Warfare & Tactics

I submit the following more as a mental exercise than a strong suggestion: Given the current mechanics and relative position of the Amarr and Minmatar factions, it is in the best interest of the Amarr militia to forego plex/sov warfare for the time being.

Consider the following:

1. Sovereignty is tied to plexing. While there are a great many PvP and PvE activities open to faction warfare participants, there is only one activity that directly affects sovereignty, and that is running faction warfare complexes. In order wrest a system from enemy control, allied factions must run complexes for approximately a day and a half under the current system, and assuming no resistance or counter-plexing, in order to make the system vulnerable. While PvP may indirectly contribute to system control, the attacking faction must spend time repeatedly orbiting the button of the defending factions complexes in order to affect the sovereignty of that system.

2. Rats in faction warfare complexes are not balanced between factions. Given equal levels of player resistance, more effort is required to capture a Minmatar plex compared to an Amarrian plex. The presence of both target painting and missiles in Minmatar faction warfare complexes make kiting or speed tanking the rats difficult at best, and can make life difficult for more conventional complex running techniques, in no small part due to the range at which Minmatar NPCs can operate. Amarrian plexes, on the other hand, are notorious for their susceptibility to speed tanking. Neither faction's complex is overly difficult, of course, but Minmatar plexes tend to require more pilots or more "ship" to contest compared to Amarr plexes.

If an equal number of pilots on both sides concentrate on plexing, it would be reasonable to expect the side that requires less effort per plex to "win" sovereignty over time. Similarly, fewer pilots are required on the side that requires less effort per plex in order to maintain a sovereignty equilibrium.

3. Faction warfare rewards are tied to sovereignty. Loyalty points are awarded for participation in faction warfare. A combination of system sovereignty and system upgrade level determine warzone control, which determines both the number of loyalty points awarded and the rate at which they can be exchanged for rewards. There are 5 levels of warzone control. A minimum number of systems must be controlled by a faction in order to increase that faction's level of warzone control. In the case of the Amarr/Minmatar warzone, a level increase requires a minimum of [14 x level] systems controlled (e.g., if a faction wanted to increase its warzone control beyond the lowest level, it could do so by first gaining sovereignty in 14 systems and then fully upgrading those systems).

The Amarr militia, with only 10 systems controlled, cannot currently advance beyond the lowest level of warzone control. Extrinsic (i.e., loyalty point) rewards are very low for the Amarr militia, and likely provides weak incentive for attraction or retention of pilots for the Amarrian faction. Conversely, the Minmatar militia controls 60 systems, giving them the potential for the highest level of warzone control (they currently hold the second-highest level), and likely provides a strong incentive for attraction and retention of pilots for the Minmatar faction.

4. There are ~1000 fewer pilots in the Amarr militia than in the Minmatar militia. It's not clear whether this translates into a lower number of active pilots, but it's likely the case. Given that more Amarrian effort is required per plex (point 2, above), and fewer Amarrian pilots are available, Amarrian pilots must spend comparatively more time plexing maintain the status quo (let alone advance their control) on a per-pilot basis.

So, if you are an Amarrian pilot and you want to compete for sovereignty, you must plex. Not only that, you must plex more than a Minmatar pilot, and the incentive you receive for doing so has roughly 1/8th the value. You plex to gain or maintain docking rights in systems that offer you missions that offer roughly 1/8th the rewards. How irrational! (Perhaps to add insult to injury, your own ships do the least effective damage against the rats you are forced to engage, meaning you are more likely to work for "the good of the Amarr" in a non-Amarrian ship. How embarassing!)

Given the above, I would guess that the short-term reality is that the Amarr faction is likely to continue to lose systems and members, with the reverse being true for the Minmatar faction.

Neither side wins a war; there are only degrees of losing.

There is room for individuals to come out ahead. However, most people, being generally terrible, will also lose.

While a cute quote, it's 100% false.

All very valid observations were it but for one little thing: It is all based on things starting on relatively equal footing.

Alas, the Shakorites abused CCPs inability to see things through and managed to acquire their ~85% dominance while systems needed sod all time spent to flip.

Had the recent changes been implemented following a reset (or last winter), NPCs been balanced and had changes made sense (ex. missions only going to hostile space), then by the time the wheel turned and Amarr once again had numbers available the Shakorites would have had at most ~5 systems not originally theirs .. said five would have been reclaimed in a jiffy and a roughly equal number taken from their "pool" .. at which point the wheel would have turned again ..

That has been the ebb and flow of the Amarr/Shakorite front since time immemorial .. a proper tug-of-war .. destroyed by CCP's appalling ignorance/stupidity/ineptitude/inebriation. What might have been :awesome: has become a big "Thumbs Up" to buggy/lazy coding/design and the people who choose to abuse it.

Not bitter, just pissed.

that's it! i'm starting a winmatar FW alt. WTB 100 rifters

You're an idiot. The 'pilot counts' have always been vastly in Caldari's favor. Since Day 1. I'd point out that there is no reason to assume the number of toons in a militia has any relationship at all to the # of pilots they have active, but I suspect that might be beyond your ability--and that of many others here--to grasp.

I agree that we can't know exactly how many pilots are active in a militia based on the member count for that militia, although the member count does introduce an upper boundary for active pilots. If players stop playing but don't quit the militia (we'll call this disengagement) at similar rates for both the Minmatar and Amarr militias then we could reasonably expect to find more Minmatar pilots in space, relative to Amarrian pilots. If the disengagement rate is sufficiently higher for Minmatar than for Amarr then we should expect relatively greater numbers of Amarrian pilots, while the reverse is true if Amarrian pilots disengage at a higher rate than Minmatar pilots. Given the disparity in incentives for the two factions, I would guess that there's more disengagement on the Amarrian side currently but then again, who doesn't love it when the underdog comes out on top?

Additionally, it's not just the number of pilots that determines the outcome of the soveriegnty war, it's number of pilots plexing. A highly active mission-running militia member contributes nothing to soveriegnty, and vigorous activity by the vast number of Caldari pilots means nothing for sov if they're not spending their time plexing. Ultimately, the Amarr must plex to win the sov war and they have a harder time doing so due to npc imbalance (even if we assume that the active pilot counts for the Amarr and Minmatar factions are even).

Whatever limit it does introduce is meaningless since it has no material basis. The proportion of alts/spies/mission farmers/inactive accounts makes the figure useless. If you actually participate in FW, you should know that it's actually a fairly small community; there may be at most a few hundred active pvp'ers on any side. The notion that any militia has 5,000+ potential actives is absurd to anyone who actually partakes in FW.

I completely agree with the original poster. When Minmatar get done with Amarr systems, they can come help us out on the Gallente front. There are plenty of Caldari plexes for which to farm LP. And as an added benefit you guys will get to cash in on even more SFIs and Minmatar faction BSs which I hear are a little bit better than the Gallente faction ships.

It does have value. No one is saying you can take the number and accurately predict precisely how many pilots fly in each faction. What is being said is that you can take that number as a reasonably accurate assumption that there are more minmatar pilots than amarr pilots.