Here is my final take on this as someone who did actually try to organise people to fight war decs in the past even if it was not often.
My feeling was that one of the most interesting sides of Eve is fleet combat, especially for newer players, getting them in a defensive fleet with allied veterans who explain and use their skills as a block against a smaller in number but better equipped force would have been a good game moment for them. Instead CCP chose to make people sit in small ad hoc useless gangs which would not make a dent in the war deccers, or just hide up or give up.
Talk about screwing up by putting a block to exposing what is truly good about Eve, neutral RR going criminal, not allowing allies to rep each other in a fleet, CCP you are seriously dumb, DUMB!
I confess, I really donât understand why CCP removed this feature (or, rather, made it unattractive). What issue were they trying to solve?
In other games I play/have played the âhealerâ role is a well established and integral feature of group encounter play.
Itâs true, we do have unrestricted fleet logistics mechanics in Nullsec, but that does not explain (at least, to me) why such a feature cannot be employed in Highsec fleet warfare - suitably adapted - which is scarce enough anyway for the impact to be restricted to those participating in a formal war.
I know that you have also advocated for its use by anti-ganking players, and careful note would have to be taken of the likely impact elsewhere - for example, I do not see a defensible reason why gankers should not also benefit from such a feature. It would have no impact on the actions of CONCORD, who blap us anyway, but it might have other uses.
I donât think such a feature should be available to duelling players - theyâve already agreed to one-on-one.
Of course, my knowledge may be lacking here, so if somebody can explain it all to this puzzled observer - heâd be grateful.
The Devils warriors merc alliance who made up a significant part of the Discord when I was on there, great bunch of lads, but they had an issue where they fought PIRAT, lost their fort to them. and their blue ally Vendetta did not help them The back drop to this was that when they fought PIRAT, PIRAT would just bring neutral alts in and they lost those fights, so for them who did not use neutral RR it was a major issue and they went on and on about it.
For my part I had intervened against some war deccers who had neutral RR in Kador, the guys I joined for a while. They were attacking a structure so shot their logi, I did not kill them just played with them a bit, as I had a structure nearby. But that was fun, if you want to take them on, take something or get friends to take out the neutral RR, not get that removed from the game because it stopped PvP. in their opinion
So CCP did the simple thing, they made it a criminal affect, ignoring all the other play around it such as AG and ignored the impact on allying. Previously if I was an ally I could RR but went suspect. I found that bad for allies because allying should not have allowed that so we could be on an even field with the aggressors, but CCP went the whole hog and just killed it.
I believe that CCP did it because it was too difficult and too much of a server load to build into the mechanics, that is why they did this, it was the most easy thing to do, and so wrong headed. They should have left it as suspect.
I hope that helps explain it.
When this was implemented, I knew that the war dec mechanics changed to structures would fail, they made it even worse for allying with this change. People blamed the structures, but it was more than that.
So if anyone can beat CCP devs over the head to ram this home I would appreciate it.
If they could allow ally RR, remove structures from wars and then force a war HQ if an entity wanted more than 3 concurrent wars then we would have a perfect setup for wars in hisec., then it would be the fault of the players being too risk averse, but at least we would know that!
It helps to stop thinking in only âremove thisâ terms. You donât remove the threat of loss. You add the potential for some sort of gain. I mentioned multiple times they need reasons and incentive to fight beyond âavoiding lossâ and all you got from that was âremove lossâ.
Think of it this way: wardeccers declare war because itâs what they want to do, itâs how they want to play, itâs what theyâre ready for and equipped for. They declare against targets that, in general, they know cannot or will not fight them. For them, itâs all gain, no pain. Whether theyâre doing it for giggles or ego or because theyâre bored, or for loot, or just to keep the proles in the corp busy while the leaders decide what they want to do next, theyâre getting to play the game they choose.
War targets are in essence, being harassed. Itâs not their choice, itâs (in general) not what they want to be doing, itâs not how they play EVE, itâs not what theyâre prepared and ready for. A wardec to them is just an obstruction, a nuisance, and a loss. All the BS in the world about âthey just need to assemble a defense fleetâ wonât balance them against a merc corp. For the target, a wardec is all pain, no gain.
Targets have no reason to participate, no gains to be made. Itâs not they way they want to play or are skilled/equipped to play. Therefore when itâs forced on them they do the rational thing and stop playing.
If there is not a gain to be made by the defenders, and if there isnât a practicable method to gain it (other than âyour corp just needs to man up and fight them head onâ, which simply isnât an option), then targets will continue to avoid wars and in extremes, avoid EVE.
So think about ways wars can be restructured so the defenders have a reasonable option for attracting defense and a reasonable expectation of making some kind of gain that is of value to them in their gameplay terms, and youâve got sustainable wars. Without that, youâve just got mechanics shuffling to no real purpose.
