Warfare & Tactics

Greetings,

Firstly, our small corporation left the Amarr militia several months ago after taking part in the conflict since it's first iteration. The intent when we first formed our corporation was to stay with the Amarr Militia and fight the good fight to the end etc; however, three months ago we decided to move elsewhere in order to afford our members the opportunity to make isk as FW was no longer enjoyable.

From my time in PIE Inc when FW first started, we experienced incredible fleet verse fleet fighting. The constant fights of all sizes meant that as soon as you logged on you needed to jump on comms and join the nearest fleet and soon enough you would be in an engaging fight over plexes against another fleet, or smaller scale fleets engaging each other on the periphery of bigger fights in the next system. A normal night (Australian Post DT fights) would mean logging off after an hour with 10 - 15 kills and several losses (or the reversed) on a quiet night.

This era was so enjoyable I convinced my brother, several close friends and my wife to join me in Eve. The only negative we had for that period was that FW was an isk sink with limited means to make isk and replace losses. This eventually led to the changes we saw when LP was gained by plexing and the tiered system came in. In an attempt to make FW better for those of us that took part in it, the changes actually saw a new problem with the stabbed stealth bomber plexers and final iterations have us in the era of stabbed cloaky frigates (with or without guns).

The reason we continued in FW was the hope that both side fleet roams would somehow come back but with the influx to both sides of plex and mission farmers, there was no requirement to form fleets as systems would eventually fall by the sheer number of farmers that are not there to fight. Farmers that have an alt on either side of the war or just bounce between both in order to efficiently make their isk that make immersion into the lore and meaning of FW a farce.

This post is not a whine against famers though, it is a request for a change to bring back decent fleet roams and a more immersive FW environment. as I am sure you can all accept that it is better to have an hour and find some good fights that you either win or lose, as opposed to an hour of chasing around lone people that have no intent or combat worthy ship to fight.

So my proposal is that changes be considered to make FW a solo (and no, do not tell me that hunting a stabbed cloaking rifter is solo) or small to mid fleet area by a version of the following:

a) Replacing the capture system from a 'hold' objective or plex for a determined period of time to 'destroy' objective with a determined amount of HP requiring for example four battle cruisers at minimum to destroy a Major in 25 mins . Obviously you don't need four BC's but less would mean a lot more time to destroy;

b) The requirement for a ship class to be present in order for the capture of plexes. At least one Battle Cruiser for Majors and a Cruiser required for mediums etc; and

c) Removing the ability to enter a plex or mission with Warp Core Stabs. Not sure how this can be achieved but I am sure if you can restrict classes of ships, there would have to be a way to restrict modules in the same fashion that MWD can not be (not sure if that's changed) used in some instances.

As I stated earlier, the intent is to make FW what it used to be with good fights. If you don't think this will work and have other ideas, then reply to this thread and see what we can generate. If you think FW is fun the way it is, then trust me, you weren't around initially and I can assure you that you would enjoy it even better if it changed.

As repeated many times in FW threads for those stabbed frigs, bring friends or equip more than just one disruptor (more points than stabs) or faction scrams. As for cloakies, it's just the lowsec version of the null sov AFK cloaker. It's all fine.

You are not going to get very much love with this thread. Many pilots on both sides of Minmatar/ Amarr are not happy with FW sov. We may not agree on how to fix it but it isn't very satisfying. Gallente/ Caldari seem to be a lot happier. More diverse pirates? A better layout of systems? Less expectation of system ownership?

Regardless it isn't hard, even with farmers, to get a fight. The dissatisfaction spawns more from system ownership not really meaning anything. In the last few months I have also noticed many more groups coming to low sec. Despite having **** for conflict drivers, it is getting a reputation for small group PvP. That and Null sucks ass.

Faction war is a conflict driver. Not a sov driver.

Sov war is essentially PvE by nature. It only becomes PvP when you force it to be. Which is where the content PvP'er are looking for can be found.

The pendulum effect of the current system gives all sides a chance to pay for their PvP and also creates hotspots during the swing as home systems and front lines are fought over.

I really think the current FW mechanics are as close to what PvP'ers could expect from a sandbox game while i admit that those RP'ers that want to be able to RP the winning side for extended periods may be disappointed.

FW plex rewards allow me to be out in space fighting nearly 23/7. That means more kills for everybody else in low sec. Mechanic is abused, but it also leads to more real players out in space for you to kill.

I like the OPs ideas. I also wonder to myself why people that are fed up with the mechanics of FW farming so eagerly bash new and fresh ideas.
I'm guilty of this myself, just go to a backdoor system with stabbed interceptors and capture large and med plexes. It's not even worth peoples time to try and catch me. I browse the internet and Dscan every 30 seconds. I've never been killed when I don't afk.
And even when I afk, I rarely die.

