Warfare & Tactics

Hi,
in response to the Tactical Entertainment Roundtable:
I've seen this line a few times now again and again and but didn't really see a discussion about it yet, it basically just combines 3 rather easy proposals that make plexing much more awesome. Of course you could flesh all this out alot more, but in the end it's just this::

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1) All NPCs are removed from all Plexes

2) A Plex is either offensive or defensive, when the Plexer is driven out, the timer immediately resets

3) If a plex is attacked, the attack is broadcasted globally in the FW-window with plex size and time left

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I'm sure there is a similar F&I thread somewhere, but this is just discussion why this could be good/bad/terribad for FW as a whole.

My first take on this is: If the global report feature would turn out to introduce too much blobbing it could still be reduced to systems within x jump range and if bigger ships are less worth it, they could be dropped close to the button by the acc-gates to compensate.



What do you think about this ?

Well his chances to suceed would be pretty slim if it's broadcasted to enemy pilots and all of them could easily throw him out and waste all his effort by just warping into the plex once. Atleast that's my hope. (And it's atleast an improvement on the current system)

Who constantly watches the faction war window?

So you really want to see spam when farmers enter plexes?

no thank you.

Plex timers only count-down as long as NPCs aren't on grid. NPCs continue to respawn throughout the timer, even after all killed. So, a plexer has to keep killing them.

Of course, this would stretch out a 10 minute timer to 20 minutes ... so maybe timers are halved.

I thought it should be some kind of list in a new tab in the FW window, where you could sort by distance in jumps, time left, plex size (or whatever we want to allow the npc intel to give away)


A (small) reward for sucessfully throwing someone out of a plex could also be introduced something like 1/10 of the lp payout*time spent on the plex by the enemy. So that people who roam through their own space defending get rewarded if they sucessfully stop enemy plexers, whether they are just stabbed-frigates or someone who is prepared to fight back.


I see the problem that this encourages farming in the beginning but the farmers should quickly notice that they just waste their time if they sit on a plex they cannot defend against anyone and have to start all over and give the enemy lp everytime they are chased out.
To be fair I really got annoyed with red crosses in my plexes in the last months, they hinder pvp for everyone, are boring to tank/shoot and they seem to just serve the purpose of being some artificial NPC defense force, that does stuff when no player is around. And I don't see this as a great concept in a sandbox game.


About the shooting NPCs solution:
It may hinder the plexing alts in uncatchable frigates, but what at the same time it forces everyone to grind PVE in order to get lp/ attack systems and do you really think people will opt for pvp fits if they need to pve ?
I'd expect the farmers to just plex with stabbed sniper cormorants, stabbed drakes, cloaky tengus or similar and be as uncatchable and unwilling to pvp as always.

Why don't they just fit a web :(

You will never catch a nano-farmer, whether he needs to shoot npcs or not.

I think you missed the point of doing all three things together. If he is in his nano ship he can't defend the plex and is actually giving free lp to everyone who enters his plex. With the removal of npcs and the timer reset he is pushed towards a combat-capable ship, but due to the removal of npcs he can now use a huge variety of combat fits.
With the npcs still there or with forced npc-killing he can only use a very limited ship fitting: local rep, cap stable, probably longe-range weapons. And the more he uses that ship the more he tweaks it for optimal pve-ing and optimal fleeing if someone comes in. After all he can still just continue somewhere else with plex or wait until the attacker is bored.



Your presumption is that people will fight if they have weapons and tank on their ship anyway. I would like to compare this statement to the current plexing:

It is entirely possible for the plex farmers to use combat-capable speedtanking ships (such as interceptors, dramiels, slicers...).
They could already do plexes and fight anyway because they are already in the plex in a combat capable ship.

The thing is: They don't. We have all seen the killmails of dramiels without guns and similar. These people farm plexes and if they have no reason to stay and fight, they won't. Whether they use dramiels without guns or drakes with 4 stabs and FOF-missiles, you won't get them to fight, they will warp out and continue later.