Warfare & Tactics

Let's guess who is hiding behind that avatar


It seems you play eve more than you need, because of this you see missions (and LP) everywhere

That's an interesting thought but I don't think removing the alliance mechanic would have the effect you think it would.

What the alliance system does is make it clear *who* the middle managers are in a coalition. Do you think that removing the mechanic would make it impossible for people to find another way to find out who is running the show?

Believe me when I say that people who have a strong drive to organize things aren't going to let the absence of an in-game mechanic stop them. Organizing isn't something that only happens when the right tools are available. For some people (I admit to being one of those) organizing is a need and will happen even if there are no tools at all.

Forcing things to become smaller or forcing things to become more disorganized isn't the answer, if you ask me.

But your second point about SOV mechanics would help enormously to force alliances to not overextend the boundaries of what they can realistically defend.

If you look at SOV in main lines it only really has four functions.

1) allows the building of jump bridges, stations and improvements
2) expresses something akin to "ownership" for policial reasons (ie, you can draw boundaries)
3) it acts like entrenchment giving an advantage to the defenders in any fight to take a system
4) it acts like an early warning system because an enemy must telegraph their intention to invade.

to my way of thinking #1 creates unnecessary limitations but I can live with it.
#2 makes a lot of sense
#3 makes sense to a point but the current mechanic results far too much in a "grind"
#4 is completely ridiculous.

If you look at a real war zone, an advancing army does not have to give prior warning that they're going to attack in a particular location (setting up SBUs). If it's an empty field (ie system with no stations) they do no have to attack multiple times in order to take that field especially if the enemy didn't show up to defend it.

I think it shoud be like that in EVE too. I understand that people are not online all the time and that defenders need time to get organized over multiple time zones in order to mount a defense, but the current SOV mechanics completely eliminate anything like "surprise" attack or a drive by shooting (except on a POS). Assets (ihubs, stations, POCO's) should still have a reinforcement mode (and only 1 timer) because of the time zone thing but there should be no heirarchy. If you want the ihub dead then just shoot it. If you want the TCU dead then just shoot it. If you want the station dead then just shoot it.

With these simplified SOV mechanics surprise attacks, blitz attacks, drive by guerrilla tactics and scorched earth policies have a place in the game and would make wars much less tedious. Taking stations, in particular, I would say to change it so that if the station is reinforced and you shoot it again without first shooting down the TCU then the station blows up and drops some of the contents of corp and personal hangars. If you take down the TCU first then the station is conquered.

All together this would vastly increase the tempo of wars and open doors to new strategic possibilities.

What I think this would do is to force alliances to be more compact because taking vast areas of space would simply mean that your neighbours will constantly be reinforcing and/or destroying things like IHUBs and TCU's in your outer provinces before you can form up and move a fleet down to do anything about it. The maximum size of the area of space that can be controlled, therefore, would depend on how much ambition/mobility an alliance had to constantly form up and move fleets long distances to patrol for and defend from incursions on the border zones.

The border zones would therefore become much more fluid, changing hands rapidly and often and an alliance that committed too many resources to a distant war would risk a counter attack on their core space. These are all things that make sense in the real world but CCP implemented SOV in such a way that leaving a flank open doesn't matter at all.... From the time that the enemy starts to attack to the point where you could actually lose a station is several days, whether you bother to defend it or not.

Anyway, enough tinfoil hattery. Any way you look at it, though, I think SOV mechanics and not the alliance mechanic, are to blame for the emersion of large null-sec juggernauts. Once "defending what you own" becomes important you'll see alliances considering much more carefully where they want to have their borders.

It holds from some perspectives.

I also think beginners buying toons have no advantage - A ship you do not know how to fit or fly correctly simply will not last.
A badly fit Tengu is just a cruiser hull at the end of the day.

Fooling people (noobs or otherwise) into engaging by making them think they can win is half of the game.
Everyone does it to everyone. We all fall for it too - otherwise no one would never lose ships.


Beginners who buy high SP toons are just learning this in a more expensive way.

