EVE General Discussion

I fully agree with this. But then again, the speaker was french and didn't he he had a hard-on for gallente anyway (playing in said faction) so I quess we can toss CCP:'s neutrality to thrashcan here. Bit like CCP waved the flag for frog militia and badmouthed Caldari in the alliance tournament they were allowed in back when FW was fresh. How did that work out for you idiots?

That was not the point. I was merely bringing into attentions CCP's biased favor in regards to some militias, which in my opinion is very valid and important point to bring across. They have demonstrated it back when FW started, continued it with unannounced changes to plexing mechanics in 2009 and even with new mechanics they favor the "blob warfare" aspect more. Some people might forget or forgive what happened in the past but not me.

And you were not even interested to know what standings bug was back when Caldari demonstrated it for all the world to see (and ruined rp aspect of FW forever, thankfully), a mechanic which is still in widespread use and which nobody seems to want to fix.

IMHO preventing one side docking in a station is a dumb idea for regular stations. What about neutrals? Alts? Pirates?

Really, replace Bunkers with nullsec-style Outpost, or in Militia terms, a "Firebase". All system sov upgrades focused here, cheaper repair, clones, taxes etc. Only owning militia can dock, and NO CAPITALS (it's a Firebase afterall, not a fully-featured Station). Couple of sentry guns that will shoot enemy militias and GCC, but can be incapacitated with a ~6 hour (or something) timer. Sov changes by shooting this station into reinforced mode, then 24 hours later killing it, with things working exactly like nullsec Outposts (all your stuff stays but you don't have docking rights, wait for sov change, jump into a clone you had inside, or courier contract/"hire" a spy (make an alt) to join that militia and dock).

This is the only proper way to do it. Why?

How else will you designate which station in the system is "owned" by the militia? Some systems have no militia-corp stations. Simple; bring your own.

How to determine who can dock in an already-built station? Many neutrals throughout FW lowsec are invested in these lowsec stations. Cutting them off is stupid. Brand-new mini stations for Militia solves that problem. Nobody not involved is inconvenienced.

If you DO decide to let neutrals dock in existing stations (but not WTs) then too little is accomplished for very little gain. That will only motivate even more neutral alts.

Makes it more interesting to apply upgrades. IMHO all upgrades should be automatic and based on the Sov level of the system which should also be automatic. Initially for example the FW-station in the system should have only basic stuff, like just a repair bay and clone bay. After the system starts upgrading (based purely on time? plexing? w/e) add more; Manufacturing slots, ore refineries, research, etc etc, even sentry guns and then start adding bonuses for all of these for the militia. When a system changes hands the stations and all its upgrades disappear. if those upgrades keep, then after a certain amount of time all stations in all systems will be max-upgraded and make the entire thing pointless.

A militia station makes it impractical for that douchebag in a fully sensor-boosted Tornado to instapop interceptors. I know, I am one of those douchebags. In general this applies to all sorts of campers. If you want to camp their station do it with a big fleet with logistics.

Not allowing capitals to dock (friendly or enemy) also gets rid of annoying campers and station-hugging Myrmidons who undock a carrier alt or whatever, and generally removes a lot of the gay "safety zone" of using carriers in FW. If you're going to use them you have to put them at risk, you can't just undock one in the middle of a battle knowing you can dock it if things look bad, and basically never ever lose it.

Other suggestions:

IMHO avoid like the plague any sort of "player input". Afterall we join the Militia as soldiers fighting for whatever cause, not leaders of that faction. Also, you will always have conflicting interests including people who just want to **** around with everyone else. That doesn't work very well when you have a militia where nobody can be kicked out for being a douchebag like you have in Alliances. Give higher ranks bonuses fine. Don't let anyone make any decisions that affect the militia on a tactical or strategic level. All system upgrades should be tier-based and automatic, and depend on a system's sovereignty level which itself should probably be determined simply by overall time the system has been in the hands of that militia. Think of it as the NPC militia leaders making the decisions in an incredibly predictable fashion. However as a slight exception to this, allow enemy WTs to "disrupt" the upgrade process of a system by running plexes and doing missions in that system. ~Guerilla warfare~, if a systemi s taken by the enemy the former defenders can spend time doing small moves to prevent that system from upgrading while a counter-attack is planned, or whatever.

Cyno jammers can potentially **** neutrals over who are just trying to move ****. Maybe make it specifically IFF Cyno Jammer that will only jam cyno's from enemy militias? Either way it should be an automatic, high-level upgrade for a system. The cyno jammer itself should be fairly weak, easily killable by a moderate 20-30 man mixed fleet in a reasonable amount of time.

Make things like Cyno Jammers, militia sentry guns etc able to be incapacitated, with maybe a 6-hour timer, or varying depending on the object; cyno jammer could be 24 hours, sentry guns 6 hours.

My 2 ISK.

Actually that has been nerfed quite a lot by my observation (unannounced). Meanwhile gallente damps seem to have been buffed in frequency and strength, another bias from CCP.

There should be docking consequences imposed on a sliding scale based on standings. From full and discounted services for those with high standing to limited or no services with lower standings. Applied equally system wide could result in players being more aware of their situation which is a good thing. You have been running missions against a race forever, have blown up billions of ISK of their ships and expect to dock in their stations without consequence? In a war zone services are never made available to the enemy to dock, rearm and refuel. Since players are immortal, there is no need for humanitarian or medical considerations. If your ship is in structure spewing flames and you hear “your docking request has been denied”, well, you should have thought ahead.

Quickly browsed through this thread, has good comments, most of them that were expressed during the round table.

Main things that stand out of this so far:

• Cyno jammer: creates a lot of corner cases and is a very risky move as it affects alliances, FW pilots and neutrals unrelated to FW. Need to be seriously looked into, and made a lot more solid if it is going to be implemented


• Over-designing FW: feedback expressed concerns about strapping a lot of consequences into a feature that may not be ready for them. Proposed idea was to start implementing stuff that made sense is approved by most of the players (LP for PvP kills, ranks, complex changes, fix issues with standings and notifications), see how it goes, then move ahead one step at a time. That would be a much prudent and wiser move in general.

I gathered quite a lot of notes from the FW round table as well, and there were good ideas being moved around. I'll talk with the other designers next week to see if we can have a look into this.

In all cases, many thanks for the discussion and comments, I really enjoyed the FW presentation questions / roundtable (even if it was a bit difficult to keep order at times )

Thanks for dropping by and following up with us. I even resubbed by FW alt (a few months back, actually) on the news that you guys were gonna be revamping it. :)

-Liang

I like the idea of not being able to dock at an enemy station. after all you are at war with said faction. why would you allow someone like that to dock up all safe like. yes this will affect trade hub prices in the area but it comes down say your a United stares Marine and you are at war with Iran, why would Iran let you stay at their hotel when you do not control it?

as an example i mean no offense

Docking Rights Suggestion:
1. Only affects FW stations.
2. You can ALWAYS dock a pod into any station.
3. You can ALWAYS undock a ship.
4. You cannot dock a ship in an enemy held station.

This way people can have access to their stuff even if the system has been flipped.

Edit: It seems the better answer is denial of FW station services and FW agents.

Change this to "Allow upgrades of systems you own using VICTORY POINTS." I've got over 100k of these buggers and they need to be put to good use!

This might be a good model:

Occupancy Warfare (plexes) ---> Victory Points ----> System upgrades ----> (isk)

Mission Running ---> LP ----> FW Items ----> (isk)