I’m writing to share feedback collected from our corporation and many other pirate militia pilots about the latest Faction Warfare insurgency adjustments. Since these changes went live, both Guristas and Angel Cartel have suffered a noticeable loss of active members. Many players, from pirate factions as well as empire militias, are unhappy with how these mechanics currently work.
Our biggest pain point is the shortened FOB reset cycle for pirate forward bases. Before this patch, we could operate out of one staging location for up to 14 days before being forced to move. Now we need to relocate every week. Pirate staging FOBs are not permanent fixed positions. Every move forces us to retransport all of our combat stock: ships, modules, ammunition and other supplies, so we can maintain our fighting power at the new site. This recurring heavy logistics burden is the main driver pushing pilots away from pirate insurgency.
We also want to bring up the ADV-10 anomaly. It was balanced around a 10-player reward pool, but the update cut its rewards down to the 5-player tier. The difficulty of the site, enemy strength and overall risk have not been touched at all. Players put in the same effort for half the payout, which makes running this site very unattractive.
Lastly, the battlefield spawn timer change is unfair to pirate factions. The patch notes set pirate battlefield spawns to 4 hours to match empire timings. This comparison ignores a core difference: empire battlefields spawn reliably as long as basic requirements are met. Pirate battlefields only spawn when our FOB remains active and meets all conditions. If the FOB is lost or requirements fail, there will be no battlefield available. The old 3-hour timer helped offset these frequent downtimes where pirates have no fights to join. With the 4-hour cooldown, pirate pilots often face long empty windows with no battlefield, while empire side consistently has content to engage in.
We kindly ask the dev team to review these issues:
- Extend the current 7-day forced relocation timer for pirate insurgency FOBs
- Either restore ADV-10’s original reward level, or reduce its difficulty to match the new 5-player reward
- Revert pirate battlefield spawn cooldown back to 3 hours, accounting for their conditional spawn rules
A lot of loyal pilots have left pirate insurgency after these updates. We value this gameplay loop and hope these issues can be looked into.