The bigger and shinier the bling - the more attention it brings.
This is not an advantage to a new player.

Send me more of these pay-to-win types you speak of.

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=18019064

No. Nullsec.

You buy capitals, super capitals and super capital pilots with PLEX, and pay people like Pandemic Leigon with PLEX. Then you take whatever you want that someone with more PLEX doesn't want, set up your moon mining, and sell goo to buy more PLEX.

Seriously, do you think the people in nullsec who have been using and losing capital ships *ratted* their way to owning them? Most went to the EVE store to buy PLEX, then the character bazaar for a pilot, then into battle. People who actually earned their ships through personal effort tend to be a lot more conservative with them - i.e. boring.

You guys do seem to have forgotten one of the basic points of pvp games. If you want juicy kills, you need people to kill in pvp zones. Putting highsec islands in null and redoing the map to improve access for independent alliances would simply mean more newbies in nullsec. From reading the above you seem to like nullsec EMPTY. So you can afk mine in null and play world of tanks, right?

Yes, preventing off grid boosting from inside POS would be a good start, and introducing a cyno jammer ship would be an excellent addition. But we are unlikely to see either any time soon.

So how much did it cost you per month to keep your SOV space? What was the mandatory level of PLEX to which mega alliance to be able to play there?

EVERY time I have seen an active independent alliance go to nullsec, it tracks like this:
1. Initially great
2. 20 ~ 30 players highly active in null, goals achieved
3. major fleets of neuts / reds appear because there is pvp to be had
4. campers appear because there are miners to kill
5. activity in the system crashes due to continual neut fleets that cannot be defeated
6. withdrawal from nullsec or system taken off them because 'someone else wanted to get in on the pvp' (never seeming to realize that the people they were kicking out were the entire reason for any pvp being there in the first place.
7. the null sov reverts to totally empty, totally unused ... like 99% of nullsec.

Fix it CCP, or watch players continue to quit despite the millions spent on advertising.

Hello there, dude with 30 thousands of kills.

Are you saying they're teamwork shouldn't pay off? =))))
still takes something for these blobs too do what they do
they got strength in numbers

And what you mentioned with easy mobility and dropping fleets at the right time isn't wrong at all. it makes sense.

Simply as it is know you'll need too pick a side too be a part of it (coalitions and become blue with someone that is allready out there fighting)

If small alliances could be out there soloing SOV it would be really fun.. but the amount of members of the big alliances would still make a difference a difference you cannot change in anyway.

So find someone you like and join them =) then you got your sov war and you can go ratting in fun space =D=D

Even with blob VS blob, if you don't like it don't do it.

NPC null sec
Low sec
Wormhole
High sec

choices is endless =D=D=D=D

It's simple. The fundamental mechanics of this game currently mean players will have the hopes and dreams of being able to play the entire game, only to discover that to play in nullsec you need to buy in with real money, and must join mega-alliances.

If you don't, you inevitably get what has happened to us - and continues to happen - that highly active *players* are blasted out of null and indeed lowsec POS by those who did use the pay to win mechanic. Pandemic dropped 6 reve, 2 Moros, a handful of Achon to kill a lowsec POS of ours ... what could we do? Nothing.

We have not spent nearly enough $$ - even though we had double the number of pilots engaged in the 'fight' for the system, it was over before it began because they could and did by capitals, and we didn't. We had 20 to 30 more pilots who would have come to fight with us too - but again, they don't have capitals either, so none of us could do anything at all but lose. When money means you win, without any risk, it just makes people want to quit EVE and go play a game where you don't have to buy a toon or play 3 years before you can have even a *chance* to win.

Make no mistake. Bottom line pvp balance, nullsec access, and pay to win is about maintaining the health of the game. And as I see things, currently the game is very badly broken in a number of areas, and if CCP fail to fix things, then I honestly don't expect EVE to make it to 20 years. Next good pvp game with conquest and depth, everyone who *isn't* a nullsec cap pilot in an ubercorp will walk out.