Warfare & Tactics

why exactly should you be able to capture plexes without holding the field. all of these mechanics were designed to make fights happen, and reward people who win fights with dosh and control. you guys are bad.

I am fine with nerfing defensive plexing. But it might be worthwhile to examine some of the pay issues just generally.

But rather than just talking about your particular case which might be exceptional lets look at d-plexing in general. Of the 96 or so number of systems that gallente control only 6 of them are over 30% contested. The other 90 systems are all under 30% contested and 56 of the 90 are under 10%. So really if you are in a system with 25% contested you are doing allot better than average. Also if a system is highly contested you are more likely to run into resistance.

The formula used to be the LP from offensive plexing * %contested * 75%. (I think it still is this system)

Now the best way to deplex a system from an occupancy perspective is to do the novice plexes. They gain 20 vp ( for readers who don't know, vp deals with occupancy and is different than lp) per plex and only take 10 minutes. You can get some more lp if you run larger plexes but you will not be as effective at deplexing the system because even for large plexes you still only get 20 vp.


Now you get 25,000lp for an offensive novice plex at tier 4. So if you are well above average contested levels and run a novice plex you would get 25k *.25 * .75 or 4688 lp per plex. So 1.3mill/4688 = 277 plexes. Even if we unrealistically assume you are constantly running plexes and never get chased out and never have to travel to a new plex that would mean you spent 2770 minutes to get your 1.3 million lp. Thats a bit over46 hours of plexing. Thats allot of time to spend over that 2 weeks.


Now that is well above the average contested level of the systems by over 2xs so on average in a system you are looking at about 2xs that number of hours. But even so you can probably get that many lp in 3 hours doing missions level 4 and level 3 FW missions at tier 4. That means even at the high end defensive plexing pays 15xs less than running missions. And that assumes you never get chased out and it really assumes a contested level that is well above 2xs the average.

I see allot of systems getting plexed all the way down to stable. That means the defensive plexing alt is make less than 1% what an offensive plexer makes.


Now the gallente lp is more valuable than other factions in part because thier missions are harder. Amarr hits tier 2 and I see people in militia chat asking how to fit out a hound for missions. What does that mean? It means our lp values will plummet and people plexing will get very little value for their time. Amarr has had its share of irrational rpers who didn't realize that running fw missions for the opposing side actually helps our efforts in the occupancy war. Running missions for your own faction can hurt your own militia's occupancy efforts.

If we compare it to offensive plexing amarr at tier 2 gets 10k lp per novice plex. It takes slightly longer to kill the rats but its not that big of a deal. Plus generally if you stay at tier 4 long enough you will find your lp is not worth as much isk. Minmatar lp is like dirt.

But anyway IMO ideally plexing would be a pvp mechanic and fw missions would remain a pve mechanic. Players who are not ready to pvp could run missions but they should not pay as well as plexing. Then once a player is ready to pvp they should be able to make more than people who can only do pve. 2 things need to change to make that happen. 1) plexing needs to become a pvp mechanic and 2) mission pay needs to be slashed pretty dramatically.

Anyway I may have missed something in these calculations. I don't know if ccp changed the calculations after the 10/22/12 change.

I appreciate your response. I did sense some tongue in cheek in your response but I still did pick up on your overall message. And I agree its a good message! In fact it might be the most important one.


We need to first find out what we are trying to do with faction war before we start proposing solutions. My goal has always been that the occupancy war should be more pvp focused. That is my overarching goal so all of my proposals are geared toward that end. Others have wanted it to continue to be a pve game. So yes, of course, if we have opposite goals then we will disagree on the proposals. But I think it is extremely helpful to tease out whether we disagree because our overarching goals are different, or if we disagree whether a certain proposal move us closer to a shared goal.

Just because I want plexing and the occupancy war to be a pvp mechanic that does not mean everyone must agree with me. The fw community used to be one where most people did agree with that. We elected Hans who specifically ran to help make it more of a pvp mechanic. But now since ccp added lots and lots of isk without doing very much to make it a pvp mechanic the current players who are in fw now might have other ends. Even before the lp there were certain fw players - one was even elected to csm - who were very outspoken in their anti-pvp views.


