Warfare & Tactics

A militia's level of control in a system should be based on how contested it is. Right now you pour 150k LP into a system to spike it to level 5. As a side effect you get some system upgrades that are underwhelming in nature. The enemy can come in and strip both the upgrades and system control level usually within a few percentage points of plexing. This system is unsatisfactory on many levels.

My proposal is simple. Separate the upgrades from the level of control. The war zone control of a system should be determined by how contested it is. When stable a system should automatically be level 5. Every 10% after that a militia's level of control should drop by one. At 10% contested the system is level 4. At 20% contested it is level 3. And so on until you no longer have any level at 50% contested. Now at each level of system control a militia would have economic, military, and intelligence upgrades that can be paid for using LP. Those upgrades will be dependent on the level of control being maintained. One of the suggested upgrades in the F&I thread is to have station lockouts as a level 3 upgrade. Under my proposal as an example you would:

1) Have to pay for it.
2) Lose it if the contested level of the system rises to 30%.

System upgrades cost should be scaled to the inverse of a militia's WZC. It should be more expensive for the winning militia to upgrade and less expensive for the losing militia. This is a common sense step needed to keep things in check. The appeal of this idea is dependent on a few things. There have to be upgrades that are worthwhile. And the spread between the war zone controls have to be a bit more reasonable. Currently level 1 and level 5 WZC are a bit silly.

If anything WZC would be more reflective the current situation. There would be no spikes. If you own most of the systems and they are not contested at all your militia would be consistently at 4 or 5 WZC. I would point out though that even in its truncated state Amarr militia has pushed a few systems to 30%, 60%, 70% ect. Those systems would detract fron the tier store. In the past I've seen upgrades slapped onto even vulnerable systems. That wouldn't be an option here.

My proposal gives an even greater imperative to defensive plex. You lose your tier store and possibly expensive upgrades if you don't. At the same time it gives some meaning to the upgrades. You would have to grind up to 50% to get rid of them all. Currently that number is closer to 4-7%.

Hello zarnak

Not to object or shoot your idea down but do keep in mind a darker more sinister (at least in my mind) goal CCP has when updating game features.

In my opinion they (CCP) want to ensure as many if not more isk drains are available as faucets. In other words the current system is such an isk hole considering you have constantly dump LP into it to make your LP 'more' profitable. It is a vicious cycle.

I believe CCP have a longer goal of making it harder and harder for the average player to make isk. Driving up the plex prices and making the 'buy a few plex' option so much more sexy an option than traditional ways of making isk.

/me takes off tin foil hat

My best regards Zarnak miss flying with/against you. A true pvper in my book.

-Peace

I envisioned a system where you could put hundreds of thousands of LP into a system via upgrade purchases and then lose them through a coordinated enemy push. That's more of an LP sink then the current system.