Warfare & Tactics

"It would be better if we stop capturing systems, but just contest them to 95% or so, and then try to capture a lot of them in one fell swoop."

I felt a little odd after I said this in Amarr Militia chat. I felt odd because doing your best not to capture systems doesn't sound like one is actually fighting a war for control of these systems. I suggested this course of action for two reasons:

1. The enemy wants us to capture some of their systems, because them losing a system actually creates a valuable resource for them.

2. The enemy doesn't want to defend systems that we are contesting, because not only does defending deny them access to a valuable resource (point 1), it is boring and doesn't give any advantage. For this reason, defending is mostly done by unskilled alts in unfitted ships, alts which can be used to reap rewards when plexing in Caldari-owned systems.

If you are a hardcore gamer, you probably won't even notice what is odd about this. Just try to explain this to someone who isn't a hardcore gamer or not into EVE. Just try to explain that the war is best won by not capturing enemy land.

Not only that, because of the ease of capturing plexes, there are Amarr pilots who have put alts into the Minmatar Militia to farm LP for them. Why is there a game mechanism at work that actually motivates people to work against themselves.

In fact, my strategy is horrible too because it relies fighting my enemy with a weapon that is detrimental to any game: boredom. By not capturing systems, I'm not only denying my enemy valuable resources but the only defense against this strategy is something best (and currently most often) done by skilless alts.

Suppose I am able to convince enough people in the Amarr Militia to follow my strategy. What would be the logical conclusion? I can predict it reasonably well: the enemy would put alts into the Amarr Militia and have them push the nearly fallen systems to 100% and then re-capture it.

Yeah, the Amarr (who are supposed to conquer the systems) don't do so for fear of rewarding the enemy, and the Minmatar put agents into the Amarr Militia and have them conquer systems for them. Say what? With regards to gameplay: I would call that seriously ****** up.

The whole FW is simply so rife with metagaming that it is becoming an insane war. Alts are a major part of the gameplay. Spies, scouts, neutral boosters (or even boosters in the opposing militia), alts which warp out at the first sign of trouble, alts which form no point of interaction, no source of entertainment.

CCP should know by now that any game mechanics that can be 'gamed' for a profit will be gamed for a profit eventually. And currently the whole 'gaming the system for profit' makes the war a farce relying on strategies to maximize the enemy's boredom.

CCP: don't give me a place on a fictionial merry-go-round together with a crowd of faceless alts executing counter-intuitive metag-gaming strategies. Give me a real war to fight!

Actually, there isn't even really a reason to ever flip systems, even in mass. By holding fewer systems, we limit the number of available plexes, and cut off one of the isk fountains for the minimatar. Taking enough systems for tier 4 is unlikely the way things are (we could take them but don't have the man power to hold them), and tier 5 is laughably out of reach. Sure, the minimatar can run fw missions, but with no available plexes, the 2 day alts will have no source for lp. Losing the sov battle entirely is actually the best thing for the amarr right now.
In the meantime,the pvp had been awesome lately. :)

In the first few weeks of Inferno, there were a healthy number of bunker busting fleets around on both sides. I know people hate structure grinding but it actually does lead to some healthy fleet fights. It's no different than how people RF POSes in order to get a fight. BBing is a great way to get the general militia noobs involved and have them mix it up with the vets thus promoting teamwork and camaraderie.

But both sides have now realized how detrimental BBing is to our other goals and thus delay or avoid it.

We are capturing enemy land. But there is some strategy in how and when you strike. Timing is extremely important. You don't just trickle in whenevery you think you can cross the boarder. You get lots of places "vulnerable" and then completely annihlate them.

I really have no problem with this at all. Its not how null sec or world war I, worked but it is how many sorts of attacks worked. Hitler didn't take over part of france and then set up a base out of there gradually taking each provence till he made his way to Paris. I really like that there is some strategy as opposed to just try to attack and flip every system as soon as you can.



Its one thing to put alts in minmatar to run missions. Running missions for tribal liberation front is no different than running missions for boundles creation. Running minmatar fw missions hurts minmatar by helping us fund our war efforts and to some extent watering down their lp store. But the latter is very minimal at best.

Plexing is different and so people shouldn't do that.




Well if you think defensive plexing is the best defense to this then I disagree. You can defend a system by doing things other than defensive plexing. In particular minmatar could get in ships and stop us from capturing the plexes. Then they won't need to defensive plex. That is not boring and that is what they should do.

But yes the fact that plexing is most effiecintly done with pve alts is a problem. If you really want to win the plexign war and do it efficiently get ready for several hours of multitasking pve alts through plexes.



