Warfare & Tactics

U mad bro?

SFI's have been quite popular for a while now. Disruptors, gyro's, and Fleet shield extenders will always do good. No use in a plate that costs half of the hull, or a heat sink in place of resistance that compliments the majority of faction bonuses. These are the major reasons, off the top of my head, that Minmatar will forever be a preferred choice over Amarr. Aside from the easier missions, because npc lasers suck so hard and are easier to avoid in a bomber that also shrugs at tracking disruption.

Perhaps for the first few months of FW there was a lot of activity. then there was 2 years of pretty much nothing. On our side of hte warzone, there was the remnants of calmil draketrain (about 5 dudes, the uncool ones left behind) who used to care, and continue to use their after downtime advantage to run plexes. And on the gallente side there was val erian and perhaps dopified and XG who did their best to chase the contested blobs on the map window, trying to find the elusive and meaningless plexes.

Everyone else was fighitng a couple of times a night in BCs around gates.

P.Sure the amarr/matar warzone also died down after the initial buzz of FW and occupancy was meaningless throughout FW space for the following couple of years.

That is after all, why people were asking for consequences to FW.

Alas, FHP, i would never expect a coherent and honest comment from you since you are just an nonredeemable role player and so so bitter. Not to say amarr havent had it tough, but those rose tinted glasses are nearly opaque.

Ok mate.

If you're fleeting up and engaging the enemy fleet in an important system, fighting the good fight like you're supposed to.....

The vacuum created in the rest of the warzone will be filled by farmers. A militia isn't just the pvpers, it isn't just the farmers, and the farmers dictate control of the warzone. The farmers aren't bots, they aren't going to just sit in one system. If you're actively defending/deplexing they move on to somewhere that's quiet and plex/deplex away. Your systems get higher and higher, and theirs get lower and lower. Eventually systems will get vulnerable and then the enemy will form up a fleet and bust the bunker in a few minutes.

You can put together a fleet to stop them, but then you still have to spend hundreds of manhours deplexing that system.

As things are right now we actually outnumber the minnies in real pilots so we can take any individual system they have, but it doesn't matter because the rest of the warzone is being taken care of by semi-afk guys in cheap frigates.

And people wonder why plex prices are so high.........gee, I wonder if it has anything to do with people running half a dozen farmer accounts.

Actually, im not. Im all for certain changes that will prevent low SP alts from being so hard to catch. Ships with stabs and cloaks should not run a timer for example.

All im saying is that nerfing farmers will not fix your militia. That requires commitment. Something that amarr has lacked to a greater degree than any other militia. From my perspective, amarr as a whole never embraced the new FW ethos. Perhaps because inferno was so tough for them, but cal mil and matar mil have been beating into the dust since then and both bounce back. Only amarr wallow in their self pity and have done for years.

Sure, farmatar didnt help. But in gal mil for example, it would be highly frowned upon if someone were to admit to farming our space with calmil alts.

There is no argument that supports having stabs inside plexes. There is more of an argument for cloaks, but usually you are not alone if you have a cloak fitted and you are generally just looking for cheesy kills from a decloak trap. Your bait can run the timer.

Neither cloaks or stabs have to change. I have no idea why you would suggest they would have to change based on a complete ignorance of how the game works.

I think you may be missing one of the consequences of a large portion of the FW population consisting of "Evasion Farmers". The FW WZ in A vs M has a population crisis. A number of pilots looking for interactive play have bundled into the one WZ (C vs G) in order to counter the long term effects that the FW mechanics have caused, including the failure to address the LP farming issue.

Your comments regularly point at "why care", just turn a blind eye and sweep it under the carpet. However, the long term existence of this type of play is putting FW under some risk of failure.

Whilst the FW WZ includes a large number of different playstyles, which it should encourage and support, it should do so at a prejudice towards those that invest in interactive low sec activities...

Why?

If you want to maintain subscriptions and players you need to give them something fun to do. If you dilute their fun with a lot of unfulfilling gameplay you diminish the reason for them to log on and play (Goons have used this in the past to win Sov). However, it does not make a good business model for CCP to allow for this to continue.

