If the wardeccers would really look for interesting PvP, the most simple solution would be to allow anyone to wardec any other corp for whatever reason, but losing CONCORD protection when doing so. Kinda being âperma suspectâ as long as you have any offensive wars running. Basically you force your target to pay attention at all times in highsec, but you also have to do that yourself if you donât want to be thirdpartied.
Good and organized PvPers obviously wouldnât have any problem with that, since like in Low, 0.0 or WH you simply have to scout, scan and consider anyone outside your fleet a potential hostile. On the other hand I am pretty sure the current wardeccers would somehow not be amused about such a solution and label it as unfair if their fleet gets jumped on by another fleet that could actually fight them instead of just farming the next best Citadel Core from some 6 man Newbiecorp in close to 100% safety under the CONCORD shield. Shrug. Probably they will bring examples of âsmall wardec corps looking for fair fightsâ (that donât exist) being at too much of a disadvantage then. 
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I think everyone should be able to declare war on the Frostpacker clan regardless of their war eligibility. 
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And hinder their money making abilities?
Think before you speak @Uriel_the_Flame
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Frostpacker recently started outsourcing its fundraising.
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That is not a bad idea at all in one sense, and it does solve the farming issue, but what about smaller conflicts?
I disagree.
But nice try, trying to speak for me.
The old wardec mechanic was great. It needs to be brought back. Very engaging gameplay. Gave a sense of looming danger that fed into the dark, dystopic atmosphere the game was know for. Shame it got âHello Kitty-ized,â and easier to swallow for the light weights.
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I agree with both of you in different ways, yes it was easy to dec small corps of players who might be new to the game and just wanted to play at making their own corp but i also rather enjoyed the old system.
I still think tying it in with faction warfare would be fun, with some sort of letters of marque, high level mission counter play and rewards - maybe only corps of a certain size and/or age could be wardecced?
Iâd deffinately like to see some changes to the current system, havent enjoyed a wardec for years myself and it was fun at times, even when i was on the losing end haha
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Many war decs are blanket war decs that are aimed at passing targets going to trade hubs along the pipes. They are just a big boring waste of time. We just got one on us from Blackflag. which from their most recent activities on Zkill look like a ganking alliance at this point, with the real war deccers in Vendetta. It is one big yawnfestâŚ
Late reply on this one, I know, but I think Dracvladâs idea on this one has merit, with some caveats.
I would be ecstatic if this change were made. It would put me back in business as a solo wardeccer. However, it would only really be of benefit to solo wardeccers. I think the concept is great though, and if the number of concurrent wardecs was raised to, say, 10, it would allow very small wardec corporations to thrive.
10 concurrent wardecs is only enough to sustain a very small wardec corporation - too small to realistically defend a war HQ. I want to see smaller independent wardec corporations make a comeback, but I donât think that larger ones shouldnât be able to exist at all. What we need is a mechanic that allows for wardec corporations of a whole range of different sizes.
Some folks may remember that there was a brief period when I was the CEO of a fairly high profile wardec corporation. I made a lot of mistakes in that capacity, but I did learn quite a lot. I also CEOed a nullsec PvP corporation back in the day. What Iâm saying is, I have some perspective on what PvP corps require to be successful that many others may not have.
If you are going to run a successful PvP corp - build strong killboard activity, cultivate a reputation, attract good FCs and good PvPers, then you need to provide conditions in which your members can log in and be fighting someone with reasonable odds of winning within 30 minutes or so of playtime. They need to be able to do that consistently any day of the week. This is true whether you are in highsec, nullsec, or anywhere else. If you canât provide those conditions, your corporation is either going to melt away or degenerate into a PVE group that sometimes also PVPs (a shameful fate indeed.)
In a highsec wardec corporation, you make that happen by declaring large numbers of concurrent wars. A solo guy, or a corp of 2-3 individual players, can carefully scout out target corporations which are super active in their TZ and get that content through focused wardecs. But not every wardec is going to work out. Many result in no fights at all, in spite of everyoneâs best efforts.
