Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Wardecs serve the sole purpose of allowing conflict in highsec. Pirates are NBSI and in null everybody is NBSI as well (dont tell me about CVA I heard about them but their KOS list is miles long, and thus for all practical purposes they're NBSI as well).

So wardecs arent necessary at all for conflict in low/null. But with current flawed mechanics, which CCP allowed wardecs cant serve their purpose of allowing war in highsec. Also wardec shredding and decshield look very bad in the game and break immersion.

Before I continue, for all carebears this is a pvp game and is sold on premise on open pvp, with all that comes with it. Ganking and uneven fights are the norm. If that core gameplay of Eve Online is what bothers you prolly you'll enjoy more a different game with pvp flagging of some sort, or with some other system to discourage open world pvp and uneven fights it brings. Pve hauling and mining are valid playstyle in the game but you must accept to play in dangerous pvp environment.

Lets see how wardec shredding works:

wardeccer corp declares war on another corp. Instead of fighting the war, that corp joins wardec shredding alliance, transferring wardec to it. Then when it leaves wardec is no more.

Lets see how decshield works:

A corp makes an alliance, and a number of one man person corps that will wardec it. As with each wardec cost of war increase, aim of that is to make wardec prohibitively expensive.

Lets see how wardec should work so wardec shredding is impossible, and mechanics is fair:

when wardeccer corp A declares war on another corp B, that war is stored by the system to be for that corp. It shouldnt be transferred to something else. If I bribe Concord and Empires presumably so I can wage war its only fair I myself to pick a target.
if that corp B joins an alliance, an alliance is making a hostile act toward original wardeccers A, and should pay the wardec to corp A. Even in case of mutual war between corps A and B, if one of them now joins an alliance, alliance is initiating war and should pay for it
if alliance C pays the wardec, corp A continues to pay the wardec to corp B. If alliance dont pay for initiating war then corp B cant join at all

Is it fair? Yes.
Does it prevent wardec shredding? Yes.
Is it something that isn't unimaginable from fiction point of view and breaks the immersion? No.

Lets see how calculation of war cost should work so decshield is impossible:

Cost of wardec to a corp or an allaince should be the same, not alliance being much more costly to wardec.
Cost of wardec shouldnt change if corp or alliance is in war already, no matter the number of wars.
Cost of wardec should depend on number of members in corp or alliance, but so that it scales up with diminishing return. Wardeccing corp with 1500 members shouldn't be 100 times more expensive than corp with 15 members. Expensive yes but not that much.
Cost of wardec would increase over time, so that waging long war becomes very costly. Each week the cost should increase. That will prevent permanent wardecs out of spite, unless wardec is mutual of course. Even from fiction point of view this makes sense, long war between capsuleers would increase attention of general public and Empires, thus making more difficult for Concord to allow it as time passes because of political and media pressure

Of course wardec cost shouldn't apply in case of mutual war.

More added: ad hoc alliance

Alliance serves a purpose in Eve. It can hold sov, and so should be registered with Concord and Emires presumably. However I propose ad hoc alliance too, which will be unable to hold sov, but will have allaince wallet.
Purpose of it is to allow merxcenary corps easy way to ally with their customers during highsec wars, without the cost of making real alliance. Ad hoc alliance would have another use, which is fulfilled by blueing today. I feel blue and temporary ally arent the same. There's the issue of personal vs. corp blues as well.

Discuss.

Forum ate my post.

I find it surprising you are in E-Uni.

Decshields are prohibitively expensive. Most Corporations either could not afford them or wouldn't be interested in maintaining the payments/Alt Corps to manage them.

Decshields are also perfectly in line with Red tape and political hurdling. Nothing outside of the realm of possibility or unusual to EVE in their implementation. Using an Alt to gain an advantage as usual.

I'd be surprised if you aren't getting flak for posting here like this. If you aren't yet, it means the Directors are on holidays, and expect a flogging when they return.

