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FW: I-hub and system upgrades

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Veshta Yoshida
PIE Inc.
Khimi Harar
#161 - 2012-08-24 12:22:37 UTC
Cearain wrote:
...Hans if you make it a pvp mechanic all the people who are cashing out will be dedicated faction war pilots for that campaing. There won't be any farmers screwing up the market. People who earn lp in plexes will all be pvpers who helped actually fight the war.

The only exception to this will be the mission runners. And I think level 4 missions could stand a bit of a nerf...

When (no longer consider it an "if") spawn destruction becomes a requirement for plexes, thus killing off a majority of the plex farmers, the obvious next step is to revamp missions.

By expanding the list of ships/structures needed to be killed for completion and introducing what has become known as "poison pills", you have effectively removed a majority of mission farmers as well (without CCP having to give up their delusion of wanting to give us choice .. in a bloody WAR!) and can allow missions to count towards occupancy.
Double bonus if they address the glaring oversight that allows missions to spawn in already held space as fighting traditionally increases as a given side is 'cornered' and with both plexes and missions being spammed in the last remaining systems .. should be a honest to God bloodbath Smile

PS: Whoopsie, off-(official)topic again .. hehehehehe Big smile
Cearain
Plus 10 NV
#162 - 2012-08-24 13:27:07 UTC
Hans Jagerblitzen wrote:
Cearain wrote:
Hans I can't believe you are just taking her conclusions wholesale. Do you ever read the comments to these blogs?


Yes, I do. I had read this already.



Then why did you say this:

Hans Jagerblitzen wrote:

There is simply no debate that a system that rewards winners and punishes losers financially will encourage profit-seekers to enlist in whichever militia is winning at the time. This sounds in theory like it would lead to "snowballing" and an unbreakable power monopoly over time. But the numbers show something a little different. As CCP disclosed at the summit, and as publicly available data shows,. the "army of plexing alts" that have joined Minmatar haven't really translated into a noticeable increase in plexing behavior The Amarr have been able to put forth as much warzone activity in terms of kills and victory points, despite the on-paper size advantage that the Minmatar have.


Without even addressing the comment that explained why her analysis is flawed?

Hans like she says in her post we need accurate information to base our changes on. There were several big mistakes in her analysis arriving at her conclusion that "the 'army of plexing alts' that have joined Minmatar haven't really translated into a noticeable increase in plexing behavior"

To those who understand the mechanics and have been carefully paying attention to what is happening, the data very strongly suggest that the army of plexing alts that have joined the minmatar have in fact translated into and increse in plexing behavior.



Make faction war occupancy pvp instead of pve https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=53815&#post53815
Cearain
Plus 10 NV
#163 - 2012-08-24 13:43:22 UTC  |  Edited by: Cearain
Hans Jagerblitzen wrote:
corestwo wrote:
I wrote a few (hundred (ok more than that)) words about my thoughts on FW here: http://themittani.com/features/dissection-game-system-faction-warfare

Discussion after the fact spawned what I think is a really great idea. Credit where credit's due: Weaselior (of Goonwaffe) came up with this idea, and its definitely a "more elegant" solution to the problem of "coordinated cashouts", among others.

Basically, do two things. First, make donating LP directly to infrastructure hubs not a thing. Remove the ability.

Second implement a system where hubs gain LP through player action. Attacking a hostile plex, or scoring PvP kills in a hostile system, would add LP equal to a percentage of the earned LP to the nearest friendly hub ("nearest" most likely by absolute astronomical distance or something). In friendly systems, LP generating kills contribute to the system's hub, and players could be rewarded with LP for defensively plexing - a smaller reward than offensive plexing, to be sure, but the contribution to the system's hub could receive a bonus as an extra incentive.

These bonus contributions to the hub could also come in the form of a tax, which may be preferable, as it still means players are losing LP to upgrade their systems - they're just doing it involuntarily. That'd be for CCP to decide. Likewise, the size of the contribution would have to be tweaked - too small and it remains too easy to offset with offensive plexing, and achieving and maintaining higher levels of warzone control is too hard, but too large, and its too easy.

The overall effect here would be that defending systems would be incentivized, as it would give your hubs a larger bonus, and it would force players to actually participate - the "coordinated cashouts" that are the norm now would be dead.


