_Minmatar/Egghelhende#sec

If they dropped the whole lock-out idea (please?), I do like the idea of not being able to access agents nor have clones etc in stations that are held by the enemy. I also like the idea of station guns shooting at the enemy militia.

Perhaps we could do some shady deals with the stations and pay for some services, like an extraordinary amount for repairs or something. Maybe Scotty takes bribes?

Also, I'm curious if we will be locked out of our militia allies lost system's stations as well?

the amarr are perfectly capable of getting a blob together and doing anything they want. the difference is that we've stuck with (and worked) the grind much harder than them. On the numbers front, the two sides are actually very close, and in quality of ships and overall quality of pilots, i'd say the amarr still have the leg up.

In the end, the Amarr don't want to work for the systems and now some of them want CCP to just give them stuff back - and in the end screw over all of the minmatar who both worked their asses off for the systems and who have lived in these systems for well over a year now.

I honestly don't see any justification for a reset, what-so-ever, but I certainly can understand where the feeling comes from.

This is more of the stuff that really scare me. It's random "awesome" introduced without any thought to it's lasting implications of game balance and without any direct motivation to it's introduction.

Drones never had damage modules for a good reason, they already had a high-damage niche to begin with. An Ishtar could always spit nearly 500 dps over 100km at the expense of the drawbacks inherent in drones. Turret ships put out half of that. Missile ships could contend with raw damage but had their own application issues. Then came Tier 3 BC with their 600-700 dps paradigm just stepping over every other notion of balance, and now this. In what way did we need it? did drone boats lack damage output? will they see fleet-use because of this? Surely not.

A fuelled shield booster would cut down on slots needed for an injected tank. A fair general idea it may seem, considering the manadatory nature of midslots like MWD or points, but it does enable new combinations of high-buffer injection that will ripple balance issues across the ship classes; force a major amount of post-balance work better spent elsewhere, and for what reason?

It's probably just a testing ground to meet the demands of people whining about active bonuses not scaling as gang sizes go up, or active tanking being relegated to small gangs. The thing is that balance is actually pretty tolerable as it is, between armor and shield or between the logic that internal mitigation with external regeneration is a combined superior team-strategy. Why meddle with it when there are glaring holes to fix? Why cause work?



There is one very important difference between EC-drones and web-drones. ECM may indirectly cause a ship to explode, but webs have a direct and much quicker effect. Look at it like this: if you swarm something with EC-drones it tend to affect offensive control, you can still manoeuver and buy time, it's also chance based which allow you to sustain and deal with it. That's why something like smartbombs is effective on EC-drones. They have little offensive snap - even if they can have defensive snap (drones, jam, flee).

Webbing drones on the other hand can be applied to a fleeing enemy with an instant effect that then and there can cause them to explode. Smartbombing that won't be feasible. Your team-effort versus mass application can't react that fast. You'll likely see profileration of large gangs just putting out a sphere of webbing death by allowing small web drones. It doesn't matter if it's a weak figure, every Drake in the game all of a sudden got 60km of web reach; a bonus usually reserved for very specialist ships under specific circumstances. It's yet another of them mechanics that just feed a blob and will give people less motivation to go out and fight each other in the first place. It's a blobber tool, Malcanis' Law applied to numbers (not having the margin to spare, etc.).

Barring CPU-rigs, what of this crap is actually needed in the game? Needed to the point that it's taken design precedence over fixing clearly defined problems. I understand i sound conservative and boring, but ugh.

Sorry all you Amarr militia types, but the idea of a reset is the wrong way to go. Just thing of what null sec would be like if they 'reset' sov every time a change was made. You lost those systems and the Minmatar militia earned them, now you have to deal with it. Any perceived 'advantage' they earned for themselves. And you are perfectly capable for basing out of other systems and taking them back.