WarDecs against the Uni are frequent and prolific. They are not about PvP, and are rather intended to cause the Uni to enact the SOP which limits all but the Directors from leaving station for the greater majority of the WarDecs duration. Members of the Uni are also restricted from using alts to spy on, gather Intel on, or engage war targets in any fashion.

Effectively, it limits non-directorship to hauling alts and the like who stay away from the warzone. Given most Newbs have to skill an Alt yet, by the time they're in the Uni, that means these players either leave the Uni for the duration or do nothing. Leaving the Uni means another ~30 day wait to get in again, unless that's changed.

Considering the Uni suffers these WarDecs in the past for all bu 2 months out of the year on average, that doesn't leave a lot of time for normal operations.

Lowsec Pirates are of varying types, and will shoot or not based on any number of reasons. This has nothing to do with the effectiveness of a WarDec there. WarDecs aren't needed in Null.

WarDecs against corporations in Lowsec benefit from not having to worry about GCCs or security loss, as well as station and gate guns not being a concern while members of both sides engage in any form of PvP against each other. Most people who fight in Lowsec just don't care; it's not that they couldn't benefit from the relaxed aggression mechanics. I Null, it doesn't matter.

Will start the counter arguments off by pointing to this post and the one following it.
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=587842#post587842



Like most people you make a set of statements about how war should be in your opinion without considering the effects this will have on EVE.

I would agree with removing the Alliance P nerf especially if wardec costs are increased in any way. Put in a hard limit instead, {max wars declared equals B}.

Scalable wardec costs. A classic eve university argument to get wardec costs on them increased as they are massive compared to other high sec groups. They dont think anyone should be allowed to wardec them ever as no one is good enough and we are all "faildeccers" and eve university members are indoctrinated in this from the start as even PS still exhibits this despite his dislike for eve university.

I have stated the arguments against scalable wardec costs many times before. It will be easy to exploit and hard for ccp to police, it will encourage smaller pirate groups to merge to reduce wardec costs, I am paying to dec a group but if you want me to pay to dec based on members then I want to choose the members (why should I waste money on alts, those who dont log in, those who dont undock, people who drop, those who dont fight for example). The counter argument that wardec costs should decrease for deccing larger groups is equally valid here, and this too can be rationalised in many ways.

Why should a wardec cost increase over time? What actual rationale can there be for this? Part of the expressed intent of wardecs was that you can dec a group forever (it is permitted and is part of the game, why remove it just because eve university is likely to be virtually permadecced when wardecs machanics are repaired?), EVE is a game where spite is important.

You think "political and media pressure", why would the affairs of capsuleers be of any concern to non-capsuleers, why would these groups try to violate the Yulai Convention by interfering in capsuleer concerns in such an unwise manner, why would we even listen to these mere mortals?

Here are the simple fixes for both these issues.

Wardec shedding, prevented by introducing a large cost to a corp for leaving an alliance at war that is paid by the quitter corp to the aggressing party, a cost for individual members dropping from corps to avoid war equal to your clone cost and paid to the aggressors (if you cant pay then either allow negative wallet balance or take it from the corp wallet instead and allow that to go negative). You can subtract a few points from these amounts as a CONCORD handling charge. Dropping is penalised and people are not locked into wars for ever.

For decshields, simply change this {number of wars declared by attackers or number of wars declared on defenders} to {number of wars declared by attackers} in the wardec costs equation. Or remove the Alliance P nerf which would simply wipe out this part of the equation.

@shiptoaster

From game mechanic POV wardec to simply last forever (if not mutual) offers possibility for someone to wage war indefinitely because he can and have the resources. Waging war constantly is OK, but cost should increase so that wardeccing party must measure cost vs benefit of such prolonged war.

