Warfare & Tactics

Pirates, lot and lots of high quality pirates to fight. AFAIK, Gallente overall haven't done well against the pirates since the heyday of SOTF, but they set a very high bar.

Very true, and it gives us something to use to grow. Structure fights, gate fights, and station games are all fundamentally different than the plex warfare we've been focused on through occupancy warfare.

Looking forward to the challenge once I get back from FanFest.

A couple things. I pointed out that when a ships fitting and/or capability clashes with the ability of people to counter it is determined by CCP. And when the effort required to counter them is determined to much they have been nerfed by CCP. This has happened several times over recent years. Tracking Titans? Determined too difficult to counter. Nerfed, Drakes? Hurricanes? Too overpowered when compared to other ships and were significantly nerfed in the rebalance. Nanofibers without stacking penalties? This was before my time but DAMN that must have been ridiculous.

I believe that WCS effect the Warzone far to much. Clash with the purpose of FW. And the effort to counter them requires far to much time and effort on the part of the player. Mainly because to counter them we first have to find them, refit to something un usable for regular PvP. And then hunt them down while avoiding anyone else on fear of meeting an actual PvPer and being killed.

AND the system which was developed by CCP was meant to provide PvPers with ISK. Not Provide AFKers with ISK. Which is what its doing. It is far more rewarding to fit for WCS's then PvP. That breaks the system and needs to be fixed. Every time someone brings up an overpowered game feature(which is a difficult term to use for WCS but it still applies) the person using that feature or even some well meaning person like yourself decries people for being elitist or warns them against it. If something provides a net negative for the game, which I believe WCS does, then it should be brought to balance, even if that means stepping on a few toes.

Your solution to AFK-Plexing is to AFK-Plex more? That may be a counter to the people plexing against me, but it doesn't fix the system itself.



If you believe the Warzone is what you say it is you should be just as annoyed as me by AFK farming. (Which you seem to be and that is something that is confusing me).I don't understand how you can be against AFK-plexers, and say how "legit" FW pilots earn their income via plexing. "legit" FW players don't use WCS fits, or only do so because the plexing mechanic is so boring, they are forced to do it to maintain there sanity.

AFKing is facilitated by Warp Core Stabs. That is their only purpose for being in Plexes. If you don't have WCS's, that means people can no longer AFK plex effectively. They can still be AFK, but they will certainly die a lot more or will have to pay attention. Their isk for effort goes down as a result. Their effect on the war zone goes down. Some might even be forced to PvP and find they enjoy it, although it would only be a small >Fraction< of them.

I cannot find any reason even in your post, for NOT banning WCS. They break the system, and provide no benefit to it whatsoever. You yourself said that the system itself is used to provide money for "legit" FW players so changing the ISK factor could be, and probably WOULD be disastrous. Not only that such a drastic effort is not needed, when simply banning WCS will probably drop the amount of Farmers significantly.

Even if "legit" Faction Warfare people plex using stabs, they do not have to. They can refit for PvP and join the fun if WCS are banned from plexes. But if you want to eliminate Null Sec Alts using our system as a farming ground to fund their supercaps. WCS need to go, and go now.

Barring all that, can you give me a legitimate reason why WCS should not be banned from plexes, or what benefit the bring to Faction Warfare?

I agree with your point that WCS will not completely stop AFK plexing. I do however disagree that most people will continue to just AFK plex without them. Losing ships is not just about the ISK value. It is about the time and effort it takes to buy and build these ships, and then fly them to an area you can plex in. As stated before ISK/effort becomes much more unfeasible when you have to actually pay attention to the game. This is what attracts all the alts from Null Sec. They ability for them to keep playing their game elsewhere while detrimentally impacting ours and earning money for it.

My argument isn't against AFK play, my argument is against AFK play without consequence. WCS allow AFK players to run Plexes without making them vulnerable to other players, or limits/decreases their isk-making. I have no problem with people warping off. It annoys me occasionally sure, especially if they are in something that I believe could roundly stomp me. But they have to be at the keyboard to do so. And if they are not, then they pay for it. Just because AFK gameplay is encouraged by the plex mechanics doesn't mean that there should be no consequences for it.

