Warfare & Tactics

I'll deal with these at the same time as they're related to a single issue.

Uniformity between offensive and defensive plexing is really what FW needs, as it's from the differences that many of our current complaints arise. The need to kill a rat while offensive plexing is a rather crude attempt to simulate the difficulties in besieging a hostile stronghold, one that really isn't needed. Why artificially inflate the effort required to assault a system when the onus is already on the attacking side to initiate an often lengthy process. Relocating assets, establishing supply chains, and getting pilots in system is more than enough of a ball ache without worrying about a rat respawning every minute.

As far as the recent changes to offensive plexing go, I wasn't attempting to play down the impact they've had. Spread across 150 plexes, the time spent dealing with rats soon adds up, meaning it takes longer to plex up a system than it does to plex down. Add in enemy resistance and the defender has a clear advantage, not just in time spent plexing, but also cost and ship choice. I don't really think the increased tank was the cause of CalMil losing its plexing power though, it's an area we've always struggled with, and the chances just happened to take place when the Gallente push was building momentum. Too long at Tier 1 and the increasing profitability of switching sides is more to blame here.

I'm all for having a friendly and hostile rat in every plex. Under the current system, any change tips the balance in favour of the attacker or the defender. All allegiances aside, we should be aiming for a level playing field where the players dictate how the war is fought, not the mechanics. On paper, an unfit T1 frigate currently has a greater impact upon occupancy than a competently fit PVP ship. This fact is often missed in all the action, but it points out the flaws in FW perfectly. There's no reason why someone defending a system shouldn't be subjected to the same checks and balances as their opponents. It cuts down on the unfit, unaffiliated pilots looking to make a quick buck, and gives those of us who care about system control a greater chance of encountering these almost mythical "good fights" I keep hearing about.

Finally, Condors... I was pretty sad when I realised I couldn't go out and solo plex in one. I quickly got over it when I found out that actually bringing people along with me tended to result in more entertaining fights. You still see them around, and a solitary Condor on short at a small or medium almost always results in combat. I'm actually okay with that.

Just making plexing that is not done afk is not where I am setting the bar. Just because you have to be in a chair staring at the screen does not mean it's fun game play. The faction war occupancy game can easily be more fun and exciting than that, and ccp has indicated they will do the things to make it that way.


Ideally there should not be a need to have any npcs. Faction war should not be a carebear race to see who can kill the most red crosses. The players should defend the plexes. CCP is likely thinking the same way as they have greatly reduced the influence of npcs over the years. I think they would love it if there was pvp fighting in every plex so there would be no more need for npcs there.

The problem is players do not have sufficient intel tools to defend against people who want to rabbit plex. Chase them out and they will just go a system or 2 over and start another plex. Also without timer rollbacks even if we could easilly find exactly where people are plexing they would still potentially make gains.


CCP has indicated they intend to address both issues by giving us better intel tools and timer rollbacks . However these sorts of fixes are not as easy as giving a rat more tank or having it deliver fewer dps. So I think we received Kronos not as some thought that fw is going to be fixed but rather as a sort of easy to do stop gap. I do think players need to continue to give ccp input that these changes are still needed or it is easy for them to put it off.

Not it doesnt, it solved the greatest problem FW had ever seen. 50-100k VP per day + unrecorded diagonal plexing achieved almost exclusively by 2 day-2 week old alts causing an almost complete swing of the gallente/caldari warzone each month (or quicker with regard to swings in caldaris favor). Various iterations of plex rats have got us to where we are now, a system that seems robust enough to allow good fights while denying 2 day old evasion alts to yield 500+mil per hour.

I personally think that a defensive plex DPS check would put FW in a good place. Its a horrible fix, but the problem is its not aimed at fixing the game, its aimed at fixing the players.

Yep, ive not been on. Computer is rebuilt as of now though so ill muck in :)

My bad. didn't know that covert cats corp was on the job. :)

Yes...

Good idea 2 npcs in perpetual fights, so while deplexing you get aggro by the enemy npcs, and the ennemi npc can permanent the other npc +the actual tanking rate

Logged on, OTO is vulnerable. 15 kills in 2 hours and squids retreated to let us stabilise the system a little.

If only i had intel tools to let me know where the enemies were.

FW is totally broken!

IB4 YOU BLOBBED THEM OUT OF SYSTEM - you would be correct if 7 people could blob 15.