Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Whilst I realise that some want HS to be a safe zone, and Some want the easiest possible kills with the minimum of effort, neither of which is good for the game. They both will dislike this suggestion. Please Do not bother raging, you have all had your say a thousand times.

Wardecs are a neccesary conflict mechanism in Eve, and basically the only practical way to remove a structure in HS.

So.

To make it simple to implement and avoid unnecesary work around rules and conflicting mechanisms I suggest the following.

1. Nuke the current wardec system from orbit. Nothing carried forward. Start with a clean slate.
(Existing assets artwork and page design can of course be reworked and reused.)
2. Any opposition structure owned by the agressor or defender can be attacked for the period of a week for the price of war declaration. These costs can be based on the current rates or the number of structures owned. Or ideally a new combination, rising the more structures the agressor has. (At least one HS structure must be owned by both parties to declare war)
3. Any pilot involved in the war can have free fire on any other party involved in the war. (Not own side) but ONLY in a system with an involved structure.
4. The war DOES NOT APPLY outside of these systems.
5. No ship outside the war may participate unless joining the war for the entire remaining period of the declaration. (Renewals require choosing whether to rejoin the war. )
Neutral logi must join war before engaging. (So YES you can join a war on the attackers side after the war has started, but as an individual ONLY, there is a small cost to avoid wardec fee manipulation)
6. Due to the length of war declaration, there is an argument for not having the armour repair reinforced period, during a war. (ie shield and structure timers only). This is a balance decision that should be made purely by CCP. Timer decisions are important, and should be intuitive and consistent.

This will encourage those who wish to fight, but NOT feed easy kills. Players will know where to find players.

This is simple, enables groups like RVB to continue, encourages player interactions, a much better idea than artificial battle arenas, and both sides have the risk of loss in the war.

This allows and encourages PVP in highsec in a sane, balanced and consistent manner. Not requiring a raft of conflicting rules and minimising developer design and implementation effort.

It is an EXTREMELY simple system, that can generate complex interactions. Do not underestimate the power and capabilities of a simple system. It is the core of sandbox play.

The structure is simply the item that defines a system as a war combat system, of course, that MAY be one's target, or one May wish to disrupt supply lines or blocking an ice field by placing a structure in a war. But It is not a necessary goal.

But It doesn't make the trade hub undock a free for all murderzone, if thats your war goal.
That's deliberate.

And of course if one declares 100 wars, and drops an astrahaus in Niarja, to make it a free fire warzone, you might have a little risk If they all got together to blow it out of space? After all, they can all see when it is becoming vunerable,

I do encourage you to read point one, this is NOT fiddling around with the mechanics, it is a clean slate, so please don't say we already have "x" workaround/exception, because it isn't working. All those fiddly workarounds and exceptions, would be swept away. Everyone from the noob to the occasional HS Visitor or "elite HS PVPr" will have access to the same, simple clear Knowledge.

Is there an involved structure in system Y/N

The greatest change, Is someone who declares war, now has skin in the game, and the more wars he declares, the greater the exposure to risk, and can't just hide in a station when they fight back. It could lead to some epic battles. Amongst engaged, excited motivated people. Making PVP in HS a desireable goal not being regarded as the actions of an abuser, never mentioned in polite company

Hi, as a highsec wardeccer, I can say with quite a decent amount of certainty, that your way of solving wars will not work, at all.

Please see this post for something that I consider to be a tad bit better: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=501030&find=unread

I like your out of the box approach. I don't like the 1 system limit to the war dec. I envision 2 things.

1 - ships piled 50 high on the gates into the system. Fights happen on the gates with the ability to de-agress and jump out of the war (for a short time by leaving the system).

2 - roping off 1 system for conflict would allow either side to go about their normal business in all of Eve except that one system.



The scrap it all and start over approach may not be a bad idea however if you are trying to propose a legitimate solution you could go about it a lot more clearly. You need to list the problems (as you see them) with the current war dec system and propose new mechanics that remove said problem. You're just too vague. I'll pick one that you have touched on and show you how to propose a solution.




Problem: neutral logistics interfere with the conflict and is a cheesy mechanic that allows players to hide their fleet strength in a perpetual manner.

Solution: neutral logistics are allowed, however - once a neutral character remote repairs a party involved in the war dec system - that neutral pilot goes from neutral to flagged as a combatant. Now flagged as a combatant in the aid of corp/alliance the no longer neutral pilot may be aggressed by any pilot that is at war with the party he aided as a neutral.

Details: A neutral pilot that aids a party involved in a war dec is now open to combat from all involved war decc'd parties for the duration of the aided parties involvement in war decs. I'll give an example: I see 20 VMG pilots getting their patoots kicked on the perimeter gate in jita by a solo pilot (we'll call him Holysheet1 just for giggles). I feel bad for VMG and decide to give them a little remote repair love in hopes that they don't lose their entire fleet to 1 man in a caracal. As soon as my first rep lands on a VMG pilot I become open to aggression by all pilots at war with VMG. I remain open to aggression until a time when VMG has no active war decs that they have initiated. This gives VMG the option to go war free for a period of time to reset my combatant status - my little sister wouldn't be able to continually lol dec VMG just to keep my combatant status alive - VMG would have a way to reset the status of neutrals that have aided them. Aiding someone is defined as remote repairs, remote cap transfer, remote sensor boosting.