I see where you're going with this, you're certainly zeroing in one a very important problem, but I really believe the solution is much simpler. Fix the LP store prices at pre-inferno levels for all factions, and modulate the LP rewards for the various activities by a multiplier instead. This instantly eliminates the ability to "spike" the market, and it holds factions accountable for their current progress. Right now a faction can live at Tier 1 all week long, and cash out all their LP in an hour window on the weekend, and go right back to living at Tier 1 all the time. This is pretty broken, and it encourages everyone to chase the tier 5 spike (and discourages them from cashing out UNLESS they hit the tier 5 spike).

The problem people will point out right away with this change is the bleed-out - its way too easy to drain an IHUB quickly of its upgrades, which provides a disincentive to use them for anything other than spiking the market. This is easily fixed by tweaking the rate of the bleed-out. The other obvious problem is "snowballing" of the winning militia, meaning the more LP you earn the easier it is to maintain your upgrades. This is also easily fixable by scaling the amount of LP it takes to upgrade, based on your WZC control.

With a few mathematical adjustments to make it easier to maintain a given Tier level, scaling LP payouts instead of the store pricing will reward factions based on their current performance, and allow all players to cash out their LP freely at any time (helping them stay in the game and supplied with isk and ships) instead of the situation we have now where the losing faction just accumulates their LP, spending little and waiting for a savior to come in and help them achieve the magic system number needed to spike the market to the appropriate level. This change also heavily encourages those that are merely in FW to farm LP and isk (a valid reason to participate) to actually care about the state of the war on a day-to-day basis, which was the original design intent.



The current tier system is much better than this. Your proposal will just lead to a boring entrenched war that will not see much in terms of changes in fortune.

The current tier system will allow for large swings in fortune.

The amarr was able to hit tier four and likely could have hit tier 5 if nulli didn't decide to pull the plug early.

Yes the minmafarm quickly plexed metro. However, if ccp takes steps - like timer count down and letting players know when plexes are attacked - the minmartar army of farm will be gutted and they will have to slowly fight their way back up.

Sure minmatar will still have a huge advantage due to the numbers that have already flocked there and the numbers that have fled amarr already. But minmatar will no longer be able to flip 40 systems in metro in 2 days without any fights.

Make faction war occupancy pvp instead of pve https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=53815&#post53815
Julius Foederatus
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#164 - 2012-08-24 16:24:35 UTC
I feel like we might be getting away from the original thread topic here, but I think it's at least tangentially related since I assume we want to change the way upgrades work so that people are actually invested in the system.

In any case, I never meant to imply that items will reach zero value. My issue is not the value per se, it's the fact that the people influencing the value of the items are many times those who don't really have any stake in FW outside of how much isk they can make. We got these kinds of rewards in FW because we needed a good stream of income to keep up with the ship burn rate. Will a horde of farming alts keep us from making isk? No, but we will make significantly less than we could have had the money only been going to people who actually participate in FW. That is my problem with this system and the lvl4 mission issue we had before inferno. The discounts are there for a specific reason: to encourage and finance FW pvp. Farmers aren't interested in FW pvp, and they make it harder for us to afford our ships by driving down the prices. It's the principle of the thing, they shouldn't be able to just come in with little to no risk or investment and be able to make a **** ton of money at our expense.

Coordinated cash outs actually work against these types of people. And while many people outside of the core FW guys may know about when upgrades take place, that is a consequence of human planning, rather than an inevitable outcome. I know in Gal mil we made the conscious choice to inform the general pbase because we wanted to try and spread the task of donating around as much as possible. On a side note, I think we will change our schedule and not inform the public in the near future, because it's always the people in the secure channels who are out donating their LP (with a few exceptions), while 200 people you've never seen in fleets or heard of sit in Villore waiting to be the first one to cash out.

To Hans point about competing with your own militiamen, that's only the case if you're a bad merchant. If you're stupid and try to dump all your stuff at once, sure it's going to hurt you. But again, this is a consequence of human action.

If we can create a system where people who are going out and plexing are actually participating by fitting pvp ships, fighting for plexes, and generally doing what most people in FW do, then I think going to a system other than coordinated cash outs would actually make sense. We wouldn't have this farming problem that we do now, so making it easier to get your stuff in FW would help out.

But until that problem is fixed, coordinated cash outs are one of the few things in the current system that actually work to the advantage of the people who are invested in the system.
corestwo
Goonfleet Investment Banking
#165 - 2012-08-24 20:46:56 UTC
Julius Foederatus wrote:
I feel like we might be getting away from the original thread topic here, but I think it's at least tangentially related since I assume we want to change the way upgrades work so that people are actually invested in the system.

