Warfare & Tactics

Just stop posting, you're bad.

Why is it everytime you are presented with an argument you can't answer you end up posting 3 completely content-free posts? You have already admitted you got your other forum account permabanned for bad posting - don't you think you have a lesson that could be taken from this?

Thats an interesting turnaround - so now it was a consequence of our wardec coalitions that led CCP to intervene to protect the large alliances? But you fall into exactly the same logical trap that CCP soundwave does - assuming that people will pay *anything at all* to mercenary corporations in the current wardec system without some kind of iteration on wardec goals and objectives and a way of actually punish the attacker with a loss consequence.



Here you really show your ignorance of empire war mechanics and conduct "zim" - mercenaries are not hired to randomly join empire wars and shoot the occassional person in a trade hub. Mercs are paid so that they can declare war and achieve a specific objective that can be objectively assessed on contract outcome. 1.0 Inferno did nothing for mercenaries whatsoever - it actually hurt the merc profession not by the ally system - but by increasing cost to dec by 10-25x times (which obviously has to be eaten by somebody / client or merc) 1.1 simply makes a bad situation even worse because its messed up even the potential ability to come in as a defender without 2 weekly mandated wardec drops while doing nothing to deal with the wardec price imbalance.

That said you make exactly the same mistake that CCP team superfriends make and I guess its probably rooted in the same essential unfamiliarity with this area of gameplay. (Something the current CSM didn't do anything whatsoever to remedy to their own complete shame.)

That is precisely how its perceived by most people however, because this "fix" does absolutely nothing to help promote the merc profession (or any other gameplay focus) except perhaps for large alliances running griefing wars and not wanting to deal with the social consequences of being quite unpopular in empire.

Again you don't really seem to understand what mercs were historically paid to do (and no it wasn't randomly camp trade hubs).

Inferno wardec 1.0 was a flawed beast that increased the price of wardecs on one hand while giving defenders more options via the ally system in quid pro quo. It was a kind of balance - 1.1 removes any kind of balance and simply reverts it to a large alliance friendly nerf that protects you guys from incoming decs with the 10x price hike while denying significant numbers of defensive allies.

But again you completely miss the point that mercs are nowhere in the so-called merc marketplace - it wasn't for them. Its a badly named feature that was a bit like throwing a plastic bone to a starving hound. For the merc profession to have meaning in Eve online you need a proper war system with objectives, milestones victory boons and defeat costs. Until that gets rolled out then mercs are meaningless except as heavy lifters for POS shoots and CO removals.

Really though, we're going round in circles now, dozens of people have said this stuff to you and you're just not listening.

By means means keep posting if it entertains you but you really do need to come up with something new.

I don't know why you get away with posting baseless rumors everywhere but v0v

Old wardec mechanic: 2m to dec a corp, 50m for an alliance or corp to dec another alliance, and 50m for an alliance to dec a corp.
New wardec mechanic: 50m up to 130 people, 100m up to 374, 177 at 1000.

How many hisec alliances or corps break past 1000 members, let alone 374? Are you seriously trying to argue that this minor cost increase will put a dampener on normal, out-of-game-mechanics mercs?


Heh, no, 1.0 wasn't balanced at all. When a multitude of corps had 50+ (and increasing) wardecs at no cost, it's not balanced, and saying it was isn't going to make it balanced.

As to wardeccing "large alliances" (which I'll just limit to 1000+ alliances for simplicity), this means wardeccing nullsec/lowsec alliances, which do all their serious hisec work through neutral alts anyways, precisely because of the fact they were constantly wardecced by people who wanted to do nothing but gank people on jita undock. Nullsec alliances have absolutely no alliance assets in hisec (unless they're monumentally stupid, in which case they deserve everything they get), which means no POS etc to hit, so the only reason you'd wardec f.ex any low/nullsec alliance is to catch dumbasses.

And again, you know as well as everyone that a non-******** and predominantly nullsec alliance doesn't have a large in-corp/alliance presence, which again means you don't need a large number of people to outblob whomever is dumb enough to run around in hisec in an in-corp/alliance char.


The new system allows for mercs to be protection mercs through using ingame mechanics, this is new. The old style merc is still possible through out of game deals, and the price increases for things like POS/CO shoots are negligible given the size of the average hisec/lowsec corp/alliance.

By all means, argue that the merc options need to be expanded, but I do find it highly amusing that you're suddenly so worried about the state of the merc profession, now, especially given the fact that you had no problems whatsoever with the 1.0 changes up until I started harping on about the effect 1.0 had on mercs and how 1.1 made that better.

This is funny. Back when you were abusing the system, 1.0 was "fine". When the 1.1 changes came about, you went ranting and raving about how "CCP caved to goons", "goons whined to CCP" and various other tinfoily things, despite the fact everyone told you this wasn't the case. Repeatedly. But nary a word about mercs.

It wasn't until I kept talking about how the 1.1 changes were initiated because 1.0 made it completely illogical to pay anyone to do anything defensive that you started talking about how 1.1 was bad for mercs, and it wasn't until just now that you began talking about how even 1.0 actually hurt mercs. The funny thing, however, is that you keep talking about how much it costs to dec someone, while completely ignoring the fact that the ally system in 1.0 basically forced those who wanted to be defensive mercs to accept defense contracts for free. And come to think of it, normal mercs were also severely disadvantaged by the ally system as well, due to the inevitable zergrush.

