Warfare & Tactics

Duffo, play nice, we won fair and square, Maybe you should go remove those pesky varmints the asteroids from Vlillore and there Deadly Friends, the dreaded red crosses, for a change. I know living in hi-sec isn't your cup of tea, but I hear Amarr has lovely weather this time of year hun, give ya a chance to work on your tan.

Enjoy!!

Sure both sides were trying to get in plexes early and split the other side up a bit when they were outnumbered. But the vast majority of the time when one side was outnumbered 3 to 1 they sat out.

You are wrong to think isk was a big issue in this campaign. A nine million isk inquisitor was not a big deal. Generally speaking when you have fewer pilots you try to get a bit more out each with better fittings. Sure it’s dumb to go with faction fittings unless you are extremely space rich but t2 fittings are usually preferred. On the other hand if you outnumber your opponent sufficiently you might as well fly cheap tech 1 fits. So you got it backwards.

Isk was not the issue. I offered the ceos isk and fittings if they wanted it and never had one take me up on it. The problem was we could not keep the numbers in fleets that we needed for the extended time we needed to bring huola vulnerable.


Tier 4 is basically the goal in the mechanics. Tier 5 is hardly cost effective in the current system.

Ok I will be fair. I it wasn’t really changing the goalposts. Gallente have been talking about holding home systems before test. But the goalpost is a made up one. And all the talk about how holding these “key systems” will prevent the other side from this or that were basically proven false. Test proved you don’t need to take home systems to hit tier 4. And tier 4 is basically the best economic situation you can get under the current mechanics.



Ok I admit I just read the forums and some of the reddit threads. On reddit you would have someone say hey lets take _____ home system! And the response would be “why fight at a disadvantage in their home system? Of course gallente want us to go where they are all set up but why go to the terrain they want? I have to say that makes allot of sense.

On the forums you would have some test member saying how they took all these systems and they are at this or that tier. Then some gallente yeah but you didn’t take system X so we win! And honestly I don’t think most people from test thought you were serious. Because when you look at something describing the actual mechanics of faction war you don’t see anything about victory conditions based on holding certain systems. I know the guy was serious but there was really no reason to expect someone who wasn’t used to the militia rp lore to take that seriously.
Now it seems clear that test did make some sort of half assed effort at eha – I think because they had agents there. And maybe you did fight outnumbered but the fights I saw from that campaign on you tube showed gallente with the numerical advantage. In other words Test did not bring 2000 pilots in system and gallente held them off. But I admit I don’t really know. Maybe you did fight outnumbered against test. If I were to pick a group to fight outnumbered against Test would be near the top.

Well like I said before it wasn’t really the amarr militia but one amarr corp of 31 players that farmed kills from test when they happened to base out of the same low sec system.

I’m not sure what you mean when you say you “beat the amarr.” But yeah you probably could beat the amarr at this game of rabbit plexing. Amarr has fairly consistently been the smallest and most pvp focused militia. We don’t have an interest in the whole rabbit plexing game. But why don’t you come and see? I am sure many would like the pvp to be conveniently delivered close to home even if it is mostly blobby.





The issue is not whether you held huola. Sure that is reality. The kool-aid is when you start claiming you won all the battles when you were clearly outnumbered and kept fighting when you were outnumbered. You didn’t. When you were outnumbered you mostly sat in stations and Amarr plexed up the system unopposed.

To use your analogy we are not idiots for not drinking the kool-aid. Some koolaid drinkers might in fact be there. They are likely there despite drinking the koolaid as opposed to being there because they drank it.

Veskrashen

I think we agree on quite a bit actually.

We both agree simple math shows that you don't need home systems to take tier 4.

We both might agree that tier 5 is really not an economically sound goal.

Those are the goals set up by ccp. The rest like holding a home system are personal goals that anyone can strive for but there is no real mechanic incentive.

I do agree that holding on to your home bases allows gallente to have more power projection. And because you have a larger war zone that might have more importance. But even the caldari gallente war zone has about 20 systems that border the faction war zone. Not all have stations so you may have to go another jump from there. And some are high sec which might be a problem for some pilots below -5 (although I never really had a problem going one jump into low sec when my sec status was that low) And yes some are in enemy high sec space but again there is generally no problem bringing plexing ships one or 2 jumps in.

So from the perspective of pure occupancy gaining there are multiple places that anyone can base and have better access to these multiple border systems than your home systems would provide. Then its just a matter of grinding plex after plex after plex, for those with the will to do that. From there putting plexing ships in a few stations as you work in is not a big deal. Again if you are interested in plexing.

The problem is who wants to do that? It's extremely boring. Especially if you gain occupancy in the most efficient manner possible. That is why so many in faction war don't even bother with it. It's not that there is some big secret on how to do it.





