The simple fact is that historically most have done. I could equally cite Boadicea burning the Roman capital Londinium to the ground. She thought that was the end of it, but Roman forces were still occupying most of the country and defeated her a few years later. The Romans then ruled much of Britain for 400 years. In fact, ironically, by the end of those 400 years the Brits sent a delegation to Rome asking that the Romans not go home when their empire began to collapse and the dreaded Vikings moved in. That all has shades of Eve corps swallowing smaller corps that then become reliant on them for defence.
I’m not in the least confused. I think you just don’t grasp nuance. You need a structure to be in any way involved in wars. As an ally you need a structure. Now I don’t care whether you call it X Æ A-Xii…it effectively ‘counts’ as your own personal ‘war HQ’…because it is your ticket to being in the war at all. Comprendes ?
Needing to put down a structure so that the game‘s actual mechanics can say „the game decides when a war begins and ends“ goes entirely against the sandbox idea of „the player decides when a war begins and ends“.
CCP has a history of erecting barriers to the latter, saying „the player can still decide when a war begins and ends, but the player now has to do what we say to convince our new game mechanics to think the same“. That’s not adding to the sandbox and not adding to player freedoms, it’s like CCP Games asking 1B ISK for a War Permit. Would have been more interesting if it was players asking 1B ISK for a war permit, and running a racket and warring on non-permitted warring parties. And that’s the sandbox difference: when CCP does it, it neuters the creative energies of the playerbase to instead be greedy lazy „give me content or I’m not undocking“ effortless whiners.
Not sure how much simpler it can be stated.
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I find myself in agreement with Aiko on “winning a war”, if I may also paraphrase Clausewitz, Victory is not about annihilating the enemy but about forcing them to comply with the victor’s objectives.
There are many ways to achieve victory, only one of which is destroying a war HQ.
The inverse is also true, there are also groups which cannot be defeated. Say we wanted to prevent Destiny from owning a war HQ. We could do that, but there is no way we could prevent them from doing war decs. One goal is achievable, the other is not.
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You are not being rational. You claim that capturing a capital necessarily results in the termination of hostilities, and you are citing examples of situations in which you believe this happened. However, the logical approach is to search for examples in which this did not happen, as these disprove your theory. There are many such examples (I’ve already listed several), which disprove your assertion that the capture of a capital is the critical factor which determines victory or defeat. Furthermore, you state that Boudica burned the Roman capital (technically inaccurate), yet acknowledge that Boudica still lost the war. Your own example undermines your hypothesis.
Please consider what has been written, before you hastily respond. You claim that the loss of a capital is inherently decisive, but these examples clearly suggest otherwise, and I could list more if you wish to pay 5 billion isk for an essay.
Yes, you are. Look at the people disagreeing with you, all experienced players who have a reputation for nuanced logical argument and higher level gameplay. Why is it that you, a relatively new player, have such continual confidence that you know better? Is it possible that you overestimate your own accuracy, and fail to slow down and consider the possibility that you don’t understand something? I’ve seen your arguments before, and I frankly think you lack an important quality of self-reflection and analysis, primarily because your ego drives you to “win” arguments, rather than listen and learn from people who might actually have something to teach you.
Worth repeating, and I’ve said it as well. I’ve heard no acknowledgement from Altara that many believe the fundamental concept of EvE involves unscripted content, and the scripted wardec system inherently violates this principle of player agency. It’s impossible to have a meaningful conversation about how the wardec changes were detrimental, with someone who does not recognize what the previous situation was.
Also worth repeating.
Wesley is a wardeccer, like Destiny, and certainly has far more experience than Altara. Is Altara really going to insist that the actual wardeccers (Absolute Order not being true wardeccers) don’t understand their own gameplay? As Wesley notes, the goal of warfare is to convince the enemy to comply, and accept terms of surrender. There is no real-life mechanic which forces this, and it comes down to morale and willpower. Capturing territory is only relevant in so far as it disrupts and demoralizes the enemy, but there is no automatic “if you take the capital you win” mechanic in real-life, and any game which seeks to utilize such a concept is one which fails to simulate the unpredictable and chaotic nature of warfare. Belligerents do not unilaterally determine when a war is over, as both parties must agree, but CCP has taken away that fundamental aspect of conflict.
Here I disagree. You certainly can prevent Destiny from doing wardecs, or even playing the game. You simply need to demoralize Destiny, so he starts crying and quits. You could also seduce Destiny, putting him on a leash and keeping him as a pet. There is no mechanic which can force this, but you could theoretically do it. How you accomplish that is the fundamental challenge. Unfortunately, by introducing an automated victory mechanic, CCP has eliminated the challenge and reduced wars to a repetitive simplistic tactic of blobbing the war headquarters, awarding an unearned ‘victory’ even when the enemy refuses to capitulate. This linear scripted gameplay is hardly as intriguing or engaging as a war which might continue after a structure has been destroyed, or one in which a smaller group might engage in asymmetric guerilla warfare.
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I think I’m understanding the problem here. War HQs primarily only affect your ability to wage war in high sec, so in theory if you’re fed up with the mechanic you’re supposed to just transition to null-sec and fight them wherever you want. But doing that, you’ll be completely exposed to the limitless power and resources that major null-sec corps hold over that area.
