Crime & Punishment

The Second Era of Dec Shield has come to an end.

During the First Era we helped corporations escape wardecs by performing a free public service of wardec shedding which allowed highsec corps to render their towers invulnerable. The Inferno expansion was deployed to overhaul wardec mechanics and stop us.

During this Second Era we began abusing the new Inferno wardec mechanics with a different goal. CCP declared that wardecs should have consequences, for both the aggressors and the defenders. We discovered that one of these consequences was that defenders could prevent aggressors from ending the war by toggling it to mutual. And in a direct fix to the First Era of Dec Shield, corporations that left an alliance would take with them copies of the alliance's wars - thus preventing wardec shedding. Using both of these "features" we were able to transfer wars from any entity in the game to any other willing entity.

Dec Shield became the public hub for wardecs in the game, and began accumulating wars at a rapid pace. Our goal was to create such an intolerable situation that the devs would step in and fix wardecs once and for all. We sent out recruitment emails to fresh wardec victims offering them a chance for permanent revenge against their aggressors, and about 10-15% of them agreed. This thread is full of the tears of our victims. The hunters became the hunted victims of Dec Shield.

But victimhood did not stop with our enemies. As noted above, any corporation that leaves an alliance takes ALL their wars with them. Every corporation that joined with Dec Shield ended up leaving with hundreds of our wars that would haunt them for weeks. The pressure of these wars was typically orders of magnitude worse than they had ever experienced before joining us. This led to the rapid fail-cascade disband of an astounding 42.9% of the corporations we "helped". 96 of the 224 corporations helped in the Second Era ended up disbanding to escape the wars we had gathered.

Our recruitment emails may have highlighted the consequences of trapping their enemies, and been slightly vague on how it would destroy their own corp. But it's best not to dwell on such details...

Corporations that we trapped suffered some annoying consequences. They were unable to ever join an alliance while trapped in an outgoing war. This devastated many fractured alliances that could no longer play with their friends. Wardec duplication became excessive to the point of absurdity. Every corporation that joined Dec Shield to drop off a war, ended up leaving, and taking with them a unique war from every entity we had trapped. The end result was that every trapped entity ended up being involved in 50+ wars that they had NOTHING to do with whatsoever. And one of the main consequences was that they would never be safe in highsec again due to the dozens of wars we put them in.

We talked to the devs and the CSM and pushed hard for wardec reform. We did write-ups on the short-comings of the current system, with proposed fixes. We documented everything and enjoyed the tears while they lasted. During our peak we had trapped 1.5% of the playerbase in war against us:

Peak wardecs: 307 (warning, awesome image)
Peak players trapped: 16459
Peak corporations trapped: 592
Peak alliances trapped: 50

In the end CCP came through and announced a fix to the permanent wardec loopholes we had been abusing. It was at this time we went into overdrive to find new loopholes to keep the pain and suffering going. We discovered a second method of keeping everyone permanently trapped in war, which we passed on to CCP, who then fixed it in time for the Retribution expansion. Never even had time to enjoy it.

CCP then changed the rules of the game to allow aggressors to retract any mutual wars instantly. Thus allowing defenders to only trap aggressors if they didn't want to. At this point in time we discovered a third method of keeping everyone permanently trapped. By toggling a war to mutual and then unmutual again, it would erase the aggressor's wardec bill for that week, thus automatically extending their war by another week. Thus once per week we'd mutual toggle every war and still hold them captive. CCP caught on to our public tests quickly and corrected the issue within a week.

This brings us to the current state of wardecs. Griefing is now once again exclusively in the hands of the aggressors. There are no consequences for aggressors declaring war at all. The Ally defense system is moot and feeble. The old mercenary defense contracts hold no meaning in the game anymore. Surrender mechanics are easily bypassed. Wardec exploits involving surprise joins/leaves still exist. And the changes to costs of wardecs vastly favors the nullsec alliances to an unprecedented degree.

CCP have no vision for the wardec system. They've spent too much time throwing mud at the wall trying to fill in the cracks we highlighted that the larger picture is completely obscured.


Current stats:
Current permanent wardecs: 100
Current players trapped: 847
Current corporations trapped: 100
Current alliances trapped: 0

I cannot help but applaud the way you make "creative" use of the highsec wardec mechanics. Keep it up!

Amazing work, as always!

hope they never fix this. highsec wars have always been BS and dec shield is the best shield.

I find your lack of profit disturbing, though.

This solves the opposite problem than the one Wardecs actually have (namely, the ease by which defenders can escape*).

But it amuses me, so I approve wholeheartedly.


*Especially since WarDecs are now officially "paying for targets," those targets ability to freely disband and reform their corp is a significant problem.

Who ? I tried to find it but the interface is unreadable.

You may want to update the alliance description btw.

forever dec'ed!!! Holy Veldspar!

You might consider reading the OP before pooh-poohing it.

DecShield 2.0 isn't about shedding decs, it's about trapping the attacker into a permadec with the Alliance and the various PvP people who might join it.

This is more like a Dec Spear than a shield.