Warfare & Tactics

Inferno – The Beginning of the Beginning
In the late months of spring, Inferno arrived, and with it, a whirlwind of chaos and bloodshed. In the week leading up to the expansion, as pilots fought over systems in a last-chance effort to grab space before it became harder to do so, systems around major front lines recorded record breaking kill numbers. On many days, Dotlan showed many FW systems as being the most dangerous systems in EVE—at one point showing more kills then dangerous null-sec systems by a factor of three or more.

On one particularly momentous day for the Amarr and Minmatar warzone, shortly before the expansion was supposed to go live, over 500 kills were logged within a few-hour time period. Massive battles broke out, lasting huge periods of time as pilots reshipped and came back to the field of battle. Major trade hubs were completely sold out of certain resources as Faction War logistics freightered in thousands of ships and modules for either side of the war.

The fighting calmed down a bit in the weeks following Inferno, however, killboards still recorded killrates several times higher than seen in the years before the expansion. This, as well as the increasing pilot count in all four factions, had people labeling Inferno, in general, as a success.

Houston, We Have a Problem!
The new Tier system in Faction War, as time went on, proved to have some interesting effects. The Minmatar, who had strategized early on and went into the expansion with a significant amount of space, quickly reached Tier 4.

Unknown to the FW community, or even the rest of the EVE Community at this time, several members of Goonswarm had found some interesting loopholes within the system. However, in order to proceed, they essentially needed the use of a militia that was more or less ‘winning.’

The Goon discoveries, and the quick arrival of the Minmatar in a position of high tier levels proved to be a perfect storm. While pvpers and militia members battled over systems, eventually reaching a point to get to tier V, a few Goons were working in the background, loading I-HUBs with LP and manipulating assets.

It did not take long for them to release information about what they were doing. While all the details are not completely known to this day, nor the amount of ISK that was accumulated through their methods (it is believed to be multiple trillions of ISK) the effect was great on the Faction War community, and had some long lasting repercussions.

In many ways, the Goon debacle riveted the eyes of the community onto Faction War in a way that had never happened before. People flooded to the ‘gold mine’ finding other ways to make massive amounts of ISK, simply using the legitimate game mechanics available to them. Billions of ISK was made at little risk, and little investment.

While many eyes focused on plex farming, and the controversies surrounding plex mechanics, players made bank on easily farming missions in stealth bombers and other ships that were capable of avoiding pvp encounters.

The warzone quickly resembled a teeter-totter, as Faction War became a game of tier spiking. Militias purposefully gave up their space in order to make ISK taking it back. Markets suffered upheaval, as thousands of factional products were dumped during major tier spikes.

A Helping Hand
The Amarr, who were hailed as the major Factional underdogs within all this mess, picked up a new ally part way through the summer. While I’m not completely familiar with the politics and events of null-sec, it is known that the major null-sec group of Nulli Secunda decided to join militia after losing sovereignty of their space in nullsec.

They made no secret of their plan –to farm in the Amarr militia, and then turn the Faction around, cashing out for billions of ISK and tons of Amarrian factional battleships. Their stay in Faction War was temporary, and their objective, simple.

Many in the Minmatar have believed, and hypothesized that they may have had other agendas. Either way, they provided the Amarr with a needed boost to reach a point of being able to cash out long accumulated LP. After reaching Tier 4, flipping I-HUBs using super capitals and large caravans of pilots, Nulli returned to nullsec.

Unfortunately for the Amarr, their newly acquired space quickly flipped to Minmatar control within a week of Nulli leaving.

Enough is Enough
CCP finally said “enough is enough,” this fall, and released a patch quickly flipping around the system to prevent more tier spiking. Faction War pilots were given a mere 24 hour notice—and many people predicted panic and chaos would break out, as militias clamored to take back systems they had previously given up for ISK purposes.

But, panic did not come. Many people had already made more ISK than they would ever need in militia, and for the most part, militia members were relieved at the change –even if it left their militia in an awkward position.

In a short week, vulnerable system farming halted altogether, and warzone control tiers began to stabilize. While there were still problems with plex mechanics, and other issues, militia pilots seemed more or less willing to live with it until the promised changes came in Retribution.

Retribution
In my own circle of people I fly with, there was probably more anticipation for Retribution than any other expansion. While many of the changes were not direct changes to Faction war, they significantly affected the gameplay of FW pilots.

Ship additions and re-balancing focused heavily on ships classes used a lot by FW players. Mechanics surrounding timers and flags greatly affected low-sec–the primary locale of the FW front lines.

Even bounty hunting made its mark on Faction War, as pilots threw bounties on alliances and corporations in the opposing militia –encouraging people outside of FW to hunt them.

Merry Holidays susan.

o/ <3

As a CEO that has just entered my corporation into the Gallente Fed, I found this to be an awesome read, and it has me pumped to get started.

Could have done that a lot shorter:

1a. Massive CPP misunderstanding of player wishes and FW requirements at FanFest .. CCP R0oundtable = Presentation (this is what you get, no changes will be made pre-release at all!).
1b. Outcry from FW veterans with half a clue followed by mass-exodus (particular from Amarr Militia).
2a. Farming.
3b. Exploitation.
3. Chestbeating.
4. Farming.
5. Various accusations and incriminations.
6. Farming.
7. Farming.
8. Chest beating.
9. Constructive discussion with "new" CCP team put in charge of FW.
10. Changes that should have been made with Inferno (and would have if CCP had bothered to listen post FF) to much rejoicing.
11. Ms. Blacks attempt at Wall-o-Text recap of year.

May have missed a "Farming" and "Various accusations and incriminations" entry or two, but should on the whole be accurate

PS: Happy holidays ya'll. Let the feeding frenzy begin!

Only missing 2 things.

(i)Playing Hangman in local
(ii)Otters

otherwise, good summary :)

Seriously I was absent and/or drunk for most of the year but what I did see involved a lot of amarrians crying about stuff.

Nice summary Susan.

I started playing EVE and joined FW shortly afterwards just before the Inferno patch and have had an absolutely great time. The system we have now is definitely better than it was when I joined and I am very much looking forward to the new year.

looking forward to fighting the occasional 20vGuyWhoJumpedIntoYourBlob ?

sounds fun.

Great post Susan

Depends on what you call a fight i guess, just because someone died does not mean it was a fight but a putting down of a lp whore.