How to unbork FW megathread

PvP Gameplay Center Warfare & Tactics
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Just read the whole article and the only thing I like about it is the suggestion of introducing Pirate faction militias. The whole article seems to be written by someone who has not spent much time in FW space tbh. FW lowsec is THE single most content-rich place in all of new eden for solo&small-gang PvP. People that think a t1 frigate pilot can be forced/encouraged into fighting a Worm for whatever non-abusable reward are just disconnected from reality. This is not to say there aren’t issues with FW (SUSPECT TIMER FOR ANYONE ENTERING A PLEX CCPLS), but it’s no where near as bad as some people make it out to be.

As for mining etc. in FW space… it’s supposed to be a warzone, you know?

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22

A few small suggestions. None of these are anything resembling a panacea, but are for the most part tweaks.

  1. Count pirate faction hulls as tech 2 for the purpose of entering plexes. This has been suggested a number of times over the years, and I’m curious as to why it was never implemented. Leave Navy faction hulls as-is, as easy access to these should be a perk of FW. Hopefully this would give the novice and casual pvpers a slightly more level playing field, especially in novice plexes.

  2. Fitting warp stabs gives a 50% stackable penalty to any LP earned. Militia x disapproves of your demonstrated unwillingness to sacrifice yourself for the cause, and has reduced your reward accordingly"

  3. Mentioned before, but scrap tiers. They’re completely unnneccessary, and encourage yo-yo farming.

  4. Prevent pilots from docking at Citadels in enemy-held FW lowsec in the same way as with stations. Unlike nullsec, the Empires still hold some sway over lowsec systems, and it would be logical for them to insist on this kind of restriction as part of the charter for anchoring a structure in their space.

  5. (in tandem with 4) Designate a small number of FW systems (possibly 5%) as being permanently in the hands of each faction, so as to provide nodal bases. Call them Bastions, Sanctuaries, or Fortresses or something. This would allow players to have at least a few guaranteed bases in the warzone to fight back and mission from in the case of a complete rout.

3 Likes
23

Yep.

I don’t think this is needed. You can always base out of systems bordering the warzone if you lose it all.

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Edit:

How about this, Stop giving lp as reward for closing plexes and for missions. Put everything into the value of the tags. Those tags could then be turned in for LP or for sec status.

  1. To address the “lore” of the sec status increase as someone mentioned “why would concord care,” because your faction would be negotiating a waiver on your sec status based on your contributions on their behalf in a warzone. These tags would obviously result in a lower sec status reward than clone tags that are turned in to concord simply because they are far more plentiful.

  2. Sure anyone including neutrals could farm the tags, but just like they have very little isk value now they would continue to hold very little isk value simply because they are so plentiful and the reward per tag would be relatively small. Farming them simply wouldn’t be worth the time. You could earn more isk just killing belt rats than for selling them for sec status use. As for farming them with neutrals to sell for ppl to trade in for lp see #3.

  3. What does this do about farmers? No longer will sitting afk in a plex give you rewards. You have to actively collect the tags and return them. This helps combat farming by
    a. making it more complicated to afk or bot and
    b. because only a given number of npc’s spawn per plex it means that while tag farmers might be earning lp they won’t be hanging around to actually close plexes and thereby influencing the captured status of a system. This will help tip the warzone mechanics towards a more balanced state. Farmers would prefer that both sides have an equal number of systems under their control so that they can maximize farming. If one side has all of the warzone captured the farmers have nothing to farm so they switch. They start farming offensive plexes for tags but not hanging around to close them. The lack of npc’s ultimately just makes it easier for the losing side to cap the plexes and push back towards a more neutral point.

  4. If tags are the rewards how do you get rewards for defensive plexing. You don’t. The defensive rewards you get would come from killing enemy wt’s and looting the tags that they have been collecting. Again, this helps tip the warzone towards a more balanced state and encourages more pvp.

  5. What about missions? Missions are more complicated. Someone from the opposing faction can’t go in and close an enemy’s mission by completing it because they would take standings hits for killing rats that belong to their faction so instead of just making the mission rewards based on the tags you receive by completing it you also need to reduce the amount of time the mission remains available. One of the biggest isk farms are accomplished by accepting multiple missions with dud militia pilots putting them in shuttles and flying them around through systems popping the mission site. Then then a neutral alt comes around and completes them at leisure granting rewards to all the dud accounts.
    Once a mission is popped it should start a timer (it already does close after a given amount of time I’m sure, but that time is FAR too long) so that it has to be run within a relatively short amount of time or else it despawns. That gives opposing militia members more power to affect their ability to be completed by stabbed, mwd cloaked farmers simply by guarding the gate for a reasonable amount of time. It also means that since the tags constitute the potential lp rewards there would be greater risk in completing the mission, collecting all the tags within and making it back to your agent (lp store) in one piece as well as greater reward for catching them because you could then turn in the tags for a reward yourself.

So now that the farming has been adjusted to promote a more balanced system what purpose do you have for pushing systems at all?
a. Tiers still exist. So while owning more of the warzone means less offensive plexes for tag farming it also means that lp is more valuable the more systems you own.
b. The new moon mining. Since we know that some of these valuable new moons will likely be spread out within the warzone there has to be some way to use FW control to influence moon control. This could be as simple as not allowing mining stations that don’t belong to a corp that is aligned to the controlling faction for that system to operate their mining equipment. Sure ppl can still use citadels for forward operating bases to aid in capturing a system but they can’t take advantage of a system’s resources until they actually control it.