So the first question and a legitimate one is should FW occupancy be more of a pvp game or should occupancy still be best kept through rabbit plexing. Here is my argument why I think fw occupancy should be a pvp mechanic:

Eve should try to offer something for many different play styles and there are already lots and lots of pve options. FW missions, low sec missions, null sec anoms, missions, cosmos missions epic arc, burner missions sleeper sites incursions in every sector of known space all support pve. But at this time there is no mechanic that brings frequent quality pvp. So to the extent they want to draw a wider group of players there is no reason to make fw occupancy yet another form of rabbit versus hunter pve.



Now still people might still want it to be pve. But if so lets have that debate first. Only after we figure out what goal we want for fw as a low sec community - or even eve community can we know what proposals are good or bad. For me every proposal I see for fw I ask: will this make the occupancy war more of a pvp game? If yes I generally support it. If it won't change it then it is probably a waste of time or harmful.




Timer rollbacks doesn't fix the issue of play styles. It basically says if you want to play hide and seek and run from all pvp plexing might not be for you. You can do fw missions, or burner missions in low sec or exploration in low sec or incursions in low sec or in null or sleeper sites etc etc. etc. There are so many options for those who want to do this hide and seek type of pve there is absolutely no reason fw plexing can't be spared for people who want some quality frequent pvp.

How many plexes did your alt capture in the last 2 weeks?

I have always been a huge fan of plex pvp. I am not sure why we would care whether some other mechanics provide less pvp. Am I supposed to care if null sec or wormholes are even worse? If eve were all null sec and wormholes I wouldn't be subbed at all.

Nor do I know how to quantify and answer what you are asking. Are gates a game mechanic? Are astroid belts a mechanic? Were there more kills in astroid belts and at gates than in plexes? Are you counting every faction war kill as if it were a "plexing" kill? Even if we could decide what you mean I don't know the numbers. Nor do I really care.

I think tweaking fw is eves best chance at being a truly awesome fun game to play, but that doesn't mean as long as fw is better than some other part of eve it's fine with me.

The problem I have with current occupancy mechanics is that vp is most efficiently won by multiboxing alts and avoiding pvp. IMO that sucks. This is the same problem fw had since it started. Several players have recommended solutions but ccp has never implemented them. I think it's time they did.

A simple "yes" would have done.

CCP must have done something terribly wrong when they created a PvE mechanic that got this much PvP.

A meeting is to no avail as long the four milita have that great imbalance in their space and their respective plex and missions.

No cosmetic change will fix those imbalances.

We need a total FW reset - not elegant speeches about rules.

Timer rollbacks would be okay if there was a delay before the rollback started. It would take 5 mins for the timer on a novice to start to roll back, 10 for a small, 15 for a medium, etc.

FW topic and 90% of the posts are about plexes.

Loyalty Point Warfare where you can perma wardec anyone stupid enough to enlist on the losing side.

Not a whole lot needs changed with FW. Some tweaks to the missions maybe (i'd like to see no ewar and npcs not turning on people who go inside a mission to hunt a missioner). The whole power projection thing is more of a null-side issue unrelated to FW (lack of conflict in null, player behavior blueing everyone, etc), so changing FW mechanics just so people don't get hotdropped is kind of silly, especially since small scale cap fights are fun for those in FW. Big fish will always hunt little fish, whether it be in lowsec, sov null or npc null.

Rollback timers are fine if, as suggested earlier, there is a significant delay before the timer rolls back (5 min with no players inside plex on a novice before the timer starts running back towards neutral, 10 min on small, 15 on medium, etc)


As far as the pendulum, it is natural human behavior to choose the path of least resistance and join the "winning side". I don't think CCP needs to drastically change plex mechanics, maybe reduce the buffer on the rats slightly so that if the dps check is there and the player is obviously in a pvp ship and passes that said check, they don't have to spend an obscene amount of time shooting npcs. Lowering the DPS tank on smalls and novices would be nice for newer players and for those who wish to kite in something other than a droneboat. There will always be non-interactive stabbed farmers, as this point just learn to accept it if you really dislike the farmers existence or its your home system then take their plex.