TL;DR : new type of outpost where opposing factions stage in adjacent dead-space pockets; timer reaches zero and accel gates activate to bring both fleets into range; faction that holds grid wins the site with increased LP and system capture incentives to increase interest and participation in actual FW pvp.
Pretext: from the dawn of large massed battles, armies and navies have used staging areas to amass forces and plan the order of battle. These staging areas are strategically chosen to be relatively secure but within proximity of the enemy to enable rapid deployment of forces to the battleground.
Context for the Devs: Eve has been suffering from lost interest and substantially reduced participation. One person with many subbed accounts may seem to benefit CCP monetarily, but seeing nothing but bots and quad-alts running missions for pure income does not really reflect the purpose of FW, which is to give players who want regular and consistent PVP content, rather than “spreadsheets in space”, or sitting in outposts for 10-20 minutes at a time watching drones orbit. Let’s get back to the whole reason FW exists….
Battleground Staging Areas: based on the current outpost / mission site layout, a Staging Area becomes available on scan the same way Outposts are now, except that one side is only available to one faction (gal/min), and vise versa (cal/amar), to prevent interference from pirates/neutrals. It may require faction guns equal to Concord (call it navy artillery?) to keep anyone not a member of that faction out, if its not possible to make the sites only visible/warpable to certain players by faction.
… sites should spawn with typical size restrictions: small, medium, and large. Once a player occupies a staging area, a timer begins counting down, giving the other faction a limited time to form a counter fleet (30min?). The two staging areas may even be within visual range of each other (max grid size), but the whole area will be dead space to prevent cynos (as is the current state of outposts). There could be a scoring system, wherein numbers and sizes of ships in each staging area count toward both LP reward and capture of the system, counted when the timer reaches zero. This gives incentive to bring more diverse fleets than just blobs of frigates. At that time, if the occupying faction faces no opposition, they win the site and thus 100% of the LP/capture reward (just like current sites).
… if there IS opposition formed in the adjacent Staging Area, then an acceleration gate in each activates, which brings each fleet to within a designated initial range (50km small, 80km med, 125km large). Battle continues until only members of one faction remain, at which time the site is captured and points are awarded. Reinforcements will pass through the metering gates for ship size but may continue to arrive as long as there are at least one member of each faction within the Battleground Space, which should not be unduly confined but must have a boundary to prevent one ship from endlessly kiting the other faction.
Rewards: An adjustment in LP payout to balance destroying enemy ships over sitting in outposts and running timers, in addition to these fleet-fight inducing sites, should reinvigorate actual player interaction in FW space, in the spirit in which it was created in the first place.
- fly dangerous! o7