As you get more members, the number of wars you need to declare to produce the required amount of content to be successful grows as well. The formula seems to be that you need roughly the same number of concurrent wars as you have members. Otherwise your members will be starved of content and seek greener pastures.
I would adjust those limits. Say, 10 wardecs without an HQ, to support wardec corporations of up to 10 members. Then the HQ requirement kicks in. 11 is a reasonable number of members to defend a war HQ. There should not be any hard limit to the number of wars that you can declare with an HQ. Thereâs no reason for it.
I also object to the idea that you should need an HQ to wardec large alliances. The logic that it should be more difficult to wardec large alliances that are presumably better equipped to defend themselves than small ones who are more vulnerable has never made the least bit of sense to me. I understand why nullbloc CEOs would lobby for those restrictions, but they donât make objective sense. Besides which, these nullblocs produce targets of opportunity, which is fantastic when your focused wardecs just arenât working out.
Not to mention, the current mechanics have led to artificially bloated groups like Silent Company or The Conglomerate, with thousands of members on paper, but only less than 10 active members at any given time. Any wardec reform should allow us to weed the garden of groups like that. Wardeccers are often accused, with little supporting evidence, of driving players from the game, but you look at these groups. If you join Silent Company and thereâs 2000 members, but you only ever see 3 people online, then thatâs proof that Silent Company has directly driven 1997 people out of the game. Wardecs against such groups should be facilitated, not roadblocked for the sake of protecting the poor defenseless nullbears.
I think excessive war fees should also be addressed. Wardeccing people isnât much of a revenue generating activity. Itâs almost always done at a loss. High fees have long been a barrier to entry for small groups.
Unfortunately, all these great ideas donât count for much unless CCP is willing to acknowledge that the wardec system needs improvement. I have the strong impression that internally they washed their hands of the system after tying wars to structures, and that they are unwilling to even consider further reforms.
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Thatâs because carebears have had wardecs nerfed so many times that this is what theyâve devolved in to.
How many nerfs is enough? I know you likely mean well, but any changes will have the unintended consequence of the wardec players simply adapting to those changes, as they always do, and continuing on with their activities.
No matter what you try to do, there will always be those who take advantage of targets of opportunity. From Bandits, to Highwaymen, to Scammers, to Gankers, itâs a fact of life that your efforts are better spent keeping yourself from becoming that target of opportunity than in asking someone else to make you safe.
Hereâs a hint on how groups like Blackflag choose their targets. They look at Zkill and find people who lost expensive haulers near their area. If you send enough expensive stuff through that you get randomly ganked for doing it, you do it frequently and are thus a good target. That Sunesis sitting at 0km off the gate 1 jump out of Jita is also scanning everything that goes by, and logging all the expensive haulers.
Honestly blanket wardecs to catch people on trade lanes have their place, thereâs nothing wrong with it, and people have been doing this as long as wardecs have been a thing.
It isnât because of the nerfs. The nerfs just eliminated most of the other sorts of wardecs.
Damn good post, there is a lot of fear from people at what is seen as un-fettled war decs so they wanted limitations in possible numbers, but these numbers could be adjusted as we see the effect. I liked your points very much and hope that CCP notices them.
Blackflag. were more than that, however they seem to have morphed into something less so to speak. Years ago I was war decced by Deadly Fingertips for daring to use an Orca to move stuff to Jita, so yeah, pretty standard way to pick up on targets.
I thought that the blanket war decs just for that had accumulative negative knock on effects when so many people did it. I canât help but think that smaller groups did more fun war decs and if people want bigger fights then they should move to other areas of space. That said there could be some real fun fights around structures that was why having some structure involvement is a good idea.
Thanks to both of you for your comments.
They do, thatâs why they gave corps the option to opt out of the wardec system entirely. But if you want a station, people need to be able to take that station down, so youâre subject to wars to allow this. That is the only situation in which the game forces you to engage in the wardec system now.
