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Jade, I think the bottom line is that we are trying to *encourage* war, and encourage the use of mercenary forces to fight wars.

It's all fine and dandy to say "that's just the price you pay as an aggressor" if we are running with a punishment mentality, where the aggressor is the evil-doer and the victim needs protection at all costs. But to approach the game design with this in mind assumes that major alliances like Goonswarm targeting smaller entities for griefing is a commonplace and game-breaking occurrence.

What you've failed to convince me of so far is the scale to which the atrocities you're trying to prevent are occurring. I understand your personal situation, but CCP has to make game play decisions that are good for the majority of players, not that just cater to one group's particular situation.

I think trying to use the game mechanics to discourage a large corp from wardeccing a small corp are about as reasonable as trying to use game mechanics to discourage a large fleet from attacking a smaller gang. It quickly becomes a game of whack-a-mole, as groups that *truly* want to grief will never actually be restricted by the wardec system to begin with, regardless of its implementation. It's akin to obsessing over which lock to install on your front door - a true burglar isn't going to be deterred regardless.

Unlimited, cost-free ally-stacking defeats the entire purpose of creating a *competitive* mercenary market. It allows for pig-pile opportunistic wardecs without creating real incentive to actually participate in the war. I think a lot of us realize that forcing some degree of strategic *choice* will incentivize using the best allies for the job and increase the chance those allies will be used in the first place. I think that is a lot to toss away just to protect against a menace that isn't a well-known, well-documented threat to the universe.

Trying to be active but it kicks in pretty randomly and often near instantly. If anything like last time, there's not obvious timing or pattern to the thing, I must have tried getting past the first or second login/char selection screens at least many 10s of times over that week or 2, yet sometimes an alt would stay connected for whole minutes while either being used in space, fitting in station, or just docked and left to see. Frankly I don't want to bother see if it's similar this time around, having it start happening again is enough for me to leave it to you guys to resolve for a day or so.
Keep up the good work.

Looking forward to missile Flare, New Drake, and minmatar V3.
I have two questions though:
-V3ed ships are getting brighter - how much brighter? And why? IMO Current Amarr, Caldari and Gallente ships look great (Havent seen Minmatar V3 so i cant comment) and making them any brighter would reduce the overal effect.
-What is the reasoning behind the changes to the Rifter, Stabber and Variations' Sizes?

why does the new drake have 8 hardpoints on the sides? makes no sense :(

every time I see someone from Sudden Buggery post, it reminds me of the time I thought it was called Sudden Burgery (which is btw a better name )

@ Hans

Problem is you don't "encourage" war by making it more expensive for only one side to fight a war. All those changes achieve is to protect large alliances from the allied system being used against them. It will not encourage the use of paid mercs the way you think it will.



I think you have the wrong end of the stick. This is not about punishing an aggressor for "daring" to declare war, its about adding enough people into a war to make it a war rather than a sequence of random ganks. Unless the defender has a strategy to add sufficient numbers they simply won't fight and we'll be back to pre Inferno wardec evasion mentality and simply walking away.



My particular situation is irrelevant to this line of thought really. No atrocity is occuring or can occur to my alliance obviously. What I saw via the ally system was an opportunity to build a real defensive coalition to take the fight back to the largest alliance in the game. Well okay, thats being nerfed but its no biggy. You and I both know what I do in Eve and it doesn't really involve hisec. The Goons dec, I'll add a free trade hub ganking alliance to the dec and never need to think about it again. Job done, but its not really the sense that I got from the intention for Inferno.



Listen Hans, you really do have the wrong end of the stick here. I don't want to discourage anyone from wardeccing anyone. I would like to make sure that once the wardec button is clicked the war becomes a dynamic and evolving thing that can grow in surprising directions.

Inferno wardecs with allies was a step in the right direction - nerfing those allies to the stone age is two steps in the wrong direction. Soundwave has declared his thinking on the issue and feels that big alliances should have all the advantages of the system - so be it. But my point is there will be no motivation for the defender to do anything but move all their logistics out of corp (as usual) and simply avoid the aggressors. Inferno 1.1 will give the ability to add ONE free merc to the war and thats all that will happen. The is absolutely no motivation to add a paid merc into a system where there is no war-objective, goal, or activity beyond random lols.



Which of course is not what I proposed at all. I proposed cost-free while the defending coalition is smaller than the aggressor - once the defending force is bigger then they must pay of course and the attacker could then add additional forces.



It simply won't happen the way you think it will. As long as you can add one ally for "free" that ally will be somebody who offers for free. Even if you nerf the free slot the next strategy will be to charge a willing ally a discount rate from their usual direct wardec charge. Nobody is going to pay for mercenary cover on random tradehub ganking wardecs. Without a meaningful system of objectives and win conditions for wars the only work mercs will get will be the kind of work described already in this thread (pos takedowns, pos defenses, area denial etc etc).

This change you are making will not do anything for mercenary corps and doesn't do anything at all to deal with the problem they will face on their ordinary business when whoever they dec just advertises for a free ally and gets a 5000 man alliance to join in for lols.

From the beginning of this thread I get the strong impression that the CSM members are not really listening to whats being said and are simply quoting from their own internal dialogue.

It seems you are simply justifying a decision that has already been made rather than discussing options so to be honest, we're running out of any point to the discussion.

This change will clearly happen without any alternation and we'll see how it develops over the next six months. It won't impact me much because I'll be enjoying Faction Warfare. (If the goons really wanted to "grief me" they'd have to join Minmatar FW to ruin the atmosphere there.

But it will remove the option of what could have been an enjoyable grand hisec war from the 70 allied corps at war with goonswarm of course - but thats collateral damage from the overt intention to protect large alliances from the implications of the Inferno allies system.

So congratulations - the CSM has taken the heat out of Inferno.

CCP goliath. if your changing the cycle times for the adaptive armor hardener. can you also tweak the capacitor consumption per cycle to reflect the change in cycle time so it uses the same cap after the change as it does now

Slapfight? It will be like this.

there was once an episode of saved by the bell that had a dance off i think you should do that

maybe the fish slapping one would be better for Fanfest.. seeing as it's on the harbor anyways