Devblog: War, War Sometimes Changes

Check out this dev blog for more information on the next stage in the overhaul of the war declaration system!

Read all about it here!

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For the MANY of us that use a Corp for the sole purpose of asset sharing in the game…
AGAIN - ACTUALLY REPLY FOR ONCE!!!
When do we get an alternative option???

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Just to clarify, do you mean a way to share items without being in a corporation?

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Good stuff. It’s a bit early, but one thing about the War HQ – one should probably not be allowed to set their War HQ to a system in a “highsec island.” Just in case any of you don’t understand this syntax, a highsec island is a highsec system that can only be reached from the main mass of highsec by transiting through low security space.

One could affect this restriction by picking a system in the main mass of highsec (like Yulai) and ensure that there’s an autopilot path to the war HQ that doesn’t pass through lowsec.

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It’s not an ignored request.

It’s just that, right now, the asset system doesn’t lend itself to shared assets in any other way.

Everything belongs to something or someone. And exist in a structure or ship. Hangars are just flags on items.

Corp hangars are just items belonging to a corporation, which are flagged as being in a specific hangar. It’s not a different location.

It’s asked about, on a semi-regular basis, but it’s going to be significantly more work than you might assume.

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The remote assistance changes are huge. One of the most frustrating parts about fighting war decs in general are always the neutral logi/support and as a newer player, there is no real way to understand the underlying mechanics behind it. Glad to see that change going through.

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This was the actual reason for the new war eligible corporations
Please tell me you can finally get those people to make this simple correction.
Please? I did say please.

:sunflower: From the dev blog - Devblog: War, War Sometimes Changes

“Any time a new player who wants to join a corporation gets blocked from that goal by some aspect of the game we consider that a missed opportunity and a problem that should be fixed. As such”

Not being able to rejoin CAS, when will that be sorted? It’s the one thing stopping me from trying out player corps!

…And I know I’m not the only one.

:wink:

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This is a good devblog. This is what we as a community have been asking about. Some perspective on how CCP sees the future and what plans are in the pipeline. Please keep communicating with your customers. The radio silence breeds nothing but frustration. Some devblogs on CCP’s thoughts on other major issues like Rorqs/nullsec mining, Cap proliferation and faction warfare would also be very welcome.

There is one issue that is not addressed with these changes though. I personally don’t have an issue with it, but the question has crept up on the forums (in threads like HS moon mining thieves).

How are people with moon mining refineries supposed to deal with non-wardeckable Orca’s stealing their ore? Is the official response that ganking supposed to be the way to combat this and that the discussion regarding highsec moon ore stealing can be closed?

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This was a concern I had way back when they announced highsec moons, and while it’s a little affirming to see it was actually true, it’s still kinda sh​itty that it’s going on for those who own highsec moons.

My suggested fix to this would be that anyone who tries to mine your moons while not on the ACL for the structure that generated them gets a suspect flag. It’s not a perfect solution, but it allows for at least some counterplay.

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This is epic. Finally the defender can not use these terrible tricks to drop a war at their wishes. We have been the victim of this abuse many times, and it’s good to know that CCP listens to support tickets from their player base.

Very nice set of change’s I’m guessing the Mutual war option is something like red vs blue?

In regard to the War HQ. Will it be listed or given anywhere to the defenders as to position of system or name or anyway else?

Im asking cuz I wonder how much CCP wants players to hunt or search for them versus just giving players the information outright.

Suspect flag, kill right, something :wink:

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From the blog:

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When will the March release come out?

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Nice set of changes but has the time to kill a high sec structure been taken into account when looking at an attackers HQ? What if the attackers HQ falls into structure and they dont think they can defend it. With such a large structure timer they can most likely just let the war run out and be safe?

The defender could redeclare on the attackers and swap roles to kill the HQ, but then the defender has to declare an HQ, pay the fee, and won’t have anybody who joined them as allies on the defensive end to help, unless all those groups also go through the same process. As well as the attackers now being able to call in defensive allies quickly.

