A loose idea to revamp highsec wars and gameplay

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
,
21

I’m not sure, is it?
It gives corps a method of avoiding wardecs altogether by simply not owning any structures. They still get the tax advantages of being in a player corp.

Right, because the old mechanics did not offer that protection.

HiSec needs some method of sanctioned aggression. Otherwise, for example, whoever put down the first POCO on a planet wins that planet, forever.

I also agree, and it’s partly why I think this idea should be built on the existing mechanics.

The defenders start with a huge advantage: being able to select the window for timers.
As for ‘evening the playing field’ why in the name of divinity’s edge should that be A Thing™?
You want to ‘even the playing field’, make friends who will come and help you defend your structures against the nasty wardeccers.

Years ago, there was a group called PIRAT that wardecced all and sundry. Their main targets were haulers coming in and out of Jita.
They dec’d my WH corp. When that war ran out, we turned around and wardec’d THEM.

That’s some tangent. Have you not fought against 40-account multiboxing input broadcasters yet, each fielding 1 bil+ t3c’s? There are limits to what I would consider to be gameplay within the bounds of an unexploited system. The last war I was in with PIRAT ended when those accounts were banned. This shouldn’t be supported. A proxy conflict system like this could alter the way warfare is waged, potentially.

You talk about fighting back yet you seem to want less highsec warfare in total. I want to open the floodgates without reverting the progress that was made with the current system.

22

Beyond keeping them in the game at some level, I couldn’t care less about HiSec wars tbh.

So much tears about this mechanic, yet I’ve not seen any HiSec groups try and form a mutual defence pact alliance to try and actually contest the timers and defend their structures.

Ultimately, EVE can (for better or worse) come down to N+1 in large engagements.

If you want the relative safety of hisec along with the benefits of structure ownership, then it’s up to you to determine how best to use the mechanics to your advantage.

Coming on forums demanding a ‘level playing field’ does nothing to advance your cause.

“If you find yourself in a fair fight in EVE Online, you went in underprepared” ~ Some Wise EVE Player Many Moons Ago.

Got any evidence of such things being used or just spouting off?
It’s rather easy to rule out input broadcasting, actually proving it requires CCP to check their logs (insert The Logs Show Nothing™ meme here).
Please post some killmails where you think this has happened.

And yes, I have fought large input broadcast fleets. Although it was IB Nestors in a wormhole, not T3Cs in HiSec.

23

Coming on forums demanding a ‘level playing field’ does nothing to advance your cause.

“If you find yourself in a fair fight in EVE Online, you went in underprepared” ~ Some Wise EVE Player Many Moons Ago.

You’re merely zeroing in on a very minor focus of this idea, misinterpreting it, and blowing it way out of proportion for the sake of an unfair argument. I’m not insisting that warfare be “fair” in the manner you’re saying I am. What I am saying is that warfare ought not be exclusive to groups that can dominate without the possibility of being contested within reason. Thus, we would have more wars. That requires leveling the playing field in some sense.

As an added bonus, it may give defenders a better chance of winning, if they can make those friends you were talking about. Why not throw some money behind it even? Even small corps with enough funds might drive campaigns of proxy wars, involving many more players who might otherwise be bored enough to unsub.

Got any evidence of such things being used or just spouting off?
It’s rather easy to rule out input broadcasting, actually proving it requires CCP to check their logs (insert The Logs Show Nothing™ meme here).
Please post some killmails where you think this has happened.

You’d have to query CCP who doesn’t broadcast their findings as far as I know, other than the fact that our coalition blew up PIRAT’s hq, which wouldn’t have been possible without the sudden removal of many of their cruiser pilot accounts. They dropped like flies after that.

24

Anyone can go and declare a war. It’s hardly “exclusive” to any given group(s).
Only a group that’s confident of winning, or at least generating entertaining content for their members, is going to do so.
Aside from POCO empires, I’m not really sure there’s much in HS worth fighting over, therefore, it’s being done for content.

Again, I fail to see your point.
From what I can gather, most hisec groups just turtle up and stay docked when war is declared. If you want your enemies to see you as a soft target, that’s a good way of going about it.

This mechanism already exists through recruiting Allies in your wars.

Why should I ask CCP?
YOU raised multiboxed fleets of input broadcasting T3Cs as being an issue. Can you, or can you not, provide some evidence to back up your assertion? ZKill reports are fine for the purpose.

25

Anyone can go and declare a war. It’s hardly “exclusive” to any given group(s).
Only a group that’s confident of winning, or at least generating entertaining content for their members, is going to do so.
Aside from POCO empires, I’m not really sure there’s much in HS worth fighting over, therefore, it’s being done for content.

At this point you’re ignoring the points I made earlier – the issue is, as I see it, that the stakes are too high. Think about the old system: it didn’t require a war hq. Any corp could declare war for any reason and no corp was unwardeccable. That promoted excessive, oppressive wars, to the point that CCP curbed them with the new system. The stakes were too low. Now we have a different set of problems lending to warfare being unrealistic for a larger number of corps.