Iâm sure you would be âecstaticâ. Imagine ! Guaranteed content 24/7 by wardecâing the largest entities you can find ⌠Saves you the trip to âdangerous space filled with carebearsâ, doesnât it.
⌠while doing exactly nothing about the already existing wardec groups, or worse, with the original ideas enabling them even more. Any suggestion that enables this form of predation any further should be met with high resistance. Itâs that mindset that brought wardecâing to its current, sorry state.
What sorry state, you ask ? Besides the practice of wardecâing any hisec corporations/alliances that happen to own a structure of any kind, including a simple POCO, the go to-model is to wardec the largest groups possible, lowsec, nullsec and wh alliances. Why ? To increase the odds of an encounter. The majority of the kills occurs in and around Jita, of course. Targets are at their most vulnerable while traveling, are least organized, or are simply hauling stuff back and forth because that is what needs to be done to play the game.
What do these wardecârs have at stake ? With the current rules: a measly 100M isk per week per wardec, and an expendable war HQ - a cored Athanor is around 1.5 B ISK.
Examples:
(1) the alliance Iâm in had 75 wars in 2023. The large majority of these were initiated by hs wardec alliances. Thatâs more wars than there are weeks in a year⌠For this year weâre currently at 36, which means weâre involved in hs wars almost constantly.
(2) The alliance that wardecâd us this week did so in one nice bundle of 110 war declarations at once, and including all the largest nullsec blocs. That means they paid 11 B ISK in fees. One lucky freighter kill pays for all of these at once !
What are the parameters that can be considered when balancing wardec mechanics ?
- war HQ requirements: ranging from none, via one for all wardecs, to the extreme of one per wardec
- war declaration costs: flat fee (currently 100M) to a scaling fee (what was used in the past)
- size of the groups involved: could tie into wardec fee e.g., with minimal cost for equal sized groups (with âgroupâ defined as active pilots)
- duration of a war: number of times a war fee can be paid, from once to infinite
- end goals of a war: the âwinâ criterium (currently the destruction of a war HQ of the attacker, or a surrender)
- number or parallel wars: currently unlimited
- chaining of wars: currently partially curtailed with the surrender and loss of war HQ
- war location: currently unspecified, could be made to involve invasion instead of simply denying hisec entry
- war exempt locations: currently non-existent
Of course I have a preference for any of these parameter settings. But Iâd rather hear what other people would suggest for a better balance.
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is if anyone could declare war to anyone without any need of a structure !
no criminal for out of war logistics ! no corp leaving within a war for both sides !
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And yet with an ounce of precaution, or an out of alliance alt, you can completely ignore wardecs while living outside highsec.
Hell, with an out of alliance alt you donât even need to worry about most wars living in highsec.
Why is this the case? Because people throw tantrums like this over something that wouldnât impact them at all if they just flew with a basic amount of senseâŚ
Itâs surprisingly difficult to lose a freighter to a wardec. You almost have to do it on purpose.
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Sure, all the convenience for you, and all of the burden on the defenders âŚ
@Vuhdo_Rin Nice, no moderation or balancing at all.
And thatâs why this discussion is sterile.
why is this no balance ? the defender can do the same as the attacker oO
only the lazyness stops this HS corps from fighting back ⌠and why we should care about lazy ppl ?
Wow. Itâs a burden to fly smart? Itâs a burden to not make yourself a target of opportunity, thus avoiding the attention of those groups entirely?
We had fewer people whining about it when they could wardec everyone. It spread them out across highsec looking for targets rather than concentrate them all in the trade hubs. Thank whiners like yourself for wardecs becoming what they are today.
No, this discussion is sterile because itâs been discussed to the point the horse turned to dust, blew away, and youâre just pounding the sand where the body used to be. You have zero new arguments against the topic, just the same old worn out, âBut I canât be bothered!!!â
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