Warfare & Tactics

I've had this idea kicking around for a while, and decided it was finally time to throw it out and see what the Faction Warfare community thinks of it. This started out your typical "Wouldn't it be cool if?" daydream, but over the years watching trends and changes in FW mechanics I've come to the belief that implementing my harebrained scheme would be a good way to bring some balance, fights, and fun to FW. So, the purpose of this post is to broadly explain the proposal, illustrate some of the advantages I think it might bring, provide a bit of context on how it might address or mitigate some of the negative parts of the current FW regime, and open discussion to the larger FW community.

My concept of a Faction Warfare Incursion is pretty straightforward: One of the Militias launches an Incursion into a Warzone constellation in their opponent's territory. Players on either side must intervene to determine the outcome of the Incursion.

Obviously, implementation is where it gets tricky. CCP can't simply copy / paste normal Incursion mechanics into FW, but I believe a combination of current FW and Incursion mechanics would work. Here's an example of how I envision one:

State Protectorate forces launch an incursion into a constellation in the Placid region. Most systems, but not all, are currently held by the Federal Defense Union. FDU is holding steady at Tier 2 Warzone Control, while STPRO is at Tier 1 (sorry guys, bear with me). STPRO Command, intending to concentrate Capsuleer efforts in support of their Incursion offer Tier 3 LP rewards for any activities in the Target Constellation. FDU Command does likewise.

The entire constellation is now under FW Incursion mechanics, which would be different than normal Incursions and meant to encourage PVP. Cyno jammers are good, ship stat penalties are bad.

All FW Plex within the Constellation now spawn as Contested Novice / Small / Medium / Large Outposts, Strongholds ect. In each Plex are evenly matched NPC spawns from either side (one of each) fighting each other, requiring equivalent DPS as normal Plex NPCs for players to destroy. All plex captured in Incursion Constellations count as Offensive Plex for the purpose of rep and LP rewards.

Victory Conditions: Incursion Status will start at 50%/50% between STPRO and FDU. If STPRO forces successfully increase the Incursion Status to 100% the Incursion is successful. If FDU forces successfully reduce it to 0% they are successful.

From this point, I think there could be a lot of debate about what happens. Firstly, at 100% or 0% Victory is declared. In this case, if STPRO's offensive is successful every Gallente System in the Constellation becomes Vulnerable and can be bashed until downtime. If FDU successfully defends, Gallente Systems are safe, and any STPRO held systems become vulnerable and can be bashed until downtime.

Personally, I think it would be awesome to have a final "Boss" fight at the end of each incursion. Until now, the complicated PVE content of normal Incursion sites has been replaced by the more PVP balanced, but much more bland, FW plex mechanics. Here we have an opportunity to give FW some truly cinematic content that until now simply hasn't existed. Sorry, iHubs, you are basically the most boring thing to shoot ever.

No, in a Faction Warfare Incursion we spawn something awesome to shoot, and get an actual damn explosion at the end. Taking our inspiration from the Revenant fights, each final FW Incursion battle features a Supercapital class ship from the opposing faction to be destroyed by the victorious Militia. My thinking is that this part is a reward for winning the Incursion battle, not a victory requirement. System status is determined as soon as you hit that 100%, but both sides can still fight over the final "Boss" either way. If the Supercap is destroyed, big LP payout for every opposing Milita pilot who participates. If the defenders prevent its destruction, the Supercap eventually despawns when the Incursion is closed.

That's it in a nutshell. Many of you probably already see potential effects this would have on the current FW system. Several things occur to me relating to the current tendency to stagnation when one side is perceived to have an uncontested hold on the Warzone. I think he strongest recommendation for implanting this is that it would motivate players on the short end of Warzone control to participate more. I also think it would have a "hotspot" effect of drawing more fleets to a concentrated area. Don't want to wander all over the Warzone looking for gudfites? Mosey on over to your local Faction Warfare Incursion and melt faces. Hell, I even think this would stabilize some of the variability in the LP market caused by the Swinging of the Pendulum.

Do that, and there might even be less impact from farmer hordes.

Nah, probably just wishful thinking, on that one.

What do ya'll think?

You've got a 1500 man null alliance just joined you what more do you want.
I really like the idea, could be iterated on, good work

I read it, and I liked the idea of it. However, I would not want to play in a system that used it. I had initially pondered a similar "wouldn't it be cool if..." type of thing back when we lost the WZ as an interesting and exciting way to push the Caldari militia back into the fray. However, having helped my alliance plex our way back into the WZ -as grueling, boring and annoying as it was- I think that leaving it to the players is the best way to go about it. After all, the whole point of FW is capsuleer militiamen waging a forever war with each other. The space Templis is in now, we occupy because we took it form the Gallente. That means something, we didn't need some CCP gift of systems to do it either, it was all done by pilots from various corps and alliances working together for that goal. In my opinion that is way better than some PVE mechanic coming in to save a "failing" side, all that type of mechanic would do is allow the strong to continue to grow stronger and have something to do while the weak continued to suffer and never develop.

FW isn't about the Caldari State fighting the Gallente Federation, it is a limited war between us immortal gods of space who just happened to have decided to fly one flag or another.

Thus I think ultimately an incursion style mechanic would just be a lame PVE thing slapped on top of a system designed to generate boatloads of PVP. It is up to the players in the militia to siege a constellation. Not the NPC AI. If you want action and junk, find out where your enemy is basing out of, find out where they are running plexes, go set up somewhere near them and go shoot at them!