Warfare & Tactics

Its too unclear to talk of liking "inferno" or not. Inferno brought a ton of changes. And a ton of changes have happened since. Every change needs to be evaluated seperately.

I do not complain about swing systems. I honestly don't even know what you mean by that. I do think the fact that no one cares about sov in 90% of systems shows fw needs work.

The general cashout tier structure was better. The inferno implementation paid too much (tier 5 should have been about a50- 60% reduction in price instead of the 75%) but it was a more balanced system. I got the same lp whether I fought for the winning or losing side. So my time in the game was equally compensated so long as we hit tier 5. And the longer it took to hit tier 5 the more pressure would build within my militia to hit a high tier and get it done.

CCP could have made it so all militias could hit tier 5. In the 5 short months it was around 3 of the 4 hit tier 5, and the amarr likely could have if nulli secunda didn't decide to cash out early. But even if amarr couldn't there could have been a few minor tweaks so all the militias could hit tier 5. Then we would have that holy grail of decent consequences and balance. The current pay structure has less balance and reduced consequences.

Now only people who want less money instead of more money, can't do math, or don't care about isk fight for amarr. Moreover its just stagnant. No one even cares about hitting tier 5 and generally don't care about sov at all other than where they dock. Whatever you might say about inferno's cashouts there was allot of intrest in strategies to hit tier 5 and preventing your enemy from doing that. None of them really had time to be fully tested. But there were plenty of posts about it here and in corp forums. Now, no one cares enough about the tiers to even be bothered with posting a strategy at all.

It also meant people had to leave their blobs and booster alts behind on occasion and find some pvp outside their "home system." Getting 80% of systems meant more fights throughout the war zone.

I don't know if there is more fw pvp now than during inferno. I tend to doubt it, but that is based on my own experience.

There may be more low sec pvp in general but that is because of the crimewatch changes ending gcc. In my experience there was an awesome time of pvp in fw around june - august. I still did the whole plexing for fights thing, I do now. I likely had a lower percent of neutrals that I killed. Now I am getting more kills using the same tactics. But I am no longer in fw so I do not miss so many fights due to being blue. Plus I think am fighting a larger percent of neutrals. It seems to be about 35% of my fights and XGs fights were against neutrals when I took a short unscientific sample. I think it was probably about 15% neutrals I was fighting in June-august.

But getting some stats on fw v fw kills during inferno compared to now would be interesting. I am pretty sure you will see that they were more spread throughout the war zone during inferno. My hunch is there was also more fw v fw explosions, but I am not sure of that.

+1 So far this is the only time since Inferno when the alts weren't out in force. Overall activity was down too.

The fact that you could run the plexes with gunless frigates had nothing to do with the cashout structure. That was caused by ccp not requiring the rats to be killed - a completely different mechanic. I know you and crosi lack the mental capacity to understand that. So you say "inferno" was uttterly broken as if "inferno" was a single mechanic.





Yep and that had nothing to do with the actual cashout system. It was because the rewards were too large (at a time before the lp was devalued) and there was no requirements to kill all the rats. But you and crosi clearly lack the mental capacity to draw any such basic distinctions. So you just keep singing the praises of this imbalanced and stagnant system where no one even cares about tiers or sov in 90% of the warzone.

Read what I wrote.



Having to be on during set times was a downside to cashouts. I agree. I think that could have been addressed in other ways. Such as allowing players to put in buy orders for the lp store when the lp price went under a certain amount. But whatever.

The pluses to the cashout mechanic included:

1) Balance. Every militia could get paid the same amount for their time plexing and indeed you had an incentive to join the side that is currently at the lower tier. Now you just get paid less by joining the losing side and you will never make up for that time.

2) made people fight outside of the systems they dock and have booster alts.

3) created many lively debates of strategies as to achieve the higher tiers and prevent your enemy from doing that. No no one even cares about tiers enough to debate stategies as if there were any strategies involved in the current brain dead mechanic.

4) Gave militias a concrete and challenging medium term goal to work toward and accomplish. Now we just have a forever grind.

I don't ever see you as one of the top vp gainers for any day or week. If fw sov is so much fun now, why don't you participate?

Amarr spiked to tier 4 one time with Nulli help - for mere hours. After that even though we kept multiple systems vulnerable there was no way we could flip ihubs fast enough before being opposed to be effective with a spike. Amarr was operating with militia at 100 pilots or less online at any given occasion back then. Minmatar during that timeframe was spiking weekly to tier 5. It is mind boggling that anyone would want to return to that. Amarr spiked one time in six months.

