Warfare & Tactics

This is a crucial observation.

1. It points to the FW population crisis (particularly of PvPer population) which is particularly felt in AvsM zone.
2. It points to the absolute dull drums in game experience now moving around in BC or BS as you "Sit in warp" between gates.
3. It's bad enough that there were hardly any roams in null-sec coz "why when I can bridge" or "why when there will be a massive bubble camp on the other side of the next gate". Something that has in part been addressed with jump fatigue.

On first thoughts, if they wanted Frigs to be faster warps to cruisers to BC to BS to Caps, then fine.

However, boost them all. Add (be it 2,3,4 or 5 or whatever suitable) au/s to top warp speed for all ships so that we don't get sick of slow boating across systems? Your fast ships will still be quicker but, none of us will be yawning whilst we cross Resbroko or another such system (omg suddenly I have more time for interactive play)


I am strongly of the opinion that the catalysing aspects of FW, that bring people into the Militia's, is currently too weighted on PvE (and specifically on accumulation of wealth through LP harvesting) against PvP and weighing in with a faction for the long war.

I think there are a lot of opportunities to alter what is already in the design to bring about a rebalance away from wealth (which is what most of the rest of Eve is about).

Starting with the bonus's given by Militia Faction Tier level (remove the excessive LP bonus's).

I think the additional numbers of novice and small plexes is a bit less significant. Assuming that the plexes are all popped as soon as they spawn the cycle time from completion to spawn to completion is 40 mins for a novice, 45 mins for a small and 50 mins for mediums and larges. Assuming we start with one of each spawned and they are all completed in optimal time, after 3 hours and 50 minutes 5 novices will have been completed, 4.5 smalls and 4 of each of the mediums and larges. So in just under four hours there are 100 VPs available for novices, 90 for smalls and 80 each for the bigger ones. That gives a very, very slight edge (30 VP in four hours or c. 7.5 VP/hour) to someone who can win all the novices and smalls but none of the meds and larges.

If your suggested VP changes were implemented the value of the novices across this period would drop to 50 VP and the smalls to 67.5, dropping the 4 hour total from 190 VP to 117.5. The mediums would stay at 80 VP and the larges would rocket up to 140, making the larges alone worth considerably more than the novices and smalls together while the meds and larges together would be worth nearly twice the value of the novices and small together (220 vs 117.5) even accounting for the slightly greater frequency of novices and smalls. So we would have a swing from the current 7.5 VP an hour edge for the side that wins all the smalls to a 25 VP an hour edge for the side who wins all the meds and larges.

Edit: If we change novices to 15 VP, keep smalls and meds at 20 and raise larges to 25 then over 4 hours the novices and smalls would collectively be worth 165 (75+90) while the meds and larges would be worth 180, giving the kind of edge to the bigger plexes that might be more in line with what you are looking for. Personally, though, I still think the edge should lie with the smaller ones as this means we avoid a foregone conclusion (no matter how slow) from dominating with the big toys.

I am 100% on board with this idea. How do we actually make this happen?

I think it should be like this:

Novice - (same as it is now)
Small - (same as it is now)
Medium - (T1 Cruisers and down, no T2 cruisers)
Large - T2 Battlecruisers and down
Unrestricted - Everything

Small plexes should continue to be quick to capture, and give small boosts towards flipping the system
Large plexes should take longer than small plexes to flip, however they provide a bigger boost towards flipping the system.

Going back a bit further in history we have a brave few GalMil pilots stopping Evoke from capturing Eha by using the kind of small ship harassment tactics we are discussing. I find myself in agreement that if we weighted Medium and Large plexes to have more impact on system capture that than Novice / Small we *would* see big Nullsec blocs exerting more influence.

On the other hand, maybe that's the only way the Squids will ever try to take our Fortress systems ever again?

You argument applies just as much now if one side is dominant. Well, calmil might not feel motivated to fight while at a disadvantage anyway.

IMO no attack will be made on the basis of holding the larger plexes. Or the smaller ones. Taking a system already takes days. Under this strategy you would be looking at a much longer timescale even with a change to VP.

I dont know about your guys but if were sat in a med with enough numbers to have a go at the novice, it would be hard to tell people to just sit in their cruisers or hte next 30 minutes doing nothing when there is targets in system. Youd be lucky to get 10 people in fleet with that sort of plan.

