Warfare & Tactics

Today marks the third time that Caldari Militia successfully pushed to a T4 LP dump in approximately 3 months since the patch. We held the position for around 2 hours before dipping into T3.

The point of this post is to go over LP by the numbers during a crashed market and the actual earning of LP and the value.

LP By The Numbers:

Today after contributing LP toward the dump I turned in 845k LP. For starters I am going to break down the time element in comparison of missioning or sanctums.

There are two methods of farming LP solo and in group. Solo farming is much slower due to the obvious problems: people flying into your plex, warp outs, etc. Group plexing has various methods and is best done when pilots “occupy” adjacent systems and plex their own plexes. When WTS arrive the group converges, yada yada yada

All in all LP is estimated at making 75-90k an hour tops. So my 845k Lp took approximately 9.5 hours.

On the 845k LP I made I turned it in for 2500 isk per LP for a total isk payout of 2.1B Isk

Total ISK per hour is 222M isk per hour AT TEIR 4

Now before you go “omg op nerf it” lets take a look at comparisons and the variables that effect the actual isk per hour.

In Null Sanctums can earn around 100m and hour (some people say low number is 80m)

In High Sec you can earn 80-100m an hour running missions

I am excluding manufacturing, mining, and exploration because all can be done in any sec

So at first glance FW plexing appears to be OP however lets look at the other variables that are not factored in the raw numbers:

1) Plexing is not an isk now source like missions and ratting is. Plex is a hold and wait. With any hold and wait income source the payout is always LARGER the longer you have to wait

2) Only farming alts can achieve the true 222M an hour and I say this because the FW pilots that actually are driving FW must do other activities such as bunker bust, defensive plexing and other activities that are non quantified in the isk per hour payout.

3) Plexing is only valuable at the LP dump. If a faction does not hit a certain tier (we prefer 4) the LP is worthless. Hence the amar complaint of t1 value. The plex is worthless

4) Finally the market plays another important role in LP to isk value. As a faction floods a market price nose dive reducing the value of LP to isk drastically. Most pilots averaged about 1800 isk to LP making their value (using my 845k lp example) 1.5B (160m .hr)

In summary given the conditions of so many variables that effect FW pilots the plexing to isk value is extremely fair and reasonable. The only way a FW can continue to make the isk is to put in the added time (not just plexing time) to maintain their income source.


State of Caldari Militia

The Caldari Militia have been extremely coordinated these past 2.5 months leading up to our third LP dump. However in this time we used (as I assume most did) the strategy of all out offense and no defense. This resulted in the Caldari to be able to maintain systems by simply flipping systems as the gallente flipped one of ours. As long as we maintained 62+ systems we never had to worry about being out of T4. Then something interesting happened that aided the Gallente. The Minnitar started infesting our systems. The amount of alts farming our systems was unbelievable. As of Tuesday night the gallente had a total of 47 of the caldari systems in a vunerable status owning a total of 37. In the past 2 nights they flipped 11 systems (and our currently at 3 as we speak). (I will address the tactic in a bit) Caldari have a total of 11 Gallente vunerable systems and owns 64. Due to the minni alts there is no feasible way the caldari can continue to keep up. However something interesting happened, Nulli joined the Amarian war front and are now putting heavy pressure on the minnitar systems. We have no seen minnatar retreat (to some degree) from our systems. When CCP released the patch they made a system that supported 4 warring factions. I do not believe that they planned for the Amarians to stop fighting and essentially “give up”. During this time frame the Caldari had the ability to fight FW as intended, once the Minnies came into Caldari space, it essentially became a 2V1 battle. If this were to continue the Caldari would not be able to hold off enough systems to maintain a T4 status. It is my prediction that the Caldari will have hit a temporary hump after this Saturday. The Gallente have employed a tactic of cynoing dreads onto bunkers and blapping them in a matter of minutes. Last night they took six in less then an hour. At this rate they can and will achieve T5 by Saturday if they play the rest of the week smart. It is of my opnion that the Minnatar alts and Amar given up has finally caught up to us. I belive we will recover quickly and strongly again but for the time being the Gallente will hold the t4 status. I belive the Gallente vs Caldari FW front is exactly how CCP intended for FW to work (minus the minnis ofc) Going forward the Caldari must adjust their strategy from all out offense to a mixture of defensive plexing and offensive plexing. Dreads are only useful for the busting of the bunkers so we must prevent the bunkers from being available to the dreads. The interesting thing that we have an opportunity to see, is now that both Minni and Gallente will “own” the battle field (at least temporarly) how do the plex farmers (market monkeys) respond to the lack of LP dumps into T4 for either Amar or Caldari. What we now have is two allies are now the strongest instead of one of each. One of each balances plexing out, however that is no more (at least temporarly)

For the State

Bolsterbomb

saying that the amarr has given up doesnt make any sense at all.

as of my post the amarr have 38 systems vulnerable. The issue you are running into is that the amarr only control 5 systems. So since the beginning gave the minnies such a huge advantage until the target painting patch we fell way behind.

Once that was fixed we are on even ground in terms of being able to do plexes. So instead of flipping the systems we are just plexing them. So the minnies have nothing to plex anymore thus they come to caldari space.

In fantasyland where all the pilots listed on the rolls are active.

Amarr given up? What are you smoking. We have finally managed to deploy a strategy that will allow us to hit T5 despite the fact that there are three Minmatar farmers for every Amarr. It is called adapting to the situation. And we are still kicking their ass in head-on battle. Don't worry. It will come to you too.

You forgot to log out your spy alts....

I think giving up is a misnomer. We gave up actively contesting systems because it was clear we would never win a head on battle against Minmatar plexing alts, so we let our entire warzone get plexed down to force all of the Minny plexers out of our space so when we finally did start flipping systems, there would be few of them basing out of our space. This also made it easier to farm Tier 5 on alts. Given the fact that we started out with so few systems post-Inferno and rat imbalances, we needed a way to break the psychological dependence of Minmatar farmers on Amarr space if we ever had any realistic intent on moving forward.

What the Caldari are currently facing is the ridiculous uphill battle that fighting a nameless horde of Minmatar plexing alts creates. I wonder if eventually the Caldari warzone will eventually change to mirror the Amarr/Minmatar warzone where the only contestion is in massive Tier 5 swings, once the plexing alt battle becomes too much to handle. Don't worry though, once we hit our Tier 5 i'm sure all the Amarr plexing alts will flock to Gallente space and plex those systems up for you.

Tier 4...?

OH! I remember now. That's what is says right before Minmatar hit Tier 5.

ATTN: CALDARI

Today I logged in to do my daily plexing routine in your space when I noticed that you had fewer systems than you did yesterday. This has made my daily plexing routine very inconvenient for me, and as such I would like to request that you stop losing systems.

Thanks,
-Xuixien

Farmers don't flip systems.
































Jerks bashing the IHubs do.

































Because other jerks don't defend them.

Farmers help getting systems vulnerable.

Farmers take those plex's you would want.

Less farmers => less vulnerable systems & less competition.