And from fiction POV, we capsuleers pay sov bills to someone more powerful. Constant war in Empire completely breaks that.
And corp shouldn't pay for leaving allaince at war. This has nothing to do with e-uni or decshield in particular:

if wardecced corp joins an alliance, * alliance is making hostile act toward the wardeccers and should pay for it *.
Just because player alliances pew in null and have no need to wardec anybody current wardec mechanic havent been abused, but sov blocks have no highsec resources worthy of attack and defense whatsoever. Perhaps that will change over time?

@mars

There are some rules in e-uni we must follow, and we aren't allowed to post in some forum sections, but this one isn't among them.

You remove decshredding with my proposal too, because wars arent wiped out from the corp when allaince hopping (being tied to the originally wardecced party). Too an alliance must pay for initiating hostile act because corp at war joins it.

My proposal is better than your in every respect.

With my proposal implemented completely, with ad hoc alliances, mercenary corps will have raison d'etre. Currently there's little need of their services.

And I'll add, decshield has nothing to do with the e-uni as everybody else can use it as well, given the resources. Problem is decshield makes hisec wardecs useless and too costly for the benefit just like dec shredding makes them useless. Hisec pvp is discouraged (except suicide ganking) and mercenaries really have no reason to exist.

Problem is making hisec wars viable _without_ turning the game into FFA. Maybe my proposal is the right way.

Better to keep the current system than to implement this idea. If there isn't a way for those who just want to group together without having to maintain stacks of contacts I will never support forcing a corp to fight in hisec.

Those who want PVP have more than they can handle by roaming in lowsec or in NPC nullsec.

Then again I doubt CCP will have time to make any changes with FW stuff and corp and POS changes needing attention long before wardecs.

But can you take down their POS?

Then perhaps they should limit the number of Wars you can make mutual to 3.



It's relevent as it is indicative of players using the WarDec system to prevent gameplay rather than get good fights. One being against the TOS; the other being legitimate gameplay.



I'm not saying that the Directorship of the Uni doesn't in some fashion deserve these WarDecs, but it's hardly appropriate to make the new players sheltering under their wing suffer for it. Fact is, most kills against Uni members in or out of war, have consistently been new players or occured on E-Uni Navy Ops involving newer players. The latter is fine; the former is griefing.

If you really want to make the E-Uni directorship pay for their crimes; perhaps finding and attacking their alts is a more appropriate measure. It's not like that is particularly hard to do, given they frequent the Pirate Corps in much of the Metropolis/Hiematar region.

Some may be more difficult to find/engage being members of Pandemic Legion and various other Nullsec Corps/Alliances.

Not as fun as chaining Newbs though is it?

Provide official source to back up your statement here please.

I will state you are 100% wrong and nothing relating to wardecs in EVE is against the TOS.

Before I say anything else I have to point out that it is decSHEDDING not decSHREDDING.



I disagree as your proposal is limited in scope while mine work in a cohesive manner with the current system to correct the six major flaws inherent in the current wardec mechanics. Your change is nothing but a refinement which fixes one problem, a problem for which eleven other functional solutions have been proposed, and does nothing for the other five major problems.

Your proposal has a very limited effect on wars and will be difficult to implement, code and integrate into any wardec system. Mine have an overarching and all encompassing effect with minimal coding changes.

I can see a lot of potential problems that will arise with your idea here but will let it be for now as this idea deserves a chance to develop. Will give you some questions to get it started.

I do wonder how CONCORD aggro mechanics function within what I would term War Coalitions? (This name is copyright ShipToaster as I like the sound of it so dont be stealing it bitches!) I sniff opportunities for treachery and metagaming here. How are the costs of adding people to the sides implemented? You argue for a scalable war cost, how does this scaling apply to those added by the defenders and will adding people to the War Coalitions on either side be too expensive? What advantages are there to forming a War Coalition {(c) ShipToaster, 2012} compared to the normal mechanics where you can hire someone to fight on your side?



Number of mutual wars are not the problem. Being able to toggle wars mutual to reset the aggressing groups payment counter is the problem here.