Crime & Punishment

I thought wardecs cost like 50mil

It gets better than that.
If you're actively hunting a corp for example, I dunno, because you've been paid to... the costs go up.
Say your target corp has 100 members.
Also, lets suppose that the wardeccing corp has 10 active members at any given time... generous, i know... but let's go there.
Hunting corp wants to find people. Watchlist is gone.
Hunting corp uses locator agents. Each of their ten people online uses two characters twice an hour to locate from two different agents each.
That's 250k per use. So, speaking of course completely hypothetical... or maybe from direct experience, each player is burning 2 million isk per hour trying to find someone who is not docked in a station.... because you don't know if they are online or not, so docked tells you jack. They're madly rolling the dice in hopes of finding someone who is in space.
Now that 2 million isk only gets you the lowdown on 8 people, for that hour (or within five minutes).
So, with ten and their altts, you can get the passive location of 80 of the 100 players in that corp for a mere cost of 20 million ISK. Unfortunately, most of these people are offline, so if you do not by some miracle score a hit with your locator you repeat the process, prioritizing the few that you missed in the first place.
This is for a 100 man corp.
Now... let it sink in the effort and ISK sink for trying to find a viable target in a corp of 300... or maybe 500, or a thousand?

It's not worth it anymore. Before the watchlist changes the ISK sink for locates are significant but manageable.
Now, screw it, don't bother, just hump the pipes and hubs or find someone with a structure.... maybe they'll scout out the system your corp has it's office in and see what's going on there. Maybe a browse on the killboards to see where you like to die.

If you die to a war dec in high sec now you are bad and you should feel bad for being so bad. Douse yourself in shamepoo and cry in the corner of the shower because you suck. I don't mean that metaphorically, it can be proven mathematically on a freaking Etch A Sketch.

It Is Your Fault.

The only fix that will correct this is for you to stop being bad.

Addendum To Omar's Rant:


And what makes it even harder to use locater agents is that As Far As I Know, if someone is docked up in a Citadel or Engineering Complex, they might as well be in a wormhole system.

IE, the locater agent reports 'out of area of influence'.

Which makes level 3/4 locater agents USELESS.

Also also, structure bashes and gate camps are the PVP version of mining........they are Teh Ebil.

Thanks, CCP.

*gives Hilmar The Bird*

Not true. It simply says they are in X system in space.

I did post a few times in GD that people should go and sit in a WH system to be extra annoying when war decked, perhaps people are taking that advice, I just hope they are in something cloaky with a probe launcher with probes... I suggested it as part of the avoidance approach which was to wind up the merc trying to hunt because they would get unknown areas of space back when they looked and would think nah, won't war dec again because the target has access to WH space and can hang out there.

Also it would perhaps open up more interesting game play for them.

As almost all war deckers do no real target selection as such it is quite effective... And I did suggest that before the watch lists were removed by the way.

Even though we haven't killed you guys often... we have killed you... and will continue to do so... warfare isn't just about blowing up a ship...sometimes it's more fun to "starve" your opponent until they submit...

This might explain why the graphic for entrance into a citadel is rather "wormholish". Chances are it's the same mechanic, being in a wormhole or in a citadel, as far as the locator agent is concerned. Appears it may have been addressed.

Methinks your hunting skills need improvement if you require total reliance on locator agents to do your work for you. Finding out what sort of corporation you're dealing with, which systems they inhabit, and the activity levels of their membership is quite simple. All it requires is some zkillboard and statistics research on the corporation and it's members. Which should narrow your search to a selection of regions and likely systems.

With the additional use of some cargo scanning at major tradehubs to determine cargo types, and following said cargo ships back to their home system. Then putting some cloaking eyes on grid and in system it should be very easy to learn their movements and habits. Where they mine, and what sort of operations they run, and what assets they have. Follow this up with putting a spy in their corporation for best resutls in the weeks prior... If you aren't putting this level of effort into your reconnisance then your wardecs wont achieve the desired results.

I think you need to think less like a "PvP'er" and more like a war-fighter - and the basic fundamental of war is that intelligence is king. You can't shoot what you can't see. Futhermore, the lack of information, during war, can kill you.

This method isn't bad, if you're just going to war with a single established entity for an extended period of time.
I thoroughly endorse it if it's just your corp dealing with a rival for reasons.

However, in the case of merc alliances that have anywhere from a handful to several dozen wars active at the same time... this just doesn't work.

Also, there is the whole factor of an employer wanting a war put on their competition and you coming back to them with 'sure, it'll only be two to three weeks of legwork and then we can start'.
I'm sure they'll be overjoyed.

I can, and he's right.

But right now the best way is to simply infiltrate the target corp with a spai.

There are also workarounds to losing watchlist ( you can still find out if someone is online...) but they are...tedious.

But yes, all of this takes time, and if you are McDeccing half the trade hub, you probably are going to have problems.