Warfare & Tactics

Factional warfare is being dominated by plexing alts quickly driving systems to vulnerable.

Systems are held vulnerable so they can be farmed for LP and to deny the enemy to plex back, bar the few defensive plexes run.

The obvious counter is DPS alts in the hostile militia to bunker bust.

The counter to that would therefore be PVP friends within the hostile militia to kill the bunker busters. (WTB caldari friends)


Warzone control sway is basically = Plexes run - Plexes lost (ignoring vulnerable plexes),

The number of plexes run is essentially a function of the available hostile systems (- home systems) and the number of plexing alts within your militia. Tthe number of plexing alts is primarily dictated by the number of available systems and the availability of a good LP store. So we tend to a function of hostile systems available to plex in (as a fraction of the warzone), raised to a positive power. This has been demonstrated well by the Amarr - Minmatar front, With minmatar holding 80% systems since patch there has been limited plex availability, and Amarr have begun well by getting many systems to vulnerable, however already there is decreased availability for plexes that count and we are beginning to see their drive plateau. However it doesn't matter as there are so few plexes run my minmatar that eventually they would 80% vulnerable anyway. Hence the best thing for minmatar is to flip systems to amarr as every one gives another ~60 plexes / day to your capture rate.


This may seem shocking to the few who still think that pvp and good fights are still the driving force of warzone control, but to be honest from what i've seen the effect is minimal compared to the weight of plexing alts.

In the long term it seems the only way a warzone can be 'stable' is if both sides maintain a similar number of systems, by flipping their own systems to the opposing militia when too many become vulnerable. Through this we would see a similar situation to the pre-patch quasistatic warzone control.

This is reliant on having the organisation to bunker counter-flip at a sufficiently high rate (which no militia seems to currently possess). Failure to achieve this would probably lead to large, rapid oscillations between T5 warzone controls as each 'losing' milita plexes offensively, gains massive LP, flips all vulnerable systems at once and cashes out at T5, before having no systems to plex in and having alts swap to the new 'losing' militia.



Now I know CCP and they aren't stupid so they must have anticipated this, it just seems an odd direction to add yet more meta-game to any area of the game that already had its fair share.

When I take off my tin-foil hat I sometimes belive CCP is deliberately creating mechanics that screw over players just to create drama because drama is what sells EVE.

Exactly that. You have a new system put into effect. The rubber hits the road and all the issues rise to the surface. The hopeful part is that unlike the past it doesn't sound like CCP is doing a fire and forget release.

it's all part of CCP's plan to redistribute the isk in eve that is all.

I don't remember minmatar militia having a problem with this when they were the ones doing it.

The main time combat plexing occurs is when attacking or defending a home system. Other than that, it's either main, or alt farming of plexes. Me? I just offensive plex when not fighting and alt defensive plex when my main alt doesn't have anything to do (lol @ main alt).

Everyone wants to be space rich. I don't mind if my enemies are cause that means they are more apt to fight and bring out more shiny things to play with.

I can only hope that the Caldari farmers start busting vulnerable bunkers with their alts. Busting bunkers sucks! Any help from the other side is much appreciated.

Good post but I am not sure I entirely agree.




The only reason it plateaued is because Nulli wants to get more lp before the flip. They want to farm these vulnerable systems a bit longer until they decide they have enough and then they will continue on to the non vulnerable systems. Its not because they can't keep making more contested.



I disagree. The best thing for minmatar to do would be to get allot of fun pvp defending their plexes and hold onto the systems as long as possible. That way they can do periodic lp dumps at tier 5 for the lp they are gaining from pvp, missions and the occassional offensive plex.

Flipping systems may work to hurt amarr but it will also hurt minmatar. We will all stagnate at tier 3-4 and people will stop really caring about the sov at all anymore.

For those that didn't catch the reference;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw3G80bplTg

Gallente is already working on a trace buster buster to bust those mother fcking trace busters.

I just recently moved to the FW warzone from NPC 0.0, so I am a bit new here. But in my short time here I have seen the alts in both sides of the milita, and I must say it's pretty lame and immersion breaking. To me it seems like an easy fix would be to make it once a system is vulnerable it no longer gives LP for offensive plexing.