In any case, I never meant to imply that items will reach zero value. My issue is not the value per se, it's the fact that the people influencing the value of the items are many times those who don't really have any stake in FW outside of how much isk they can make. We got these kinds of rewards in FW because we needed a good stream of income to keep up with the ship burn rate. Will a horde of farming alts keep us from making isk? No, but we will make significantly less than we could have had the money only been going to people who actually participate in FW. That is my problem with this system and the lvl4 mission issue we had before inferno. The discounts are there for a specific reason: to encourage and finance FW pvp. Farmers aren't interested in FW pvp, and they make it harder for us to afford our ships by driving down the prices. It's the principle of the thing, they shouldn't be able to just come in with little to no risk or investment and be able to make a **** ton of money at our expense.

Coordinated cash outs actually work against these types of people. And while many people outside of the core FW guys may know about when upgrades take place, that is a consequence of human planning, rather than an inevitable outcome. I know in Gal mil we made the conscious choice to inform the general pbase because we wanted to try and spread the task of donating around as much as possible. On a side note, I think we will change our schedule and not inform the public in the near future, because it's always the people in the secure channels who are out donating their LP (with a few exceptions), while 200 people you've never seen in fleets or heard of sit in Villore waiting to be the first one to cash out.

To Hans point about competing with your own militiamen, that's only the case if you're a bad merchant. If you're stupid and try to dump all your stuff at once, sure it's going to hurt you. But again, this is a consequence of human action.

If we can create a system where people who are going out and plexing are actually participating by fitting pvp ships, fighting for plexes, and generally doing what most people in FW do, then I think going to a system other than coordinated cash outs would actually make sense. We wouldn't have this farming problem that we do now, so making it easier to get your stuff in FW would help out.

But until that problem is fixed, coordinated cash outs are one of the few things in the current system that actually work to the advantage of the people who are invested in the system.


Again, I disagree that coordinated cashouts are necessary to reward the interested PvPers. Take RF Firetails, for example - despite the price being squashed by repeated coordinated cashouts, they still sell for 12m isk or so. 12m is equal to 2,000 isk/LP at Tier 4. By comparison, attribute implants - always a popular choice for coordinated cashouts - fetch 2k isk/LP at tier 4 if sold at 8m for +3s (which is easy), 18m for +4s (they haven't been that high in at least a month) and 100m for +5s (they haven't been that high since late May). Now, firetails are unique to the FW LP store. Fill the store with other unique items worth buying, and I'd bet you that the broad enough selection would mean that 1500-2000 isk/LP would be the norm, even if you sustained Tier 4 for awhile.

Meanwhile, take the frigate for the other side - Imperial Navy Slicers. When Nulli first hit Tier 4, they were selling for 35m isk on the market, and so the first people to sell them earned a whopping 6700 isk/LP. Again, fill the store with unique items, and a pilot willing to join sides in an attempt to turn the war around would have a huge selection of items to pick from that he could earn 6-10k isk/LP from if he and his allies succeed. So someone less dedicated to a faction now has an incentive to switch as he pleases to find better pay for his combat abilities.

This post was crafted by a member of the GoonSwarm Federation Economic Cabal, the foremost authority on Eve: Online economics and gameplay.

fofofo
Julius Foederatus
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#166 - 2012-08-25 07:09:29 UTC
The reason the slicer prices were high was because there were almost no coordinated cash outs on the amarr side. We had a similar situation on Gallente side, where the extreme lack of supply caused prices to rocket up on navy domis and other items, reaching over 600m on buy orders and close to 800m until we did our first dump and then all the scrubs killed the orders in record time.

Also I think you're misunderstanding my point here. I know that pvpers will be able to get their isk either way. I'm not worried about rewarding the pvpers. I'm worried about punishing the farmers, who are perverting the system.
Cearain
Plus 10 NV
#167 - 2012-08-25 12:01:09 UTC
After having an alt in minmatar I have found that people who dump like fools don't last long.

We have just finishing the first full "cycle" with the amarr minmatar front. Minmatar started at t5 then amarr hit t4 and now minmatar are about to hit t5.

In the future both sides will shoot to make sure when they spring to the top they hit tier 5 - instead of the much easier, but less lucrative, tier4. They will also try to hold onto thier systems allowing other cash outs as long as possible.

Smart players who have been in fw for a while will be able to take advantage of these people if they understand what happens to the market over the course of a "cycle." This will allow players to increase thier profits based on knowedge/experience of the game.

