Warfare & Tactics

Hey, find one post where I said I want a system based on shooting NPCs/spinning buttons. As usual you keep throwing lies in the hope no one will call your bluff. What we did support, and still do, is removal of docking rights for opposing faction, and some real benefits (like cyno jammers maybe) . But I don't think I've ever said that obtaining those benefits by spinning buttons and maybe shooting NPCs is a good ideea.

You wanted to remove docking rights. You wanted to kick caldari militia members back to high-sec. You wanted to make sure no caldari could ever field a ship against you. You wanted low-sec to be totally gallente dominated farmville where nothing would hurt your isk grinding.

Now you got that mechanism. What is the problem?

Pretty much every sensible person who has been if faction war for more than a few months knew heaping isk consequences on plexing without first ensuring it is a pvp mechanic would cause these problems. Even the dirty rotten gallente could see this coming and said its not a good idea.

http://eve-search.com/thread/1556497-0/page/1#3

The idea is ok but let me ask:

1) It seems to do away with ship restricted plexing. I suppose they could make the missions ship size restricted though.

2) Won't people will just camp they systems that have the missions.

The logistics of where you can get the missions will also be something to consider. How far do you have to travel etc.

I do agree that your proposal would likely increase the pvp if done right. But I think ccp can simply tweak what they have right now. By:

1) making the counter go back to zero if you are kicked out of a plex. Here I think we should make it such that it only goes back to zero if you are kicked out of the plex - ie enemy appears on grid. That way if I see an alt farming a plex nearby I can chase him out and not have my own timer of the plex I was running tick down. (yes I realize the farmers will often see me on dscan and warp away before I am on grid but that is ok. Perhaps they could start the countdown if I am on grid with the accelleration gate or on grid with the button.)

2) https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=9833

Both of these tweaks would make alt ninja plexing much more difficult and might even succeed in making it less efficient than simply fighting for your plexes.

I'd rather grind a structure then circle a plex for 20min.......just sayin

I strongly object to structure grinds vs a timer, in terms of plex mechanics themselves. Structure shoots directly encourages getting a larger blob, where as a timer simply encourages you to hold your ground - whether its by yourself or with an army. You can't blob your way into making a timer spin faster, and thats great in my opinion.

As for the thread in general - I agree that forced shooting of rats for plex completion would alter the ships used to run the plexes.

But know this: it won't force those that run from PvP to stay and fight. Those that want to farm for isk, will farm for isk. They'll warp stab their nanodrakes, fit a cloak, and adopt a new fit of ninja-plexing ship for each plex size, and continue business as usual.

In the process, we would essentially be committing fully to the idea of plexing and Sov warfare becoming a blatantly PvE activity, where you cannot take space without the forced slaughter of thousands of NPC's. Now this isn't necessarily a *challenging* thing, if you are in an appropriate sized vessel (meaning BC for majors) the rats melt fine. The issue is whether we want to openly declare FW sovereignty as a PvE activity, and delegate PvP being something that just happens incidentally along the way.

Players looking to get away from mission grinds and rat grinds and enlisting in FW to get their feet wet with some PvP will realize they are put back on another NPC treadmill if they want to help their faction take space.

*Genuinely* new, low-skilled, solo pilots looking to help their faction win territory but facing an active enemy that outnumbers them will not be able to use tactics of evasion to succeed. They will be forced to take a bigger ship, risk getting blobbed by a swarm of smaller ships, or they may not be able to participate at all depending on the spawns available, where they are at, and who's trying to stop them.

I'm not saying that any of this is necessarily harmful for Faction Warfare, just that I think that forcing PvE to be directly integrated into Sovereignty might be taking Faction Warfare in the wrong direction, if the goal is ultimately to make the sov process more *PvP*-based. These are just consequences and principles that need to be considered.


