Warfare & Tactics

Depends on the gate distances. Also keep in mind its a regional gate. Hof/Eszur is so campable because its a system gate.



Nope. Never said anything about that.



Will it change a ton of things overnight? Probably not, FW activity has died down enough that no matter how much a change betters the system there aren't really enough people to take advantage of it. Keep in mind though, that map changes are there to create a positive framework moving forward.

The lowsec access points don't really matter, you need to think in terms of the connecting highsecs, becuase its the highsec that makes logistics for newbros or people wanting to "try out FW" difficult to move things in without neutral alts depending on the faction space.

You have to look at the warzone as a whole though in regards to the backwater placement of these systems. Keep in mind that everything on the Amarr side of the warzone has a connecting highsec no more than 3-4 jumps away. People will always base where their logistics are relatively easy and there is a much higher concentration on the Amarr side. You can base off of almost any of the highsec connections anywhere on the Amarr warzone and have great access to a third of Minmatar space and the entire Amarr warzone. If you wanted to do the same in Minmatar space, you end up on the far end of the warzone completely isolated with only one possible path to come down. There's that HUGE no-mans land with no neutral lowsecs and no highsec entry points throughout front and middle of Metropolis. If you try to base further up, logistics are extremely difficult unless you have a Jump Freighter. Lots of established groups have these, but in terms of attracting new players, most won't bother.



The removal or addition of systems was to create a more symmetric warzone in regards to the fact that for Amarr to hold half the warzone, they're well into Minmatar space far past their natural entrances and the only remaining hisec/neutlowsec entrances they have are at the very back of Metro. On the otherhand, in that same situation on the Minmatar side, they can enter Amarr held space at almost any point they want.



You complain that more gates will make the warzone smaller, but then also complain that the areas that people fight in are too small? Make up your mind bro. The reality is, extra gates will open the warzone up and make more areas viable for staging and increase the options in terms of proximity you can base to various hostile groups while still being able to support and receive support from friendly groups. How you are able to infer that creating useful connections to make systems viable,noone ever bothered going to before is going to make things smaller is beyond me.

Like I said before, the removal of systems was suggested so that the Amarr can hold all of their space and end up with half of the warzone. The systems I suggested removing are ones that nobody ever fights in or goes to right now anyways. Those systems would literally not be missed. Less systems would lead to more fights since it would be worth holding the entirety of the Bleak Lands versus the current situation where nobody cares since they know they also have to conquer the entirety of Metropolis which, fun fact, is bigger than Bleak Lands AND Devoid combined. Would you actually try to hold the Bleak Lands and part of Devoid if it meant that you could have a meaningful tier control?

Also, your blob analogy is hilarious because I can't remember the last time that I was in a large fleet and we chased around or even bothered hunting individual plexers. As it stands now, if I was in Anka and found out that there was an Incursus running a minor in Brin, even if he was AFK and it was a guaranteed kill, theres no way i'm going the 38 jumps there and back to kill him.

Simply getting rid of the Hof gate camp won't do much, when historically Metro has always been mostly a no-mans land and nobody has ever lived there especially the deeper parts. It will still be bad for roaming since 20 jumps through Metro means I only go through 11 or so unique systems because traveling through Metro means coming back the way you came, while I can go 20 jumps in Amarr space and never go to the same system twice.

You make allot of good points here. For example it is indeed a slight advantage for the minmatar that egg is a gallente low sec entry because it is easy for them to go into dodixie to get supplies. It’s harder for the amarr unless we have a small ship. So I agree there is some advantage in the map to the minmatar. There have been a few times when I would have wanted to pick up some supplies in dodixie with my main but I had to account for the increased risk.

However, in general I learned very early on to pretty much never use my faction war character to move supplies. This is fairly basic stuff that even thick players should be able to figure out early if not immediately. The alts I use to supply my fw characters don’t really care what region the high or low sec space is in.

That vast no man’s land is basically surrounding eszur. Eszur requires several jumps through low sec no matter how you try to get to it unless you have a jump freighter. But this is the case for both minmatar and amarr. The fact that these systems started out in minmatar hands 4 years ago is not really that big of a deal anymore.

The hope is that plexing will become something people care about. Its true people don’t care now. But the map should be made with the idea that people do care about it and ccp should work at making plexing something people care about and pvp over.

