Warfare & Tactics

Hey there. I’ve been tasked with a little fact finding and I’d love to get some help in this. I’ve been gathering the complaints, hopes, and dreams of members of faction warfare since I was elected and ramped it up a bit since Fanfest. There is a lot on this plate with proposals and documents and thousands of lines of productive discussion involved in looking towards Faction Warfare's future.

I’d like to take a minute to focus on the new players entering Faction Warfare. They are suggested to their various militia during the career missions. Some, we hope, will find themselves a corporation and learn. Others cast themselves into the war and plan to learn along the way.

We need to make this better.

I’ve collected lots of hurdles for new players enter FW. From the standings hits that they will take to the lack of a good overview tab to help them sort out who is friend and who is foe there are dozens of things that could make this process smoother. I’d love to hear your ideas.

I know that we have a lot of high end things to discuss from better PvP rewards to missions god help them and all of us. I’m paying attention to all of that too. But this is a point I’d like to hear from you all about. Your personal experiences, your recruiters experiences, the things that you believe will improve your militia and help inject new blood into things.

Like the faction police in high sec. Should we be laughing at them? How do we look at giving militia chat an MOTD or some type of information board with things like militia coms, overview packs, and general help? Standings, oh my oh my, standings. Should pirate frigates be in novice plexes?

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Please help me unearth the rest.

If they want to stay in a NPC corp, maybe swap them to a specific faction NPC corp, so corp chat will be amongst other people in the same militia only, this will help communication quite a bit.

Overview is one of the biggest issues I come across. As a "Security Status Challenged" individual I get many new-bro's charging into my plex and engaging when we are in same militia.

Perhaps the 'pilot in same militia' needs to override the 'Pilot is a filthy piwat'

Another one is the allied militia thing. Once they get the overview right, they then get spanked by someone they thought was friendly but is actually in the allied militia and simply uses that to gank people. I have used this trick before to get close to stabbed farmers and triple scram them. Then again they deserve to die.... horribly.

As someone previously posted, if we decouple the alliances in faction war and go for some 4-way action in FW this won't be an issue.

I think the guys above have covered most of the stuff.

Default Militia-specific overview available. Stops newbie awox issues of newbs shooting FW pilots with low standings.
Automatic suspect flag in plexes. Keeps noob standings high so they can still live in high sec.
Get rid of allied-militia purple OR hammer standings for allied militia kills (Gallente on Minmatar violence, for example).
- The current war is defined as Gallente+Minmatar vs. Caldari+Amarr.
- Either set the game up so this is true, or break it apart to a real four way war. No ambiguity.
Ban high sec station access to opposing militia. Gets rid of high sec station games (vets preying on noobs in Jita/Dodixie/Rens).

Edit: Re-phrasing to emphasize pain points for noobs:
1. Getting killed by own militia because they accidently shoot fellow militia and / or fleet mates because overview is set up poorly.
2. Sec status loss having to fight neutrals in plexes makes living in high sec very difficult.
3. Large barrier to entry for living in low sec without logistics backbone.
4. Understanding why somebody who is purple can shoot you with no repercussions. Like, WTF?!!!
5. Getting griefed in high sec by high sec camping specialists. Why are these guys able to dock in enemy systems?

Bring awareness to Highsec-lowsec camps (not intel, just their possibility)

Bring awareness to the available evasive options against camps

Introduce Militia Personal Deployables? Eg: Militia Mobile Depot - a lot cheaper, lasts 1h.

Fleet window tutorial of some kind, outlining broadcasts, fleet hierarchy, watchlists, the ability to lock from broadcasts, broadcasts going to the top of overview, etc. Functional details, so that they don't go "where did that target just go I cant see it".

Mention tunnel vision...



Gather facts tho, I get the impression that the newbies who want to actually fight in FW simply look for dedicated corps, and figure things out from there.
The ones who are stubborn and keep flying through Tama/Villore are just farmers looking for a quick buck.


Also T3Ds, whilst should definitely get canned one way or another, are hardly the first threat to newbies. Even opponents flying T1 frigs with T2 modules and higher SP will most often destroy newbies.

Some elements that would help new players in FW:

1) Very very simple, sticky the active and recruiting FW corps thread in this forum located here...https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=342520&find=unread

If you can get an in game pointer to it somehow that would be useful. This will allow new players to find FW specialist corps who don't mind new recruits quickly and learn the ropes from them.

2) Faction standings hit are a problem for new players, if they are to be kept it would be good if the players can be clearly warned that this will happen.

3) Sec standings hits are a barrier to playing FW. Pirates are an important part of the warzones however engaging them in plexes results in FW players having to constantly repair their sec status if they want to go in high sec at all. Vet players with ISK just buy tags. New pilots have to waste a lot of time PVEing in order to access trade hubs. Giving a criminal flag for entering a plex will help new pilots to stay in FW.

4) Pirate faction frigs should be banned from Novice Plexes OR Novice Plexes should be renamed. It is a misleading name when a vet in a Garmur or Worm can pulverise a squadron of new players single handed with ease. The purpose of Novice Plexes should be to allow low skilled pilots to still be able to influence a system attack/defence and level the playing field a little bit versus high sp pilots; Pirate Fac frigs (especially Garmurs and Worms) negate this purpose.

5) T3 Dessies should not be in small Plexes they have become cancer there and are not new pilot friendly.

Some of the other things raised would be useful but the above would be quick fixes to help new entrants and FW pilot retention in my opinion.

if the militia chat would have a moderated MOTD a lot of useful information could be added there
- how to setup your overview (or CCP could just update the overview defaults but they are not doing that for unexplained reasons)
- link to the FW wiki to explain plexing and basic FW mechanics (sadly the wiki is very outdated.. it would need to be updated first)
- maybe even a link which opens the corp finder with filters preset to list recruiting FW corps (if something like that is possible)

Apply FozzieSov to FW.

Good luck with this mate. And congratulations on getting what I reckon is the first and only sticky I've ever seen in this section of the forums.

What do CCP envisage for a FW newbie? Hopefully it's not the quadruple warp core stabilised ship farming novice complexes. Tell us what they are aiming for and maybe we can help. Otherwise it's all just lip service.


Perhaps CCP need to provide a lot more information or links to information about faction warfare first up on the enlistment page.
Expanding the rules of engagement could use a lot more information also.
To put this into context, our corporation bulletins have more relevant info that a new bro would find about FW than CCP provide via in game sanctioned methods.


Make it easier for new bro's to find a new-bro friendly corporations. Expanding the corporation recruitment ads could facilitate this. Include a check box for newbie friendly and the faction. Add a MOTD in the NPC chat channels directing newbies to these corporation ads might work perhaps? Make it easier for the new player to get out of the NPC corporations where they will always be met with suspicion and prejudice.



EDIT : - Please don't dumb FW down by aiming to please the lowest common denominator!

I understand your request but that is not the direction that I will find what I need. I need to know what is needed jow and what pain points there are. I don't need people to temper and try to design it. I need them to share what is said and heard and expierence from logging in each day.