MWD/Cloak Running boats, Cloaky T3's Nullified T3's, Warping Off, all have some things in common which separates them completely from AFK plexing. To be safe, you have to be at your keyboard and/or when you ARE safe you are not earning money. AFK plexers have the ability to be safe while not playing the game. The quite literally have more safety then High Sec miners. Fitting stabs hurts a miners efficiency, not a farmers. A miner can't warp off when tackled, a farmer can. Miners have to at least open their clients every few minutes to see if a rock has been fully mined. A plex farmer can set a stopwatch and watch Internet Cat Videos and eat Cheetos until it goes of f or they hear themselves being locked.

I also disagree completely when you say that fitting stabs in a plex is legitimate gameplay. Just because something can be accomplished through game mechanics does not make it balanced, or legitimate. In fact, I could even term it as an exploit. Rooks and Kings Wormhole video described a perfect situation where game mechanics were changed because they were far to game breaking to be left in. Remember how an AB rep Incursus without guns could run Large Plexes in the first iteration of the Inferno patch? CCP realized that kind of "legitimate" gameplay isn't what they wanted plexes to be about so they tried to fix it. They didn't fail necessarily, but there actions did lessen the impact of Farmers. Not by much because farmers just went to AFK-STAB Transformation mode, but they effected it.

There are many more myriad examples of things deemed "legitimate" by others and then nerfed by CCP. And not only that, but there ARE limitations to enter certain Mission plexes. I cannot remember if its DED plexes in Highsec or something else, but they prevent anything from above a certain ship size to enter. These are high sec Exploration Complexes, that CCP is putting ship restrictions on. The only logical reason to do that is because they deemed that ships up to a certain size made it to easy to complete the mission. If they restricted people from completing High Sec plexes to easily, do you really think CCP can not justify banning WCS from plexes?

Warp Core Stabs give massive penalties so that the only thing they are used for is safety of travel I do not believe CCP ever intended for WCS to be a money making module. Unintended consequences also do not equal legitimate gameplay.

I am wary about making plexes more engaging because I am not sure there is a way to make plex rats more engaging without either turning it into a PvE situation, or making it so that only a few fits can be used to run plexes. IE What if I am in a lightly tanked condor? Or a slow AB Incursus? I do not think CCP would have the capability or time or the inclination to devote their time to doing so. Unless their going to revamp ALL the rats. Which I think we both know, is going to be a long way off if its ever going to occur at all.

Also their is a reason why plexes are the way they are. To prevent systems from flipping to fast. IE the Inferno expansion where systems could be flipped in 6 hours. And to prevent people with certain fits (gunless fits for Inferno 1.0) from being able to plex to easily. The system works fairly well as it is now.

I like the ideas of having the contest status of a system effected with out actually having to devote time to a plex. But natural decontestation doesn't do it for me. I think something should be sacrificed in exchange for time, and that something needs to able to be neutralized directly by the opposing faction. Otherwise I think it becomes far to hard to capture systems because your fighting the enemy AND the permanent natural decontest.

An Idea I have had is a structure added as an addition to the bunker, people can warp to it like always and "buy" plexes with LP, timers in the plexes are run down. When a plex is capped in the system, but only if the plex has remained unoccupied for a certain amount of time, the plex is subtracted from the plex total. Same thing happens when an enemy runs it down. ALSO an enemy fleet can go directly to the bunker and bust the structure holding the LP amount. The HP scaled correctly so that it would take a significant fleet commitment to kill, but not enough to require that Capitals be dropped. Also, the LP costs would need to be scaled correctly so that no net LP is gained from capturing the plexes. IE I put 50,000 LP into the plexes, capturing those plexes would give me 50,000 LP back. But thats just a spit balling Idea.

POST CONTINUED BELOW BECAUSE OF CHARACTER LIMITS .

tbh the one thing I actually miss from pre-inferno FW is the npc waves that occurred while running a plex.

But the whiney 'bitter-vet' "it's not pvp so should be in FW" argument go way too much press IMO and the rats were changed to a single (occasionally 2) npc that lets face it is a cakewalk basically becasue people didn't want the npc's to be a deciding factor in a pvp fight.