But you make my point. Right now a blob would not be able/willing to go from anka to brin in order to chase a plexer. I don’t want to make it so they can. When/if ccp ever makes plexing something worth caring about I want that blob in anka to have to make a choice. Either we divide up our blob or we lose the plexes in brin.

If we make a whole bunch of gates that jump us all over the front in a matter of minutes they won’t have to make that choice. If we literally reduce the number of systems in the front they won’t have to make that choice.

One or two blobs will hold the whole front. That effectively will eliminate any tactical decisions of who should be assigned to what areas. Faction war will be no different than anywhere else in eve where the best deployment of resources is always to just get them all together in one big blob.

Combine that with the other changes that need to be made such as notifications and timer countdown and plexing will no longer be about small scale pvp at all.



I don’t think we know what getting rid of the hoff gate camp will do. I agree its not going to change things dramatically and completely undue the damage of station lockouts. But there have been plenty of nights that I ended roams for the night because hoff gate was camped and I already covered one or the other sides of the front. If there were a decent way to get to the other side of the front I would have used it and kept roaming.

But again you keep saying no one ever went to metro, but you are wrong. I am not saying metro was ever nearly as popular for fw as kourm. But we used to do allot of roams through metro. I used to have a minor base in frerstorn. My corp was planning on having minor bases in frerstorn and egmar. Hell we may have even started supplying them right before the news of the station lockouts started. I probably have more killmails/lossmails in frerstorn and eszur than I do in kourm and kamela.

Lockouts are fine. It raises the stakes. And it's been beat to death and doesn't deserve walls of text anymore. Back to the original point of the thread - it would be nice to have at least a second route into Metropolis and to have Amarr space actually feel like Amarr space.

@Cearain

I want to clarify what I mean when I say new players. I'm not talking about players who are brand new to the game, i'm talking about players who are deciding that they want to try out faction warfare, whether its single players or a smaller group of players like my guys or a larger group like Fweddit. I've said it before and i'll say it again, it will be extremely unfortunate if FW goes back to how it was pre-Inferno in terms of active numbers and PVP. You guys might have had fun back then and would still have fun if things went back to how they were, but many of the new groups that joined post-Inferno, joined for the new game mechanics and would have never ever joined under the old system, so keeping that new blood is key.

Adjoining friendly highsecs are important for those who want friendly casual PVP. To participate in FW for the PVP and have a good base of operations shouldn't require you to have a jump freighter and carrier logistics support. Leave that hassle in nullsec. It doesn't affect groups like you since you're already well established, I.law has been in FW for ages and regardless of any changes will still probably be there years from now. But a group that is unsure if they will even like FW isn't going to want to spend time jump freightering ships in, only to find they don't like it and having alts to move things through enemy highsec shouldn't be a requirement to enjoy FW either. Mark my words, if the Amarr are unable to attract and retain new players to FW due to crappy and stale mechanics, they will NEVER come back against the Minmatar without them getting bored of FW and leaving. I'm not really sure why you're so against this.

You might think that attracting new players to FW might be the wrong approach, but that first month post-Inferno was some of the most fun that I think every side has had in a long time. That should be the kind of environment that FW is like.



Then add a backwater region with poor access that nobody wants to base out of to the Amarr side of the warzone. Ideally forcing the larger group to split up into smaller gangs would be advantageous for the smaller side and looks good on paper, but thats not what actually happens with warzone control. In a fleet fight, sure splitting up a larger gang has a huge impact on the fight because the half that gets split up is essentially doing nothing. Warzone control is totally different, since on the side with more numbers, the group that isn't fighting has free reign to plex to their hearts content. Plus the reality is, the Minmatar are already quite well dispersed/spread out and due to their strong numbers advantage, the Amarr can't really afford to split up unless they want two gangs that have the strength to fight nothing and are too isolated to support each other in any meaningful ways.

Lets run a scenario. Say that a group like I.law moved up to Metro. The remaining groups on the Amarr warzone would hurt for the numbers you provide. The PVP for you guys would drop tremendously other than chasing plexing alts in craptastic ships, since its too far even for most Minmatar groups to go try and fight. Nobody goes up to Egg as it is, do you really think they'll go into Metro for fights? Lets say you guys did decide to come down to the Amarr side to fly in a joint fleet with another Amarr group, the second you leave, the plexing alts come back out and run down timers, time which you will have to pay back later to defensive plex if you want to hold the systems. Its really disavantageous for you guys to come down from side of the warzone becuase you're guaranteed at least 40 minutes of jumping gates down and back. If someone logs on later and wants to join in on PVP in Amarr space, they're probably SOL since a fight will most likely happen before they can make it down.

