Warfare & Tactics

no. the solution really is simple. don't let them contest the system. How do you do that? By implementing timer resets and chasing people out of the plexes using combat ships. Chasing people out of the plaxes is currently of no use, since the damage is already done, the timer ticked, farmers will be back or contest a system next door while you undo the damage. The only way to fight farmers are farmers. Timer resets would change this, they would also add an incentive to stay in the plex and fight. Cloaks and stabs won't be abused anymore to game the system.

thats my input. I just keep it short since i repeat myself in every thread about the topic since inferno already. Timer resets: do it

still posting in a timer reset thread

Ultimately, chasing a farmer out of a plex (with a timer reset) is like bumping an ice miner out of range - at best, you temporarily inconvenience the farmer/miner. The optimal play in both situations, for the farmer/miner, is to continue farming/mining elsewhere.

As long as this does not change, faction war will choke with farmers, regardless of which mechanical fixes are put into place.

Beefing up the NPCs has been suggested a couple of times in this thread. Allow me to explain the history of plex rats over the last year or so and then you should realise that these suggestions are only going to take us back to a different problem that has already been tried and deemed sub-optimal.

1. Up until late summer of last year. Each plex spawned 5 or 6 waves of NPC each of 4 or 5 NPCs. But none of them needed to be killed to run the plex down. More to the point they didn't need to be killed instantly, you could let them burn in and take them down at your leisure and optimal range without coming off the button. This was the time of the gunless speed tanking frigate. Everyone whined, the Forum trolls got their backs up, make it so that you have to kill rats they demanded. If you read the forums at the time, everyone was in these frigates. In reality most weren't, it was actually easier to kill the rats. Certainly if you were there for PvP and it gave you something to do while waiting for the clock to run. It was a problem though if a PvP battle started and an NPC wave spawned in the middle of it. It wasn't impossible, but it made it difficult for the soloist and small gang engaging in PvP while the attacking side had to simulanously deal with the NPCs.

2. Around August of last year, they made it so you had to kill the rats. The trouble was the clock wouldn't run while the rats were up. Each spawn would take 3 or 4 minutes to clear. It would add 20 minutes to the plex time. Sure it killed off the gunless speed tanking farmer, but offensive plexing was seriously damaged by it. Did it end farming though? No! TBH the system was always advertised as temporary and it wasn't up long enough to settle. When it went live almost every system was already vulnerable as a result of a second issue described below. The farmers flocked to defensive plexing to decontest those systems, it was actually more profitable at high contestation, when factoring in the time saving in not having to kill the NPCs. Solo/Small gang PvP remained a problem though. However, the biggest problem was that it became very difficult to drive a system to vulnerable.

3. So they reduced the NPCs to a maximum of 1 at start with one reinforcement spawn. The intention was to encouraged small gang and solo PvP in the plexes and of course encourage offensive plexing over defensive plexing, necessary to create the pendulum effect across the warzone. An aim that has been spectacularly successful, but for the problem of farmers milking the system as they have always done.

People are suggesting a return to 1 or 2. I disagree, it is at it's best now. But that's my opinion of course. The thing is though, people are suggesting a return to 1 or 2 in order to STOP farming. Have another read of their descriptions, it didn't stop farming then and it won't again.

So why are farmers much more of a problem now than they were a year ago? Well there was another change. Back then when a system went vulnerable, the farmers could keep running the plexs and get LP. Thus they stayed in the farming systems, people didn't flip those systems. In short the farmers reached a position where they could earn LP without affecting contestation, a bit like a pressure cooking letting off steam. Of course it sounded stupid in a common sense, RP way, but to a degree it worked. The biggest problem was that almost every system was constantly in a vulnerable state. You couldn't afford to put any of your stuff in those system because they could be flipped on a whim and they might never come back.

Now we have a situation where farmers are running out of farming systems and then having to go to the important systems. We need a pressure cooker release valve. This suggestion is about providing that release valve, it plays to the farmers greed. A pure farmer will opt out, the back water farming systems will be run ad-nauseum by them without becoming contested or at least significantly slower than currently.

Do we want to pay farmers more? Of course not, but I'd rather see a working FW than the current never ending de-plexing grind. Of course, if we ever get too jealous, we can always do a bit of mindless farming ourselves.