Solution: keep the current system but allow participants to lower the stakes, for wars to be smaller, so that they can be more frequent.

This mechanism already exists through recruiting Allies in your wars.

To an extent, except that what I am proposing would modify the rules of war, temporarily. If Bully Blob declares war on Two Guys Inc because they own one poco, but Two Guys Inc is rich enough to hire Massive Mercenaries, Two Guys Inc can be guaranteed to be protected unless Massive Mercenaries loses the proxy conflict. Later they might even rehire Massive Mercenaries to push the offensive against Bully Blob, or form a lasting relationship, buy a war hq and continue to employ Massive Mercenaries for additional campaigns, because with a system based on ship-to-ship combat, you may not need to play timezone games, or require people to run shifts around the clock, or take the cheap way out with a multiboxing input broadcaster.

Why should I ask CCP?
YOU raised multiboxed fleets of input broadcasting T3Cs as being an issue. Can you, or can you not, provide some evidence to back up your assertion? ZKill reports are fine for the purpose.

I can but I don’t see why I should. Their war hq kill is in my alliance’s kb history. It was uncontested, which is a sudden and sharp contrast to a few days prior, due to the disappearance of those accounts. There is no other viable explanation other than the one I provided.

26

How exactly do you make wars… “smaller”?

27

What about charging a 1% asset value fee per month for anything stored at an NPC station (reduced to 0.5% if you have an office there)? To avoid this, you can setup your own structure - thus increasing eligible war targets.

Just an idea (I haven’t put this through an exhaustive thought process, so be gentle). I still think there also needs to be an accompanying $ incentive for deploying a structure as well, ie: more mission ISK/LP, mining yields, etc.

28

If we were to sell everything to avoid this change it would not only crash market , it would create an increased cost t anchor a structure in highsec.

NPC stations should not hold our assets at ransom.

29

I can think of another reason why all the accounts failed to show up for the defence of that war hq:

It is possible they knew they couldn’t take the fight at that time and decided not to show up.

Failing to show up for a defense fight is not at all a sign of ‘input broadcasting’.

30

The biggest problem with HS wars, is that a lot of players see no reason to participate.

Want to change HS wars into something fun and useful…

Then Empire Building as a concept is going to have to be forced upon players from both sides of the equation.

31

An easy way to let more people choose to participate in HS wars is this:

Add the default NPC tax to every non-war-eligible corporation.

If players have to choose between tax-avoidance and war-avoidance I bet we will see a lot more war-eligible players partaking in the system.

As it is right now players have no reason to stay in their starting NPC corporation and many will join a new corporation for no other reason than tax- and war-avoidance. The game should let people choose one or the other, not both.

In turn, this also encourages players to make better corporations to draw in players, boosting the social part of the game, as making a corp better than NPC corporations won’t be as easy as turning the tax lower.

32

doubtful, since the tax is applicable to Bounties, mining and indy corps can avoid that tax with no issues.

The only ppl afraid of such a tax are the ignorant and new players

33

You’re free to imagine any wild story you want. The hard evidence is in the kb record, which supports what really happened.

As far as I’m concerned let the cheaters imagine that CCP coddles them.

35

How exactly do you make wars… “smaller”?

I didn’t say “make wars smaller”. If particpants are incentivized to wage war on a scale that can be considered smaller than one which requires hq-destroying capabilities, then I think we need a system that allows that to happen so as to not deterr those wars from happening.

I still think you need to risk an escalation of the conflict, however.

36

Right now you can “invite” other corporations to war. There’s no incentive, though. I think if you enticed this with a “war bond” it might be a bit more interesting, ie: “My corporation would like to go to war. We’re putting up a war bond of $2 billion ISK in the event you defeat us or we surrender. Interested?”

37

I think that could very well work, and in a way that doesn’t contradict what I’m thinking here.

But when you say there is no incentive, as the other posters here who are suggesting there’s nothing to fight over, I recall very clearly that under the old system we didn’t really need such reasons to fight. People were wardeccing out of pure boredom.

So I tend to look at the issue as there being too much risk which is disincentivizing a significant proportion of potentially smaller conflicts.

38

In the old system there was also a lot of abuse going on - which is what led to the new system. I’m not saying boredom wasn’t a factor for some.

39

Yes. I realize that, which is why my proposed changes are intended to be built on top of the current system. You’d still have your unwardeccable corps. Proxy conflicts might look a lot more like the conflicts of old, but they would be among willing participants by design, with some bits to make it interesting like fighting for cash.

40

This is the part I never understood? And was a corp like ours, mostly wd’ing the null blks part of the problem?

Might help to refresh everyone’s memory as to where we are today?

41

As a 3-man corporation, I was seeing (no exaggeration) a wardec every week. I don’t believe your group was responsible - but there were definitely others willing to go out on a limb to make living in high-sec a virtual torment. I imagine there were quite a few other small corporations being harassed in a similar manner.

With the way it is now compared to how it was back then, yeah - night and day. I’m certainly not complaining about the current system.