Player Features and Ideas Discussion

1. agree
2. not sure this is a good thing, WH-AI might actually killoff fighting in plexes, because we are stuck with more fragile tech I frig, dest, and cruisers which is not the case as in WH space.
3. sounds good
4. possibly
5. definitely. And it would funnel the farming alts (assuming they survive as low skilled alts) into fewer systems where they themselves could be farmed quite easily.
6. hmm, well it would make bunker busting or mass bunker busting more difficult. it might cut down on the extreme ping pong monthly or so lp dumping strategies currently manifesting. Would have to think more about this.

I realize that this is not a huge problem in FW, you have tools to get fight : intel chat, scouts, map statistics (wich include FW stat), and system status monitoring. I like this process, so i would consider it a feature removal. But i understand that some people don't like this.




I'm not sure i understand what you call a pvp mechanics in this case, Do you mean that capturing can only be done upon PvP fighting?

in fact i think you are misunderstanding me :

when i said that defensive plexing should get rewards, it is because it is currently the only way to diminish the contestation. But like i said, remove D-plexing if it is unwanted. If the contestation diminish by itself overtime, then you can effectively defend by protecting the plexes from hostile, but i still think you should get something from driving WT away from the plex.

It make me think of a way to balance NPCs.

The problem right now is that without NPCs, farming plexes will become too easy, but if a player is under NPC fire, he will avoid a fight inside the plex. and the plex is the reason to fight.

But what if while the button is being captured, NPCs from both faction were being spawned, this way you have npcs firing on both fleets, it might be difficult to balance the spawnings but here is an example for a minor plex :

Upon the plex spawning (done only by an attacker because defensive plexing is unwanted), 5 weak defender frigate spawn, once they are destroyed, 5 mediumly strong frigates spawn for each side when the defenders NPC are dead, 5 strong frigate spawn for the defenders and 5 medium for the attackers, the goal is to have around the same dps on both sides.
if a the defender kills all attacking NPC, the plex is reset and the present defender gets lp for protecting it.

but maybe it's crap, it's just brainstorming

i did low sec pvp, but the problem is that it is very difficult to make a living out of it and you indeed can roam for 2 hours without finding targets.

FW allows you to find them really quickly.

The fact is that i don't think that knowing where the adverse militia is will increase the number of fight you get. With Eve rules, people will only fight if they think they have a chance, if you know where your enemy is , a small fleet will get blobed everytime then flee.

Your wish of getting 10 fights every 2 hours is possible only if the two sides are of the same strength. The losing side will not come again and again if they loose. And if the sides are actually even, the fights happening must produce enough income for both sides to replace ship loss, or it will suffocate both sides.


What i am afraid of with your proposal is that the losing side can not force a big fleet to spread, making every fight lost in advance.

I completely agree with putting very low dps NPCs though, make them tanky enough that capturing a plex in an undersize ship is impossible, but without dps (maybe just put a structure to destroy, its boring but it won't affect pvp)

This will simply create a big hole for missuse. In such a scenario you just get an Alt in the enemy milita and then kill him all day to farm LP. Sounds not good to me.

Truncated for ease.

- 1) broken is that you can capture the plex without killing the defending npc's who sorta shrug at you as you warp off victoriously having orbited them for a period between 10 and 20 minutes on average.

-2) Navy NPC's in high sec should apply points before webs to targets of enemy factions (though perhaps not pirates...cause I am one and I like them helping me to warp faster)

-3) NPC's in low sec should attack any non-militia regardless of standings as they are trespassing on military property...additionally they should at some level (perhaps major and major unrestricted) apply webs, though perhaps not warp scrambling devices. To discourage solo activities on noob alts perhaps all FW plexes should have some form of arp scrambling NPC with the number and toughness of the npc's rising with the supposed plex difficulty rise.

I know this is supposed to be a low barrier to pvp, but honestly it is more of a farm system than one that encourages a fight.

On to the ihubs

-4) Ihubs can be hit whenever the system is vulnerable and it flips at the next down time...so a system ebing vulnerable is the same as being lost...except that it still spawns plexes (ideally to let defenders defensively plex I'd gather).

The problem with defensive plexing is that there is no just reward for the work. You get increased standings gains (they pat you on teh butt and send you on your way). So no one bothers defensively plexing a system that is vulnerable.

The other effect of vulnerability is that there is nothing to force a fight on a certain time table like in 0.0 sov. All the enemy has to do is wait until you are bored/asleep/ @ work and they can shoot it with a fleet of stealth bombers, thrashers and tier 3 bc's and it flips. Defense is pointless...you just have to farm lp offensively now.

Traditionally in EVE game mechanics the defender is given some advantage....like knowing when the enemy has to strike.

A simple Player Owned Customs Office (POCO) has the best mechanic for this. It has a window of a couple hours when it could come out of RF. As it stands the FW i-hubs have no RF and might as well be lost right when system is vulnerable for all the practicality of it.

-5) ihub HP is fine, perhaps a boost to its passive recharge rate so that a fleet of 50 or so thrashers can't do it would be nice. or 25% resists even across the board to harden it up a bit. Add a small bit of challenge for attackers. Perhaps have a nice fleet of hostile NPC's protecting it instead of an RF timer. They come fully equipped with ECM, webs, points and might as well be a small incusion force for its difficulty.

Either way the current system is geared towards farming rather than playing the game for any RP reason. The flavor isn't there. Perhaps more live events in FW would help.

The whole purpose of this thread is to ask players how they want the NPC's balanced for fairness, and yet you argue that we can't make a set of changes because the NPC's are currently imbalanced.

I don't say this to be adversarial, you make excellent points, I'm just using this as an opportunity to remind players that the NPC's will almost certainly be rebalanced along with the plexing mechanics. ALL variables are in motion here, nothing should be taken for granted as it stands today.

And for the record, NPC's that de-agress upon enemy player entry is my absolute favorite solution to a lot of these issues. If the timer stopped and the NPC's deaggressed whenever a player warped in, we could have our PvP unfettered, and you couldn't just use an alt to trigger the de-aggression because you would be stopping the timer in the process.

Regardless of whatever form the NPC's take in the end, there will inevitably be some optimal plex-running ship that is discovered, there will still be some degree of farming, even if the ship used for this purpose is much more substantial than a triple-stabbed merlin. The days of farming complaints will certainly never end, the goal should be to continue to make these as PvP oriented as possible with the minimal amount of NPC involvement as possible to reduce speed-farming. I do NOT want these to become mini-incursions where the risk comes from dying to the NPC's themselves.

Can you explain this a bit more?

As I understand it:
Offensive plexer is killing NPC's.
Defender warps in
NPCs stop shooting offensive plexer and the timer stops
Both players shoot each other

Surely that would just create speed tanked *defenders*?
What would stop me, as a defender, warping in using a speed tanked slasher (for example) and just flying around until the plexer gets bored and runs away?
I can stop the timer and be impossible to catch. The offensive plexer can't do anything except find another plex.

It's not really any different that the current scenario, except that now the attacker wouldn't have to deal with NPC DPS while he kills the defender.

I'm not suggesting that any defender inside the plex stops the timer, I still think the stopping of the timer should take place only when the enemy is also in range of the button - you're absolutely right we don't want speedy slashers orbiting at 100km and stopping timers.

That's encouraging, except that some things need fixing ASAP.
A few relatively minor changes *now* that remove the bulk of the farmers will be enough to keep people happy and still involved in FW until the rest of the fixes come along.