Even if I miss Dscan and the damage warning beeps to alert me I'm being attacked. can you really expect someone to bring 2 people to lock down a frig worth less than 500k? Especially since your chances of actually catching it are so low.


-LOVE the idea of making large/med plexes capturable by only cruiser/battlecruiser. Especially if the rewards are increased and the amount of larges are increased.

-LOVE the idea of timer rollbacks, even though I am a dirty farmer at times, I really hate that it's allowed and I think deep down it ruins the spirit of FW.I do it because other people do it, and I want easy afk money at less risk than mining.

-Love the idea of faster countdowns in plexes with more people in the plex, nota HUGE amount, but a small increase.

-Love the idea of increasing rewards for having more than one person capture a plex. Not enough to make it more profitable than capturing 2 at once, but enough to make it not worthless.

In fact, FW sov mechanic is exactly the kind of mecanic which force the owner of the system to actively defend it. And the natural and expected consequence is that you need a lot of pilots spreaded accross owned territories if you want to keep them. That's *exactly* the sov mecanic people always requested, and that's the best kind of sov mecanic we can expect for a sense of territory ownership and to provide conflict drivers : the system need to be actively and permanently defended, and the attacker need a real commitment to capture it if defenders fight for it.

Farmers then are only a nuisance and you only need to be in space to prevent them from leaching a system ; which is ironicaly interesting to force players to actively defend their home : you can't leave your home undefended and expect it not to burn because of the farmers, and nobody ever found a mecanic to do this better than the farmers already do. That's pure sand box magic in action.

And anyway, farmers don't interract much with real pvpers, and I doubt anything can be done to prevent farmers from farming and allow pvper to earn their day. Timer rollback might be a good thing, but they won't prevent farmers, and the system we have is already rather good anyway. Just consider farmers like the vermin they are.

If you want fights, just live closer from your ennemies and you will find them ; but I really doubt the farmers have anything to do with the lack of roaming gang in the minmatar/amarr warzone, because I find everything fine in the caldari/gallente warzone ; plenty of fights, always.

I still think people are confusing the crux of this thread. I am not trying to find ways to counter or defeat farmers. I understand and played the 'hunting farmers' game for a fair while. I am trying to find a way to bring back the fleet action that we used to experience.

Amarr FW a few months ago, in particular post DT consisted of logging on with my fellow corp mates and going for a roam through the entire FW systems (either solo or with several others) and only having Farmers and the occasional solo rifter to engage. This has not always been the case as I recall a while ago as I stated in my original post that there would be a lot of opportunity, no matter what your composition to find a decent fight.

I do not consider hunting two targets that are farming over three systems anywhere as enjoyable as trying to counter several fleets or having a fleet v fleet fights on a nightly basis. I would rather spend an hour online for worth while engagements then chasing people that do not actually take part in FW to fight.

In its current iteration, there is no need to form a fleet as one person in a plex is all that is needed. Having a system that encouraged the old fleet v fleet fights is what this post is about.

At times, the population of Amarr/Minmatar FW is quite low. If there were opportunities to have good quality engagements on a daily basis then maybe some people would come back and I am sure a lot more people would be interested in coming to FW.

I agree with the premise here quite a bit, though i am not as convinced by the proposed solutions. I think they are on the right track but miss the core of the issue.

The core issue as i see it is the size of the part of the warzone that is contestable at any given time and the lack of a front line mechanic of any sort.

What i would like to see more than anything is a change to make it so that you can only capture systems that are connected to a system your side holds. This would channel the plexing into a much more restricted set of systems and foster a front lines feel to the whole war. It would also make for a much more interesting strategy game for those playing at that level. Basically, farmers would have to organize and fight rather than use their current tactics, because the plexing systems would all become much more dangerous.

If you wanted to do it right, you could have it so that the more hostile connections a system has the easier it is to take. You could also put in a raiding mechanic of some sort that makes is easier to take front line systems but does not directly lead to the capture, this would keep the change from completely removing 1v1s and such.

But those are extras compared to the more important part of restricting the front lines.

But works as intrnded; the purpose is just to discouraging blob escalations and promote solo/small gangs, giving a chance to solo/small gang to affect the global WZ balance.
And this is done - as ususal in EVE, making large numbers fleet not needed (and not even convenien) to achive the FW goals.

I think we can't have both solo/small gang and fleet gameplay, if the focus is on one the other is compressed.

Also I'm sure often people say "farmers avoidingthe fight" simply because they're roaming in fleet and only fnd single players that, of course, do not engage.