Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This is just getting damn ridiculous. Within 24 hours, Amarr has gone up at least 1 tier, and within another 24, have a good chance of getting tier 5.
They're not gaining systems by fighting everyone and taking by force, they've been using alts in overwhelming numbers to run constant plexes for LP. About 90% of them use warp core stabilizers, and some of them use cloaking devices so once someone enters their site, they can easily bugger off to the next system with ease.
Something needs to be done about plexes, with only 1-2 rats that are easy to kill per site, they are the easiest isk to make in the game. This opens up a ton of ISK making opportunities for people, which isn't a bad thing if Faction Warfare were working properly, but it's not. Hundreds of people constantly switch between Amarr/Minmatar once they hit tier 5 and the prices go down, meaning that one side has an abundance of pilots that can farm systems with no risk of PvP, since the militia they were fighting for has almost every system and nobody to cover them.

Something needs to be done, this shouldn't be about getting LPs and making a quick million, it should be about constant PvP and being able to pay for the ships that you lose. So here's my suggestion for FW:

• Warp core stabilizers have no effect when inside combat sites or missions.
• Militia rats spawn at intervals of the timer, once every 5 minutes or so. The also spawn on top of each other, so if you don't kill the first in time you're fighting more rats.
• All of the FW regions need to be put together. So there isn't always one side you can flip to, Minmatar can take Caldari systems, Gallente can take Amarr, and vice-versa.
• You get 10% bonus LP for killing someone inside of a combat site, to encourage defending them or trying to flip the timers more.
• Combat sites no longer have a set timer and LP gain at the end, to make them more dynamic and fun to use instead of sitting there for 10-30 minutes, they will have multiple rooms depending on the site and bunkers to destroy for system control.

And now for the combat site revamp idea:
Sites no longer will have a set timer and 1-2 rats inside of them. This is far to easy, so the point of tech 1 frigates being able to run medium sites alone without any problems. This also meant that flipping systems didn't take very much power, you just took 4-5 frigate gangs for the day with warp core stabs and just ran plexes. Easy LP, and a system could be flipped within 1-2 days.

Combat sites will now have between 1 and 3 rooms seperated by acceleration gates depending on the site name:
Outposts have 1 room,
Facilities have 2,
Strongholds have 3.
Each room has a timer on it and 3 destructable bunkers, and 1 ship (size depending on the site, frigates for novice, destroyer for small, cruiser for medium, and battlecruiser for large) to defend it. Ships also spawn every minute, starting at 1 ship of the current size going up to 5 ships per wave. The next acceleration gate cannot be opened until all ships are gone and the bunkers are destroyed
Destroying all 3 bunkers will give you LP based on how many ships were destroyed and how much time it took to destroy everything. Bunkers will have 0% resists across all shield, armor, and hull.

Novices give 250 LP per ship, Bunkers have 500/500/500 (Shield/Armor/Hull)
Smalls give 500 LP per ship, bunkers have 1500/1500/1500
Mediums give 750 LP per ship, bunkers have 2500/2500/2500
Larges give 1000 LP per ship, bunkers have 4000/4000/4000

Each room after also gives 10% bonus LP for going in farther each time, so the second room has a 10% bonus and the third has a 20% LP bonus. The formula for LP per person is as follows:
((LP from ships destroyed)^1.2)*(1.01^-(time in seconds)) / [number of pilots]
This formula gives the maximum LP for a novice site if completed at 150 seconds, 7,108 LP. Which is a lot, but you are killing a bunker and 4 frigates within 2 minutes 30 seconds.
Most of you will be thinking "But wait, medium sites are the most popular! Won't they have so much more LP then?!" Which is completely true, but again you need to destroy 4 cruisers and 3 bunkers all within 2:30 to get the maximum amount of LP, which is 36,938 LP. And with having 3 bunkers, with 7500 EHP each, it will be very had to be able to run through those alone in that time. So having fleets running through plexes will be much more encouraged with these changes. And with 4 people, that's still 9,000 LP per person.

Now for system control. Each bunker destroyed will give 10 CP, so having people running offensive sites will be much more rewarding the the standard 20 right now. And since it's not time based, taking a system will be faster if you're burning through plexes for control.
Defensive plexing now works differently also, there's now bunkers inside the plex that have the same HP as the offensive plexing bunkers, but the hulls have 99.9% resists, and start with 100% armor damage. Once these are repaired back to 100% armor, 10 CP is granted to the defending militia, along with 1000 LP per person, since there are no more ships to destroy.

These changes make a number of improvements to Faction warfare, including:
Combat based instead of time based plexes.
Defensive plexing is now rewarding, and doing it as a group is fast and useful.
More dynamic sites that also encourage running them as a group.
Less farmers and more active site runners, since warp stabs won't work in plexes.

I am not entirely certain how your suggestion would fix things. If you want to stop people from farming, you need to provide an incentive to stay in the plex and fight for it. If there are a ton of NPCs bearing down on you, it would be absolutely stupid of you to stay and fight them plus another player at the same time. That's why the original change happened.


there needs to be a mechanic which encourages people to chase out plexers. Right now, if you enter someone's plex and they cloak or warp out, you have to either sit around with your thumb up your ass for however long the opponent was plexing it for in order to reset it to neutral (for no reward) or, more likely...get bored and leave, allowing the farmer to continue.

If someone leaves a plex, it should begin counting back to neutral on its own. If the faction which was plexing does not have anyone inside the plex anymore, and either a neutral or an opposing WT does (or the original plexer is cloaked), the plex should revert to neutral at an accelerated rate (say, 10-20x speed)...you could perhaps throw a small LP reward in here, too, to encourage people to make the effort. Thus, the only feasible way to finish a plex should be to kill anyone who comes to force you out of it. if you cannot fight them and choose to leave instead, the plex is effectively reset.

Let's just start with timer resets, shall we?

LP farmer sitting on button, enemy shows up, runs farmer off the button -> timer goes back to zero.

The more you ask for, the less likely it is to happen.

" Spr09: Warp core stabilizers have no effect when inside combat sites or missions."

WCS has to work; is good for new pilots; having 500,000 SP, they cant fight with olders (milions of SP) , or gankers. CCP has to encourage FW plexing for newcomer.