Warfare & Tactics

Idea of fw is to have fights, but some militias have adopted tactics that it is better to avoid fights and just gank noobs or lonely travelers.

Co-operating with such people is just waste of time.

If you base your conclusions on game theory than yes, no fight is better than negotiate how to best waste resources with an enemy, who becomes than anyway a partner and not an real enemy.

Furthermore cooperative behavior leads to more resources for all, but sociopathic behavior will not only decrease your own resources, but will decrease resources of your enemys even more. So if we are locking from a war perspective on this, its better not to cooperate but instead actually try to gain significant advantages over the enemy militia. Will this lead to less battles? Sure, but actually the "goal" in faction warfare is not to fight as much as you can, but actually to fight not anymore because you secured all resources for your own militia / faction.

What you are trying to achieve is to change faction warfare to something all do enjoy more, without changing the game mechanics. It is a honorable try, but why not just use red vs blue for this? If you are locking for pre-arranged battles, I am pretty sure red vs blue can offer this to you.

They "used to". As in, now they don't. This simply shows what I'm talking about.

The sort of fighting you get in, sayt, a 32 vs 32 FPS game where there are no lasting consequences is not sustainable in EVE when the "rules" are optional. All it takes is one group refusing to play by whatever rules you come up with and it's doomed to failure.

There are lasting consequences in-game for this stuff, so people are going to take any advantage they can get. Ultimately it's going nowhere because people on the sides lacking momentum can and will simply 'opt out'. FW is just an elaborate multi-party dueling system with nothing keeping participants from just blobbing it up, which seems to be what people don't want.

Optional PvP flagging always ends up like this because not enough people will do it. Perhaps a simple solution for this would be to pay militia pilots for time spent flagged and undocked - a stipend. I think a lot of noobs would be willing to take the risk for a million or two ISK a week.

Thanks to everyone who has responded to this thread.

What I'm taking away so far is that the FW scene is complex in terms of its organisation, goals, resources and behaviours. There are different sets of expectations and values which players do not always share in common and which may be competing or even incompatible.

So perhaps this means that there are a wide variety of sub-games within the overall FW wargame which require a nuanced approach to understand, each within their own context.





Thanks for this post - that confirms one of my expectations about co-operating to increase payoffs - namely, that it is communication and informal understandings between key rival decision-makers with some shared goals that drives the discovery of more efficient strategies. This ad hoc approach is likely to be far more pragmatic than any rule-based agreement.





Given those conditions, a formal rule system would probably be as difficult to make and enforce as the original complexity it is designed to overcome. Although communication and awareness of the types of games that will result from certain behaviours could change the strategies that fleets and their commanders pursue, even without a formal agreement.





Another value to maximise is the introduction, training and retention of new militia members. This is a goal that is common to all militia groups and therefore it should be in their interests to pursue its maximisation if a co-operative strategy can do that.





Thanks, that's very much a classic example. The solution to this problem would be to reduce the costs and risks of any agreement while increasing the benefits. This means that certain types of agreements will have the potential to work in certain situations, while others will not. While a Universal set of principles might be unenforcible, there could be considerable benefit from specific, local agreements based on mutually shared goals.





But can this goal ever be achieved? FW is a continuous wargame, is it not? There is no finite victory condition that allows a final outright victory. That being the case, it seems inherently pointless to consider a final strategic goal - let alone to prioritise said goal to the detriment of goals at the tactical level. It seems the sense of victory can only come by a continuous series of tactical victories and this requires continuous combat operations and therefore a logic of tactics dominating strategy.



Dammit, limited to 5 quotes per post


"The sort of fighting you get in, sayt, a 32 vs 32 FPS game where there are no lasting consequences is not sustainable in EVE when the "rules" are optional. All it takes is one group refusing to play by whatever rules you come up with and it's doomed to failure. " Ehn Roh

Is there a reason why you can't choose to run multiple game types within a broader context? Every strategic decision made is going to lead to one type of game or another - perhaps awareness of the type of game that will result from a decision will influence both sides to reconsider it and to co-operate if they share a mutual desire to avoid that type of game in favour of another type?

No, but I often write like it. I apologise if my style is tedious

Isn't it possible that both sides might lose, if they get drawn into fighting complexity and randomness rather than each other? There is a threshold of time cost and opportunity cost beyond which it is no longer worthwhile participating in the game.

Mutuality therefore exists in the fact that there is no game to be had if your opponent does not partake in it.

Also, there is evidence that players voluntarily choose to create sub-wargames such as fighting in the PLEX mission areas or arranging fights in some way. These sub-wargames are compatible with the sandbox experience as they are not universal and they reflect the free choices of the players concerned, who presumably arrange them for a reason.

Don't you think that, one way or another, you will end up fighting some type of wargame in FW? Perhaps an awareness of choices can improve the nature of the wargames that occur.

No, not at all? Why do you think I would say that? I stated that sociopathic behavior while diminishing your own resources will diminish resources of all other "players" even more. Which is beneficial to our own standing compared to others. And you want to be better than others, right? If you want to respect your victims, you are still free to do. Respect is a unrelated matter.

Though I have to admit, cooperative behavior within your alliances will yield better results than betraying them ever so often ;-)

In addition everyone will rush to any fight to make sure they "tag" it so they can get some extra money. We see this same crap in every other mmo that has for simplicity "honor system like wow". It just produces freeloaders.

Thanks for all the great responses everyone - I've never really posted in this sub-forum before but I'm glad I did as the replies have been well thought-out.

I think my OP has been proven largely incorrect - perhaps restricted to only a limited application in a few areas. I'm still interested in the concept of applying partly-structured wargame-type scenarios to fleet ops [as personally I prefer a structured engagement with rules, probably from years of wargaming]. But clearly, FW is not perceived as a structured wargame by the people taking part in it, which is interesting. So perhaps there is different aspect of EVE warfare to apply my perspective to.

Many thanks!