Warfare & Tactics

In 0.0 people just dock up and get safe, though there are some that fleet up and go after the attackers, the alliances I was in normally went after the attackers. The issue is that the more his corp fights the more people who are starved of content war dec his corp, whose main focus is industry, so what happens his corp that fights back loses a large chunk of their industry players and starts losing their capability. Its like anything if you over do it then it will break, its like when the CFC dropped a large super fleet on IRC in Cobalt Edge on the station timer, when IRC had a carrier fleet there to save teh station, everyone realised that they had no chance to fight that and just melted away.

If you keep punishing the indy corp that fights back with more decs then they will die, its as simple as that. Its like over fishing basically...

EDIT: I see you give breaks on your post above, very wise, but others do not and seeing people fighting back dogpile on them

EDIT2: The metric of success or failure for the attacker is killing an off-line POS which is easy, a on-line POS is a bit more fun.

There are pros and cons to the ally mechanic, and generally speaking it benefits me and my alliance tremendously, however I think it's bad for the game because its total one-sidedness results in it being a really terrible idea for 99% of the people in highsec to ever declare a war.

Having an ally join a war is like having someone declare war on you. Except it costs nothing, becomes active in 4 hours and lasts for as long as you keep the war active if the ally wants it to. Also the defender can publicly advertise that they can do this to you. Not to mention that there's no mechanic that facilitates escalation or retaliation in response to this in any way whatsoever.

It totally removes the specificity of the war declaration to begin with, rather than declaring war on a specific group you think you can beat you also have to factor in both their friends, the possibility of them hiring mercs as well as any other randoms who feel like jumping in on the free war party. Groups like TEST and GSF learned how declaring war post inferno was a great way to find yourself at war with every trade hub camper in the game pretty quickly.

The massive, disproportionate level of risk and uncertainty an aggressor is exposed to by the ally system, and the fact it only works one way has served to completely end war declarations as a means for the average guy in highsec to engage in combat with the other average guy in highsec, if he declares war someone like me will show up, in 4 hours, for free, and **** on his day.

War declaration changes aren't even on the table right now, so it's kind of worthless to talk about them, but I feel like the fact that the ally system only works one way is super harmful to wars as a useful mechanic because there's nothing to discourage bringing in as many allies as you want because the attacker can't do a damned thing about it.

I hear what you say and your arguments are thought through and very good, however you have to look at the state of your prey and often this is where you fall down, your prey is limited in number in terms of hisec operations that are prepared to mix it with you, also they will not unless there is something specific to defend bother buying in mercs, there is no value, the only exception is those that have a sugar daddy with vast wealth.

In terms of the ally system, it was designed to assist small guys against big guys or medium guys, in the situation I described the corp that did the war dec has 22 characters in corp, my fiend has two accounts and at the moment I have two accounts, I am an ally, they had a specific target an offline POS that is now online. Done finished, I was there as back up they are only interested in offline stuff, so nothing to see here.

Your prey needs the alliance system to even have a chance to undock, and yest there are hardly any white knights, the only thing that causes an issue is people who are desperate for fights to keep their membership engaged... and this is not just an issue in hisec.

Very good post.

Lets now look at the merc approach, the attitude is not convoy support but hunter killer, and you have multiple hunter killer targets, yet your clients want convoy support, but your members don't want to do that, of course I understand that, but you are not meeting the needs of your clients and if you did it would be as boring as hell. How do you really make this work, to be honest beats me, which is why I never bothered trying to do what you are doing, for me it was just not possible.

And people who fight back get a queue pof people war decc'ing them, because there are too many people looking for good targets and not enough prey.

I don't get war decs, and that is because I have nothing that they can pin me down on, such as a POS and I can go 0.0 or low sec no issues, not so hisec indy corps.

LOL, time for a definite statement...

The key word there is fight, F I G H T, got that, so someone war deccing and not undocking is not fighting, the art of playing Eve by not playing Eve, it seems that the pinnacle of Eve warfare is the art of stopping people from playing, something that I have been saying for some time, and amusingly a guy who makes that point in posts to the forum has his posts reported every time he says it.

Lets repeat the key part again:

this game is about fighting

So if the defender forms a fleet and is ready for the attacker to fight and they do not, is that fighting?

