Warfare & Tactics

I think it's safe to say that FW plexing is, in it's current state, a broken mechanic. It's shifting the focus away from PvP, and despite the attempt to get people into lowsec all it's doing is filling lowsec with 2 day old alts that people use to make isk while they play somewhere else. Anyways, the problem with FW isn't the amount of LP being paid out, or even the ability to clear plexes in a gunless ship(remember many PvP ships aren't optimized for dps, and a lot of them can't even clear some of the sites without backup). The problem is how easy it is to go into dead end systems and make boatloads of isk.

So, how do we fix this?

Well, there's 2 components:

1. Add a new tab in the Factional Warfare window which shows all plexes current under attack by the enemy faction, with the ability to sort by location/distance and display the number of ships within the plex. It doesn't have to spam your inbox or pop up tons of alerts. It just tells players looking for PvP where to find it.

2. Change the way that LP is awarded so that if you defend and capture a plex that was under attack, you get all the LP that the attacker would have received. For example, if you caught an enemy ship in a minor plex that was halfway captured and you sit on the button for 5 minutes, you receive the 5000 LP he had generated thus far. If you intercept someone in a major, who was only 2 minutes in, you'll only receive about 1500 LP.


Why does this fix the problem?

Well, it changes the way that LP is distributed. As it currently is, it frontloads all the LP into farming alts who attack plexes in out of the way systems, hoping that the enemy PvP players don't notice them. And nobody defensive plexes. A quick look at any FW tab shows that both sides will sit at around 15-20% warzone control, with a MASSIVE gap in the middle due to the lack of defensive plexing. All in all, it creates a huge LP fountain for alts and farmers, and doesn't actually generate any incentive to PvP.

Under this new system, the amount of LP generated *does not change*. What does change, however, is that you get paid for defending systems and actively seeking fights. You, in essence, "steal" the LP rewards from attackers. Now this isn't going to cause all the farmers to just evaporate, and it isn't going to reduce LP income on any real scale. You'll still be able to fund your eve experience by plexing. The big change here is that people who who want to PvP will be able to find fights, and in the process they will get paid while actively reducing alt farmer income.

Within a few weeks, alt farmer income would drop to very little, as they would be forced to either fit guns and fight for their plexes, or go find another source of income. This would happen seamlessly, without changing LP payout rates at all. It just moves the LP into the right hands...the ones holding the gun.

Because when people are out of fleets they're going to wander around and scout all day.



Hence the "sort by distance" feature available in every other Eve window ever. So, ya know, a guy, or small group wandering around will be able to react quickly. Large fleets won't bother. Small squads of defenders will.

Oh, and it actually adds to strategic importance to the decision of whether to go for the minor or the major, because larger plexes give the enemy longer to react.

FW plexing is fine L2P or GTFO

the lp sink is great anyways,best plan to battle constant eve isk inflation in a while,so whatever else it does it is less important

Except that it isn't much of a sink at all.
1. In the process of taking just a single system you make almost 3M LP assuming the enemy does not defend at all .. that is enough to fully upgrade roughly twenty (20) systems to Lvl5.
2. Systems are only upgraded in bulk and not continually as the only thing worth a damn is the broken-as-hell WZC modifiers.

So assuming you need say 50 systems upgraded to get tier5:
- First 2.5 systems generate the LP for the entire upgrade cycle, leaving 47.5 systems worth of LP or as numerical value ~ 142.5M LP
- When upgrade hits that LP lump is effectively quadrupled so that it has store value equal to over half a billion LP, and that does not even account for ISK costs in store also feeling the love of the modifier.

It is that "great LP sink" mechanic that has turned FW into the greatest Farm Eve has ever seen or is likely to see.

In short: Not that great.

On a personal note: Hahahahahahahaha, told you so!
(This will henceforth be attached to all non-official FW posts made by yours truly)

@Veshta Yoshida

nobody cares if they spawn LP out of thin air,as long as they reduce the TOTAL AMOUNT OF ISK IN GAME everyhing is fine
when they decide its been enough in like a year or two ( when isk reaches a normal value of inflation and worth ) all the LP will get nerfed and worthless.
Until that time comes it is better if everybody earns more LP faster for the whole universe

So frankly LP is of no importance.

i understand what you are saying garresh but IMO you make a mistake in calculating the profit from FW

since FW profit is dependant on the market and it can only gain you a limited (although large) number of items from the fw store at some point in the imminent future all the items you can get from the LP store will plumet.
Than the profits will go down and it should get closer to what you can earn from lv 4-s,what is about the level I personaly think it sohuld be.

Another bonus of this is,there can be only very little profitable LP hording,and all of EVE get cheap learning implants,so newer chars should have an easier start in the game.

Contested = system under attack.

Anyway after amarr took systems, every ******* systems was farmed 24/7 and no one cared, so no point to make any new system to announce things, no one is going to do anything advert or not.

We both know that most things generated by the LP store are absolutely excellent. Yes, items will eventually come down in price, but I don't think they'll ever go as low as you think. If FW isk income reaches as low as even double the isk from missions it'll still find equilibrium because then every PvPer will want access to cheap ships that wreck face. Every item generated by LP is in high demand. And if they become cheap more will flood to access them. You're underestimating just how strong the demand part of the curve is in this case.

And besides, this was never about "nerfing" LP rewards. It's about restributing it in a more logical and interesting fashion, which would make FW much more interesting and not drive away the core player base of FW.

Actually, yes. Farmers will still exist, in smaller numbers. Ship losses aren't a threat to them because their ships are cheap. Many leave in frustration because it's not longer as effective in terms of isk/hour, but some remain and try to make it work. On the flip side, people looking to PvP can actually plex as a way to attract enemies to them and get fights. Kicking the hornet's nest, so to speak. Instead of wandering from system to system, a player looking for fights can pick a system to attack, knowing that the fight will come to him *and* he's doing a service to his militia, and getting paid for it.

It bridges the gap between farming and PvP, and links sovreignty, farming, and PvP in a much more direct way. Honestly, it benefits everyone except alt farmers. People who farms on their mains come out just fine because they can defend themselves.

You have to keep in mind that there's a large portion of players in each militia faction who don't want to deal with sovereignty and plexing because it distracts from PvP time. If you listen to the Amarr militia, they often are at a downside because they don't want to plex. Now that's not why they're losing, but they do have a good point that plexing is very much seperated from the PvP component. By linking them and allowing you to take LP from hostiles when defending, AND giving people the intel to rapidly defend, you make plex warfare actually fun for those players. Or at least passable. I barely ever plex, but if this system were implemented you'd be damn sure you'd see me patrol our space defensively plexing and blocking captures. I'd bet quite a few of those anti-plexing pilots would do the same.

Uhhhh you are skipping a vital step, that being to convince CCP that there is something wrong with FW:



CSM & CCP Meeting minutes, May 30th – 1st June 2012 Page: 110

CCP Soundwave then took a moment to pose a philosophical question – “If someone joins FW, and just wants to run missions, is that actually a bad thing? Do we have to force people to PvP?”


Soooooo.... if it's not broken but working as intended, why would ccp soundwave say "oh here is the solution!"?
Well, the past two CSM elections, FW was the #1 issue I was looking for in a candidate... and of course they always lost. No one really cares about FW, only to make it a reason to draw population into lowsec, period.