Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The (Maybe) Last Wardec Proposal

The aim of this proposal is the create a simple wardec system that makes moot all of the previous exploits. It further puts some power into the hands of the defender.

Declaring
Corporations in an alliance, declare war as an alliance (the executor corporation has to declare in this situation.) Corporations in an alliance have war declared upon their alliance.

Any number of wars can be declared upon a single corporation/alliance by different corporations/alliances.

Costs
I think most people agree that the current costs to initiate a war are far too inexpensive. There is some middle ground where a group will have to weigh cost versus reward before declaring war on another group of players. My suggestion would be that the cost to declare on a corporation be in the 100M to 250M ISK range. That the cost to declare on an alliance be in the 250M to 500M ISK range. This would be the base cost.

Costs escalate based on the number of wars the attacker has created. This is the escalation cost. Since the escalation cost is based upon the attackers wars in progress, decshields become moot. I suggest an escalation cost of around 50M ISK. This is then multiplied by the number of wars where the corporation/alliance is currently flagged as an attacker. So, for example, if the attacker has five wars that they have created and wants to start a sixth war, the cost for the sixth war declaration would be base cost + (escalation cost x 5).

The 24 Hour Warm-Up
During the 24 hour run-up to the start of conflict, both the attacker and the defender may perform normal membership activities. Players may join the corporation(s) of the attacker and defender. Players may leave the corporation(s) of the attacker and defender.

Friends and Mercenaries
Additionally, during the 24 hour warm-up, the defender may invite other corporations and alliances to join the war on the defending side of the equation. The attacker does not have this option.

The cost to invite a corporation will be in the 50M to 100M ISK range. The cost to invite an alliance is in the 100M to 200M ISK range. I suggest these costs be half of what it costs to initiate a war with a corporation or alliance.

The cost in non-refundable. The cost only sends a corporation or alliance an invitation to join the war. That corporation/alliance can choose to accept the invitation or decline the invitation. Accepting adds the corporation/alliance to the war declaration as a defender. (Ignoring the invitation is the same declining.)

Any number of other corporations/alliances may be invited by the defender, but each invite is a separate non-refundable cost. The non-refundable aspect ensures that scamming/lying/subterfuge/trust remain an integral part of the game.

The invited parties have until the end of the 24 hour warm-up period to accept the invitation. If they do not respond before hostilities begin, the invitation will be automatically declined.

This systems puts some power and control into the hands of the defending corporation/alliance.

For industrial corporations, it is now in their best interests to develop symbiotic relationships with more combat oriented corporations. This mechanic gives the industrial corporation/alliance some method of adequate defense.

This system encourages increased interaction between the players, especially with regard to diplomacy and relationship building.

War Begins
As per usual war mechanics, the attacker and defenders may attack each other at will within empire space without repercussions from CONCORD.

Membership
Attacking and defending corporations may continue to recruit members during hostilities. There is a delay in joining a corporation that is under wardec of a couple hours. This eliminates recruitment gaming (e.g. one person points an adversary, while in station ten people suddenly join the corporation, undock, and become part of the fight.) This delay only takes effect if the corporation is currently in the hostile phase of any war.

Corporations may not join an alliance if that alliance is flagged as the attacker in any war. Corporations may join alliances that are only flagged as the defender in any war.

Members of the attacking and defending corporations may still leave their corporations, though they continue to remain war flagged to all wars currently in their hostile phase.

Corporations may leave alliances during war, though the corporation will continue to remain flagged to all wars currently in their hostile phase.

Surrender
Only the attacking corporation/alliance may sue for peace. If the defender accepts the proposed surrender, the war ends immediately.

Extending the War
A war lasts seven full days (eight if you include the initial 24 hour warm-up period.) There is no mechanic to extend the war from within the war itself.

If an attacker wants to continue a war, once the current war ends, the attacker simply redeclares on the defending corporation/alliance. There will always be another 24 hour warm-up period between these extensions of war.

Conclusion
I am curious to hear possible exploits and problems with this proposal. Obviously there are certain restrictions imposed upon the attacker that are not imposed upon the defender. The attacker commits themselves to the war, the defender has some power to shape the war to their advantage.