On the point of citadels being allowed to be anchored in systems controlled by an opposing faction I personally think it’s a good thing. When an opposing faction controls a wz it makes it nearly impossible to mount a push back into the warzone because you have to fly all the way into high sec for reships, ammo and repairs. It just add’s to the current unbalanced state of FW. The ability to do so should NOT be touched or limited. The ability of those structures to function in certain capacities however should be controlled. Perhaps even not allowing research or manufacturing to take place in systems that you don’t control. These restrictions should not only apply to members of opposing factions but also to neutral entities. If you want to harvest the resources of faction warfare space you should have to chose a side. Those systems are after all under the control of said faction and in any real sense they wouldn’t allow opposing entities to harvest those resources any more than goons would let cva come mine their moons. (hell if I know, perhaps they would but you get the point)

To repeat/summarize, only structures owned by a corp belonging to the controlling faction of a system should be able to operate moon mining systems, research functions or manufacturing in said system.

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Yes to all of this.

I’ve always been a supporter of no tiers, and having it so your LP rewards get increased a fair bit over time to encourage loyalty to a specific faction etc.

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Hey Tristan.

First things first I love FW. Without it I can only see Eve dying, one short-sighted step at a time.

To Daemun’s point it really saddens me that CCP has let it stagnate so badly, then say it is changing it in Winter release, then just stop any mention of it. Feel a bit conned.

In reply to your questions, my two cents worth is:

What are your biggest issues with how FW is now?

Lack of balanced factions.

Now that all 4 factions have won the WZ at least once it seems there’s very little to fight for. Not everyone here is only running an lp/isk making exercise but want to achieve something. For four years I did nothing but fight to get the Minmatar the damn WZ medal (#nomedal). It gave purpose. Now there is no purpose for us loyalists but to try to find gf’s. Which is rare indeed.

I know you remember the amazing fights in Huola four years ago, balanced fleets, and appearance of Diana Kim’s Harpys or X-Gallentius’ derptrons to the fight. True, dynamic fights, open to all. They were not about LP but about pride in chosen Empire or supporting mates. Shared interests/values connect people but FW is now too singular.

What would you like to see change to improve the overall experience?

Agree with most of great ideas above to change mechanics and get rid of farmers and tiers, but for me unless there is a reason to actually fight for a faction (not just oneself) there is the endless swing of one massively outweighing the other.

Somehow Empires need more loyalty and recruitment into FW corps. Why not make some of the most lucrative sites in Eve available in Low Sec to only Empire FW fighters that hold system. Or some other (than medal) kind of recognition for victory.

What do like about FW / What works well?

Fights against old foes like Daemun and yourself, because of the history shared in the WZ. It adds the fun dimension to fights.

It trains new pilots to PVP.

And the fact it is not just a bunch of Apostles sitting in a motionless ball.

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Would explain war over territory even more.

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To expand upon my previous post: What I would like to see is CCP build upon what’s already good in FW lowsec. Like I said, a great place for solo/small-gang action. In order to make FW lowsec even more content-rich, I’d like to see two things:

  1. Members of a militia having complete immunity from NPC standing losses/sec status losses (make it less punishing for players engaging in FW).
  2. Being able to sign-up for FW for a short period of time without having to leave your current non-FW-alliance.

This way I bet much more people from nullsec/highsec would occasionally come to lowsec, bring a small gang, have some fun for an evening and then can go back to what they usually do without having to deal with messed-up SS/standings.

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Question…

For those of us who are not up on the terms.

What is “stabbed”?

My take from my short time in FW. There isnt any real warfare. It is just a plexing chase. I would love to see more uses for other ships other than T2 frigates and Destroyers. Like T1 and T2 recon Frigates. Hacking things like data sites, or other such actions. That can increase or decrease the influence in the region.

I am a dedicated Scout frigate pilot, I love my Probe and Cheatah, but there isnt much use for me in FW.

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Stabbed is a ship fitted with a warp core stabiliser (or several). They seriously reduce your scan resolution and targeting range as well as taking up lowslots, so they’re virtually never used as part of a pvp fit. Usually used by bots or farmers to evade capture.

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Ahh I never use them… I think my salvage Venture has them on there… but that is because I dont care about any scan resolution. I have a tractor beam and 2 salvagers and some drones for light rat defense.

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Ventures are another FW bugbear, because they have a warp strength bonus of +2, essentially 2 free warp stabilisers without needing to waste lowslots.

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T1 frigates are very popular and should not be underestimated, same goes for destroyers because they are exceptionally strong at deleting blingy active-tanked frigates. Fielding larger ships such as battleships requires a lot more experience though and is really not something a newbie should try since they tend to attract large blobs.

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My venture is strictly a salvage ship or a mining ship. I dont plex in it at all.

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The Venture only has a single low slot giving a max of +3 warp core strength. The Punisher for example has 5 lowslots, giving a max wcs of +5, and is often the stabbed farmer’s vessel of choice. I don’t often come across stabbed ships which are in any way fit for PVP. So the whole “wasting” a lowslot is a mute point.

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Right, it’s hull and stabs; no other fittings

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I wouldn’t be opposed at this stage to doing away the the plex npc all together and having to entosis the plex, with the gate being set to block access to all ships without an enotosis module fitted. This would gimp everyone not just those in fw. Somewhat leveling the playing field.

The best part of this is “While an Entosis Link is active, the fitted ship cannot cloak, warp, jump, dock or receive any form of remote assistance.” Instantly doing away with stabbed farmers. As the Entosis link itself is an Omega mod it also does away with the throw-away Alpha plexing alts.

An added bonus would be if ships available from the FW LP stores were reworked with an extra high for entosis only use. This could be spun into the lore/RP as the empire navies competing to provide the best possible platforms for their militias to succeed in FW or something along those lines. Making navy ships the best solution for FW and readily available to the militias. Obviously pvp outside of the plex environment would be unaffected.

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Im strongly against excluding alphas from faction warfare.

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As you can probably tell, I’m strongly against including Alpha state accounts in Faction Warfare.

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Why?..