If the prices remain fairly constant and people are cashing out all the time it just dumbs things down. Look at the market and crash this item. The items will be permanantly crashed because people won't have to stock up and plan.


Farmers will be eliminated if ccp takes the steps already mentioned to make this a pvp game.

the only question is whether they want to add another dimension to fw where people can learn how best plan market cycles or whether they want to the lp cashouts constant so there is not thought or planning necessary.

Make faction war occupancy pvp instead of pve https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=53815&#post53815
Veshta Yoshida
PIE Inc.
Khimi Harar
#168 - 2012-08-25 12:26:56 UTC  |  Edited by: Veshta Yoshida
corestwo wrote:
... Some mumbo+jumbo about prices ...

You state that RF Firetails sell for 12M as if it is some kind of high price .. check the store with your FW alt .. 12M 'was' rock-bottom or "at cost" so to speak prior to the ridiculous x4 modifier was put in. Base is 10k LP and 2M ISK and the market is capable of moving insane volumes at 12M a pop, especially now that AFs have gone again after their boost, so it is a natural low.

As for Slicers, when we left militia service the price had been bottomed out for over a year (thank you mission whores!) and they were wholesaling for 12M .. if you want to know how/why they got to 35+M then look no further than the Shakorite bum-rush in the last weeks before patch and the logically following scarcity of product as Amarr militia members suddenly had to pay 40k LP due to the ridiculous x4 modifier if they wanted a Slicer.
"But that does not make sense because 35M is a ****-poor LP exchange rate if they are 40k LP!!!" I can hear you think .. well my dear, the system was so wonderfully thought out (*cough*cough*) that rock-bottom for Empire mission whores selling faction frigates is lower (30k LP+10M ISK vs. 40k LP+8M ISK) than the corresponding militia when they are steamrolled .. I can almost guarantee that the majority of those 35M Slicers came from Empire and not FW.

PS: Did I mention I think the x4 modifier is ridiculous? Smile

And just so not this entire blurp is off-topic:
Make individual system upgrades (iHub) matter primarily for the grunt fighting and dying in the trenches.
- I for one could care less about extra factory slots and would rather have cheaper repairs, purchases (ie. kill the taxman!) and less tedium in general.

Introduce a constellation wide bonus, dependent on "stability" (ie. aggregate upgrade level) of included systems that caters to the care-bears such as factory slots.
- Just makes sense that a battlefield does not encourage civilian presence until such time that resistance has been taken care of.

Utterly and completely annihilate (Goddess, I love that word!) the WarZoneControl crappola or use it for some "soft" purpose that does not make everyone want to take up industrial scale farming with no time for pew.
Previously suggested it be used as a sort of stability modifier, one gets shakier as size increases (ref: every damn Empire in history), in FW terms that could be done by decreasing the time it takes for the enemy to cap an offensive plex on a sliding scale.
- Will, or rather should, let the fronts reach an equilibrium based on combat pilots rather than farming frigates (assuming plexes are sorted, ie. Kill Everything!).
Cearain
Plus 10 NV
#169 - 2012-08-25 12:49:22 UTC
Veshta Yoshida wrote:
corestwo wrote:
... Some mumbo+jumbo about prices ...

You state that RF Firetails sell for 12M as if it is some kind of high price .. check the store with your FW alt .. 12M 'was' rock-bottom or "at cost" so to speak prior to the ridiculous x4 modifier was put in. Base is 10k LP and 2M ISK and the market is capable of moving insane volumes at 12M a pop, especially now that AFs have gone again after their boost, so it is a natural low.

As for Slicers, when we left militia service the price had been bottomed out for over a year (thank you mission whores!) and they were wholesaling for 12M .. if you want to know how/why they got to 35+M then look no further than the Shakorite bum-rush in the last weeks before patch and the logically following scarcity of product as Amarr militia members suddenly had to pay 40k LP due to the ridiculous x4 modifier if they wanted a Slicer.
"But that does not make sense because 35M is a ****-poor LP exchange rate if they are 40k LP!!!" I can hear you think .. well my dear, the system was so wonderfully thought out (*cough*cough*) that rock-bottom for Empire mission whores selling faction frigates is lower (30k LP+10M ISK vs. 40k LP+8M ISK) than the corresponding militia when they are steamrolled .. I can almost guarantee that the majority of those 35M Slicers came from Empire and not FW..



