Warfare & Tactics

Not sure if it's been said....

What about ship size specific sites?

Like a Cruiser only, Battleship only, Battlecruiser only but the incentive would come from it rewarding the winners with a higher % towards the holding/taking of the system.

They'd have to be random. Maybe have a setting where if the system goes 60% contested or over then they will randomly become available?

Then that wouldn't make it nullsec. Poor analysis by using apples to oranges comparison. Not sure why you're so risk averse to bigger ships in lowsec. It just means more pvp opportunities for all playstyles

Why not balance it so that every plex counted the same, accounting for time spent in it? My issue is that larger ships are really just outside of the ship lexicon for a lot of FW pilots. I realize it's not as much an issue for us but that's because we're a coalition of groups that have been working together for ages. Pilots who are outside the group have really no incentive or need to be able to fly anything bigger, which maybe works for them, but ultimately it makes it harder to integrate these people into the mainstay militia groups because they're not used to flying bigger doctrines. It's even a problem among the bigger groups because when we do use larger ship types, a lot of pilots simply don't understand how to fly them properly in a fleet because (and yes I'm being charitable here) they rarely use them.

Even in my corp, which is a militia mainstay, a lot of guys groan when we do system pushes because it basically means the largest thing they'll fly is an Ishtar, and even that isn't that common. At the moment, the plex war favors the side who has the most numbers, because an opposing side that brings cruisers to counter the dessy blob gets sandbagged from inside the smalls and novices. Generally, the only way to truly eliminate a numbers advantage is to upship, but with the plex restrictions, and the weighting off novices/smalls vs. mediums/larges, the outnumbered side really has no opportunity to even the fight a bit by upshipping. At least by weighting the mediums/larges towards the more impactful end of the spectrum would mean that you would have to seriously weaken your force to be able to contest even 3 of the 4 plex types, whereas now, upshipping really doesn't help you all that much.

I guess my issue is really that the weight of the VPs per plex overincentivizes certain fleet comps. I want FW play to include all ship types effortlessly, instead of us having to essentially go outside the FW framework to (lets be honest here) have infrequent fights with larger ship types.

IMO smaller ships are preferred for three reasons:
1. Cost
2. Logistics
3. Smaller ships can enter larger plexes, but not vice-versa.

This is not a bad thing. Larger-sized ship fights can happen at POCOs and POSes, for example. However, it would be nice if there was a BC/BS sized plex that was immune to hot drops so guys could "Get their BS on" without looking over their shoulder all the time. Something like an already-existing deadspace anomaly that is currently used for exploration farming.

Bash poco/pos.
Arrange batphone.
Form precious BS for lame assed timer.
See who has the biggest trump card.
Loot or flea field.
If you are lucky collect your 400m isk per month moon goo.

As far as plexing is concerned, there is not many people who have the isk to engage in a war of attrition with 200m + BS and 300m+ guardians. Im just gonna come right out and say it bluntly, theres more fun to be had and its more of a piloting challenge to apply useful DPS with a derptron that it ever could be with a Megathron. Anyone that can fly a derptron well is basically a pro megathron pilot. But not ay all the other way round.

God I wish this were true lol. You should rewatch some of our pvp videos with bs fights. I find myself yelling at the screen constantly when I do. I still don't see why larger ships should be relegated to timer fights (which suck). Sure not everyone can finance those kind of losses, but we're talking about only 25% of the available plexes. It's not like you would be SOL assuming you couldn't afford to lose some BS (and I really don't think it would be that big a deal with insurance and no blingy fits).

We already use 200m+ HACs and 300m+ guardians for plex fighting, why are BS so different?

You have nice ideas but I was in FW for half a year and I can confidently say that a plex change won't encourage pilots to get into bigger ships.

The mindset of a FW pilot is different from that of lowsec or nullsec pilots. Both good and bad.

Didn't CCP make it so that medium plexes would allow T2 HACs inside about a year ago? And then they buffed NPC rats so that you had to get a bigger ship with more DPS. How much have those changes encouraged bigger ships? Probably a bit. But never enough to the satisfaction of pilots who want bigger ship fights.

My observation is that FW pilots are highly focused on their KB efficiency and so are *generally* speaking, averse to bigger stuff which makes them look bad. I hear it all the time on fleet comms. I also noticed that there are alot of Gallente corps who do logistics for other pilots. This is really great to helping integrate newer and younger pilots into your militia. But the downside is that they are now dependent upon you guys to give them ships all the time. I was in a couple of your fleets and I was shocked to see you guys having to give out Cruisers, HACs and logistics to pilots because they were too lazy to bring their own in. That's just embarrassing. This along with other issues is part of the reason you won't get the constant big ship fights you are wanting. Just accept FW for what it's meant to be; constant small ship battles.

I think it is smart to have a wide variety of ships to play with and ship to whatever the situation dictates. There is no reason not to have a doctrine for it because not all situations dictate it. There is no reason why GalMil shouldn't have a NavyMega doctrine and use it when needed. For example last month when we dropped Legions on a POS you guys were hitting with Ishtars. We were outside quick reship range and standard capital support range. If GalMil would've shipped too short range Megas and brawled us the fight wouldve been in their favor, instead they docked up screamed blue in local and smack came from both sides. While this doesn't apply to plex fights I think it would be smart to open up the array of ships that you have to use, not everyone is ok using the standard atron/ishtar combo all the time, and players should be rewarded for the desire to ship up for the occasion.

You make it sound like this isn't an issue that was solved before plex changes when BS/BC roams were a norm, the small ship plague only happened since the plex changes. In fact it is now easier for a player who doesn't have the sp or the time to mission to make isk because of plex payouts. When I was in GalMil I had BS (that weren't fdu LP) in Nis/Nenna/Vlill. Saying you "cant" do it is either 1)lazy 2)lack confidence in your pilots 3)lack confidence in your logistical chain.

And people should get rewarded for putting in the effort. Corp Hanger provides logi so that will always be covered and pilots spend ~200m (Ishtar price) each to have assets in staged systems that could give you a strategic advantage.