So you both can’t fight them in null-sec and in high sec. So you just can’t fight them at all. Except with some war-dec alliance trickery, I guess, but that’s just rigged, let’s face it.
The way I see it, if you’re solo going to fight a literal space empire, I wouldn’t expect the game to make this a “fair fight” anyway, let’s just say that. If you’re not a complete champ, I would expect your deaths to be both numerous and gruesome. But, if you’re willing to expose yourself to that risk and brutality, and wish to spend your afternoon battling entities that span an entire galaxy, I think you should be able to freely do so. A overhaul for this system seems to be in order.
With contested regards
-James Fuchs
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oh no not again
Sigh. No, that’s not what I said at all. You were the one who brought up capitals. I was the one responding to your claim " It is wholly erroneous to conclude that wars end because of territorial occupation."…which was nonsense. Any number of wars have been concluded via territorial occupation. Even a cursory look at history books reveals so. Every empire in history has been a case of territorial occupation.
I win arguments through the old fashioned method of actually being correct.
It’s clearly SO detrimental that Destiny already has 250 or so ‘solo’ wardec kills this year and as many billions in kill amount…and a single loss. Sheesh, if that’s CCP screwing things up then there are more areas of mechanics they need to screw up. I see zero evidence from killboard that the wardec mechanic is preventing Destiny from war activities. The griping really is all much ado about nothing.
Can you please try to slow down, instead of just always trying to “win” the argument? I think everyone else here will agree that it’s pretty absurd to be splitting hairs like this, in an obvious attempt to jump around what I said and find a “win”. In this case, you are just twisting semantics, and not responding at all to what I wrote at length. That makes me think it’s a waste of time to even try and talk to you about stuff.
Seriously, this is a waste of my time. Reread what I wrote, and just substitute “capital” for territory. You are being absurd, and you are wrong, and several people have told you (nobody has agreed with you).
Nope, it was you.
See? That’s why you are wasting people’s time, cuz you respond so quick and so often you fail to even remember your own arguments.
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I already won it. You were wrong. History is one subject I don’t need lecturing to on.
Yep, that’s definitely Dunning-Kruger effect at work.
Try to question you own assumptions sometime.
Sigh. I respond quickly because I know my history exceedingly well. Unlike people who don’t know that Carthage was both the capital and the state.
You are nowhere near as smart as you think you are. You said the Romans burned Carthage to the ground, and then you emphasize that Carthage is both the capital and the state, and pretend you were only referring to the larger territory.
So you are seriously claiming that Tunisia was burnt to the ground? Really? It’s a big place! So no. You were talking about the city, and that’s blatantly obvious from the context. Unfortunately, you are just incredibly stubborn, with an ego which refuses to ever admit when you are wrong. We all know this, even if you don’t.
You are literally struggling to remember your own argument, and instead of slowing down and reading more carefully and responding more carefully, you just try to play semantic word games in order to avoid admitting that you are wrong.
Clearly, you were referring to the city. Furthermore, regardless of whether you are talking about capitals or territories, your argument remains wrong for all the exact same reasons I already listed. Read it again and think more.
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Sigh, yet again. By the end of the third Punic War, the city of Carthage was all that was left of their empire…the rest being conquered territory, you know…that thing you say doesn’t win wars. With no means to support the city during a siege, it fell to the Romans. Er…same happened with Athens and the Spartans. I think you’ve completely lost track of what you were arguing about…as I was refuting your claim that " It is wholly erroneous to conclude that wars end because of territorial occupation." Tell that to the Carthaginians, the Greeks, heck…even the Romans themselves. Tell it to the vast swathes that fell under Gengis Khan. Gosh…the list is endless.
You are cherry-picking the actions of a single person as the basis of a generalization. That just doesn’t make for a very strong argument. There are probably like…three total people in the game right now who could successfully replicate what I do with a comparable level of efficiency. If it was such a viable way to play the game, accessible to the average Joe and/or relatively new player like you, you’d see a lot more people doing this. Think about why that’s not the case.
Also, if I were afforded the opportunity to maintain a war HQ for outgoing wars, I most likely would’ve exceeded a thousand kills (and I’m not talking about popping corvettes and shuttles on the undock here) in the same period.
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Altara, I already told you to search history for examples which do not correspond to your thesis. I wrote a long essay above, which I won’t repeat just because you refuse to put on your thinking hat. I can assure you that there are examples in history which disprove your thesis. It is irrational to only cite an example which follows your hypothesis, but blindly ignore the examples which don’t.
Capturing territory is only relevant in so far as it disrupts and demoralizes the enemy, but there is no automatic “if you take the territory you win” mechanic in real-life.
Indeed…
It is wholly erroneous to conclude that wars end because of territorial occupation
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Can you tell me which page of the 512 page Encyclopedia Of War that example is on. I’m citing the other 511 pages.
It seems to me your tactic is to ambush enemy ships with something powerful enough to blap them with certainty. Given that you don’t have to worry about Concord, you can just wait and see what arrives at Amarr and ship up in whatever is appropriate. Obviously skills required…but certainly not something beyond the skill of 99.99% of players. I suspect more people don’t do it because they simply don’t know that they can !
I love how this started as an indy thread from OP and went to war HQs lol
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