Warfare & Tactics

Hey guys,

One of the things on the PVE side of FW that keeps getting brought to my attention is LVL 4 FW missions, and an imbalance between the ones that are run by the Gallente and Amarr vs the Minmatar and Caldari missions. The specific issue that I keep hearing is that Cal and Min missions can be run in Stealth bombers while Gal and Amarr missions need to be run in considerably better ships, often tech 3.

The reasons for the higher end ships that seem to be most common is the missile spam prevalent in the Gallente and Amarr missions. I've got a few other things on my list that were mentioned, but I'd rather hear directly from you guys as to what you think the issues are.

My questions for you in this regard are 3:

1: Do you feel this issue is important to you or people you fly with in FW?
2: What do you think is causing the imbalance between the faction missions where some factions can run their missions with SB while others need to bring a "bigger boat."
3: If some balance were to be brought across lvl4 FW missions, should it be geared towards everyone needing a "bigger boat," or everyone being able to run in stealth bombers?

This issue is one of a few on my plate at the moment. If there is a strong desire for change here it's something I plan to pass on and attempt to press the need to the dev team that handles PVE content. If the desire is not strong, and it appears the people who have brought this to me are a small minority, I plan to move on to other issues.

/discuss

1. Absolutely. If someone is out grinding missions for LP, they need to be at risk. Not uncloaked while running the mission, protected by a gate.

2. I have not run them, so my opinion is not informed. From what I can gather, the Amarr EWAR is not effective against SB's, but the Minmatar EWAR makes running a sig tanked SB very difficult.

3. Bigger boat. SB's are inherently unfun to play against, and given the massive reduction in risk, they should not be the primary choice for mission running.

Increasing PvP is a good thing, although I suspect many will not like the idea of their ISK faucet being turned down. No surprise there.

I don't mind the difference. It makes fewer mission farmers on the Gallente side, which inflates our LP value.

Not ignoring the rest of what you said, but I need a little elaboration on this as it's not something I've had waved in my face as of yet. I know gal missions will usually run 10-13 jumps from the agent. Is there a big difference in travel in the other zone? I know it's smaller.

1. YES.
2. Can't speak for Gallente pilots, but Amarr pilots have to deal with Target Painting and Missiles which are both threats to SB's.
3. I personally feel that this can go in 2 directions. (1) If CCP are happy that bombers are able to complete missions in 3-5 minutes then they shouldn't give the huge LP that they do, i.e 90K LP for some missions when Tier4. (2) If they want to leave the high rewards then force the use of bigger ships and make the missions more difficult to complete.

The way mission LP scales for Tier2 - Tier5 is crazy in my opinion and instead of increases like 75%, 150%, 225%, it should be something like 10% increase per tier.

Nice to know someone is looking at other issues in FW, in addition to the changes just made.

1. It's important to me, and those I fly with, only in the way it affects the value of our LP.

2. As has already been said, Caldari and Minmatar rats use effective ewar against most missioning ships, and missiles don't miss. I'm a minmatar pilot, and tracking disruption really doesn't affect me that much and I can fly fast enough for the Amarr lasers to miss me. Just an example of why our missions are so easy.

3. Definitely make them harder! The LP payout for missions is obscene! Make it so that instead of just a bigger ship, you need a small gang to complete them.

Personally I think FW missions should be removed completely. They have no effect on the warzone at all, except to devalue the LP of those who are there to fight the war. Mission farmers couldnt give a damn about how the war is going other than how it affects their LP payout. Come to MinMil channel and watch the farmers demand donations to hubs any time the tier looks like it will drop to 3.

Faction war should be about fighting for your chosen empire. If you want to PvE there are other factions to mission for, plus incursions, belt rats, null sec rafting, and sleeper sites. Nobody should be getting rich from FW.

1) Yes, I'd say it's important.
2) The imbalance is primarily about NPC ewar and damage projection. Painter and missile NPCs hit bombers. TDs are useless against bombers. Damps hurt for kiting bombers. Jams + NPC hax are bad for everyone compared to all other ewar.

3) I'd really like to see all four factions' L4 missions tuned with the intent of all factions being able (and encouraged) to run them in PVP-fit cruiser-sized ships, or in small gangs of PVP fit frigs/destroyers.

A little bit of history on my part before I go into answering your questions.

I was in Caldari Faction Warfare soon after the 2012 nerf to LP and during the battle of Asakai, I ran only a few missions when with the Caldari but did so in a stealth bomber. Earlier this year I was in Amarr Faction Warfare and spent the majority of my time running level 4 missions (thanks to the standing I had built up while in Caldari.) I then turned pirate after becoming disillusioned with FW and spent some time hunting FW mission runners.

1. While currently this isn't a huge issue to me now, while I was in Amarr faction warfare and to a lesser extent Caldari (lack of skill and standing) Faction Warfare missions were my number one source of income, I felt in some situations that without the missions I wouldn't be able to run and compete on the wider stage with the pirates of lowsec and indeed the opposing militia. But this difference in the missions was very apparent to me, I found the Caldari missions far easier than the Amarr ones which forced me to use ships such as Vexor Navy ships to complete the missions correctly. Also as a Pirate, I found hunting mission runners in one type of racial missions are harder than another due to the fact that the stealth bomber was preferred.