Makes the whole “hire people to kill the other guys HQ” a bit of an issue in this setup.

@CCP_Lebowski

Thanks for the post and the changes. These look to be well considered and positive.

I do have a specific question about how the AOE effects are going to work in some more benign situations. Here’s an example:

Player A is running a mining fleet and bringing in different players from different corps. Player A is in an Orca and is providing mining and shield boosts for the fleet.

Player B, who is in a war and not in Player A’s Corp or Alliance, but does not have a combat timer joins the fleet, arrives on grid, and receives mining and shield boosts.

Player C who is in the corporation that Player B is at war with arrives on grid and attacks Player B. Player B responds (say, combat drones go after player C).

Since Player A is giving different kinds of non-targeted boosts here and Player B is affected by them, what specifically happens to:

Player A
Player B
Any ongoing boost effects active when Player B gains the engagement timer (do they drop immediately, do they run out the cycle, etc.).

Thanks!

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A few thoughts:

Closing Loopholes: So far, so good, but what about other loopholes, like corp-hopping. Let’s look at a real-gameplay example:

Corp-Hopping

PIRAT has a long-standing wardec against Goonswarm. During the course of their normal mercenary actions, PIRAT declares war on Kyn’aldrnari, along with a 1-man PIRAT alt-corp, and RF’s the Kyn Fortizar in Sarum Prime. Goonswarm now has a time and a place they know PIRAT will be showing up, and sends a fleet to kill PIRAT. When the Goon fleet arrives, PIRAT’s pilots all hop into the 1-man alt-corp, and continue attacking their target, but are now immune to being targeted by Goons.

PIRAT is the attacker in all of these wars. So the attacker is shielded from the repercussions of declaring a large number of wars and having their targets coordinate a combined response. Does that line up with “the goals of encouraging the sorts of wars that provide entertaining conflicts between corporations and alliances while reducing the number of situations where players experience a lack of viable choices”?

Elimination of Neutral Assistance: Oh thank heavens, yes. However, there are still complications to consider. Again, a real gameplay example:

Multi-Alliance Wars

In December, CCP’s Lore team continued with the storyline that began with the Kahah crisis and Crimson Harvest. This continuation saw capsuleer fighting between Amarr and Minmatar loyalist groups in Thebeka, Amarr Highsec.

None of the Minmatar groups were members of the Militia. They couldn’t be: The Imperial Navy would kill them for being in Amarr Highsec. Not all of the Amarr groups present were in the Milita. In fact, this is the clearest illustration of who was involved:

In any given fight, multiple alliances on each side were in unified fleets. Under the system you’re planning, there is no cut-out for ‘Are both alliances fighting the same targets?’ PIE and LUMEN, both aggressors in wars against Electus Matari, cannot form a unified fleet without their Guardian capchain getting CONCORDed just for cap-chaining. This, once more, appears to violate “the goals of encouraging the sorts of wars that provide entertaining conflicts between corporations and alliances while reducing the number of situations where players experience a lack of viable choices”.

I’d ask that you consider how to address issues like these, which represent the actual complexity of wars in high-sec.

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Ok, so here we go, great changes when it comes to neutral alts. Thats one of the best changes ive seen in a very long time, and it made me grin… Until i came to the war hq.
Why does it need to be in high sec? Thats a very strange move to make in my opinion.

examples
a) Small high sec corp war decs goons to try and kill of their logistics, mission runners or whatever.
Goons form for them a tiny fleet, kills the war hq with a fleet 30x the size of agressors corp corp
numbers and destroy war hq. Result, war lasted two days or something and agressors cant restart for
two weeks

b) Small/medium sized pirate corp has some alliance move in close by, but they are tired of having to
deal with sentrys for every engagement and declares war. Problem is that pirate corps cant go to high
sec to defend their war hq. War lost due to not being able to defend it.

I really must admit that the changes were really amazing up until i read about that war hq, cause the high sec restriction kills it for quite a lot of corps out there.

@CCP_Lebowski this might be under your area, i dunno

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