Speaking as someone who has actually done wardec station bashing for almost 2 yearsâŚso Iâm one of the few commenting who actually knows what they are talking aboutâŚthere isnât always loot and what there is will often get divided ( the value of it ) between 20-30 members of the fleet. Itâs made me 4 or 5 billion ISKâŚwhich over that period of time is way less than I could have made from level IV missions or even just mining or ratting. Itâs not a highly lucrative activityâŚespecially when one considers that the ships required to do it collectively cost around 3bn ISK. So really in 2 years Iâve made about 2bn âprofitâ.
There were a lot of threads on this back then, so a google search might give more detail. Itâs not an area of the game I interact with so this is just a âsorta remember something I read years agoâ explanation.
The key problem apparently was that any logi that is not directly already part of the war, could in effect hang around on the edges of battle or whatever and not be legal war targets. Then they could step in with reps only if and when needed (which would give them some combat flags). So essentially they were a reserve force that could only be engaged after they acted and until their flags expired, and outside that window they were safe from the war.
The various ways to calculate âwhoâs a legit repperâ were complex so CCP just went for the fast and easy answer. (Donât take my word for it but that was my understanding of the basis for the RR changes.)
Wardec targets may already have been getting massive gain via moon mining, for example. How do you think Parabellum came to be able to afford 150 such stations ? And I recall being told, when we destroyed them all, that Parabellum were likely rich enough to afford to replace all of them.
Of course there was no gain for them in being bashedâŚas the entire purpose of the bash was to stop their existing massive gain. And the same is true even with smaller corps fielding a few structures. Those structures are put up to make gain. They are not just sitting there as a lump of lootable value for wardeccers.
There is truth in both points, there are people that will never defend, never fight and just want to do their thing, there are some that will fight and help others. The key thing is to help those that want to fight, not make it super impossible.
You are both right! But you are both talking in absolutes.
I should point out that I know who Parabellum are, one of the alliances I am allied to fought and lost against them in the past. My alliance almost joined in that war, when it ended up in low sec we did, though not me as such. Parabellum were a very good alliance, but this really hurt them.
Yes, youâre the one whoâs been sniffing around the heels of a larger and older merc corp since you got blown up as newbie, trying to prove something. Youâre the one whoâs been in the game for 2 years without figuring out how resistance modules work.
Trust me, your opinions receive all the consideration they deserve.
Oh, forgot one: youâre the person who seems entirely unable to get the point of whatever it is youâre replying to and arguing against. I mean hey, itâs a free forum and you can argue all you like on any point you like. But when you consistently get everything wrong because youâre trying to jam it into some self-justifying perspective, you need to realize thatâs going to affect how people treat your posts.
Talking general cases isnât âabsolutesâ. EVE has literally had the same issues with wardecs since the start.
Tell me, when a Black Flag or Wrecking Machine wardecs a smaller or even mid-sized mining corp and proceeds to start blowing up all their structures, what is their rational course of action?
Is it to fight the war? Because the answer to that appears to have been ânopeâ, since EVE wars began.
Here is my issue with you, I really respect your posts and how you rationalise things, but sometimes resisting is not rational. That is the point I think you are missing, some people just enjoying resisting if they can and if you make it easier to resist then who knows how that will pan out.
I say this because it is how I play, and I have come across a lot of people that say and do the same.
I should answer your question on Blackflag and Wrecking Machine, you try to pick them off when they are out and about, we did that at times. Also if you had the system I proposed you could gather allies that could then come in en masse as an organised fleet and give them a real fight.
Iâm the one whoâs been one of their most active members for 2 yearsâŚhaving attended over 95% of missions and been in on destroying 1.5 Trillion ISK worth of stuff. You havenât undocked since 2017âŚso do not seek to lecture me on the subject.
I didnât get anything wrongâŚand I note you cannot even state what part of what I said is âwrongâ. All you do is sit on the forums and make disparaging remarks when your own grasp of a topic gets shown up.
How would you know when you have never done it ? Many of these corps actually have more members than the wardeccers. Iâve been on missions where we could only muster 12 fleet members and were up against a corp of 30 members. Some have actually put up fierce resistanceâŚbut in other cases no-one shows up, or they put up a half hearted defence with a single station gunner. They lose because they put up a station but have no idea how to defend itâŚnot because WM or Blackflag arrive with vastly superior force.
And as I stated earlier, of course there is no âgainâ for them in the wardecâŚother than maybe surviving. They already had their gain during the 2 years or so that WM or Blackflag were not bashing in their neck of the woods and they were making profit from mining or industryâŚas you fail to grasp that WM in particular tend to move staging and bash within quite small local areas at a time.