Veshta no one cashes out when they are at tier 1. I was against the tier system at first to. But the no lp for defensive plexing means every faction has a chance to hit the high tiers. Now I realize the current tier system works extremely well for fw.

The reasons slicers went up in price is because they are actually about the best kiting frigate in the game. Firetails are the best at ... best at... at being "better than a rifter."

Veshta you should get your corp back in fw. Its better than it has been in years.

Make faction war occupancy pvp instead of pve https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=53815&#post53815
Zarnak Wulf
Task Force 641
Empyrean Edict
#170 - 2012-08-26 02:27:59 UTC  |  Edited by: Zarnak Wulf
I had an idea as I sit here at work. Why not simply make the upgrade levels reflect the contested level of the system? At uncontested to 19.99% you are level 5. At 20% to 39.99% you are level 4. And so on. Every 20% contested you would fall a level.

At each level you would have upgrades that you could purchase for the system. You would pay for these upgrades with LP. If a system lost a level by being contested you would lose the upgrades that we're dependent on that level as a prerequisite.

Edit: make all the levels fit into the first 50% of a system being contested. Once you get a system halfway there it can't be upgraded at all.
Axl Borlara
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#171 - 2012-08-29 16:33:12 UTC
I'm not quite sure how yet, but there should be more benefits the longer you continuously hold control of a given system.
Noroswen
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#172 - 2012-08-30 17:21:45 UTC  |  Edited by: Noroswen
It would be nice if upgrades where alittle more pressistant. As it stands the whole system is a cycle. One side builds up the LP reserves then cashes in at an appointed time. A few days later all those upgrades are gone because doing plexs bring it down. Make them last, as an independant I didnt put my LP into the system because a day or so later that system I upgraded to tier 5 is now tier 1.

Am I alone in thinking that those upgrades are to fragile?
Hans Jagerblitzen
Ice Fire Warriors
#173 - 2012-08-30 19:34:10 UTC
Noroswen wrote:
It would be nice if upgrades where alittle more pressistant. As it stands the whole system is a cycle. One side builds up the LP reserves then cashes in at an appointed time. A few days later all those upgrades are gone because doing plexs bring it down. Make them last, as an independant I didnt put my LP into the system because a day or so later that system I upgraded to tier 5 is now tier 1.

Am I alone in thinking that those upgrades are to fragile?


Not at all. Addressing this is included in my "top 13 list" outlined in my most recent blog post.

CPM0 Chairman / CSM7 Vice Secretary
corestwo
Goonfleet Investment Banking
#174 - 2012-08-30 22:59:14 UTC  |  Edited by: corestwo
Noroswen wrote:
It would be nice if upgrades where alittle more pressistant. As it stands the whole system is a cycle. One side builds up the LP reserves then cashes in at an appointed time. A few days later all those upgrades are gone because doing plexs bring it down. Make them last, as an independant I didnt put my LP into the system because a day or so later that system I upgraded to tier 5 is now tier 1.

Am I alone in thinking that those upgrades are to fragile?


Upgrade status being extremely difficult to maintain is one thing Hans & I agree on, albeit for somewhat different reasons. Blink

This post was crafted by a member of the GoonSwarm Federation Economic Cabal, the foremost authority on Eve: Online economics and gameplay.

fofofo
Veshta Yoshida
PIE Inc.
Khimi Harar
#175 - 2012-08-31 05:23:54 UTC  |  Edited by: Veshta Yoshida
System upgrade status is easy as hell to maintain, all one need do is kill hostile plexers and defensive plex .. problem is that the upgrades are largely worthless and only the 'spike' in WZC has any real value, which is why a level 5 never lasts long, because why spend time/ISK for zero value?

That is what this thread is all about, to cook ideas that will make people want to bleed the enemy and themselves to maintain upgraded systems.

@Hans: See, I do know how to read the thread titles .. just can't be bothered most of the time Big smile
CCP Ytterbium
C C P
C C P Alliance
#176 - 2012-08-31 12:07:05 UTC  |  Edited by: CCP Ytterbium
Hey folks,

It has been quite a while since our last update on this topic, mainly due to summer vacations then inertia time to get back into shape, but we are now back alive and kicking.

There are many excellent points expressed on this post that I will first address. Once that is done, we will then move on intended improvements we want to bring to the table for winter. There has been plenty of internal discussions, brainstormings about them, and after receiving feedback from the CSM we are ready to unveil changes for public review.

Please note that we will only address system upgrade and war zone control mechanics here. NPC and complex revamp will be announced in that thread.