The Minmatar can cover the Amarr half of the warzone easily and cover more systems with fewer jumps. If they want to split into groups and chase out plexers they can do this while still easily grouping back up to support one another. If the Amarr want to do the same, they essentially need to make twice the jumps due to Metro gepgraphy and have to make the decision to be completely cut off from support with the possibility of being camped in due to only one way back home. I don't care if you add more connections or create an Amarr equivalent of Metro, but you need to do a better job of convincing me why this should exist for one side and not the other.

The backdoor from Bleak lands into Metro would allow the Amarr to push into the back of the Minmatar warzone from their own side. Metro is still going to be pretty pipey and less accesible overall compared to the Amarr warzone, and the additional connection to the back of Metro is to ease the choke pointy nature of Metropolis. If you were to simply add a relief valve to the Eszur/Hof gate, Ardar would just become the new Eszur/Hof chokepoint for the entire region, which is what we're trying to get away from why additional connections are needed.

The practical warzone where fights actually is small because all of the worthwhile staging systems that give you good access to the warzone are all clumped tightly together. Adding more accessibility might make the warzone feel smaller from a travel perspective, but should increase the size of the usable warzone that fights potentially happen in.

This thread has been de-railed too much.

I agree with OP....and I approve pinky's map. In fact I'm going to like that post and I suggest everyone to do the same.

@Xio Zheng:
You simply joined the wrong fw side. Lol.
Fighting for amarr means: You are f....
You are completely outnumbered and the worst: You are fighting against minnie billionaires who are laughing at loosing 200m faction drams or 70m sfi because they already made their 40 or 60b and still make more.
So yes it is fun I know but little tip: Never get in amarr fw without a good support isk making alt.
Cause amarr fw is atm nothing about getting sfi blobbed and burning isk. After CCP screwd up fw completly (amarr couldnt farm because of ewar, minnies could, goons getting t5 etc...) amarr militia will be probably broken forever.
But yes I am in a great corp and it is fun even if you have no chance to be honest. But you get really much pew.
And thats only a game. So long as we have fun it is okay.

I'll totally ignore the docking rights Q.Q. Because, as Zarnak says, it raises the stakes.

Pinky's map shows a serious flaw with the map design. if this was Counterstrike, you'd have people spawn and run into Metro and run around in circles until sniped to death. In the EVE context, the major problem with metro is the lack of an Amarr hisec connection, AND the lack of a second connection via Heimatar lowsec to avoid the supposed loki-boosted remote-sebo HICtor gangs of doom.

I've seen one such instance, in 6 weeks. If you can't use an alt to test the waters, Cearain, you fail hard. Man up, and scout ahead if you are just too too scared to get out of Kourm/Kamela and go run around Metro because of the scary Loki gangs camping Hof/Eszur.

Sure, you may have had a stock of ships in metro, but only your complete craven laziness stops you and the Amarr in general from stocking up in station ahead of time, flipping a few systems, and putting a shiv into the backside of Minmatar. In the very least you've got Turnur, which has a station, surely you can figure out how to JF and go live in Turnur. Or, you know, keep crying about how your stuff is stuck inside station in Metro and baww baww baww.

Its the "field of dreams" conundrum. Build up a presence, and people will come.

I can guarantee BUGRY will never be bashing an Amarr ihub. The reasons are manifold. Number one, and not being condescending, but the Amarr side needs help ahead of the patch which (I hope) will see a major reduction in gunless minnie plex alts. Number two, winning an endless war via dominating everything is not only self-defeating and pointless, but infantile and peurile. Number three, all your excuses are rooted in laziness and rose-tinted glasses - support Zarnak's call for a rethink of the map.

Finally, if a connection between Amarr hisec (Devoid?) and Metro was added, or between Metro and the Bleak Lands, then the choke at Eszur would be gone andd the crux at Dal would be lessened. This would allow a much larger area for roaming, and allow the Eszur camp to be circumvented, which would throw a lot of Metro into play.

Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya;
Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya;
Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya,
O Lord, kum bay ya.

Can't we all just get along?

Enjoyed this thread for the most part, hopefully the Devs will take a look.

I LOVE being the underdog.

When i decided to come back to FW my choice was Caldari or Amarr for a couple of reasons. RP and they are my fave ships and my standings with them. I chose Amarr cos of the underdog status.