I'd be confident enough to state the average "Evasion Farmer" does not do so for fun but for income.

Not everyone runs multiple clients. A lot of people have also changed over 10+ years and have lives that limit their game time (I am one for sure). If you reduce what they can do with the time they have in game down to a search for reasonable content they change their game choices or change their game (eg: Alliances leave one WZ for the other, players play other games).

This has been happening for some time. The A vs M WZ lost the fight to the C vs G WZ. Likely due to the close proximity of the C vs G WZ to more active null sec. The population that does play FW has contracted there.

Small changes are needed stepwise to see if they can trigger the right change to the mix in order to kick things back into balance. There is a place for farming if the risk / reward relationship is well balanced.

The same can be said about the off grid boosters, OFB. Currently there is not enough risk to the reward. Aggression timers (same as neutral logi) would perhaps be appropriate but forcing them on grid is unnecessary.

Boost kills can be cheesy.

I dont think defensive plexing is a problem. Dplexing alts are useless if pvpers want the system more. And if the pvpers are not there, how would they know if they are dplex alts or not?

My suggestion makes things less frustrating for pvpers. Pointing someone only to watch them warp away must be frustrating. You know they were semi-afk, and some module they have fitted means you have to go dock up and refit if you want to kill them, only now they will be watching for you.

I am less interesting in stopping the use of alts (or new low-sp players), and more interested in making pvp more rewarding for those that make the effort to undock and find targets, however easy they are.

I like the scale of pay, i think risk should be increased for all levels of SP.

Personally, id argue for removing the bulk of skills. 12 years down the line, as some are hitting 300m SP, asking people to join the game and have to spend the first year of their play with a rudimentary set of skills is untenable. Id give everyone perfect fitting skills and all weapons/support skills and t1 hulls to level 3.

That wouldnt stop farming, but along with a restriction on modules that have little or no combat uses in plexes might entourage people to fit things a little differently.

The skill injection changes coming will offer new players the opportunity to ingest some of those old SP's, if they are so bothered with long wait times. I threw out the possibility of the Sisters of Eve epic arc granting SP upon completion, something minuscule that would allow them to top off a lvl 4 1x skill, such as CPU management. You can only do them once every 3 months. An excellent carrot to chase that would also grant a large measure of experience and comprehension of the scale of Eve at the cost of a measly 45,000 granted skill points. Therefore I like the elapsed time of skills. It is an unfortunate reality that they will almost certainly lose if they meet a player that is skilled in both time invested and combat effectiveness.

I apologize for the scatter-brained responses during my work breaks. I am mingling answers to different posters in one answer.

I believe the current level of payouts by tier are good. It is the means by which high tiers are easily reached and maintained that I think is the root of the problem, which points us back, always, to the FW missions.

Defensive plexing farmers will diminish in lower tiers, which is the inevitable outcome of axing the missions. I say these things because Gallente militia is a true example of what a faction will look like when missions are not easily accessible and have a high risk, high loss. Getting rid of them entirely would return the focus to VP warfare. Restricting tech 2 and tech 3 hulls will allow others to still do them, with the risks that will fit the rewards. The general consensus is that keeping them around will still divert attention from the actual fighting. I have run them in pvp fits and have gotten kills on the way to objectives, in a pre-made fleet and a few times solo I just happened to be at the right place at the right time and helped shoot stuff down. There is still a place for them if we do it right, but the warzone can only be better without them than with. Stabbed plexers can be caught and the Navy Maulus will soon help. OGB's can be scared off half the time by simply throwing out combat probes, whether you know what the hell you're doing or not. Unfortunately no one can tell, without becoming familiar with enemies, who is boosted in a busy system or not. Neither can you tell if they're drugged if they already popped. Big oh wells.

I think the FW map screen that clearly shows which systems currently have objectives that are being captured is plenty of information for you to go by. Whether you want to show up in a t1 frigate or a pirate cruiser, is your own damn choice. You deserve to see anything more. Use a scout. Make friends. NAFF like the rest of us and get it done. Why should anyone know if i'm in a Curse, a Lachesis, a Daredevil or a Garmur with free remote intel tools?