1. You can extend by simply redeclaring again after the current war is finished. There is still the 24-hour warm-up to allow both parties to engage in general corporation/alliance housekeeping, and prepare further for the continuing hostilities.

2. The attacker can have friends too. Those friends simply declare war on the defender of their own accord. There is no need for the attacker to add friends/mercenaries.

Wardecs shouldn't be limited in number nor have Isk fees as some sort of barrier. Simply rolling Wardecs back to how they were pre P Aliance nerf would be a huge improvement on what they are now and over what you suggest.

If there's expensive fees, it should be tied to surrender mechanics. Such as a corp/alliance surrenders to end a War at the cost of something like 10-50 million per member which is paid to the party to which they are surrendering. then they get a week or two where they can't be wardeced by that same corp/alliance.

With regards to people getting wardec'd when they don't want to:

Party A pays a fee to "legalize" a war on Party B

Party B should be able to pay Concord, or whoever, the same amount plus 1 isk to invalidate the "legalized" war.

A new isk sink is created and less inflation

An issue with the defenders not being able to leave corp while hostilities are active leads to the problem of staggered/overlapping wars. The defenders would never be able to drop corp.

To fix that small issue:

I suppose the simplest solution is to simply set the rule as "if the defending corporation(s) are in a 24 hour warm-up period, then folks can leave the corporation(s), no matter if other other hostilities are currently active." Of course, under this "solution" a corp/alliance could then wardec itself with an alt corp to allow folks to leave. That's likely not much of an issue, though.

I will once again adjust the text to take this into account.

Hmm, I think I liked your first iteration better. Now you have an increase in base war dec fee with an increasing cost per war. I think that makes wars too expensive. I think your notion of taking the simplest route to fixing wardecs is spot on, however your implementation could use some work. Instead of your proposed changes, here's what I think is the easiest route to fixing wars.

1) Make it so only alliances can declare wars. This will get rid of a lot of the trash wardecs that people seem to complain about so much.
2) Increase base war fee to 100m. Each additional war goes up by 50m.
3) No increase in war dec fee for target's incoming wars, fixing the dec shield exploit.
4) 24h delay on joining or leaving corps at war, fixing any member hopping exploits.
5) Wars extended for duration of war to corps leaving alliances, with option to renew, instead of the 24 hours they get now. That fixes the dec shield alliance exploit.

And that's it. That's really all that's needed, imo. :shrug:

Sorry, my post was a stand alone proposal, not suggested changes to yours. I was trying to illustrate a bare bones approach that would hopefully be easy for CCP to implement quickly. Things like inviting friends to the war I assume would be more coding work without much gain imo.

I meant only alliances can declare war, but corporations can still have wars declared upon them. This is to stop people from rolling up 1 man alt corps to dec other corps without intention of showing up. Frankly, I couldn't care less about that but a lot of people complain about it often, so I figured I'd address it.

I'm failing to see how Increasing the base cost of a war between corporations by 5000% would "fix" or "improve" anything. Or how increasing the base cost of alliance decs while removing the cost increase for multiple decs would do anything but encourage people to form large alliances and then pile on the largest possible soft targets while leaving everyone else totally unmolested.

It's like you've actually designed the entire proposal so that everyone doing war in highsec would get the best bang for their buck by declaring war on E-uni and giant nullsec alliances for trade hub camping.

The increase is there. It simply is not based on how many wars the defender is shouldering (which is what caused the decshield exploit), but how many wars the attacker has running.

Well, ignore it. It's some bullshit that keeps being spread by University and ex-University members. They have a strict set of rules during war (which mostly consist of staying docked up), which they must follow whether their war targets are logged in or logged off. They've come to believe that their strict rules are game mechanics and that any new war declaration system must account for all the boredom they endure, which is why they are always yammering about targets which don't show up to fight, and why that is somehow griefing (when it isn't ... it's actually to their favour.)

Seriously, though, who gives a sh*t if a war target doesn't show up. It's their dime.