Warfare & Tactics

It just happens that the rats spawn at range and you need a weapon system that can shoot far. If the rats would spawn closer, you could prolly use a ship with closer range guns... Caracal has ability to shoot at long range and short range, thats prolly why Damar chooses to use it and missile weapons in general. I don't really see the problem here...

If having trouble with the rats, take someone with you who takes care of the rats. Or go plex with Damar :)

... and people like this keeping me out of the main stream of the miltiia politics ... and gods of eve knows I was in the middle of the main **** for too long. Later I found it is possible to have fun, corp buddies and kills without swimming in pool of this.

... stop talking, start flying, killing, dieing .... once u there start talking again ... silently, few words, some smack .... just my 5 cents.

I think the key here is that a very vocal minority of one says that you can't pvp in plexes with pvp ships even though there are several people in here stating that they can and do pvp in plexes with pvp ships all the time.

The vocal minority of one has asked for a consensus:

The consensus is that you can fight in pvp ships inside plexes, and the people who have expressed this have given plenty of examples of how to do it. (CCP really has adressed many of the issues w.r.t plex warfare). You can't always pvp in YOUR favorite pvp setup that's appropriate for some other type of combat, but that's a "you" problem.

They've pretty much fixed plexing warfare. You get fun fights, if you want to conquer a system you can. With the increased availability of plexes, afk plexing alts cannot shut you out of contributing to the cause.

Nowadays, the only real complaint people have about the Occupancy war is rewards/consequences/meaning. As with 0.0 Sovereignty, players want some sort of benefit from taking over systems. This could be something like 5% increase in rewards in that system, Decrease in taxes on station services (station switches faction loyalty, you can now reprocess your loot at 100% efficiency for example), rights to mine moon goo in that low sec system, increase/decrease HP of all friendly/enemy POCOs or POSes in that system, etc... (no need to argue these suggestions, they are just examples,)

The vocal minority of one has also asked us to stay on topic:

In all honesty, it seems we've been trolled by the CSM and CCP. The idea of elections to force null sov politics in militia is really that bad. CCP ought to continue to implement Jan's todo list. Bouncing ideas off the current CSM has proven to be a waste of time. We need to get Jan on the next CSM.

CCP is on the right track in the CSM minutes w.r.t. rewarding the Occupancy Warfare. However, it looks like they are trying to figure out a way to distribute the rewards.

What I'd suggest is that they use the victory points statistics (generated daily by CCP) to distribute the rewards. Give the monetary reward to the pilots/corps(/and now alliances) that do all hard work. Gets rid of alts in militia who contribute nothing, doesn't allow army of alts to disrupt an elections and siphon off all the rewards to one group that contributes nothing otherwise.

good now FW pilots can't just do what they want and make stupid ammounts of isk. they actually have to defend or gain territory.

Wheres my love?

Wrong. I never said you can't pvp in plexes with pvp ships. Many of my fights are in them.

I said the npcs in plexes tend to work against pvp. There is an important distinction. The plexes *themselves* can be great tools to bring about pvp. Its the rats and lack of a notification system when plexes are taken that make it so plexing is mainly a pve activity.

So the issue is "do the npcs in plexes tend to increase the pvp in plexes, decrease the pvp in plexes or are they irrelevant?"

I have read these forums long enough to know that my view that the npcs decrease the likeliehood of pvp is not a "minority view."

Since ccp has never done anything about it, many have left plexing because it continues to be a stupid mainly pve mechanic. Just because a few people say yeah you can kill the npcs by using missiles spam and rails doesn't mean they think npcs increase the amount of pvp in plexes.

Here is a quote from June of 2008 from ank:


"As predicted, it took less than a week to achieve the maximum faction warfare rank (Divine Commodore), for the Amarr Empire in this case.....111 faction warfare complexes were captured in the process, ....
I did not kill anyone in the process, although I have fired on some people to scare them off. Your new Divine Commodore is a moral objectionist."

This sums up why fw plexing is broken. Nothing has really changed that would effect this. There were many more people doing plexing at that time than there are now so if anything it would be even easier to do plexes pve style now.

But is pve style the most efficient way to do plexes? Yes. I know it is.

People say well you can fit rails or use missile spam boats with either larger shield buffers or armor reps. But the point is you are limitted in what you can fit if you are doing offensive plexes. If plexign ever gains in popularity again the people coming in will know this. Plus you will have the rats hitting you. This is why allot of people were turned off by plexes.