I understand the game. The fact that 5 veteran players and a pack of 50 new players following them disagree and try to marginalize the points I raise is not a big deal.

Huge numbers of people are finding that faction war occupancy is not worth playing. Its for the same reasons. They eventually realize that the best way to gain occupancy is to get multiple alt accounts and start rabbit plexing.

XG tries to deny it and is one of the most outspoken in trying to marginalize the points I make. Yet he admits his alt deplexed 100 plexes in 2 weeks. The proof is in what you do, not in what you say.

Crosi admits plexing alts are important and has learned to embrace them.

Both of those players now say rollbacks are "no longer needed." Gallente used to have a stong emphasis on pvp and it was a gallente pilot who gave the most elegant proposal for timer rollbacks. But in the meantime gallente started getting lots and lots of alts to defensive plex. I saw this in the war zone. Caldari would oplex to farm isk. Gallente would have alts to dplex mainly for occupancy.

Well ccp boosted defensive alt plexing and that happened to help the gallente defensive plexing alt army and stunted the caldari farmers. It wasn't an intentional boost to gallente by ccp - so no I'm not tinfoil hatting, and to be clear, I don't think ccp ever intentionally tried to help a particular miltia. But this change happened to be good for the gallente defensive alt army and bad for the caldari alt army.

So now since it is defensive alts that are favored all of a sudden timer rollbacks are "not needed." As if defensive alts in plexes are any more pvp oriented.

There are 300,000 subscribers to eve. Tens of thousands of those players have tried faction war and see that occupancy mechanics need to be fixed so don't waste their time. Possibly you and the few dozen people who think its great are the ones at the margin. Even the other 20,000 players currently in faction war understand that the occupancy war with these mechanics is not something to care about.

Were you astonished when XG admitted his alt captured 100 plexes in 2 weeks?

I wasn't surprised at all.

Oh yeah here we go with the spin. Really all these d-plexing alts don't really effect occupancy, they are actually there to get fights. Right right. There are much better ways to use an alt to get fights than sitting him in a plex orbitting a button 20 hours a week. We both know that.

Oh and by the way XG himself isn't even showing as getting 780 vp for the week.

Cereain -

We actually don't agree. Case in point:

CCP does not create goals. They create incentives. It is the players who create the goals, who define the desired end state, who decide how the game they are playing in this giant sandbox will be scored.

When we say you don't understand the game we're playing, we're serious. You are playing a different game with different rules and a different scoreboard.

In your game, it's all about the LP gained and the VP gained. For us it's PvP opportunities and warzone control defined as how much of the warzone we can project power into and reasonably determine the ownership / use of.

Thus, pre-Kronos, timer rollbacks for instance were a huge deal. The alt farming hordes, combined with the ease of o-plexing, meant that the time required to take a plex compared to that to defend it was seriously out of whack. We thus narrowed our zone of influence that we'd be willing to patrol / keep at low contested levels. Timer rollbacks would have helped balance this effort / reward a great deal.

CCP went a different route, requiring a lot more commitment in terms of time / ship fit / risk / etc in order to get the lucrative rewards of oplexing. That definitely cut down the alt oplexing, which correspondingly reduced the defensive burden. Of course we keep deplexing alts on hand - that way we ensure our home systems and those being farmed in the backwaters don't get out of control. You'll note that the systems currently under pressure in our WZ are those right next to highsec, those with L5 agents, and Diesel's home system of Mantenault. In other words, areas that are considered valuable and that are being deliberately plexed higher.

Look, your WZ is different, you're using different metrics for success, you have different goals, your culture is different over there. YOU ARE PLAYING A DIFFERENT DAMN GAME. You cannot use that as a reference for how things are played in our part of the game, and the fact that you keep arguing when even our Caldari opponents are telling you you're wrong never ceases to amaze me.

Seems the way we play generates a lot more PVP than whatever you are doing, and yes, I have plexing alts.

Actually, none - but because it wasn't needed. The Caldari weren't really pushing the backwater systems hard enough. If the counter attack would have been sustained then we would have used alts as "Canaries (in a coal mine)" in that if a WT fleet came by we would then get a fleet up to go meet them. We did this one night and it worked out really well. BTW, this counter plexing technique was learned from PERVS a long time ago.

But, again, it wasn't needed. Caldari were finally defeated in Asakai and the rest turned out to be the cleanup effort that all winning sides need to do to finish off their victory. (Of course this is 20/20 hindsight now. At the time we still expected heavier resistance in Heydieles, and perhaps an Amarrian intervention in Ladistier. But.... nothing....)

Quite the opposite actually.

Bittervet tears = Best tears!