Warfare & Tactics

I really dont get this argument, I really dont. I plex and mission in pvp boats (yes, drakes, caracals and gilas are that good. Shocking!) and I rarely, if ever, have trouble in either. Ok, "Halt the invasion" tends to be a bit hefty job for a drake but gila can manage it. I still prefer not to do it since chewing through the bloody gate takes ages

Why is CCP hellbent on taking over the sandbox? Why cant we have one area of the game where we aren't subjected to the control of large alliances?? Why are they dead set on on introducing metagaming ( more than it currently exists ) into FW???
Why is the playerbase being forced to play a playstyle they dont want to? Why cant they just enjoy their subscription money and let us play our game? Do they really think anyone in FW wants these changes?

The next thing that will evolve after this is block standings exceptions, or changes to standing mechanics will be made so alliances joining FW dont have to adhere to current standings standards for joining or staying in FW( after all that would be "unfair" to long time alliance members).Sounds like a nice opportunity for Nex to sell standings.Changes to standing mechanics are coming for sure.I think its BS that they dont make systems conquerable to FW unless and until they admit alliances. We wanted it all along, have been waiting for it but no, they wont implement it until they have the mechanics set up for alliances to co-opt FW.

The change after that will be the dissolution of state pro.You will be forced to join an alliance or if we are lucky, only a corp to get the advantages of being in militia under the new mechanics system. it's nothing but an opportunity to force low sec to be like null sec.

Will members of state pro be able to be taxed for using stations owned by Cal FW alliances?
We can kiss our small gang warfare goodbye and have the snoozefest that is 0,0 warfare forced upon us.Now you will be forced to fly in fleets, instead of having opportunities to fly solo or in small or medium gangs, cause if you attempt it you will be blobbed.

And elections? Alliances will just come in, with their alt buddies as well and take the elections.Has CCP ever even talked to long time FW pilots, and asked them why they are in FW for years and not 0.0??? it was to get away from the politics and metagaming and snoozefest fleets in the first place.I guess the CSM and Hans ( master of theory crafting as opposed to actual combat heavy experience in FW) are dictating the changes.The only reason CCP is paying attention to FW now is they have found a use fo rus.They want FW as nothing more than a testbed for 0.0 I would have thought they would have learned the dangers of trying to use us as their unpaid beta testers after the Incarna Fiasco.

It is clear CCP has not learned it's lessons about the players controlling the sandbox, and are poised to repeat their past mistakes, ready once again to impose their playstyle on us whether we like it or not.

As an aside I find it amusing that as CCP focuses on "War" they increasingly turn this into a political and metagame. Why is CCP so goddamn sure that metagaming ,spying, and manipulation is what the majority of eve players want?? it isnt, but the people who have the ear of CCP are those type of people, the ones who have bothered to manipulate themselves into that political system. They should call this expansion " Politics" not "War".


What amuses me most is that CCP in actuality has no understanding of war.I doubt there are few if any people with a background in anything vaguely related to military science or the military arts employed by CCP.I started to play Eve as a crossover from a hard core group of guys from a Mil sim community ( real mil sims) and what appealed to me and the others was the fact that eve as a game as it existed at that time effectively captured many of the real world elements of warfare, even if it failed miserably as any kind of sim itself. Command and control issues, Friction, Mass, Maneuver ,Tempo, Morale, Supply and logistics ( real logisitcs, not logi ships) intitative, were all part of the game. Now they want to turn the entire game into the trench warfare stagnation of WWI that has afflicted and killed null, that, and the metagaming.

People join FW for solo, small and med fleet size fights, as it's the only place left we can get them. Instead of rewarding those who stuck with FW for years by giving us something to fight for, they now plan to do what they always do, giving yet another piece of the pie to alliances in the vain hope that by literally FORCING people to join allainces ( which is why they want to eventually include high sec) it will solve the problems they have with nullsec and impose their idea of what they think the sandbox we play in should look like.

All they will do is spread their flawed model throughout the game,like a cancer, leaving nowhere for longtime hardcore warriors like me no choice but to move on in the hopes of finding another game, or sim, that captures the real mechanics of warfare as Eve once did long ago.

If you are gonna impose these godawful changes on us, please,

1) DON'T soften the standings requirements, now, or in the future and DON'T sell standings in any size way shape or form.

2) DON'T apply dif rules as far as benifits go as per stations and hubs for guys in state pro or non alliance FW corp that are in FW. We SERVE THE STATE. Make allainces that join FW do the same and make the benifits the same for all, be they state pro, in a lone corp, or in an alliance. If they want to risk their assets to gain control and benifits, extend them the same way militia wide.Otherwise we have no hope of not simply being co-opted by larger alliances.

3) DO NOT hold elections forcing us to wage war along the guideleines of 0.0. We joined to get away from that, and it's politics. I can't tell you how many pilots have left FW and returned because of the fact that they hate the politics, metagaming and snoozefest fleets that nullsec is now.

4) Do NOT allow bubbles in lowesec.

Yes, it's possible to pve in a pvp ship, send me a mail if you would like to get details on the fit/tactics.

