Warfare & Tactics

Translation: There's not that much difference between some people being able to shoot you, and everyone being able to shoot you. Also, here are some ways you should adapt to the change that's supposed to help you.

It won't bug neutrals at all, they already go suspect in plexes, and all this does is stop them from taking a sec status hit for doing so. What it will do is ensure no neutral fleet ever takes a fight in a plex again. All they need to do is wait long enough for a militia fleet to dive into a plex, wait a jump or two away and engage without worrying about gate guns. Neutrals can adapt to us being permanently flagged as suspects, our solution is to leave FW so we don't need to enter plexes.

I've seen plenty of fleets avoid a fight on a gate because of gate guns, given a choice between taking them yourself and forcing your enemy to take them, which would you choose? Most fleets that roam the warzone are frigate and destroyer gangs with little or no logi, occasionally a cruiser gang with logi that still won't take a fight on a gate who will currently warp to and/or enter a plex to fight you without the hassle of gate aggro. You're asbolutely right though, you'll see them coming with a competent scout, but it still leaves the militia pilots (you know, the people this "fix" is supposed to help) at a significant disadvantage anywhere that isn't a plex.

As for your final question, I'd still oppose it. Any solution that penalises me for doing my job is not a solution. Personally, I'm happy with how things work at the moment, but since this is apparently going to be a thing, I'd rather it wasn't a thing that ruined FW.

What is wrong in giving aggression timer, instead of suspect timer?

Let's think about a different approach. What is the problem? FW pilots tank sec status if agressing neutrals first within a plex, which is perceived unfair. From what I understand from CCP comments, suspending sec hits in certain regions or for certain player groups would need a major code rewrite. Other discussed fixes sound dirty ... so what about giving FW pilots a privileged access to sec tags? For example Concord could give them a discount in the number needed and fee to boost the status back to 0.

Great, I (am neutral) would kill plex rats all spare time.

there is allways a way ... just ignore the rolleplaying part

How would that hurt stabbed farmers? They don't shoot back anyways and just roll over and die while rolling in dosh, LP and killrights WHILE maintaining their current sec status.

I think this feeling is exactly what many in faction war go through. They think they are signing up to fight for some sort of reason. And then they find they are just pirates that get lp. I certainly went through it when I started faction war. My best friend started in faction war about a month ago and I was talking to him on the phone and he says something like: "you know I noticed no one really cares about actually winning sov. We go into plexes just for fights. I mean its ok and like the pvp but I don't see any difference between us the neutrals we are fighting much of the time."

I think this sort of dissillusionment is a considerable problem. If faction war is to remain piracy with lp bonuses and station lock out negatives that would be unfortunate but ok. Just don't make people think it is more than that.

The current plex mechanics have a lot going for them. They may very well be one of the best small scale pvp mechanics in the game. But they do need some tweaks to really make gaining territory for your faction fun.

I posted a thread in features and ideas that involves that topic. I won't copy them here because they are not all for new players. They are for all fw players who think it might be good to fight for sov.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=6038178#post6038178

Ok thanks for your opinion, it is valid, and shared by many. But understand that allot of people do want fighting for sov to be the reason to join faction war. (although many of them are no longer in fw because fighting for sov is not fun) The thing is, CCP can make both sides happy. They can improve the sov system to make fighting for it a valid reason to be in fw. Those who are in faction war for other reasons can just enjoy having more pilots involved in the game. If you want to roam around and do random pvp with the occasional system push you still can. It's a win win.




The problem with ambitions to hit higher tiers is that in order to achieve those ambitions you have to do boring grinds. Unfit frigates in defensive plexes and multiple alts in o-plexes. CCP can tweak the mechanics to change this so that fw occupancy warfare involves much more exciting and challenging pvp.