Timezone problem? Yes I agree, but that's another issue.

So nerf it until it isn't worth all that. Giving people lp for sitting inside a plex is silliness.

At least make the plexes harder. We found a venture plexing, c'mon now...

Major Trant, I really like your idea from the OP... with a few caveats. I know that for myself and members of my corp, LP is the primary way we fund our PvP. What you're suggesting would nerf PvPers' income. Let's say, for the sake of example, that 90% of the LP generated comes from plexes and missions and 10% comes from kills. Only PvPers get the LP from the later, while both farmers and PvPers get LP from the former. So by boosting the former in such a way that only farmers benefit, you're decreasing both the value of LP overall as well as the % share PvPers will get; i.e. now it's 95% to 5% with the increase going to farmers.

Now like I said, I still like your idea, I just think you need a two pronged approach. The new mechanic you're suggesting needs to be implemented in combination with a nerf to plex/mission LP and a buff to kill LP. Right now you get maybe 500 LP for killing a T1 frigate, maybe, on the other hand you can get 10,000 LP for orbiting a beacon for 10 minutes; that is horrible, horrible, horrible game design. Triple the LP for killing an enemy militia member and halve the LP for plexes/missions. I realize that this game mechanic has been abused in the past, but the current state of affairs is just as broken as when Goons were abusing it - only in the opposite direction. Kill LP can be buffed to a point where it actually incentizes PvP without being profitable to blow up your alts.

Adjusting the value of plexes/missions down and killing enemy militia up, while at the same time implementing the ability for farmers to choose all LP instead of LP + system control would remove pure farmers' ability to so drastically effect the warzone, maintain the value of LP for PvPers, incentivize PvP over farming, and still retain value in plexes for LP and PvP.

Current FW is balanced, can be tweaked an improved, but it does the work.

Main problem is defensive plexing, is boring like hell and not rewarding, so everyone hates doing it.
Problem is: a core idea behind FW sovreignity model is that don't have to be passive like in null (place your flag and then don't have to worry about it too much, don't have neither live in there) but players have to actively be there and "do something".

Another element in the current FW is promoting offensive gameplay, gathering resources (LP/plex) in enemy systems, capturing and so on.

All this - as is balanced now - works; create e dynamic envinroment and checking the ship/pod kills on dotlan prove as FW systems are generally the one with higher PvP activity in all EVE.

However just these characteristics: promoting/rewarding offensive capturing gameplay and forcing people to do something boring (deplexing) is what annoy. I think many hysterical approach to farmer are more generated by this: people login, would like to roam around fighting and see that have to deplex instead becaiuse in the previous hours someone else plexed in his home system.

So, yes, we can nerf offensive plexing so the problem is fixed; but the whole system (that actually works) will be broken.

For sure we can tune it, but we have to always keep in mind as any nerf to offensive or buff to defensive (this include, LP reduction, automatisms, timers rollback, less plex spawn and so on) risk to ruin the system turning it in a pale and stagnant clone of null-sec sov.

I heard this somewhere. If you kill the farmers, they MUST stop farming for the entire time they are dead.

Reduce LP gain for the amount of Warp Core Stabilizers fit.

The system as it currently stands is really quite good. Who cares about all the systems nobody lives in? If a FW group actually lives in lowsec, the home systems will be at low contested rates pretty much all the time as any farmer attempting to plex will be hunted and destroyed.

IMHO, the only thing that needs to change is that people should be rewarded almost full LP for deplexing a "home" system so that it doesn't become to much of a chore that nobody wants to do. The devil is in the details and CCP will have to figure out how to define "home" system so that it isn't exploitable to farm full defensive LP on a large number of systems. If this happens, the winning side can keep the losing side down instead of burning out because they have no more plexes to run, which then starts the pendulum swinging back towards the loser.

Yeah, farming pretty much fell flat on it's face when you had to kill all the rats and there were a ton of them. Plus, it actually provided a limited amount of built in incentive to plex in groups that didn't overscale because you could clear the rats faster. If you wanted to push a system, you truly had to dedicate the resources necessary to push that system since deplexing was so much easier.




I think of this everytime I see one of these threads.