THREAD FEEDBACK:

[list]
  • Q: ONE OF THE REASONS FOR LOW-SECURITY SPACE BEING CRAP REMAINS THAT HIGH-SECURITY STATIONS ARE TOO GOOD IN THE FIRST PLACE, DO YOU HAVE PLANS TO ADJUST THIS?

    • A: Indeed we do. This topic brought quite an internal discussion, and while this most likely won't be part of a Factional Warfare iteration, we do want to have a look at reducing high-security stations effectiveness to make other areas of space more interesting. Some examples could be reducing refining rates, increasing ISK payment to install jobs. Nothing is set in stone as this is not planned for the immediate future however. Another good idea we noticed here was to tie high-security tax with the war performance of its related Factional Warfare Militia. So if, by example, the Caldari Militia are losing the war in Factional Warfare, all taxes in Caldari State high-security space could go up to support the war effort.


  • Q: HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT TYING FACTIONAL WARFARE AGENTS TO SYSTEM UPGRADE LEVEL?

    • A: Yes, quite a bit as this is an interesting point. However we decided to keep agents out of the upgrade loop for now, as this would create quite some issues if you have missions accepted / in progress when a system level changes. Dynamic agent seeding also is another problem we need to tackle before we can go on such route.


  • Q: WHAT'S THE POINT OF UPGRADING A FACTIONAL WARFARE SYSTEM WITHOUT A STATION?

    • A: At the moment, not much indeed, which is a failure from the previous design that needs to be solved in the next iteration.


  • Q: HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT ADDING JUMP BRIDGES AS PART OF SYSTEM UPGRADES?

    • A: A bit, but we dismissed the idea. That is because we don't like instant travel as it lessens risk as a whole. If anything we should strive towards reducing instant travel, not the opposite.


  • Q: HOW ABOUT LINKING NPC STRENGTH TO SYSTEM UPGRADES?

    • A: That's also something we internally debated. We first wanted to scale NPC response depending on system upgrade level, but after some more discussion we removed the idea out of our plans. The main reason is that we want Factional Warfare to mainly be a PvP activity, where PvE supports player engagements without overriding them. NPC scaling for complexes / general protection brings us dangerously close to the point we are trying to avoid. The design mechanics should encourage players to defend their own space themselves instead of relying on NPCs to do so.


  • Q: MAYBE WE SHOULD TIE SHIP INSURANCE COSTS TO SYSTEM UPGRADES?

    • A: That also was quickly considered and dismissed, mainly because there is a high chance it will be exploited to death. If anything the great summer 2012 LP farming taught us to be extremely cautious with this kind of things as our player base are a bit like Velociraptors in that Jurassic Park movie: they will find devious way to eat our designs alive from the side. Clever girl.


  • Q: HAVE THERE BEEN ANY PLANS TO FACILITATE TRACKING OF LP GAINS?

    • A: Yes, quite a bit, but they require quite some UI overhaul to properly display, store, track LP progression as a whole. Some ideas are tied to better notifications as a whole, or having a LP history just like it's done in the wallet.


  • Q: HOW ABOUT AFFECTING POCOS IN SYSTEM UPGRADES?

    • A: If possible, why not. That's something we briefly talked about, but I can raise the issue for more discussion.


  • Q: WHY NOT HAVING SEPARATE DONATION BRANCHES WITH DIFFERENT EFFECTS IN THE I-HUB?

    • A: That's a good question. Our first design for the system upgrade included different upgrade branches; for example, one was focused on industry, the other on warfare. But the main problem here, is that on the contrary to null-security territorial warfare, there is no supreme authority coordinating FW player effort into a specific upgrade path or another. Because the donation system is totally free and open to large pool of players with vastly different interests, having separate paths would cause quite some problems. What would happen to LP stored in branch A if branch B was upgraded first? How to tell whose donated LP is more important? It's not to say this is impossible to resolve, it just was too much of a complex problem to look at for a first summer release.


  • Q: HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT ADDING/REMOVING LP STORE DEPENDING ON SYSTEM UPGRADES?

    • A: Indeed we have. The main issue with that option is that the LP store is a terrible, confusing, horrible [Censored by the EVE Moderation Team] pile of [Censored by the EVE Moderation Team] dog [Censored by the EVE Moderation Team]. Here, I said it. The code is obsolete and it needs a serious back-end as well as external UI overhaul before we can touch it in such an advanced fashion. For example, clicking the same datacore offer 1000 times because there is no multi-buy option is to put it mildly, annoying. And yes, we know you, you and you over there have been doing it for hours, we have logs.


