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I'm kidna wondering how many of these RP/Datacore whiners actually use them in invention... I do invention all the time (primary source of income) and datacores are BY FAR the lowest price impact in the process.

Firstly, I have played in FW for 3 years before leaving it, and I am happy to see all these changes being announced. Thank you for the attention you devoted to FW for this summer.

My feedback :

1) Now I would have a few remarks on something that does not make much sense to me : if lowsec warzone stations become undockable for the pilots of the enemy militia (at last ! it did not make any sense otherwise...), I do hope the stations in enemy high sec are locked for them too ? It would not make a lot of sense if not... Not being able to dock in the stations of your enemy in lowsec, but being able to have a tea in their stations in high sec ? I do not recall having read any mention of enemy high sec stations, thus why I am asking.

2) I hope you know what you are doing by adding all these stakes here without fixing all the NPC and complexes lack of balance beforehand. Because I know two sides that are probably going to suffer a lot from this until it gets fixed.

3) Also, a few people already mentionned that the losing factions in the planned changes might get difficulties to get back on their feet without any safeguards in the new gameplay. I tend to agree with that. In the current system losing or winning does not mean a lot of things. The only thing that changes is the occupancy label at the top of our screens. People can still run their precious isk farming FW missions, dock in enemy stations, etc. Now then, in the Inferno planned changes the losing side will get a lot of disadvantages (which only makes sense, again, and adds a purpose to the fight, if only purely economical). This is really cool.

But with that in mind, now, imagine a militia losing terribly to the point they lost most of their systems. The enemy gets all the advantages listed in the devblog and the losing side gets a lot of disadvantages (which is, again, fine).What would push newcomers to go to the side of the losing faction ? I mean, except for the few people looking for challenge, most people in Eve think in terms of isk and advantages. I would bet that most of them will chose the winning side. What are the safeguards here ? Again, with the old system, we do not face this situation exactly because there is no disadvantage or advantage to be gained. The losing faction just has to HTFU and get back to work harder. Another possible consequence of this is that a side might be winning for a very long time, making all the conflict in the area boring for everyone (lack of targets on one side and no fun on the other side). I do not want to sound ominous but in a worst case scenario, this could severely damage FW as a whole.

Also, generally speaking in terms of gamedesign I think that winning has to come with rewards like advantages, but the more you win and the more you get advantages over the adversary (that gets a lot of disadvantages), then well, it becomes harder and harder for the loser to win and easier and easier for the winner to win. It sounds to me a little like an ouroboros, an issue feeding itself, a vicious circle. I think that kind of system needs a balance that acts as a failsafe to make sure that the losing side, even if in a delicate position with a lot of limited supplies, stuff, expensive prices, denied docking, no system upgrades, has a way to get back on its feet. For example, the more a faction expands its sovereignty, it would sound totally logical to me that its navy has to spread its forces on all the new captured territory, which obviously means that the more the systems under one's control, the less ships one can send to defend his own territory. In our case for example, it could mean that NPC ships would be less numerous in complexes while the NPC ships on the losing side would actually get a lot more numerous in the last systems under their control.

I think this would definitly make sure that the winning side gets all the advantages they gained through their hard work, but at a cost. Which basically means that the more you get access to advantages, the more it could get difficult to defend them. It only makes sense to me that way, and it fits quite well to the general eve spirit : the more profit you can get, the more dangerous it gets.

Not entirely sure on mechanics of this but does this new thing block you from all stations or just amarr stations?

Just curious as I have 2 characters in FW with r&d agents for a minmatar r&d corp but 4/5 of their agents are in amarr/caldari high sec.

Crossposted from a FW thread on another forum (disclaimer: I don't fly in FW and I don't intend to in the future, but I recognize that this is intended to have an effect on people outside of FW, and that part does include me. I'm also tired of the continual QQ whenever the advantage pendulum swings from one militia to the other.)

Anyway:

As I've said to a few people already, I like the changes they've already got listed, and think they're a great start, however I believe there are a few very important things missing from the list that without which I would consider this not in the slightest ready for release.

Things that help balance the playing field regardless of numbers on either side, like:
- I-Hubs requiring constant upkeep. Even if nobody's offensively plexing in your system, LP should still need to be funneled into the I-Hub to keep it upgraded. Constantly. This would mean that if you don't feed an I-Hub, you can lose all of the upgrades and possibly the system; it would also force people to prioritize feeding the I-Hubs of strategic systems over others. Force militias to play triage with their systems - pool your LP into these two particularly important systems in exchange for barely upgrading (or even losing) these five systems over here that are of little use to either side.
- Make rewards for various accomplishments scale inversely to the amount of space your militia holds. This means diminishing returns for LP rewards based on the amount of space held by your militia, and conversely, increased returns for the side with less space. The more of the opposing faction's space your militia has claimed, the less LP you receive for various tasks. The less space your militia holds, the higher the LP rewards, and the easier it is to flip systems. Coupled with the previous, the more space you hold, the smaller the amount of LP there is to spare for fueling your I-Hubs, and the harder it is to keep control over more space than less space; likewise, it makes it easier to make a comeback after you've been pushed into a corner.

These two changes alone would make me consider that maybe things were ready to be rolled out. It obviously needs more, but without these two? No. No way in hell is it ready for release.

few questions

1) will there be incentives to capturing entire enemy constellations where the systems of the constellation are eligible for possibly a different tree of more considerable upgrades?

2) If a faction isolates systems from its enemy faction, effectively cutting off their supply lines, could the isolated systems face a weakened infrastructure or some other negative consequence?

3) what happens if a faction loses control of all of its contestable systems? have you considered a victory incentive?

This. Makes no sense that one faction has a stranglehold on it. (Also, it's Mechanical Engineering, not Duct Tape Engineering.)

Make Pirate factions also participate in this factional warfare and my corp will gladly join Nation. Until then, not interested.

^^This. I don't even do Industry and I can figure out that giving ME datacores to just one faction is a terrible terrible terrible idea. It is THE most used datacore. Giving it to one faction is like making Veldspar only available from one area of space.

Come on CCP, do at least a marginal amount of research into things before you go changing them. This is the sort of stuff that makes people think you don't even play the game.

Actually its more like:

"You want to do research, fine but you will need to do experiments on the fringes of empire. The factions don't want explosions in safe space or anything. By the way the stations with the services you need come under attack regularly so you will need to learn how to fight and protect your work. Welcome to the fringes."

Your explanation makes sense if R&D wass just moved to lowsec, but not when you get rewarded with datacores for shooting people and have no prerequisite of learning about the field you are researching.