This would make sense for several reasons.
1 - if you're so bad at eve that you accidentally remote aid VMG - you deserve to be subject to aggression by their dec'd parties.
2 - I remember my first kiss, first handy and that time in the back of my parents station wagon quite clearly. It makes no sense that CONCORD and everyone at war with VMG 'forget' that I aided VMG just because I warped away for 15 minutes. That makes no sense at all. If you can warp time and space routinely in Eve, it's reasonable to assume that you can access who neutral repped who and when in a HS conflict.
3 - Neutral aid takes you clearly from a neutral status to a combatant status when you offer aid to someone in a war - basically you enter the war(s).

Conclusion: This proposed change would still allow neutral repping, but make it a real decision with real consequences beyond docking and waiting out a short timer. Neutral repping would go from a common crappy tactic that is currently mechanically absurd (combatant status is forgotten a short time after de-aggressing) to a carefully thought out tactical decision that takes both time and effort to undo.



That's how I would approach what you are trying to do. Put some meat on the bone so folks can chew on it. The point of this forum section it to put out solid ideas and discuss them. Oh yes, the disclaimer part. VMG was used only as an example as they are a commonly known HS war decing group. Holysheet1 kicking their fleets patoot on a gate was offered due to the commonly known mutual love and respect between VMG and Holysheet1. It's common knowledge that Holysheet1 has never left the Amarr middle station docking ring little lone the Amarr system. I doubt he even knows the route to Perimeter. The example situation was hypothetical in all accounts.

Ah, OK I was expecting people to realise it was a lot deeper than just the most obvious. Thanks a lot for your input.

I only focused on one structure to keep it simple, of course many more would end up being involved, EVERY system with an at war structure is a war system.

Now a wardecc corp may decide to place one in say for example Niarja, to interdict travel between Hubs, and a defender may place one where the wardeccers regularly travel, or one may want to take control of an ice field and drop one there.

Now if a wardecc corp does this, and declares 100 wars, then potentially 100 corps may attack his citadel/structure at the same time. This tends to naturally limit "gaming the system"

It is deliberately an extremely simple system with the potential for vast complexity, It is chess not whack-a-mole.

Now regarding things like neutral repping or out of corp defence of a citadel/structure, It simply cannot happen, the old wardec system is gone, there is NO exception to the reaction from concord. Shooting/repping/ scrambling/ e-waring a player at war in combat, is an aggressive act. Edit:- I hope CCP will restrict such actions so you need to be amber or red settings to do so.

If someone wants to join the war they do so BEFORE taking any action, and once they join the war they are in it until it comes to the end.

I hope this clears a few things up, it is a simple mechanic, clean to implement and understand, with lots of complexity possible depending on how one uses the tools. But whether highly experienced or a noob, if one dies, one will clearly understand why, simply you were in a clearly understood War system.

Back in the day, when wars were still cheap and I had trouble affording a Hurricane (they were 30-ish mil back in the day). I was fighting wars, outnumbered, outgunned, and WINNING them.
Having isk doesn't mean anything when you've got motivated people. They can be new, they can be poor, but they'll get the job done a hell of a lot better than that "carebear" that's sitting on multiple billions.
Raising the isk bar on wars has never, ever been a good idea. It only drives people to group up even further. Requiring a metric ton of structures to even have a somewhat decent coverage of a few systems would basically completely exclude any players with less than a couple of billion isk.

Even a simple refinery can cost you hundreds of millions, and that's without a fit. Losing that would be catastrophic to a small group such as that. Compare that to losing a few frigates or even cruisers, you get my point.

Also, nothing prevents the owner of the altcorp to hire mercenaries to defend their structure, while they just go about their business. And should it be destroyed, no problem, like you said, a refinery is cheap, right? If they can afford one, they can easily afford another one, even in the same system, under a different alt-corp.

Yes, and then you're faced with the issue that is currently happening. With people banding together in massive wardec conglomerates that give absolutely no chance whatsoever to their targets because they have vastly better ships, wallets, pilots, organisation, etc...

This is what we need to move away from.

It can be strongly encouraged (for instance, through the post I linked beforehand). It won't limit you in what you want to do, but it'll make it a hell of a lot tougher to do so.

And for your second point, when in the history of highsec wars has that ever happened outside of extremely rare events?
It hasn't.
Point of fact, it's hard enough to get a single PvE corporation to organize properly. I can count the times that's happened against me personally on one hand. And every single time (except once), it was me myself that had to basically talk everyone into it using spies.

You say that corporations can band together to fight the one big bad wardec group. They won't, they never have, they never will. It's simply a dream that is unachievable.

I would say a 12

Then why are you basing your entire system of defense against larger groups around that?
That's really really bad design. You need to think for the everyday moment, not for the grand finale.