  • Q: LET'S GET BETTER NOTIFICATION/INTEL TOOLS WITH SYSTEM UPGRADES MR. HOLMES!

    • A: Interesting...
    CCP Ytterbium
    C C P
    C C P Alliance
    #177 - 2012-08-31 12:07:22 UTC  |  Edited by: CCP Ytterbium
    WINTER ITERATIONS

    After looking into current mechanics and feedback there are a certain number of points we want to change on the system upgrade and war zone control systems.



    • WAR ZONE CONTROL EFFECTS


    Current warzone control design is flawed as it does not encourage players to hold space, only to upgrade I-hubs when they need to buy stuff from the LP store to get massive reductions. Ideally we would want players fighting and struggling to keep control over their space, that is why we propose the following.

    We would remove LP store price reduction in the new system, and only modify LP gained. As such, tier1 WZ would reduce all LP gains by 50%, tier2 would keep them on the same field as of now, tier3 would give a 100% LP gain bonus, tier4 150% and tier5 200% LP gain bonus. This would encourage factions to actually keep and maintain space to have the LP bonus rather than just push once in a while.


  • NEW SYSTEM COSTS

    • We are not particularly fond of how easy it is to upgrade a system currently. On top of that it is quite easy for attacking players to reduce upgrade level by attacking complexes in the same system due to how the bleed-out on the I-Hub works (this will be tackled further down below).

    Part of the fix is to increase LP amounts required to upgrade a system to the new numbers mentioned below:

    * Level1: 40,000
    * Level2: 60,000
    * Level3: 90,000
    * Level4: 140,000
    * Level5: 200,000
    * Buffer: 300,000


  • NEW SYSTEM UPGRADES

    • As mentioned quite a few times, current system upgrades are a bit lame, as not really providing needed bonuses, especially in systems with no stations. Iteration would include:

    Level1:
    * +5 station manufacturing, copy, ME, PE, Invention slots
    * 10% market tax reduction
    * 10% repair cost reduction
    * 5% manufacturing time reduction

    Level2:
    * +10 station manufacturing, copy, ME, PE, Invention slots
    * 20% market tax reduction
    * 20% repair cost reduction
    * 10% manufacturing time reduction

    Level3:
    * +15 station manufacturing, copy, ME, PE, Invention slots
    * 30% market tax reduction
    * 30% repair cost reduction
    * 15% manufacturing time reduction
    * 10% reduction to starbase fuel cost

    Level4:
    * +20 station manufacturing, copy, ME, PE, Invention slots
    * 40% market tax reduction
    * 40% repair cost reduction
    * 20% manufacturing time reduction
    * 10% reduction to starbase fuel cost

    Level5:
    * +25 station manufacturing, copy, ME, PE, Invention slots
    * 50% market tax reduction
    * 50% repair cost reduction
    * 30% manufacturing time reduction
    * 20% reduction to starbase fuel cost
    * Able to anchor Cyno Jammer


  • CYNO JAMMER

    • As you can see above, the Cyno Jammer is back with a vengeance. However we took into consideration the feedback we received during Fanfest and various community channels, and it would work as mentioned below.


    * Bought from FW LP stores as 1 BPC (total cost including manufacturing materials estimated around 100-130m ISK)
    * Has only 25% hitpoints of the null-security Cyno Jammer version (thus about 4 million HPs instead of 16)
    * Cyno Jammer is launched from the ship cargohold and deployed into space, requires the "config starbase equipment" role (this technically restricts all NPC militia members to launch such a structure - you have to be in an enlisted player made corporation)
    * Cyno Jammer requires a spool-up time (5 or 10 minutes)
    * Cyno Jammer automatically turn online once spool-up timer has passed, causing its effects to be activated for the specified amount of time
    * May only be anchored when proper system upgrade has been met
    * Only one Cyno Jammer may be anchored per solar system
    * Cyno Jammer needs to be launched near the system Infrastructure Hub (between 5 and 10km)

    Working conditions:

    * An anchored Cyno Jammer automatically turns online after the spool-up period and works for 1 hour
    * Deployed Cyno Jammer is automatically unanchored and destroyed if the solar system upgrade level goes below minimum requirements while it is active
    * Deployed Cyno Jammer automatically unanchors and self-destructs once their lifetime has expired
    * Cyno Jammers are considered as militia objects and may be shot by the opposing factions without any consequence (neutrals can shoot them but have to take a security status hit)
    * Has same effect than null-security version - prevents Cynosural Fields to be created in the solar system as long as it is active


  • LP DONATION MAINTENANCE FEE

    • The more system upgrades a faction has, the more donated LP is wasted to maintain current upgrades. Technically this would mean a faction with no upgrade would get a 0% fee while donating LP to the I-hub, while a faction reaching tier 5 war zone control would spend 70-75% of its LPs into the maintenance fee before they are counted for the upgrades themselves.