Now others have said well then just bring friends. Now this answer is the answer to everything in eve right? Get in a bigger group. Larger groups will lead to more quality pvp fights right? Sorry but your arguing with math. The larger a group gets the less likely you are going to find a similarly powerful group that will give you a good fight. (at least assuming you don't do a prearranged fight) This is just statistical probabilities.

Let me explain how this works in practice based on what I did last night:

Last night I did some plexing for a few hours. I was looking for a pvp fight. Now I was in a pvp buffer tank fit so i couldn't tank the offensive rats without them chewing through my tank. (yeah I know I haven't moved down my armor reppers or missile launchers yet )

Now if I had a pve fit I could have stayed right there and knocked out about 10 plexes no problem. No one would have even known I was there (which is another problem- we need a notification system)

But I was looking for a fight so I went closer to the front lines. I went into vard. I saw about 5-10 enemy militia in local. With several ships on scan. I was in a vexor. So entered a medium defensive plex and started running it. I saw only destroyers and bcs on scan. I ended up closing that one so I went in another medium. Then I started seeing some cruisers.

I have had quite a few good fights with this enemy corp so I was thinking I would get a good fight.

What came in? Rupture thrasher and blackbird. I have sat there being permajammed and died too many times. If they would have just came with the rupture and thrasher it would have been great. I warped out thinking that was overkill.

But was it? I mean if the rats would have done the damage the equivalent of a cruiser then it wouldn't have been overkill. The enemy didn't know how many rats there were. How much damage are these rats going to do? **** if I know.

So there you have it they brought their "group" which perhaps was just intended to compensate for some unknown amount of rat damage and it lead to me thinking they overshipped and warping out.

The most efficient way to do plexing is still to get in a pve ship and avoid pvp just like ank did. Instead of doing 1 plex I could have stayed in back waters and done over 10 plexes in the same time. If for whatever reason CCP does something so people really start to care about plexing again then pve fits and warping out if the enemy comes will still be the way to go again.

Something about doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Nothing has really changed from the time ank did all those plexes back in june 2008. People who think all well now if people start to care about plexing like they did back then it will all of a sudden be all about pvp instead of pve are crazy. Nothing has changed to turn it from pve to pvp.

That "stupid amount of isk" by those who merely farm isn't reliable. It can be a lot, but there's a decent amount of harassment in both warzones (Amarr/Min a bit more due to number of systems) to make it unpredictable when you can crank out 100 mil+/hour.

Cearain, stop using that ridiculously outdated quote for Goddess sake, it lost its relevance ages ago.

It hails from back when we all purposefully hunted for bugs and loop-holes in the hopes of iteration of the "Brand New Thing™", plexes were farmed for the free BPC's from the Navies and people were still openly asking what ship could go in what plex (ie. the good old days )
Nowadays farmers have moved to missions and plexes have only just begun being run in anything resembling a continues fashion (week after week, not DT related) due to the plex spam mechanic.

Some NPC's hinder PvP more than others, just imagine the ECM spam world the Gallente have to live in, and they are in all cases fairly easy to avoid within a plex if you know who/what you are engaging .. obviously some fits/hulls will be more affected than others but it is just as much the pilots choice as it is the NPC's themselves.
That simple fact is one of the reasons why FW has just about all possible fits flying around when plexing is ongoing as range is often preferable to pure gank.

Back on topic:
There is no hope of getting anyone onto the CSM unless the null monkeys wants it .. they proved once and for all just how stupidly flawed CCPs "system" is by essentially hijacking the council.
In the minutes they spoke out against the vote transfer idea because it is too :obviousexploitisobvious:, but also against the idea of "parties" which has the potential to introduce variety to the council again .. the only concept that is a direct threat to their fledging hegemony.
In short: As long as CCP takes the fail CSM's spin as 'truth', we and Eve as a whole will suffer dearly.

To be fair I quite like the idea of an elected militia leader or command position.

The problem with that is like almost everything CCP try to do in good spirit, it will be abused by some(thing) awful players and become more of a hindrance than a help.

Regarding alliances in FW; again I like this idea, and unlike many here I doubt that any major alliances will up sticks and move from 0.0 to lowsec for FW for any long period. The issue however is more alliances like PL that have no real home in 0.0 (because of their choice not to) that will just use the FW area as a lol 'staging' area like PL do with Amamake as current.

A lot does depend on the new plex capture mechanics, and again unlike most of you I hate the current system and don't feel it has some awesome unlocked potential for producing epic frigate/dessie whatever fleet battles. I'd much rather see the core pvp mechanics looked at to make such fleets/fights more popular and viable than making more 'staged' areas for such fights.