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Gabriel, That view of EVE war is the classic 18th century PR that war is a gentlemen's game over who gets what. Instead of the RL and EVE way of war back then of destroying the weakest first and whenever possible. And then destroy the army if given the chance.


The issue is that instead of being what it should be of war over POS and POCOs and maybe over tax benefits. War turns into a tool to drive people out of corps or out of the game completely. This was the exact reason wars were allowed to be exploited out of for so long.

That is why I really don't care of the views of say Noir or other so called big name mercs. Your game is PVP and you have the numbers and strict organization to stand a remote chance. You aren't a player and 6 of his buddies that quit eve after a war goes into another week of staying docked due to constant red presence. Atleast not until today.

Yay, EVE is serious business. Just paying for it doesn't entitles you to play it. Playing EVE is a privilege to be earned.

Oh my: I just got a new signature!

OK, after i have really read a lot of dev blogs and comments to the new expansion. (It took me nearly two weeks to read all the stuff). And after Inferno is now online for everyone, i would like to ask you a few things
Sry everyone my english sucks as you can see, so i tryed to make it as short as possible.

This is a link to the fanfest videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ2u9Njy4VA&list=PLDDA989F65CD6E98A&index=7&feature=plpp_video

( I hope it worked with the link, im not a forum person. otherwise its the "war declarations video from the fanfest 2012)
starting at minute 25 ending at 27:15)

After what this person says, you did try to figure something out, like 1 contract for many allys. Why at the end you descided to not make it, he does not really tell.... i mean he does say stuff about technical difficultys (26:45) but this is not really helpful.
Therefore i try to make a reasonable example of a contract with multiple allys.

---

Corp X is looking for ally Against Corp Z
War started 2012.01.01
War period Ends 2012.01.07
Corp X pays to ally [0.10 Isk] Bounty for every [1.00 ISK ] inflicted (estimated worth) damage to the offender
Corp X has a Total of 100Mio Isk Bounty to payout for this War period (warweek)

[I agree with this terms]

---

WARNING:
If you agree with this terms, legal fighting between blablabla....period ends 2012.01.07. If maximum bounty is higher then 100Mio Isk it gets proportionally divided by efford to all involved allys during this warweek.
[OK] / [NOT OK]

---

If yes...and I am quite sure you did thought about that, what was the reason to not implement it? I can simulate such a thing easely in a excell table, at least the mathematical base, so im quite sure it can work in actual gameplay too, and most of what would have to be programmed, does allready exist in the current game mechanics, also am i shure that u are able to do this. Why did you descided to not do it in this way or something similliar (there are many possible other forms of such contracts)?
And if you never thought about this, could you bring something like it? Would be very nice if you at least give it another thought

I mean i have no Problems thinking about a corp who is blindly offering theyr assistance for free and get traped into a sensless, neverending war, actually it makes me laugh. This is why i think its not a bad idea to have both possibillitys. On one side you have the more bounty hunter like killer merc, witch gets payd at the end of week proportional to his efford, on the other side you have a protector in witch you have more trust to actually deffend your stuff, and therfore gets payd in front, but stays untill the end of war.


And By the way... great work CCP, eve is the best game that i ever Played, even if it is not perfect.

I kind of agree with you in that a guy and 6 of his buddies might not know what to do when a 20man PvP gang war-decs them and shows up outside station. I've always been of the mind that "eve is hard" and not everyone is cut out for this. That said, I also quite like the idea that if you are war-decced you can counter by getting allies.

However, the massive and obvious thing CCP have missed is that by making Allies potentially 'free' and 'unlimited' it completely ruins the whole system. This is the point of contention.

It seems that you are arguing from a point of not wanting war decs to work at all in high-sec? Which, I hope, is not in line with CCP's thinking (I hope).

P.S FYI, we are not a blobbing outfit but you're correct on the strict organization.

I think the system would be greatly improved if you could call only one ally. Be it a free blood-hunter or a serious profesional merc, your decision.

Current issues with the ally system:

1) The defender needs the ability to terminate ally contracts - with the usual 24h cooldown. This way, allies which are not performing can be removed from the war. Or allies can be removed for some other sandbox reason defined by the defender.

2) The defender needs an easy way to see whether a particular ally is pulling their weight. Or maybe I haven't found a way to pull up the war report for how an ally is doing on the current war in terms of kills/losses.

3) Ally contracts need to have expiration dates as short as 3-days and as long as 14-days (or until the war is retracted). With the option for auto-renewal at the end of the period for a *possibly different* renewal fee. I might want to hire an ally for 500M for the first 3-days and then only 200M for every 3-day period after that point.