    This mainly done to offset the massive LP gain bonus when reaching higher War Zone tiers, and also provide diminishing returns to factions owning vast amount of space.


  • GENERAL CAPTURE CHANGES

    • Last but not least, we have a certain number of smaller changes that have been suggested and requested for a while.


    * Reduce I-hub LP bleed from attacked complexes: I-hub currently lose 50% of attacked complex LP amount, which makes it difficult to hold a system upgrades. We would like to reduce the bleed out to 10% to make it less easy to reduce it. Thus capturing a Major site would only remove 3,000 LPs from the I-hub instead of 15,000 as it is today.

    * Defensive plexing gives LP: as title says, but with a twist. LP amount is based on contested system % to avoid farming. Thus, a system that is 50% contested would only give 50% of the total LP amount available. Maximum cap would be set to 75% to encourage...
    Karah Serrigan
    Ministry of War
    Amarr Empire
    #178 - 2012-08-31 12:39:03 UTC
    CCP Ytterbium wrote:
    WINTER ITERATIONS
    We would remove LP store price reduction in the new system, and only modify LP gained. As such, tier1 WZ would reduce all LP gains by 50%, tier2 would keep them on the same field as of now, tier3 would give a 100% LP gain bonus, tier4 150% and tier5 200% LP gain bonus. This would encourage factions to actually keep and maintain space to have the LP bonus rather than just push once in a while.
    ]


    Imo this, combined with the increased cost for upgrading, will just make upgrading obsolete at all. In a balanced war, like the one between caldari and gallente, where systems flip every day or two, its not worth upgrading a system to gain some more LP.
    Repair cost, tower fuel cost and market tax reduction are a complete nonfactor.
    The industry bonuses are very nice obviously, but again, theres just no way someone would spend 300k lp for a system which gets flipped in 2 days anyway.
    Morgan North
    Dark-Rising
    Wrecking Machine.
    #179 - 2012-08-31 12:46:52 UTC
    I have a suggestion:

    Currently defensive plexing in FW, offers no rewards.

    Here's an idea:

    If the system is being contested, or not at maximum upgrade level, some opposing FW beacons show up.

    Lets say that a system is secured and at level 5.

    No enemy plexes can show up.

    If at level 4, one enemy plex may be open at any one time, but never more than one. Recapturing it, or destroying it, works the same as simply recapturing a defensive plex, but offer standard rewards. Or lowered rewards.

    Level 3, two plexes, level 2 three plexes, level 1 four plexes, contested, as many as possible of both types os plexes, and at opposing faction there's no friendly plexes other than those permitted by the above.

    This would provide incentive for defending players aswell as look like military attempts at retaking or capturing the system.
    CCP Fozzie
    C C P
    C C P Alliance
    #180 - 2012-08-31 12:48:51 UTC
    Karah Serrigan wrote:
    CCP Ytterbium wrote:
    WINTER ITERATIONS
    We would remove LP store price reduction in the new system, and only modify LP gained. As such, tier1 WZ would reduce all LP gains by 50%, tier2 would keep them on the same field as of now, tier3 would give a 100% LP gain bonus, tier4 150% and tier5 200% LP gain bonus. This would encourage factions to actually keep and maintain space to have the LP bonus rather than just push once in a while.
    ]


    Imo this, combined with the increased cost for upgrading, will just make upgrading obsolete at all. In a balanced war, like the one between caldari and gallente, where systems flip every day or two, its not worth upgrading a system to gain some more LP.
    Repair cost, tower fuel cost and market tax reduction are a complete nonfactor.
    The industry bonuses are very nice obviously, but again, theres just no way someone would spend 300k lp for a system which gets flipped in 2 days anyway.


    That's part of the reason we're dropping the bleed to 10%. The combined factors of the reduced bleed and the increased cost mean that to get a system from fully upgraded down to no upgrades will take 10 times as many plexes as it currently does.

    Game Designer | Team Five-0

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