Warfare & Tactics

How I would do it.

There would be 3 system contestation bars in each system, one for each of the non owning militias. Let's say Minmatar currently held the system. There would be bars for the Amarr, Caldari and Gallente.

Any of the offensive militias could run a plex and it would affect only their bar, adding 0.7% (or whatever) to the contestation level on that bar.

The defending Militia (Minmatar) could run a defensive plex and it would reduce all three bars by 0.7% (no effect if a bar was already at zero)

Thus normal farming activity would be distributed about the extended warzone and could be much more effectively countered by the defenders. But when a proper push of the system did occur, the offensive militia would not be penalised or have to undo the work of other offensive militias. They would of course have to keep the other offensive militias out, so as to maximise the number of plexes available, just as they would have to keep the defenders out of the plexes.

Two offensive militias would not be able to push the same system at the same time - well they could but it would be counter productive, although could lead to some great fights. Thus a player driven alliance between two or more militia to gang up on another would have to agree to let one militia capture all the plexes and then flip the system, rather than just bring numbers and share the plexing rewards. That would be tricky to broker which is good, cause we don't want to encourage permanent NIPs and NAPs in FW.

How would an individual plex be captured? I suggest keep the single plex capture bar, with all 3 offensive militia pilots able to pull it one way, but while two different militias are on the button, the timer is halted as per having both a defender and attacker on the button at the same time. When the plex is captured, ownership goes to the militia which had pilots on the button at capture time, same as the LP. eg An Amarr pilot could do 9 minutes of the work of capturing a Minmatar novice plex but then is driven out by a Gallente pilot who then spends one minute to capture the plex and gets all the LP, while the plex capture is credited on the Gallente system contestation bar. This again would drive conflict and discourage NIPs and NAPs

But as I said earlier, we would still need some guaranteed safe bases spread around the warzone, outside of the current station lockout mechanic.

Some new connections between the warzones would have to be made for this to be appealing.

This would be open to abuse. An entity like PL could join one of the militia and would just drop on every vulnerable system I-Hub, without ever doing any of the contesting.

This would make dedicated plexing pushes almost irrelevant. Everything would depend on who could mobilize the I-Hub bash first and with the need to get there first, it would become predicable to all the hot dropping entities, their cyno alts would be circling like sharks.

You can't expect dedicated system pushes which can take weeks if defended, to end in such fiasco's. That would just kill FW.

Decoupling the alliances seems a good idea for the next change.
No forced alliance, no forced war dec outside each of the two warring factions.


Total war sounds intrigueing, but I doubt it's a realistic possibility, given how the current mechanics work (and a complete rework is a bit much to ask). If that's ever going to be a thing, please include pirate factions, TYVM.

rp is already barely hanging on with a thread.

No

No. only people who are to lazy to plex hate the station lock out system. couple years ago. i run plexs in arzad 'hey annah come get me im plexing your system!' 'no thanks ill just have sasawong dplex it when your offline because we can dock here no matter the occupancy'

you guys did that do yourselves, balling up in 1 system and not having secondary bases. or wait maybe that was amarr taking all the home systems. idk cant remember.


In the old system there was no secondary bases. at all. nobody cared about basing 40 jumps away, you based in auga or huola thats it. station locks out stay.


No, setup a pos every 5 jumps and do it the man way. stop crying over every little isk you have to spend on to do cool things.

If this goes up next you will all be whining about how terrible the dock range TLF stations are and how they need a BUFF.

+1

Do this, and also add pirate factions to FW. Thanks.

Sounds good!

In point 3) how would you count it? Since the last time the system was flipped? Or only, say, the last week before the ihub bash?

Point 4) buys time indeed. I'd also consider giving the defender a further advantage by making d-plexing lower the contested % more than o-plexing raises it. Since anyone could oplex, but just one militia could dplex.

That's why I want an ally system in place from the get-go, but I certainly don't think the majority of the militias will be allied with each other in the long term.

I really like this idea as well. It leaves the actual diplomacy to the players in the militias not a static game mechanic.

They would need to think through how it would work a bit its true but I think there are some good suggestions so far.

I was thinking along the lines of major trent where each militia could have the system be contested for their faction and there would be a seperate bar that shows how far each contested it.

If more than one miltia had it vulnerable they could either let the system fall to the offensive miltia that

1) At one point since the last flip made the system vulnerable
and
2)delivered the final to the bunker. (or at least the last blow of a militia that made it vulnerable.)

So no a defensive side couldn't win the system by giving the final blow to the bunker. Nor could a side that never brought that system vulnerable since the last flip. So there would be some sniping - I think it would be kinda funny- but maybe its not a good idea.


Anyway yeah I would love to see the total war idea implemented.

However I would not want them to just end cross plexing. That would reduce the complications and intrigue not create more. One warzone can get dull.