I posted some ideas on changing the WarDec structure and including something like mercenary contacts a while back. Unfortunately a kindly mod promptly merged it into a thread where the discussion would never be seen again.
Post starts here: The Mother of All War(dec proposal)s
And goes for about 9-10 posts. Then its back to the insanity thread.
One of the points I made in the original was, “any new system, how would you break/exploit/abuse it”?
With the December changes, I would break/exploit/abuse by:
- Griefing as much as I could, but not owning a structure. (The “You can’t touch this” approach)
- Acting however I wanted, including egregious griefing, baiting someone into wardeccing me/paying for it,
then removing or transferring my structure away to end the war. - Looking like a small defenseless corp with an easy structure to hit, baiting someone into wardeccing me, then joining my alliance to pound on them.
- Opportunistically joining an alliance to engage in war when I wanted to war, and then drop from the alliance when the action gets too hot for me.
The current proposals also do nothing to encourage actual fighting, they don’t help smaller corps get established and grow, they don’t represent “players making choices with consequences” because there are easy ways around all of the current proposed mechanics.
Basically this just looks like the same old corp-swapping techniques people have used for years, only with tying it to space structures.
The proposal I linked above includes tough player choices, with permanent effects, rewards for both sides to engage in wars, and ways for people to participate usefully in a war even if they can’t ‘win’ it. It also uses existing game mechanics to cut down on the programming budget.