It is a wholly unrealistic scenario.

As for ishtars. If you guys wernt too busy moving back to high sec and started to put pressure on a few back end station systems simultaneously (as opposed to just the russians in hysera), then ishtar fleet would have achieved nothing.

In FW, regardless of VP levels, a gang of 5 dudes can take a system just as fast as a 200man ishtar fleet or whatever we were accused of. Its just a question of location.

For example, even with the numbers for VP i pulled out of my arse and based on your projections of them.

Small and novice = 117 per 4 hours
Meds and large = 220 per 4 hours

Net gain of 103 VP every 4 hours in this nightmare scenario you forse.

thats about 26VP per hour.

3000 / 26 = 115 hours. or 5 days.

I guess that is a little short scale for only taking half the plexes. I still think its an unlikely scenario but with further rationalisation of the VP rates it could be a good way to encourage more fights over the larger plexes. Assuming that is desirable.



In all honesty, the current mechanic favors the smaller plexes as has been outlined earlier in the thread. So its a question of where it should balance or if the VP should relate exactly to the time needed to run the plexes including the respawn time?

This would still yield lower VP for novices and smalls but would be cancelled out by the fact they can be run more often.

I'm still struggling with the idea of *WHY* we need to create a mechanic that encourages / forces us to use Battlecruisers specifically.

Making a gated plex for BCs and down doesn't make us use BCs, it's just another gated plex that we ship into the right type of ship for the job. Even if someone brings BCs, it's still dependent on cruiser logi which is a lot squishier than the BCs they'll be supporting. It'd basically be suicide to warp in on a brawling BC gang - logi would never make it off the warpin and wouldn't be able to hold.

I get why people want to go back to the old days to some extent, but realistically BCs still have some uses. The issue is that they're generally outclassed in those roles - T3s are more tanky, BS do more damage and are more tanky, etc etc etc.

I see no reason to create a mechanic in FW to specifically support a ship class like BCs.

The idea isn't about a create forcing mechanic that usage of BCs. It focuses on balancing in related mechanic.



You miss the point of BCs specifications don't fit for unrestricted large FW plexes. Beside I can't see any problem bringing BCs in a gated plex for capturing? Long time ago it was like that and it worked well untill CCP changed it.



This depends your game style. Not only FW players using those mechanics also non FW players are using them for PVP.

Not sure I want to fight napoc blobs in plexes already setup at range with logi and t3 support.... Honestly the fact is at the moment big stuff is still useful, even if it is less common than frigs. I mean last night we were in Prophicies fighting typhoon fleet issues and other assorted stuff.... We tried to fight in a large plex and they wouldn't so we fought on a gate (we are mostly outlaw they weren't so they wanted gate guns in the mix I guess). These fights do happen, and they are fun when they do but if FW was all about faction battleships then I am a lot less interested.

The bigger issue behind the FW and the "plague of small ships running around" does have a direct correlation with system capture and flexing. As many have already made it very clear in this thread, having a smaller ship sized fleet is better because you can find fights in all of the plexes.

What the OP is saying about making mediums and to a larger extent larges more relevant so that you find bigger ships in them does hold merit, but I don't think readjusting them to make the larges and mediums for that matter more valuable isn't going to change anything. As others have said, just because it can let larger ships in doesn't mean larger ships are going to be used. That has more to do with players mentality and you can't just change that; i.e. I brought a Domi to run a large plex and was greeted to squids reshipping to cruisers, BCs, and a T3 to fight 1 BS (they had 9 come).

The solo heaven is still there in the FW zone, but changing the plex mechanics to make bigger ships more valuable isn't going to work because people are becoming/have already become to risk adverse (whatever the reason that may be....inflation, nerfed incomes, crappy insurance, etc).


The answer you're looking for is probably increasing the range of the bubble so that larger ships have more room to position themselves for a fight; i.e. I can bring a cruise raven and sit 70km off the warp in, but still within range of capturing the plex. Now I can position myself that doesn't automatically make me have to be brawl fit since I can't really outrun anything when I'm already "at 0". I know this has an adverse effect on farmers being able to run plexus from further out (essentially always being out of point range from everything and means Force Recons are completely useless in FW