Please let's stop derailing the thread with fitting/missioning discussion and focus on what this thread is about :)

Are you serious? Who's going to read all that? I got in to about a third and then almost fell asleep, right where you start indirectly bragging about your "knowledge of warfare". Yes, that is snoozefest right there in your post.

And so we're clear, I don't like that new CCP bullshit either. I second the idea, that VPs need some rewards and taking systems needs some meaning. Other than that, I think that the FW mechanics works quite fine as opposed to the horrors that could happen.

EDIT: And there is your second post, where the first sentence is enough. You should seriously think about yourself. This is a game forum, not a lecture hall. And we play a MMORPG game, not some meticulously designed warfare simulator based on someone's delusions of grandeur.

Why don't you just come out and say 'nullsec' is the end game for everyone while you're at it? The way you phrase the question already shows what preference you wish to impose on everyone

I made my post in good spirit and meant no offense :)

What I meant was that discussing stuff actually related to FW like 'Plexing' (such as this statement of yours: "IMO Occupancy plexing is broken because it is more about pve than pvp."), instead of detailed fittings talk like your debate with Damar over the caracal/navy caracal.

Don't misunderstand me, I like most of your posts, they do have a lot to add to the thread, but it simply looked like you two were getting a little carried away in your discussion of fittings.

And I take offense to your statement of me whining, that was completely uncalled for and immature, simply because I criticized you in a constructive way.
To me Faction Warfare is important, and so I want the thread to focus on FW discussion and how to improve it (such as your ideas of how Plexing should be more about the pvp, I agree with that), which is sort of what this is about.

If you look back a bit, you will notice some of my posts and see that I've tried to add something to this thread.
I will not derail the thread any further, but I felt compelled to reply to your post.

(Ps. you can send me a mail ingame and I'll reply with a pretty solid pvp drake that I've used on countless occasions to do the FW missions in, you can also look up my losses)

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On topic:
The Minutes mentioned something about there being Revenue from holding Sov (or something of the sort) that could be used to purchase system upgrades/LP payout.

An idea: instead of there being some kind of fixed profit going into the wallets of a specific few, why not make it so that you gain more Victory points for killing enemies of the opposing faction and use that as currency for whatever improvements there would be. So if you want more stuff, pvp for it.

I haven't thought over this much, so the idea may be terribly flawed, but it's something.

You can solo destroy medium plexes in a 200mm rail, long point, nano Thorax with a medium repper. Use tungsten. You have to turn on your repper exactly once during the whole plex. Its an ok pvp ship too. Good against frigs. I have only fought another cruiser solo once. I had an arazu in low armor while I had full armor the other day, but then a tempest showed up and ruined my fun.

Personally, I like the fact that you dont see cookie cutter fits all the time in FW. It makes it interesting. And people dont always solo plexes. So if there is more than one person in the plex, it is more likely that they are all in "full" pvp setups.

I was thinking the same thing. Instead of something to convert to isk you could say that after your faction gets so many vp they get a "vp cookie" or something. You can use a "vp cookie" to make it so you get more lp or make it so probes don't work well or some other set of limitted bonuses but you can't convert it to isk.

This would work better than giving leaders isk and all the problems that brings. But it still misses the mark.

The thing is the consequences can't be something players really care about. Because if it is something they care about they will just switch sides or at least new players will start joining the winning side. The war will just get more and more lopsided. After all if players care about it they can easilly just join the side that offers what they care to have.

Now they can make it so players can choose to kick players out of the militia but that has allot of problems too.

The thing is the players have to want to win fw because it is a good quality game not because they can then get something else. Winning FW really should be the ultimate goal of players. Not a means to some other end.

Compare chess to the lottery. People play chess and try hard because chess is a good quality game. They don't play so that they get something else.

On the other hand the lottery is a stupid game. If people only earned "lottery isk" (currency that could only buy you more game time/lottery tickets) no one would play.

CCP needs to make sure that fw is a good quality game. To the extent they try to lure us into playing by giving us more isk/consequences the "improvement" is a facade.

How do they make the game a good quality game? They need to make sure it implements small scale pvp. Why? Because IMO small scale pvp is the best eve has to offer. (others would say eve politics, I disagree, but whatever people who think the politics in eve are great have null sec.) In any event if fw plexing is primarilly a pve activity the game is not a good quality one - we can all pretty much agree there.

Now I have argued that the pve works to ruin the chances that plexing brings about small scale pvp. Damar has taken issue with that. He seems to claim that he can do the pve in a normal pvp ship and the rats don't seem to make the pvp less likely.

This is where the debate naturally leads. And at this point we really need to examine that issue if we are to actually fix fw. All the other suggestions have real problems and tend to miss the mark.

That is why my asking him to explain these pvp ships is not beside the point. To me it is where this whole topic will eventually move.

So when you say "Yes, it's possible to pve in a pvp ship," and then suggest we just move on, you come off as glib and IMO move the discussion backwards.

Thats why I responded as I did. I apologize if you didn't intend to sound glib and your really thought I thought it was impossible to pve in a pvp ship. I don't think its impossible to pve in a pvp ship I just think that its very suboptimal and leads to fw being primarilly pve instead of pvp.

Until we get some consensus on how fw can be pvp instead of pve we will not be able to offer ccp constuctive feedback on how to fix fw.

The fail is strong in those CSM minutes.