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When you think about it, the 1.1 changes are laughably skewed in favour of the aggressor (compared to being stupidly skewed for the defender in 1.0, and stupidly skewed for the aggressor pre-inferno)

1) it costs 50m for a big alliance to dec a small corp, which is nothing. They also have a huge advantage in numbers.
2) it costs a small corp 500m to dec a big alliance. They're also at a huge disadvantage as far as numbers go.
3) the defending corp has to pay to get allies, with exponentially rising prices

1 + 3 = utterly ridiculous.
A small corp decced by a huge alliance can't mount a defence by themselves, in order to try and get a reasonable counter/defence they have to pay a load of isk for allies.

If a small corp wants to dec a large alliance they have to pay a load of isk.

Actually I think this just gives a reason to stay in a NPC corp if youre gonna be in High sec. Till they make those deccable anyways

A lot of interesting points of view in this thread, but, it does seem that CCP's goal is to bring some equivalent of the "excitement" of the null sec wars to high sec.

However, I tend to think that most of the players who currently perma-dwell in high sec aren't all that interested in that sort of "excitement" - which is why they choose to play in high sec in the first place. Miners and industrialists, for example, aren't really all that interested in being shot at, while going about their daily activities. Why do you think so much effort and argument is expended on trying to figure out ways to avoid or shed unwanted wardecs?

In this, there is some similarity to RL - during the '60s and '70s, many folks/corps preferred to live and work in the US rather than in Vietnam or Columbia. Certainly, no one has ever proposed bringing the war, or mercs, to the US, just to keep things exciting. If that were to ever happen, I suspect that many people, and corps, would pack up and leave.

So, I suppose the relative success of the new wardec mechanism - bringing war to those who don't want it - will ultimately be measured by how many players simply unsub when given the choice of "adapt or die" because "Eve is unfair".

In any case, I rather doubt that this sort of forced gameplay will do much to increase the number of new subs. The last couple of times I checked, "unfair" games, of any sort, do not tend to attract a lot of new players.

Eve is a sand box, so do not smother emergent game play in infancy, give it chance to prosper.

The current situation has been a boon for Eve, it's got many interested again.

PCU falls in the summer, so ask why the usual trend has been bucked in the last couple of weeks?

People are getting to like hunting down Goons in high sec.

Dont know what else to say.
The upcoming limitation on Allies is just pain disappointing and clearly puts the advantage back to the aggressor and large alliances, who already have a number and economic advantage. This was the ONLY advantage a smal corp would have - and now its gone, for no good reason.

CCP - I love you guys, but when it comes this war dec, i think it is time you hire a Military Advisor, just as you did for the economy. Could probably help with ship balancing as well.

I get it was the merc industry idea, but the fact is, if they are worth paying for, people WILL pay for a good merc corp to help bloddy a nose. Aside from that, Asking them how to handle wars is like asking the pharmaceutical industry if we SHOULD cure disease. At the end of the day, this isn't just a merc market issue, it is a war issue and on some levels a larger Vs smaller corp greifing issue. There has not been enough time to say "this is killing the merc market" scare screams yet.

Why cannot I leverage my political capitol and get all the friends I have involved in my cause - why place some arbitrary cost on it. WAR is it OWN COST, you keep saying you want people to PVP, but then this.

Ill give you a small anecdote currently going on. A small 10 man noob training corp steps on the toes of a Large 200 man alliance. Small corp excuses itself and offeres to bow out, but large corp, (admittedly bored) PROMISES to burn everything down and wardec the small corp indefinitely asking for a VERY large sum to end it. They deliberately go after the noobs.

Small corp begins to receive assistance. 5 man corp here, some 10 man there. Within 5 allies, we now have a force that makes the clearly griefing aggressor think twice about camping noobs. they start to back down. Some were free, some I payed for after verifying they were good PVPers. Everyone won, so this nonsense about only using free people is hogwash.

No fee means I dont have to wait to find a better option and that I am not open to alt corp scams. (Yes, some guys use this system and them offer assistance with an alt corp). This could lead to even more bleeding of the receiver assistance or them filling the rans with people who do nothing. Yes we have a history, but lets face it, it has not been around long enough to give a good assessment and still has a long way to go in functionality and auditing.

If we had to pay an aggrigated fee for everyone who WANTED to help us for free or thier own fee, it would have been prohibitave to match the might of the 200 man alliance. Noobs were happy and did not leave the game.

The merc system is a beautiful thing - dont screw it up with this alliance fee. Let the market decide the cost of war, and let PVP corps get the money that would normally go to a NPC sink. If a smaller guy can out match a larger guy by adding 20 5 man corps - then why should he be penalized for that.

Adversely, why are you going to block out smaller corps. It is inevitable this only benefits larger merc corps ans people will be holding out for larger numbers with the limited space.

Some Ideas:

- Honestly I would even remove war costs, again, the price of war is its own thing. I have been a part of three real wars and we never had to pay anyone some 3rd party fee for the privilege. But if there is to be a fee, just make it the wardec. And even that should be more expensive for the LARGER corp/aggressor to simulate logistics cost and bribery considering they are a larger source of potential damage.