I agree its open for discussion. But I doubt people leave faction war because the rewards aren't good enough. The problem is there are no long term goals that are fun to achieve. If fighting for sov was fun CCP wouldn't even need to add rewards. I think that is what they envisioned when fw came out and there were no rewards. Now CCP gave tons of rewards and people can't see past the isk to understand if the sov war is actually fun to wage.


At this point you are telling everyone they shouldn't find anything fun other than what you find fun. As for me I do not think it is fun when the enemy fails to defend their system. It's boring.

Sounds self contradictory and somewhat toxic - what SHOULD the reason for being in FW be then, if not for sov? If it's for the PvP, there are much better prospects than FW, for a broad variety of reasons. If its LP, then FW just breeds aversion to risk and encounters. Not saying there is a right or wrong - just that each of these choices will bring out certain behaviours that we may or may not like/want to be part of FW.
One of the primary endorsements to be in FW is the advertised "earn as you go and kind of PvP" method of wealth accumulation, which is attractive to PvP focused newbros because it supposedly lets them kill two birds with one stone. Except the system does not successfully achieve to fuel itself with a need for combat, in fact it does the opposite. Farmers are one thing, but even players that desire fights freuqently would prefer to just blueball.

Long plex timers are one of few reasons for that. The discouraging mechanic is manifested when you lose a plex fight, because you lose twice, the hull and the control over the plex. Control over the plex is partially measured in time invested. You could argue one can reship and comeback, but the time will already be lost and there is no guarantee that you will recover the plex ownership. This puts a strain on the plex occupant, where he must toss up the value of the time invested plus his potential hull loss against the value of the somewhat vaguely possible victory in the advancing encounter imposed by the guy on the other side of the gate.

For whatever reason, there exists a mechanic that may cause the assailant to lose interest in occupying a partially run plex (if only all of us had the fortitude that Moglarr has). On what occasion is it not the smarter decision to employ a strategy that makes this happen? You don't lose the hull, and any time spent on warping in/out seems fictional in comparison to the time spent orbiting the beacon and spamming D-SCAN whilst waiting for a favourable match-up. Losing the hull may sound trivial in value (and likely is in the grand scheme of things), but you mentioned yourself once in the farmer discussion, that the pain is in the logistics, which never gets better, even when "living close to the fight", because that is still docking/undocking/gate jumping/warping to safe/d-scan for encounters. And the more interest you demonstrate, the more reasons you give your previous opponent to stay "and fight and have fun" which to most feels more like harassment.

To end the rambling, the justification for shorter plex timers is that with a lower time investment comes less attachment. That's not to say that the chasing you mention is not a risk of this. But with less time invested lost due to a PvP loss and consequent loss of plex ownership has the opportunity to inspire a more laid back attitude towards losing a PvP encounter in general, hence encouraging more people to stay and fight.

For example quarter the timers (and rewards) for a novice; if one is successful in finishing the first 3 quarters and is contested on the last quarter, with comparison to current timers, it is obvious that in the latter scenario he stands to lose more. Whilst the negligible commitment in the former case is grounds for "giving it a try".

This can be argued both ways, like, a bigger risk/reward is what inspires people to stay and fight, which may be true, but the current evidence points to the opposite, since people demonstrate a lack of commitment to giving the contestant a reason to go at it.

Another positive point with shorter timers is rolling them back becomes less painful. For the same quarter timer, rolling back and closing slightly less than 5 minutes is far less agonising than slightly less than 20...

On the flip side, it does introduce an all-or-nothing pressure for the groups that compete over the vulnerability bar. The timers now allow for mounting a counter-attack in the event of a loss. Shorter timers will likely prevent that from being a concern. Shorter timers will also likely have to be followed with a reduction in VP contribution, which will reduce the value of losing a plex in the context of system control. The majority don't actually go to a plex to get conflict. It's just a side bonus, and only in the event of a favourable match up. And that's something that should change. People should go plexing to get a fight.

EDIT: I did a thing with the keyboard and the writing and then the POST button pressing
I probably shouldn't have