*IMPORTANT* As I've said in other threads on the subject, the chances of CCP forcing the rat grind aren't very high anyways, due to their production schedule and the fact that *all* FW NPC's are due for an overhaul in the winter expansion. (tThey should be getting better AI that should encourage the ship-ups everyone's asking for) That doesn't mean such a change isn't worth discussion, we should certainly hash out whether FW should be about PvP or PvE, but I don't want anyone having unrealistic expectations about whether this is being worked / considered for the immediate future. CCP's about to begin their summer break, we may not see another release for a couple months.

Look, I'm just sharing some of the reactions that others have had to the issue of forced rat shooting. I think its fair to ask - do we want to *mandate* PvE as part of Faction Warfare. It's a philosophical question. For that matter, should we *mandate* PvP in FW?

Is it acceptable to join Faction Warfare, and run the missions cause you enjoy them or want the isk, as long as you're *genuinely* vulnerable as a PvP target in the process (unlike today where we're all in bombers) ? Should a mechanism FORCE you to fight someone?

Isn't it also acceptable to join Faction Warfare, and want to participate in the feature ONLY for the PvP aspect? Should anyone ever be FORCED to kill NPCS to take Sov or earn LP?

Why can't FW exist as a risky, reward-filled sandbox where players can engage in both activities, or a mix of their choosing?

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Think about this for a minute:

Incursions have lucrative shared payouts, PvP risk, and recently were changed so that you have to kill all the spawns in order to complete them, as an anti-blitzing measure. Oh yeah, and also a slider-bar with system takeover progress, a unique LP store, should I go on?

It was only yesterday that every was crying out "Please don't make Faction Warfare null sec lite". CCP has already stated their intention of beefing up the NPC's to be smarter and to reduce speed tanking (this will likely mean bringing back E-War of some kind, under the assumption that it will be balanced amongst factions this time, even if that means that just webs alone are used by some of the frigates or whatever)

If we have lucrative payouts, smarter NPC's,and now we will be mandated to shoot these NPC's, - am I the only one here who thinks that we're essentially turning FW into "incursions lite" ?

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I'm just surprised, TBH. You guys have all begged for this change, I've already brought it up with CCP (thats why I mentioned the likelihood and timeline issues) so I'm not trying to stonewall anything. I just would never have guessed that we'd be seeing a thread where everyone is begging for forced PvE in FW.

Yes you are. Killing all npc's is the way to go IN ABSENSE of CCP changing the entire mechanic. If they actually come up with something that works, then more power to them. But in this version of plex warfare, the consensus is that NPCs being killed will mitigate much of the afk /self repping plexing strategies that are completely lame.


Question: What is the difference between orbiting button for 20 minutes and pressing 'F1' for 20 minutes?
Answer: Orbiting button can be done with any speed tanking/repping frig. Pressing 'F1' needs to be done by an appropriately sized ship for a given plex.

"PVPers" who are willing to "orbit a button" but are not willing to "shoot NPCs" .... LOL. You're being mislead by those who want to continue to farm.

This tbh.

Its about making sure that people are plexing in ships that can actually activate their weapons. And frankly it's not much fun blowing up speedtanking junk ships for anyone.

The problem is that plexing is already pve. So since ccp has apparently decided to make faction war pve many just want it to be balanced.

Yes of course we would rather it be pvp and and not based on shooting rats, but I have not seen anything that suggests ccp is working in that direction.

Perhaps we can identify some things that would make plexing more of a pvp activity:

1) For one I think the timer counting down to zero if you run after an enemy lands on grid with to your accelleration gate would help.

2) I also think notifications would help.

3) Making the rats stop aggroing when an enemy comes in or at least stop agroing when you go outside the orbit range would help.


Are there other ideas?

Will ccp consider these ideas?


In the meantime the massive consequences based on plexing make it so that indeed the war might be over by the time they get around to balancing things.

BTW having npcs use any sort of ewar will detract from the chances of pvp happening. We would be forced to kill them anyway. For example no one wants to fight with extra webs on them because that means the enemy can likely leave if they start to take too much damage but you will be unable to leave. You will basically be in a lose or draw situation.