- Maybe instead of fees based on member count, could be of total player SP.

- Remove ally costs. Let the players determine fees.

- Assistance fees only kick in based on size of corp/alliance assisting NOT number of total corps.

- "Invite to war" option - Right click on cor/alliance and invite to war. Sometimes you find an enemy of your enemy on a kB, would be great to directly invite them as opposed to tell them, make them find it.

More to come, but kill the alliance fee as it is... its bad... just bad.
If I find a bully on the field, and I recruit friends to kick his @SS, I dont need to pay the school $10 for the first friend, $20 for the second... etc..

Well you are reading too much into the propaganda of one side I think Hans. Even in 1.0 nobody was "locked" forever - they could always have surrendered. I know its becoming customary for the CFC guys to rule out the option as "unthinkable" but it was still an option.

That said I think pretty much everyone (myself included) agreed that the permanent lock-in of allies was a mistake - and its a mistake that can easily be corrected by allowing 2 week contracts with option for autorenewal on both the defender and alliy sceens (both need to click yes for it to be auto renewed).

Beyond that nobody has really given a satisfactory answer as to why having allied contracts concord-fee-free (as long as the total size of the allied coalition does not exceed the attacking force) will not work.



At the moment nobody can win a war in Eve Hans - thats the problem. Hence trying to balance things in favour of the attacker so they declare wars is just avoiding the bigger issue which is the need to produce a wardec system that has structure and objectives and a way to objectively measure winning and losing - right up to win bonus and loss penalty. Until this exists there will never be a purpose for mercenaries in random wardecs either. The hypothetical "military adviser" we're talking about would tell CCP there won't be any war if one side massively outnumbers the other - what will happen is an asymetric insurgency where the outnumbered side avoids the regular army and simply tries to gank loners. Well just like actually happened! What 1.1 is trying to achieve is to protect the regular army from the insurgency on the grounds that big should = win on most occassions. Its interfering with the integrity of the sandbox and meddling with emergent gameplay and thats why most eve players responding to these threads instinctively dislike what is being done.



Well you'd have a point if there wasn't a perfectly good solution that works in all cases (both the edge case and the ordinary wardec) but there is - its been widely publicised and most players appear in favour of it.



Its a bad compromise then, the kind that pleases nobody. And the shame of it is that there is a perfectly good solution that would please pretty much everyone. In an ideal world the CSM would take up the voice of the common players on the forum and argue for this better solution.

Yep. Jade is actually making some sense here.

lol Oh noez! Not griefdecced! Heaven forbid that Goons might actually foot the war bill for me.

The only valid "emergent gameplay" is that started by goons, it would seem. The little guy starting a dogpile to protect himself from - or to even try and punch back at - a gigantic alliance (whose leader has made it clear he is out to harass certain individuals and push them out of the game entirely because they disagree with him) is a great thing I think. But nope, gotta "fix" it and push the mechanics straight back into the old territory of war decs being squarely in favour of the aggressor/bigger group

So you're saying the only scenario in which an aggressor will declare war is one in which they know there is little risk of retalliation to themselves, and which they can back out of the second things go **** up? The mechanics should favour that?

You're a CSM member, you must realise that EVE is a game of risks. Declaring war on a corporation - even one with 8990 members less than your own alliance - shouldn't be a sure thing, mechanics should allow for surprises and counters. Exponentially rising costs for defenders simply means that the bigger your corp/alliance, the safer you are - and NOT as a result of having more pilots able to fight, but as a result of stupid mechanics that inherently make it much harder for your victim to do anything.



I'm a bit tired of people trotting out the "it shouldn't be fair and balanced" crap. By stating that you don't want any fairness or balance you are by definition saying it should be biased against one side - but it's odd how certain people are so insistent on it being biased against the the defender in a war, especially when - as we've seen - the defender can be outnumbered 100 to 1, and can have a bill far, far in excess of that of the aggressor. The dogpiling and mutual wars were arguably "unfair" against the aggressors - but at the same time it's an avoidable unfairness since the aggressors started it. It seems everyone wins - you get all the unfairness you desire AND there's a little safeguard in there too. Any potential abuse could be removed by simply making mutual wars disallow allies - additional costs and limitations are bs though.



Of course not, but the 1.1 changes do NOTHING to minimise this, all they serve to do is exacerbate it by placing more roadblocks in the way of smaller/defending corps. I also don't think anyone is suggesting designing the entire mechanic around that one edge case - but people want such cases to be taken into consideration. The fact that the mechanics have been changed again in a way that make that one specific case even more problematic is whats causing all the drama.



Except there have been plenty other suggestions across the boards that seem to equally fit the majority of 'normal' wars, while also better suiting the extreme cases. I think the knee-jerk reaction has resulted in potentially better alternatives being overlooked, or if I had slightly more tinfoil I'd say they were deliberately overlooked