In this topic I’ll be looking at two issues that negatively impact gameplay for FW space. The first being how structure and station accessibility should be revamped, and the second is how plex warfare works, and how to update it in a sensible manner that doesn’t give preference to one side or the other.
- Rules for structure and station accessibility should be universal.
Members of an enemy militia should not be able to dock in citadels, stations, or any structure in high or lowsec that is owned by your empire. If i am in the caldari militia, i should not be able to dock in gallente hisec, or player owned structures in high or lowsec. This helps enforce clear and present battle lines on the field, and supports the need to take and hold systems.
- Faction warfare complexes should be dangerous for the enemy, but should not advantage the defender.
A major issue with faction warfare is how the combat in complexes is balanced. Camping the warp-in point has been the go-to tactic for the entirety of its existence, and diminishes engagement options for the aggressor coming into the complex. A possible solution would be to have the complex put out a warp disruption field that gets triggered when someone is present, with the landing point for the acceleration gate having a structure that bumps you in closer to the center of the complex. This ensures that spawn points can’t be reliably camped, people can’t be in a stabbed frigate and farm complexes at their leisure, and the attackers and aggressors stand on equal ground when fighting each other.
From a programming aspect, introducing the coding for bubbles in lowsec that are only accessible to the NPCs would be to have them target and destroy any bubbles that get deployed by players, both through gate/station guns shooting them down, and npc patrols blasting them to bits. Or, introduce a separate kind of bubble with its own rights that doesn’t follow the rules for the others, and despawns with the complex.