And let's talk a bit about costs, since you insist on using relative terms instead of absolute terms. When you say "25x as expensive", you're talking about a corp declaring on another corp. The actual price increase is from 2m/week to 50m/week, which is hardly going to break anyone's bank, and it's not remotely as dramatic-sounding. And when you say "10x as expensive", you are of course talking about declaring war against an alliance of goon size, where the price of a dec goes up from 50m to 500m (or whereever, I'm not going to do the math). Most wars which you'll see in hisec are going to be between much more equal numbers, which means that most wars are going to cost between 50m to 177m/month, which is anywhere from 1-3.something as much pr week. Again, not exactly something which'll break anyone's bank, and again it sounds much less dramatic when you put actual figures behind the claim.


Yeah, no, you're the one confusing my position. I said, specifically, that 1.0 did not help defensive mercs because the ally system basically made it a requirement for defensive mercs to offer their defensive services for free if they wanted to even begin to compete with random chucklefucks being brought in willy-nilly (see your and honda accord's list of allies for a good example of exactly that). 1.0 also did not help non-defensive mercs, because if someone hired them to do POS/POCO shoots, the wardecced corp/alliance would just open up their wardec and bring in the same bunch of random chucklefucks as everyone else, and the mercs would most likely not be able to do anything.

1.1 fixed the problem with a defender bringing in every random chucklefuck instead of actual defensive mercs, because actual defensive mercs will most likely be a lot more effective isk for isk, corp for corp, than the random chucklefucks will ever be, which means it's an improvement for those who wants to be defensive mercs.

1.1 fixed the problem where the defenders would (not just could, would) just bring in whatever chucklefuck was able to send in a war assist request with 0 isk as payment, which meant that wardecs for normal merc corps who were looking to get paid to grief someone, take down someone's POSes or POCOs etc (i.e. not just defend someone) weren't just taking a risk, it was a certainty that they'd get zergrushed in return, which meant the entire merc profession as a whole was effectively shut down. 1.1 is reigning this in by making sure it costs money to bring in allies, which means the defender has to think more about who he brings in, and how many he brings in, which means the whole process is still risky, but at least it's more balanced in 1.1 than it was in 1.0.


Yeah, 1.1 does nothing useful for anyone apart from making it so defensive mercs can actually charge money now, and normal mercs aren't certain of being completely zergrushed, whereas in 1.0 they couldn't. And you gave absolutely no indications you had any qualms whatsoever with how 1.0 played out until I started pushing you on it.

And I see I forgot to call you out on this:

1) There's no psychological and morale harm done to GSF by the 1.0 wars. Repeating this fallacy multiple times doesn't turn it into a truism.
2) The "permanent war record" is cared for by nobody but people like you.
3) I've asked you to quote the specific parts where he "complains". I read the paragraph you refer to, I saw no whining.
4) Ministry of Love is such an embarassment that it's actually being expanded. vOv

I find it interesting how you removed the "But nary a word about mercs." bit from my quote, I guess it's because you're all out of arguments, and have to go back to your usual deflection routine.

Fact is, however, you had no problems with the state of mercs when 1.0 was released, you had no problems with the state of mercs when 1.1 was released, and you probably never even thought about mercs prior to me harping on and on about it, you were too busy being tinfoily about how "CCP caved to goons", "goons whined to CCP" and various other hilarious claims (all of which has been repeatedly and forcibly rejected as false assertions made by you with no base in reality).

And no, 1.0 wasn't "fine", no matter how you slice it. Mercs initiating a wardec would just get dogpiled on, someone like, say, zedrik cayne wardeccing someone for "breach of good standards and practices" would just get dogpiled on, in short wardecs rapidly approaching complete unusability because of various corps dogpiling in on 50+ wars each. And the only way mercs wanting to play the defensive game in a war could get any action at all was to essentially sell themselves for nought, which again means there's absolutely no market. 1.1 adds some semblance of balance to the two sides, makes hiring mercs to grief someone not a complete suicide job again, and makes being a defensive merc actually something which they can charge money for, which was the entire point of the wardec patch in inferno to start with.

1.1 is probably still not perfect, but it's a damn sight better for mercs than 1.0 was, not worse, and you claiming it got worse in 1.1 shows that you haven't paid this much thought at all, all you've thought of has been "hurr goons".

Whoa there I got a character ban, not an account ban.

We know. You were too busy going "hurr goons" to notice, and you didn't care about mercs until I pushed you on the subject.


This is a baldfaced lie.


This is a baldfaced lie. 1.0 was a wardec patch which was supposed to be with mercs in mind, it just failed miserably because of the allies mechanic loophole which a lot of wardecced corps/alliances ended up abusing. 1.1 closed this loophole, and mercs are more viable, now, than they were in 1.0.


Wrong. See above.


I thought I'd added a question as to the average wardec length, but guess not. Anyhow, I expect that most wardecs in hisec last 1, maybe 2 weeks, and I don't see this 2 week maximum as a great issue. Quirky, but less of an issue for mercs than the endless allies bit, and if it does cause an issue, I expect that CCP'll continue to make changes.

Removing allies from mutuals is a smart move. If two corps have a mutual war, that's a war which both sides want, which means that allies are just a dumb distraction. Deal with it.

Concord expenses to defensive allies is a smart move. Be less slutty with the accept allies button, and deal with it.

The prices for initiating a wardec isn't going up as much as you'd like to portray them as. The prices in old mechanics were 2m for corp on corp wardecs and 50m for corp on alliance, alliance on alliance or alliance on corp wardecs. The new prices are 50m minimum, increases to 100m at 374 or something, and reaches 177m or so at 1000. No hisec alliance or corp is above 1000 members. Deal with it.

The cooldown will most likely not have a serious effect, and if it is then CCP has this thing they can do which is called "iteration". I think they did that once, and it made you whine like a stuck pig.