I thought of this possiblity. Would it work well? That is hard to say. Does this sort of thing happen in real life? Did roosevelt know about pearl harbor? Did the wester allies in WW2 let germany damage thier eastern allies? I'm not asking these questions to see whether you think it actually happened. My point is just that sometimes there is reasoning behind what seems counterintuitive to common sense.



I don't know that spying really has much to do with it. I mean the strategy is somewhat counterintuitive for some but here we are spelling it out on a publich forum. Spys aren't going to make much difference in this game at all. I am glad about that because I think spying in eve is just lying to people on vent.

Alts running plexes with no guns? Yeah that is a problem I think we definitely agree on.

Neutral boosters: Yeah I agree too force teh boosters on grid. Or at least put them on the killmail that they helped create. I do think ccp is just protecting income from alt accounts here - but it is costing them on their core game. But that is a problem not confined to faction war.

Of course the side who wanted it to remain vulnerable would use thier alts in the other militia to shoot them! I guess I can say ok this is a possibility. But it is also a counter to a strategy that has not even yet been successfully employed. So I guess I am saying before we rush to decide that this how things will play out lets just wait and see a bit.

There are also other ways that this could play out beside the alt versus alt warfare at the bunkers!

I think there is a good chance that both sides will realize that due to no lp for defensive plexing both side will have good shots at hitting tier 5 and cashing out eventually. We will stop trying to cling to raa like its our only baby and start just looking for fights in the plexes. (although this is going to require changes from ccp that reduce the effectiveness of alt pve plexing. e.g. notifications and timer countdown after warp outs)

Perhaps instead of havign alt on alt warefare we will realize that if they eventually cash out we will have a chance to do the same thing they did. Perhaps we will decide to just stick with our main characters and try to hold onto the systems as long as we can through pvp. That is instead of defensive plexing after the enemy leaves we will actually just try to fight the offensive plexers and keep them from capturing the plexes in the first place. The longer we do this the longer we can keep tier 5.

But then when the other side does blow their load and trys to start flipping lots of systems to hit tier five we will then be able to start running offensive plexes ourselves and building up lp that we can cash out once we build up enough systems and do a mass flip. And again hopefully the other side wont decide to try to defend their systems through boring defensive plexing. Hopefully they will try to defend their systems by preventing us from taking offensive plexes through pvp.

In other words. I think there is a very good chance that this system may lead to allot of pvp and rewards that help militias pay for that pvp.

Reducing rewards of tier 5 all that just makes it more difficult to afford the ships and mods we want to blow up.

I say give this system more of a chance to play out. It may work out pretty well, now that the losing side at least has a clear strategy. Lets see if we can make it work.

The whole system is broken and it's likely CCP wont do anything to fix it. Some of us try to defend systems but it's just a lot of chasing 2 week old farm alts around and I personally de-contested 4 systems over the course of 3 days. 2 of these systems were upwards of 40% contested.

In the 3 days that I don't log into EVE due to work, by the time I came back 2 of those systems were already over 30% contested again. Until there is some reward that adds balance we are likely just see see either 1 side totally give up with the other dominating such as the Amarr /Min war front or each side trying to our farm the other and flip enough systems for LP dump days as on Cal/Gal war front.

Well..one thing we can be certain of...if Bolster is leading it...then it will involve more "winning" like this:

http://gallente.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=13900155

Ninja edit: Squid summary (not sure why our losses aren't showing now on the gal board) http://caldari.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=13899875

Well I am not going to point fingers about fcing ability. I don't fc but if I did I would likely have similar results. The only thing I can say is props to bolster for bringing the fight.

Unlike in 0.0, in FW you get rewards for capturing a system, not for holding one. Therefore it is to your benefit to repeat the capture event (plexing) as often as possible, regardless of how many systems you actually hold. The extreme of this would be having alts in both militias and just flipping one system back and forth. At that point, which militia are you really fighting for?

I would compare it to hunting. You get a benefit (food) every time you kill a deer. You don't get any benefits from having killed ten, a hundred, or a thousand deer in your lifetime. But if you hunt too much, the deer will not be able to reproduce fast enough, and over several years you will kill all of them. Sometimes, in order to be able to hunt deer, you have to not hunt deer for a while and give them a chance to repopulate.

Agreed with the LP for defensive plexing. Although in that case LP rewards and contested amounts should be stopped at 0% for defensive and 100% for offensive. It may also be worth making hubs have less HP and put defenses on them...

A simple fix in regards to the offensive plexes. Rats should be killed or some other objective met. It seems crazy that a stabbed/cloaky alt could run circles around the enemy and win... What are they doing?? Making the enemy NPCs so dizzy that they give up???

Also FW missions should give weight to the war and be available in ANY system that is contested or controlled by the enemy, awarding LP/VP based on the type of mission. I understand the significant overhaul that would be required although FW missions are a very under-utilised PVP/PVE mechanic.