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Yes that's why they need to change.

This change has got nothing to do with the fact that the goons were involved

I'm pretty sure it was that the whole infinite allies thing broke the war dec system

Why are you people all so quick to jump to tinfoil hat conclusions all the time?

True, wardecs for 0 isk were not an 'exploit' but they were definitely broken

The skill should also reduce cap cost of each cycle by the same amount. Just stupid to have a kinda of negative effect build into a skill since you cant unlearn them or disable them.

At work so can't read the whole thread (so requisite apologies if I'm repeating someone) but given I find myself in the strange position of mostly agreeing with Jade about something, I thought I'd continue this world of bizarre strangeness by trying to write a cogent post on the ally changes.

First though:

To tinfoil hatters. Enough, please. Yes this change is massively advantageous to GF, but testing and change control cycles virtually guarantee that this change was planned and proposed long before GF declared war on SF, so unless you have evidence that they bypassed this, cut them some slack.
To devs: T20. Yes it was years ago. No it's not fair that people still wonder about such things, but remember you're arguing with people on the internet. It makes us all crazy people.

Now the meat of the issue.

I'm not going to repost Jade's proposal. Go look it up for yourselves, I'm at work. What I did find interesting about the thread, though, was Soundwave's comment; namely that war should not necessarily be fair. In context, he very clearly meant that war should not be guaranteed to be fair to the defender, and everyone I think agrees with this. Left unsaid, however, is this. Why should war be fair to the attacker? An analogy was made in defence of the Soundwave's position in the same thread by comparing a fleet engagement in nullsec and posing the question as to whether or not a larger fleet should wait for its target to find allies before stomping on them. This analogy I think is perfect. Should, in contrast, a larger fleet be allowed to stop the smaller fleet from batphoning for support? Is it not part and parcel to engagements that the aggressor should always be allowed to bite off more than he can chew, and pay the price for it?

If we accept this design philosophy, then we can look again at how this applies to the war system. Consider a large alliance A that declares war against small entity B. In nullsec if B has friends C to Q, that give some numerical parity to the action, then A would pause before considering agression, because there would be actual consequences to the action. In hisec, however, the opposite is true. A can engage without any real risk of reprisal for the following reasons

1. It is economically more difficult for B to declare war on A
2. If A would beat B easily B would need C to Q and that would be even more economically non-viable
3. If B engages C to Q in aid, A simply stops paying the war costs and withdraws from the conflict
4. if B makes the war mutual, all other parties are locked out of the war, allowing A to kill B at its leisure

There is simply no mechanism by which alliance A can ever face serious consequences for biting off more than they can chew. Are we really saying that aggressors should get to dictate all the terms of a war? Surely when a CEO (or director) presses the button to release the hounds, then at the back of their mind, there should always lurk the possibility that their action could lead to the destruction of all they hold dear, and the mechanic as is manifestly fails to provide that.

On the other hand there is the issue that the mechanic IS targeting - namely that of "dogpiling" being a contributing factor in the lack of a vibrant mercenary marketplace. Honestly I'm not in a position to judge whether this is the case or not, but I can see how it could be. In any case I think we can agree that it's axiomatic that once a merc is in a contract they shouldn't be locked into it for all time because they fight voluntarily. In the spirit of the above, however, there should be some recognition of mercs that cry off their contracts before the term expires. That's a whole can of worms I'm not going into now though. In the meantime, however, Jade proposal does address a lot of these issues. Is it perfect? Far from it - the issue of how you deal with this situation for instance



is poorly defined and needs consideration, but some mechanism whereby the defender CAN tip the odds in his favour by calling 2000 of his good friends (even if they're not his closest) I think is sorely needed.

Now I have to go fix an issue I introduced to UAT because I was thinking about this...

--Edit for grammar and punctuation and also to point out that leaving diagnostic fields in a query when you make the rollout script leads to strange behaviour when the users run their reports in the front end app

Mutual wars:
Allowing no Allies at all is an interesting approach. Since both confirmed it as a War they want allies should cost a lot and should be limited. If you want an ally you can hire them to war dec your mutual enemy. It would be nice to see an option to "add an ally" by paying the same fee you would have to pay to wardec again. Limiting the number of allies to +1 over your enemy would create an interesting competition between mercs to hire.
It would have meaning who you hire and also gives the other side the option to add 2 others once you have called in allies.

Wardec costs:
Capping the cost at 500m is a good move. The limit is high enough to stop random wardecs but still allows to hire mercs by paying that bill.
In order to address the balance between forces it might be possible to simply always count the higher one. If 20 declare war on 50 they pay the same as if 50 declare on 20.
If a big alliance (like triple A) is wardecing a small entity they would have to pay the same needed to wardec them. The big powerblocs have the money to do that and there is no way you will stop things like that by raising the cost but it would be a bit more even.

What happens to the Money Concord gets?
Obviously its a ISK sink. But would it help to get a part of this money into a fund for allies? If you get wardect by -A- there is 500m going to concord. 200m of those are available to hire mercs, payout or just covering the concord cost for adding allies. Even with an exponential raising formula 200m should be sufficient to hire some mercs to assist you without spending too much money on concord and more on the mercs directly.

New Skill
"• Added new skill – Armor Resistance Phasing, which reduces the cycle time of Reactive Armor Hardeners"
Shifting resistance faster is good but at the cost of doubled energy cost it looks very hard. If this was a Rig i could decide to put in or not like the ancillary nanobot accelerator (to reduce repper cycle time) it would be ok but a skill is either you have it or not. Some cap use reduction wouldn't hurt and make it worth while skilling it.

@Web-Dev-Team: please add an option to hide "tinfoil hat posts". would make this thread much more readable ;-)

clearly you are a moron! as there are consequences for "indiscriminate Ganking" in high-sec as you call it first you lose your ship to concord second you take a hit to your sec stat. obvious but hurt pod pilot is obviously but hurt lol stop being a whiney b***h and HTFU!

Tbh It would be better if the new skill change the amount of resist shifting per cycle then provide a shorter cycle.

Right now it shifts 1% per cycle => from 15% to 30% in 15 cycles (150 seconds)

Say that Armor Resistance phasing increas the shift % by say .25 % /cycle

with level 3 it would shift 1,75% per cycle => from 15% to 30% in 9 cycles (90 secounds)
With level 5 it would shift 2,25% per cycle => from 15% to 30% in 7 cycles (70 secounds)

Hi!

Inferno is about making war easier. Currently if you get killed by an individual you get kill rights. Not only do i think this should be extended to the corporation (because its an act of war) but the rights should last until one side surrenders. If the victim chooses to go down this path.

Losing a throw-away ship and getting sec-hits for some people is meaningless. Goonswarm agree with me :)

Which of course the solution I proposed (and vast majority of non large bloc/non CSM) posters appear to agree with resolves perfectly.

Make the defender pay for allies only when the total size of the defender + defending coalition is larger than the attacker. This means the wardec system is not balanced around the edge case you describe but is balanced for EVERYBODY.

NB. balanced does not neccessarily mean "fair".