Warfare & Tactics

Ok my breakdown of FW mechanics and my opinion on them.

Docking restrictions: I like that you have to fight over your 'home' why should I be able to dock in enemy held territory. This could be expanded upon slightly by always having the ability to dock in your own militia stations regardless of who 'owns' the system.

LP for plex capping/kills: I like this you should be rewarded for doing good work. However I think it is way too high and I would drop it down to about 10% of it's current level for plex capping. Pvp kills seems fine imo.

Plex NPC's: The current single NPC is completely bloody useless at anything in it's current format. The only time Farmers were not present in inferno FW was when we had NPC's waves that stopped the timer. I would bring back multiple waves(2 or 3 waves after the initia spawn) of 2-3 npc's. These NPC's would be sufficient threat that you would have to bring a combat fitted ship of the right size to a plex (i.e. a cruiser to kill the cruiser npc's in the plex). They would stop the timer until they were all killed. FW is a place that has hybrid pve/pvp content so utilise this potential and give aspect of both to the players. A solo cruiser pilot would be able to pretty easily kill the npc's but a solo T1 frig would take too long etc. And for the naysays whining about FW being apvp only playground - grow up and realise that FW DOES NOT have the player base to be a pvp only mechanic without being hopelessly broken!

Stabs/cloaks and other farmer/alt stuff: HTFU you lot! These are valid combat avoidance mechanics/tactics. You are NOT special snowflakes that deserve to get kills handed to you on a silver plate.

These idea above IMO would stop a lot of the farmers we have now but still allow decent income generation to support active pvp'ers hell if they brought the tags back in decent numbers you would probably be able to fully faction fit out your ships with tags/LP and that's something I'd like to see more of.

Ultimately FW is better now than it was before IMO. But not all that was implemented was good. Most however had the designed effect of being an isk sink for the rest of EVE. I don't think CCP will be doing any major changes to FW for some time and IMO is working ok in it's current form.

thing why there was no plexers back then was that it took so long to complete plex even with high skilled pilot with proper ship that with tier 1 it was so bad lp that highsec level 4 missions were better income.

so putting back those spawns and requiring to kill those will end FW once again.

I like to remind that current system is working only because of farmers. Farmers are not bad thing if those are not bots.

1st version of FW was enough to make fights on plexes, only thing that broke it was plex denial mechanics that prevented plexes from spawning on certain systems and limited pvp even people were willing to fight for plexes in those systems. constantly spawning outpost fixed that and we saw after that change spike on pvp and those were not killed stabbed farmers those were actual pvpers.

CCP listened players and did lot of changes that was not really good, but after incarna CCP had that 'listen players phase' and they did lot of bad long term decision.

Current FW is working fine, there is lot of plexers, lot of pvp and systems change owners and no one is dominant and people change side to loser side. There is nothing more you can ask.

Most of problems listed here are fixed if complainers leave FW and go play 0.0 games, there is all you ask for, no need to defend plex, just pvp when needed.

Docking denial should be removed, it made FW non casual. only thing that makes it some how working is that you can use alts or leave militia to get access to your assets. If you can not lock assest for ever why to deny docking ? Atleast personally i do not care if some takes my home system, i just move to another or go to camp villore, i have assets around fw area anyway from the past now i have not much reason to spread assets anywhere.

I never said I would prefer the old system. I am well aware of the issue most of the 'vets' have with farmers and TBH if you went back they would just complain that FW died again.

IT ALREADY IS.

There never was a reason to undock a bc. Or anything else back then. You should probably get eyes on the local titans tho.

um yes there was. there was bc plexs. which caused thousands of bc fights. why would we waste our time? all local titan groups have 24/7 coverage theres no point in getting 'eyes' on em. your going to get hot dropped in this warzone and there isnt anything you can do about it.

there was more reasons to undock back then, then there is now.

Pockets is right,

all vets remember the multi-wave BC fights we had in BC-plexes. Those definatly where my best times in eve.

We did BS fights too - but those mostly where at gates or outside plexes.

These are gone now - totally - CCP made that decision to make FW small ship small gang combat. So they removed the big plexes and introduced the novice plex - the novice plex is nice, but removing the big plexes killed the BS fights.

This was a huge mistake - a plex is nothing but a content filter to keep crap like titan bridges out. The titan bridge was a big mistake in itself, violating the risk to gain equation.

As we where at the end of being active in fw a pirate gang moved to our hq system. Those guys were old school eve pirates that did nothing but station camping - the most lame thing that is in eve. They did not even dare a gate camp and were sticking to our station all day.

The pirates and us did a TS convo - the pirates were suprised to see the fw warzone empty. No fleets around, no roams. They voiced this, being back after a 2 year break, and seeing only farmers, no fleets.

They were hungry for a cruiser fight and we gave them one - that was their only engagment they could organize in 4 to 6 weeks in fw low sec.

Now they moved on, being bored to death.

We stood down from fw - there is nothing to fight in the amarr warzone but pirates.

Docking restrictions are ok - but why is evey thug allowed to dock in fw space? If the enemy milita - the emeny - is not allowed to dock - why can neutrals dock?

Imagine some null bears building an undestrucable outpost - and evey neutral char in eve is allowed to dock . . .

People don't like to log on to deplex their home system for hours. Current mechanics are more about time zone coverage and less about your prowess vs. your enemy's. The war zone has degenerated to massive home systems because of this. Huola, for example, has a presence around the clock. Others have simply retreated to non FW lowsec (Egghelende). The side effect of this is smaller footprints on the battlefield. The people who plex and live inside the warzone create content for everyone. Systems are within 15% of going vulnerable and WT are fighting hard! Systems need defending! Get into fleet and let's go! When people retreat to supersystems or stage outside of the warzone - those dynamics don't happen. People still log in. They form into fleets. And they can't find anyone to fight. They gate camp. They station camp. They get bored and stop logging in.

There are no silver bullets. People will have to pick their poison with whatever solution CCP comes up with. The current tweaks that are proposed will help - the extent of the relief I'm not even going to pretend to know. Extra spawns will make the plexes harder. The novices people will still tear through. The smalls I don't expect to be much of a speed bump. The mediums will be significantly more difficult though if you're flying a 100 DPS Condor. The larges - I don't expect them to be run by farmers tbh. Will CCP stretch out the plex respawn timers as they are adding a new permanently spawning large plex? If they don't then a real aggressor will flip a system much more quickly. If they do - less novices and smalls for farmers.

It begs some questions though - why aren't there mechanics to protect yourself from off time zone plexing? FW is probably one of the most harsh areas of the game because you're wide open to other time zones. Why are novices and smalls as important as mediums and larges? Why don't kills in system reduce or increase the contested %?

Docking denial forces you to defend your system, it was a good change and should stay. Being able to deny the enemy of assets (at least temporarily) is a good thing.