4) There should probably be a small ISK fee, paid by the defender, for every ally accepted into the war. My feeling on this is that a fee of 10-25M per ally accepted would be enough not to crimp the sandbox nature, but enough that you maybe would not want to accept every last 1-man ally corp that applies.

5) Do not put limits on how many allies you can bring in (not without the ability for the defender to terminate existing contracts). Do not put in scaling costs on the ISK fee paid per ally that you bring in (not without the ability for the defender to terminate existing contracts).

6) Corps should be free to join as many wardecs as they want. If limits are being considered, they should be tabled for 2-3 months to see how things play out after the initial frenzy.

Hmmmm interesting ... finally a reason for people to go to losec and nullsec .... PvP ... what a novel idea.

So, what's the plan now that everyone is doing exactly what I said and running around taking wars for 0 ISK? Especially all of these lovely wars with tens of allies? Thoughts on how you're going to make it so that:

A) It's worth dec'ing people again.

and

B) It's worth being a merc and having people actually pay you to defend them, rather than everyone running around doing it for free?

Welcome to the free market of EVE. There are no guaranteed income sources and not all actors are rational. Now you understand how industrialists feel about the MIMAF crowd (Minerals I Mine Are Free).

If your competitors are willing to give away their services for less (or for free), then you need to figure out how to stand out from your competition so that people are willing to pay you instead. Maybe you have to make your profits on war loot instead of the initial contract fee.

It would help if we could setup free-form bounty contracts which are paid out over time as objectives are met.

An open-ended contract system where you pay for performance (which is now possible since in-game kill mails have the concept of ISK destroyed). It wouldn't need to be tied into the wardec system either.

- "hit" or "bounty" contracts can be public or made private to a specific alliance, corp, person who will do the wet work.
- Time limits of 1-14 days for expiration, 1-30 days for completion time limit.
- Target area can be all of EVE, or just a selection of systems, constellations or regions.
- Target can be anyone (a good way for the creator of the contract to be swindled), or limited to a specific set of corps/alliances.

The more selective that you are about contract limitations, the harder it would be for someone to defraud you without getting the results that you want.

The creator of the contract would escrow a maximum total ISK payout for the contract (could be 10M, could be 100B ISK). They then specify how much they will pay for kills of a particular type (pod, frigate, dessie, cruiser, BC, BS, cap, s-cap, titan, POS tower, sov-structure, industrial, cap industrial). Each ship class can be specified as a percentage of kill mail value (1-1000%), with a maximum payout per kill mail. There would be (13) classifications of ships. That could balloon a bit if you separate out T2 and T3 hulls. However, since payout is specified as *both* a percentage of the KM value, with an upper limit on what you're willing to pay for a single KM, you might not need to separate out the T2/T3 hulls.

Payout is made to the organization who accepted the contract, to anyone in that organization who was on-grid when the kill happened. Split just like rat bounties, and taxed by the player's corp just like rat bounties. If a particular kill is covered by multiple contracts, they should all pay out.

When the contract expires due to time limit, the remaining escrow goes back to the creator of the contract (and counts as failed). If the escrow gets used up before the expiration date, the contract is considered "completed".

So you could setup a private contract to a merc corp where they only get paid if they take out a POS tower belonging to a specific corporation in a specific system. Or maybe you pay a merc corp to wage indiscriminate war in a particular constellation. Or you want to pay for TCUs destroyed in a particular region. Or you use it as a pay-for-performance contract to get mercenaries to wage war against a target corporation.

Bounty Office
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1362340#post1362340

You're so far off the mark here. Anyone who's been a merc will tell you that it's not the quickest way to get rich by a mile. If it was about the ISK then players would just do incursions instead or whatever.

The reason why the current iteration of the ally system makes no sense is because it is geared up completely to dissuade players from running a war dec for any reason. See my post on this or the previous page with the example of two alliances - it shows you just how broken the system is.

There are some really simple fixes, for example the defence ally fee could be subject to the cost of the war plus whatever the ally chooses to charge if anything - meaning wars would be more cost-stable.

The truth is that CCP rail-roaded in a war change they hoped would help protect whining bears and they ended up creating a loophole even worse than the "dec shield".

What's really galling thing is how this pill was sugared as we were all told about how great the new system would be for mercs. Ironically this could not have been further from the truth.

Edit: Your suggestions are interesting btw. Not dismissing them but I just wanted to stay on topic of ten blog/changes.