Warfare & Tactics

The problem is that what is being proposed is adding more plexes with gates that accomodate larger ships. That's not a reason to use BC/BS, unless there's something in those plexes that requires the use of ships that big. In addition, forcing the use of larger ships via game mechanic has incredible knock-on effects due to sustainability. Unlike nullbears and piwats, we don't just PvP on occassion for a few hour long fleet - we're fighting constantly. That means we go through hulls like candy, especially in system pushes. You're ignoring the logistical burdens and the impacts on WZ control that come with making larger plexes more valuable.


FW is about small ships because it's the one area of EVE where you can actually be effective in small ships on a regular basis. There's no special snowflake scenario that has to happen for your T1 frigate to be effective. You're free to roam and fight in BS/BC/HAC/T3 all you want, and you will get fights. But you're not required to do so in order to be competitive in the WZ - and that's a very very good thing indeed.

Not everyone wants to play a game where the price of admission is a Command Ship / T3 / BS. Let us have the game we love and go back to nullbearing.

The OP can be summed up as 'the only ship i ever want to fly is a megathron'.

I dont see many other people griping.

Just still lives in a black rise where he gets a few massive dust-ups each week. There are places that you can still do that. If you can for a large enough fleet you can still do that in our area. But he wants to shoehorn larger ships into mechanics that are already functioning better than any other area of eve.

Its just not possible.

It may or may not become necessary to use BS to plex. But it really is just a question of need.

Pretty sure that's not his argument.

If a lot of people that are bled out want to use big ships they already can and people already do that.

In which case it prolly means that they are bled out for entirely different reasons other than not having a BS size plex for them to sit in whilst their enemy can't compete and then blame them for being "too stubborn to upship".

That's exactly why I left. The way I saw it was it is easier to put my +100 sp main into a BS pew pew corp, then get or train a low SP character that can do cruiser pew pew and do both. It's not like I don't solo or run small gang stuff, I've put myself in a position that I can do both.

FW is an amazing beast that I love dearly, would be interesting to see what small changes would do to dynamics (larges being worth more VP for example).

I get it, I really do. After a while you want to stretch your limits beyond solo stuff and plex warfare, and bigger badder ships is the way a lot of folks choose to do it.

I'm just doubtful that changing FW plex mechanics to achieve that goal - by forcing / "incentivizing" the use of larger ships - is the way to go. I feel there's too many negative consequences from such a move that would leave the warzone more stagnant, and that would essentially lock general militia folks out from having any real meaningful role in WZ control. We'd essentially be relegating them to farming for LP via missions and plexes, without having a notable effect on system contested percentages.

It'd also give a huge boost to defensive plexing, since any mechanic that introduces larger plexes with higher LP payouts, which are also worth more VP, would still be able to be run by unfitted empty T1 frigates on 1 day old plexing alts. That's definitely not a mechanic that needs to be encouraged any more than it already is.

Like a lot of folks have said, there's a place in FW for BC/BS at the moment - taking down strategic structures. The issue there is your crew and others like it, to be honest - no reason to field BS just to have you drop faction BS with triage and supers on standby. If ya'll would quit hillariously overcomping everything that came out to fight, you'd probably see BS/BC get a lot more use.

The jump isn't just from cruisers / HACs up to BC/BS, it's from Cruisers / HACs to Faction BS + Triage + Blap Dreads + Supercarriers. The fact that BC/BS aren't worth fielding if you can't counter the inevitable escalation is the bigger issue - folks might even use them more often in ongoing system pushes to lock down Larges if they weren't such a big draw for all the neutral crews around.7

If people are bored enough to drop T3's and supers on a random cruiser blob what do you think will happen when one of the militias undocks a BS fleet?

Most people in FW have neither the desire nor the resources to feed Megathron killmails to Snuff on a regular basis. I'll fly an Ishtar because at least that's mobile enough to have a chance at escape if things get squirrelly.

"Changing VP payouts to fall directly in line with the time it takes to complete a plex would be a good change though and would address the current problem of novices and smalls yielding faster progress than the meds and larges."

This seems like a good compromise position, and has the added benefit of making sense.

and he should feel free to go to null, to be honest.

I still hold onto the dream that this can be done to a FW corp. This being that a FW corp can be both good at solo/small gang and large "elite pirate" (ala the big 3 lowsec of Snuff/SC/OE) fleets. I have been trying to achieve this for a very long time and every time we got close (-FU-) we failed due to disagreements from the two sides. QCATS was great at the small gang/solo, but the everything is optional attitude drove away our "large fleet" FCes who could never get enough pilots to log in for their fleets.

Those disagreements are that the solo/small gang guys are too ADD to stay docked up or Titan humping and would rather chase a T1 frig in a novice plex. The fleet guys get PISSED when they lose 10 dreads because the dread pilot reships to a T1 frig for a bit to chase a target. We then get into the "If you are online and NOT on the Titan you will be booted" vs the "I'll do what I want whether that be sit docked in my dread, in my T3 on the titan, or in a T1 frig running around". The main problem is that unless a corp magically starts with a large enough population of both groups, it wouldn't work. The corp/alliance culture will push one way or the other in a mutually exclusive way.

There are a whole lot of FW corps who would love to see the same thing - a GalMil coalition that's willing and able to step up and fight the big lowsec groups on their own terms (or something close to it). Finding that right balance between pushing for the big timer fights and giving folks space to pursue their own goals is a wicked b*tch indeed.

When BOHICA was in militia, we definitely made some progress in that direction - but folks quickly got burned out, there were some cultural frictions, and comms coordination wasn't the best as well.

At the moment, GalMil is at the point where we can take groups like WAFFLES and Vox Populi on roughly even footing and com. SNUFF is still a bit out of reach, but we're at the point where we can force them to escalate to Triage support or they lose fleets. Getting up to a point where we can take T3s / Absolutions is one thing - getting to where we can fight multiple Triage supporting Faction BS (all the while knowing Supers are on standby) is quite a leap.

We'll see how things play out I guess - especially considering we still have to keep CalMil in check while we do it.