One of the fans of my show has written in with some questions about faction warfare, so in this episode, we’re going to do a little Q and A. Big thanks to long time viewer @yellow_parasol for the questions.
Do people operate with, or against, any (non fw) lowsec pirates? Were there ever plans, or the idea, of working with lowsec pirates?
Most of the time pirates are there for the kills and will happily attack either faction. There are exceptions of individual characters who have friends in one faction or other though. Sometimes too, particular hostility can arise between a particular pirate corp and a particular FW corp and therefore on the basis that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, short term collaboration can occur for a specific objective such as an i-hub bash.
What is the current political state? Who are the big guys, who are the upcoming small fries?
From the Minmatar side, Ursha’Khan is the big alliance and most people are either part of UK, working with UK regularly or playing the warzone pretty much on their own. Within UK there are various language groups, the most famous of which is the Italian corp (Global Isk Network) because they are crazy, always fleet up in good numbers and get good kills. The French pretty much keep themselves to themselves.
On the Amarr side the milita is pretty much dead. There are a few small groups that can pack a punch when they get a fleet together but nothing big and often they are dependant on the Russian Caldari milita corps who have recently moved to the area.
What’s the currently preferred ship-meta, and why?
I love firetails because they are quite cheap, good at defending sites, but also good at running away when needed. We also see a lot of fast kitey frigates, who like to swoop in and kill somebody drifting from the herd and then fly off at crazy speeds before they get caught.
How’s the situation with (from opposing factions) awoxers and bluekillers?
I’ve heard this is bad for Amarr at the moment, maybe because of all the Caldari in the warzone. I’ve not really seen it for Minmatar recently and often we are in fleets so awoxers don’t risk trying anything.
How’s the social climate in the Minmatar public militia?
Pretty good I think. I don’t hang out in text chat because I use VR and can’t see my keyboard, but our voice comms have good banter and are very friendly.
How’s the situation with farmers, who influence the war?
There’s an unfortunately large number of bots (or bot like characters) on both sides who will plex a system constantly for hours on end, which is hard for real players to compete with. We have a few players in Minmatar who will actively hunt and kill bots, using dotlan statistics to find them. For example, this screenshot shows how killing a bot prevents the steady increase in contested status of a system: http://imgur.com/GEKfSUj
I see the contested status as a bit like the tide. It goes up and it goes down and it takes a heck of a lot of effort to move it significantly. Instead, what you have to do is wait until the tide is high and then catch it at that time to push it the rest of the way up to vulnerable. Thats why I made http://evewarfare.com/orders.html - so you can see what’s the best place to go attack or defend.
I hope you found those answers interesting @yellow_parasol. Any other questions from the audience?