First, I think the system was not even implemented for 6 months, I think it was in for only 5 months.

No one is saying return to everything in inferno. Just the cashout system.


At first the amarr were quite simply doing it wrong. Cyntia Nezmor was telling everyone to defensive plex and that was like spitting int he wind. Then there was such a gold rush mentality due to people being able to make 1 billion isk per hour that many amarr had alts in minmatar plexing just to cash in before the lp crashed. And why not fw sov has always been a primarily pve activity. I can tell you if you could still make 1 billion isk per hour plexing

Yes the amarr did get it together somewhat and they started getting systems vulnerable or close to it before nulli even joined. Then nulli started and they managed to make todifraun 9999999999999999% contested. But that time would have been better spent if they moved on to some other systems instead - like ebolifer ontorn etc. Instead they chose to cash out early. So even at that later date mistakes were made.

Thats not to say I know amarr could have hit tier 5. But if they couldn't then there could have been some easy tweaks to help them. For example if what you say is true that we could not flip all the ihubs before the farm came back and plexed a system back to minmatar then ccp could have put a cool down period in. Plexes would not start appearing until 36 hours after a system flips.

Instead they threw out all the good things with the bad.

-Now amarr who can count should wish they could hit tier 4 in the cashout system. Its much better than sitting at tier 1 or 2 like they have been for the most part since the october changes.
-Very few care about sov in 90% of the systems
-Very few care about the tier system
-There has been a persistant imbalance in favor of minmatar that is worse than their hitting tier 5 and amarr hitting tier 4 under a cashout system.


So it really shouldn't boggle your mind that I say the cashout system was better, then this boring and imbalanced, forever grind of a system.

The one good thing about this thread is that it clearly shows the devs Cearain's vision for FW.

Yep here are a list of the points about how I envision a non broken faction war:

1) Faction war with a tier system people actually care about.

2) Faction war where people actually care about sov in "the other" 90% of systems.

3) Faction war where choosing to fight for the side that is currently losing isn't as dumb as choosing less money instead of more money.

4) Faction war that involves some strategic thinking.

5) Faction war with some concrete and challenging goals for the militias to try to achieve

Last and most important:

6) Faction war with a sov system that is based on pvp.

How does that match with your vision?

1) I think you still need to bash structures. That has nothing to do with a cashout system versus the current stagnant system.

2) No that is not why nulli cashed in when they did. Sorry you don't kjnow what you are talking about. As for gallente strategy of flipping caldari systems. You said it yourself you only accomplished one tier 5 cashout. If you keep flipping systems so the other side is out of sync then you will not be in sync to hit tier 5 yourself. Plus I addressed counter strategies that never had time to play out.

4) Yes now we have lp for dplexing. The Minmafarm got very upset that they no longer received lp after they milked all the systems. Susan black wrote no fewer than 4 blogs about how unfair it is that they can't continue to farm after they take a system. So this was a top priority for hans. He did not manage to get the pvp mechanics through but he did manage to get this one heard. So now the gallente can get some lp when they run their defensive plexes in empty atrons.

The sov game is not by definition a pve game. But we do agree it always has been in faction war.

You were crowing about fighting a whole caldari bunker busting gang in your naga. I simply said I am not interested in it if you had boosts if you didn't have boosts Ill watch it.

900,000 lp in a month at tier 2 is allot of plexing. I am surprised you never made it to the top of the daily or weekly vp list.

1) So you don't really care to get any higher than tier 2?

2) It takes longer than a day to plex a system. But yes occassionally caring about the other 90% of systems is much better than never caring about them.

3) We were talking about joining the side that is currently losing. Not a losing fight. But yes under the current mechanics its dumb to join the side that is currently losing. Even if you turn it around the people who will profit from it will be those who jump in your militia after you spent your time at t1 profits. In the cashout system of course, the people who actually turned the losing militia into a winning one made huge profits. Because anyone that tried to join after they were winning would join too late.

4) Again that has nothing to do with cashouts. We still shoot structures to flip a system so that is completely beside the point. But anyway getting that phase of a cashout done did involve risk and strategy.

5) Never heard of it. Having goals for militias to strive for like hitting a tier cashout can add context/backstory to the game. This is good, as otherwise you just have allot of random rvb style pvp that can get stale.

6) Yes fw sov has always been a pve game but it doesn't have to alway be that way in the future. CCP can choose to make it involve more pvp. Its more of a spectrum than an on off thing. Its always been pretty far on the spectrum of pve. The changes that would make it more of a pvp game - rollbacks and better intel tools - never got implemented.