2. Mainly the types of Ewar employed by the other races as previously mentioned.

3. I definitely appreciate the fact that this is a type of mission that the stealth bomber is unusually suited for and I would be hesitant to remove that from the game, it is a reasonably easy ship to train into, it falls into the training class of what I would expect to be the usual type of Faction Warfare pilot which is someone first moving into lowsec and is mainly focused on small gang frigate / destroyer / cruiser combat. However, as a conflict driver, as a content generator people hunting these mission runners find the whole experience very frustrating, often I have had to sit in a site with a cloaked ship waiting to grab a mission runner I had chased off. Agreed this provided an interesting cat and mouse mechanic, given I probably could spend the same amount of time hunting a lowsec DED site mission runner for a nicer kill and then steal the site which is much more rewarding than hunting a stealth bomber. So in line with that I would probably like to see more runners in cruisers to give opportunities for pirates and opposing factions to harass and stop the mission runners. (God bless the Astero is all I am going to say on that matter)

On balance, I would be very hesitant to make the ship requirements too high, using a T3 cruiser to run FW missions are, IMO, not in the spirit of the low entry barrier that FW offers, and putting too much on the line. You should, in essence be able to pay for the ship you are using in these sites in 3/4 runs and depending on the tier level that can be anything from 100m to 400m. (25,000 LP to whatever the T5 level is). It is hugely important the original mechanic of FW, which is the gated area restricting the types of ships and acting as a buffer for the person running the sites so they can make that choice of fight or flight. FW always has provided that barrier to aggressing pilots to allow the person in the site to make the decision of if this site worth staying in and finishing and fight or is this too dangerous and should I take that standing hit?

To that end, I feel that the time of these missions is too lenient. If you warp to a site to run it, and you are unable to complete it and have to warp out the site should vanish and the mission ends as a failure, this will encourage people to fight for their rewards more which is something that Faction Warfare plexing just does not do. But as a reward for sticking it out and taking the risk you should then of course get the appropriate reward. As extension to that line of thought, missions do not encourage ships to be PvP fit, which again discourages engagement because your PvE fit ship would never stand up to a fully PvP fit ship. They need to be redesigned to encourage more PvP fittings in these missions. The number of rats in the missions are totally pointless, there should be fewer, but harder to deal with. If anyone says these are all part of the whole tag mechanics, I would be very interested to see how many tag drops actually come from FW missions.

Just some of my thoughts on the matter, but overall, yes SB's a silly, yes encourage the use of other ships, and definitely encourage PvP encounters but in the tried and tested Faction Warfare controlled way.

edit - introduce level 5 mission for groups to run and mix up the systems missions spawn in, getting the same systems over and over means runners learn which systems to avoid and running missions in systems controlled by your own faction is weird.

Excuse the grammar and spelling I did this on fly during my lunch break at work and didn't have time to proof read it!

How many FW players actually farm the tags in these missions? I know I usually go in, kill the target, warp out.
On another note: I believe FW missions need to be totally rethought. Currently they are abused for easy isk/LP. FW missions should contribute to the cause, should not be easy, and should encourage PvP.

My suggestion is thus:
1. FW missions count toward system capture status.
- If the mission spawns in a system held by your militia, completing said mission reduces the capture status.
- If mission spawns in a system held by enemy militia, completing said mission increases the capture status.
- There will be friendly and enemy rats in the sites. This ensures there will be no huge advantage if someone wants to warp in and engage you. Only advantage will be if the mission owner can get in first and kill off the enemy rats. The enemy and friendly rats will not kill each other, both are there to provide a semblance of balance for pvp.
2. You have to kill all enemy rats. No easy assasination mission.
3. The mission site will still show in space.
4. No EWAR. At all. Ensures balance across the board and encourages pvp.
5. Mission difficulty would be the same as for regular missions.
- L1s can be done in T1 frigs, L2s in destroyers, L3s in cruisers, etc.
6. Sites would be gated and ship size restrictions would apply.
7. Capture percentage would be based on the mission level.
- L1s would give .7%, L2s 1.4%, L3s 2.1%, and L4s 2.8%
- Why you ask? Because it would give people a reason to kill/help the mission runner.
8. LP Payouts would be thus:
- L1 = double LP payout of a novice plex.
- L2 = double LP payout of a small plex
- L3 = double LP payout of a medium plex
- L4 = double LP payout of a large plex
- All affected by tier level. What would the missions entail?

Going in and killing 10-15 rats, maybe more. Types of rats would be based on the missions equivalent plex size. So a L1 would have the frig rat npcs, L2 would have destroyer rats, and so on. That would be my suggestion on FW missions. If anyone else has any other insight on something I missed, or something better, or an addition to the above; please chime in.

1: Do you feel this issue is important to you or people you fly with in FW?
Yes. I think easy to farm missions creates a bad culture in a militia (see Caldari).

2: What do you think is causing the imbalance between the faction missions where some factions can run their missions with SB while others need to bring a "bigger boat."

For Gallente, the imbalance is caused by being jammed 90% of the time and hit with infinite range missiles that never miss. This requires you to fly a ship that can project damage while jammed (ie drones) and tank like a boss (ie Ishtar at the minimum).

3: If some balance were to be brought across lvl4 FW missions, should it be geared towards everyone needing a "bigger boat," or everyone being able to run in stealth bombers?

I think the missions should be made more difficult (ie no stealth bombers), but at the same time I think there would be massive revolts and damage to the FW ecosystem if everything was made as difficult as Gallente missions. I think the missions should still be possible to solo in a ship with more tank than a SB can offer, but not require HACS or T3's. As a result of the easier missions, the rewards should be nerfed (ie lower base LP, keep LP rewards on T1/T2 scale, whatever CCP decides is the best way to reduce the LP).

I think the risk/reward system should push people to plexing over missions. Missions should really only be viable/desirable from a risk/reward standpoint when a faction is "winning" and doesn't have enough systems to support plexing in.