Load of bollocks I say! When being a pirate I have to way up the NPC's in a belt/mission/site that my potential target is running. If I pick too squishy a ship the npc can actually kill me! there fore it is a factor in almost every other area of eve where we are trying to force and engagement.

I Personally would like to see the waves of npc's to be brought back AND keep the timer paused while they are still on field. You then physically can't afk in a plex and still run it. You would have to keep your main on standby to come in and kill them before running the timer down. Well bugger it you might as well just plex with your main!

The npc's should be though enough that you can't stomp them with too small a ship but could still kill them given enough time. But not too hard that you need specialised pve fits to do so. This would mean that you can go out in your cruiser and still run mediums pretty quickly with a pvp fit but would take a bit more effort (or a specialised pve fit) to run a large for example.

This would also bring militia tags back as a money maker for LP item swaps. Make less LP cos plexs require more time/effort but also have tags as another potential isk source in FW. I used tags a lot as extra isk before inferno. bring em back. This simple change would also encourage more up shipping to run larger plex's and get some more cruiser sized action going on.

Might have to agree to disagree here.

I get where you're coming from, I truly do. I don't see the loss of a ship as a major impediment, because when they run under 2mil a pop you can replace them with ease - even if they're kitted up with guns, rigs, and prop mod in addition to a full rack of WCS. Farmers have the same access to JFs and the like that we do, and there's no reason they couldn't use them to. Just get a stack of boats shipped to the nearest medical station, and voila. Instant reship and back in action.

WCS are a legitimate module to allow a player to avoid combat. Moreover, there is no value in my opinion in forcing a player into PvP, nor has CCP created one that I can see (one that can't be avoided, I mean). There are PvE aspects to FW, missions for one a great example of it, and we have to recognize that those are an intended part of the design.

IMO the need for constant work to control an area is exactly what makes FW special. It's the fact that you can't just sit back and let a flag on a map due to an IHUB bash define your area of influence. That takes work, and it sucks, but that's what makes it different - and better! - than nullsec.

CCP has already given us the tools we need to counter stabbed farmers. A Crucifier has more than enough mids and DPS to kill any stabbed frigate, as does a Merlin. If you want to disrupt their income, run the plexes yourselves. Nisuwa is constantly close to stable due to the hard work of the folks who live there. They've earned that status, and they deserve it - because they use all the tools at their disposal to counter the farmers that try their hand at plexing there.

You want to make it hard to run plexes with WCS, I'm all for it. Banning a mechanic (WCS and the ability to evade combat) because of the fact it forces us to do more work to keep our homes isn't a good reason to do so. If you want there to be more than a lock time penalty, then lobby for it. Having a DPS hit for each WCS - to include for drones - would make it a lot harder to kill the rats while not invalidating the tactic entirely. They'd have to compromise their fits to compensate.

Of course that wouldn't stop them from coming in with a full combat fit, killing the rat, and refitting to stabs when they were done via a mobile depot. Which is why I think we need to do something else to change the incentives for them to be here in the first place.

TL;DR: We agree it's an issue, I don't think we'll agree on a solution. My feeling is that banning WCS won't fix it, we'll just see more cheap hulls getting ganked while AFK. Better to change the incentive structure.

+1
If CCP did this even at t1, and brought back lg plexes, I would be a happy camper.

LOL well i did not think this thred would blow up like this but i guess it is one of them hot topics that people argue about

Many of the complaints are silly, people who whine about WC stab farmers.

Just as you have the right to go blast people in the face, the same right exists for you the escape from the people who want to blast your face.

EHonor exists only for the players who know they will be the clear winners and call the ones who flee before them "cowards" or "disgraceful".

I am not going to get my ship blown and me killed just for someone's self-righteous pride.

Stabbed/cloaky farmers are the noob version of this lameness anyway. The pros realize that losing a 400k frigate hull is meaningless and just deplex in unfit t1 frigs, where they don't even need to kill the rat. Podding them helps them too as it saves them time.

I had fun for a while by fitting a SB with rockets and scrams and cloaking in plexes waiting for these guys, but really, why bother.