Personally I would rather leave it as it is, but human nature is causing an issue with this, so maybe CCP needs to set up a system where if the defender had set up a fleet and the attacker was online that they declare a contest and if the attacker does not attack then the war dec has a 2 hour countdown unless he comes out to fight. During this time they have to stay undocked and ready to fight.

There you go a FIGHT, do you want to make any more definite statements?

Its not necessarily about being risk averse or cowardice or wanting to stay in isolated pockets and never be bothered.

Lets look at a recent HS battle. Lets say my alliance (IOC) sends out a skirmishing gang to see what "The Pursuit of Happiness" puts on the field. It was almost comical when you really look at it. Armor AHACs/Cruisers/BCs/Logi vs. Ceptors/Faction Frigs/AHACs/Faction BS/Neutral logi. Didn't look for but would bet money neutral links were floating around. I'm pretty sure both sides can escalate plenty more.

Now lets look at the three big themes in the thread as whole...

1) The fight I describe above is a perfect example of the scale of difficulty issue Vimsy pointed out. Changes to wardecs broke the ecosystem and there are no "small" participants. Entertainingly people are suggesting that new corps undock in T1 cruisers and frigs. These are setups that typically won't break a single logi much less multiple.

- To the small Indy Corp that means no more "at least we got an X" morale kill

2) Multiple people have confirmed, " Indy Corps that get wardecc'd should fight back or die. Oh and BTW don't expect to ever run the content you actually want to since its Indy HS work.".

- To the small Indy corp the motivation to fight back because you might get back to go back to what you are doing is now gone.

3) War Dec alliances dec LOTS of people to get targets because so many aren't willing to fight.

- To the small Indy corp it looks like you're griefing when you're just searching for a fight, somewhere, anywhere.

I don't know how you fix #3 without doing something to alleviate #1 or #2. A mechanic where an indy corp can "win" peace through war for a bit is probably more realistic than finding a way to scale back the ships/fleets being used. This would also create more of a market for mercs because "Hey theres a point to fighting back"

In the end its still a game and you can't complain about not having people to play with if you don't give them a carrot to actually come out and play.

There is also an element of the reduced tendency of defenders to defend themselves in the prevailing fleet doctrines of highsec pvp outfits. Armor had and always will remain dominant in highsec due to a combination of the close ranges involved and because utility mids allow the fitting of anti-escape modules like webs, scrams, ECCM and sensor boosters. However there used to be a tendency to ship down to the lowest end thing you could reasonably use because that encourages a fight by concealing your actual strength. Nowadays when a serious effort to kill you almost never happens it is more advantageous to just bring whatever is most able to catch anything you can find and kill whatever it is without needing RR and without it escaping.

This means lots of tank lots of tackle and high DPS out of a fairly fast hull. Subsequently you guys get to deal with armor T3s and AHACs as the standard rather than something we ship up to if things get too real.

You want to know the solution? There shoudl be no Exclusively Indy corps. The corp system was tought and made so peopel gather and join corps into alliances and help each other. If you want to have an indy corp, you are putting a limitation on yourself, and you should not blame others.

When the enemy is above your paygrade, Hire another group. Then you talk to them and bring your t1 cruisers when there is a fight. So your members learn. SOon you might not need these mercs to any but the most critical wardecs (no one is expecting small groups using t1 cruiser to fight PoH or FA for example, but there are several lower classes of mercs that you can fight back against without help)

NO space for small players? Up to June PoH was runnign with only 5 active members, and we still wrecked havoc. It is nto about the size. It is about peopel not wantign to learn the basics.

EASILY 90% of our WT do not even have Local open while flying around. Peopel that do not ask for a corp member to go ahead in a frigate when they are moving an orca.. things like that.

A carrot you say? Sure we coudl ahve better carrots. I still think high sec POCOs and PI should make more money and minimum taxes shoudl be higher. Also The war tax should be GIVEN to the war target is they manage to win the war report balance.

the relevance is overwhelming

So let me understand you correctly.

Reasons for war in eve, dumb.

But the dumbest real life war reasons, the dumbest of them all being definitely religion, which we have been waging war for since this none sense was created, yes, that is ok....

troll thread ? If yes, I'll give you 8/10 troll rating.