We simply undock using altsâŚif we want to get ammo or other stuff. If target corps really wanted to have a go and be effective, they could find our staging station and attack when we all undock and before logi get to form a chain. This did actually happen during one of Absolute Order warsâŚand was the one time I lost a ship during a station bash. So the tactic is quite effective.
This kind of discussion reminds me of something I saw in the original Neon Genesis Evangelion anime.
To start, there is a person in a completely blank white void. They can do whatever they want there, but there is nothing there to do anything with.
Then the ground is drawn. Now the person can walk, or fly, but can not occupy the same space that the ground does. Why shouldnât you be able to go there? Thereâs no answer to that because the limitation and the new actions it enables are arbitrary. It doesnât care about what should or shouldnât be, it just is.
Wardec mechanics are not much different. Theyâre a set of limitations (or waived limitations) that enable us to act upon other things AND have those other things act on us. Itâs a two way street. People like to be the one to act, and in this case do not like to be the one acted upon.
I donât disagree with the statistics CCP shows. That wars generally do not seem to result in much activity from the defender. I just donât think that they were a problem that needed solved on that basis. Sure, the rational course of action is to avoid the consequences of the war to the maximum extent that you can, or to find a way to extract value from it. I will grant that much.
However, is that goal really served best by the olâ logoffski? I donât think so. Granted it is harder, but you can still mine or run missions during a war, just as you can do these things in low, null, or wormholes. War could be oneâs opportunity to strike out and explore other areas of space. One can work while there are no WTs in the area, or one can move around the vast map and evade. One could (at least when there were more merc corporations around) hire allies to fight with or for them, or have friends do so.
There are lots of things that wars enable people to do, or encourage them to do, but people understandably donât like being made to change their status quo. I think wars are a thing that make highsec more interesting and dynamic, and I think highsec was more diverse, interesting, and dynamic before introducing all these additional restrictions and costs.
Wars were not, and will never be âfairâ to both parties. Iâd like to see the slide that shows the current state of affairs and how much the situation has improved (or declined, as is my suspicion) since CCPâs changes. While I do feel for the story of a 150 man corporation being pushed to oblivion by war, I would still call this incompetent leadership, or at best expanding faster than leadership was capable of managing effectively. Emphasis on numbers before all other considerations, like preparing for war when they got large enough to attract attention.
Wardecs werenât and arenât perfect. They donât give everyone everything they want, but I donât think they were the problem people made them out to be. Every small group everywhere is vulnerable to a larger, better trained group. Itâs that way everywhere, just more limited in highsec because you have to pay to get CONCORD to stay out of the way. Itâs not indicative of an unfairness that only exists in high security space, but an unfairness that is mitigated to some extent by formality and procedure only in high security space.
If I had to make a binding decision on neutral repping, Iâd allow it in preference to what we have now because lord knows there is third party interference everywhere outside of highsec and allowing more people to participate in combat seems preferable to locking them out of it.
What a truly excellent post. I saw the ally aspect as something that could develop wars in a positive way, it was not for everyone I know that. I remember some wars when I started again in 2009, the corps I was in were hilariously bad at it, but they had fun. But years later when you had blanket war decs that fun had gone, it was mechanical soulless and I put the blame for how war decs became, such a pita the blanket war decs, the numbers game to get clueless targets to blap sans risqueâŚ
As an old player I can switch my characters around easily to avoid, but the point is not to avoid, the entire thing about this game is to fight, and fighting might be doing what you normally do because that is your way of fighting and good on them doing that. You understood that this ally thing and the inability of allies to rep each other was locking people out, to force the small groups to operate as independent groups against a fully organised war machine pushed avoidance. CCPleaseâŚ, make it so people think they can, not make sure that they canâtâŚ
Well donât get me wrong. Iâm not arguing against your proposed changes (they look okay to me but Iâm no expert on wardec mechanics). Iâm not even arguing against the OPâs proposals. Wardec count limits, size differential factors, recruitment stasis, ally logi also all look okay to me (same proviso).
But the core issue to me is that under EVE mechanics, resisting is almost never rational. There is simply no point in JoeBlow Corp X trying to actively fight against a dedicated wardeccer. Sure, there are times a small corp decs a small corp and thereâs a fight to be had. Or a midsize corp puts up an unexpected resistance. But these are outliers and the stats show that overwhelmingly.
So tweaking the mechanics, even with quite good ideas, is like trying to put a couple stitches on a mortal wound. It wonât stop the bleeding.
Also, consider that from CCPâs perspective, perhaps theyâre getting the results they think they want. They may well be thinking âOK, big wardec groups will form up. And the only way to resist them is to form even bigger defense groups and out-war them. This will eventually lead to big wars, which makes the news and makes all of us here at CCP feel really good.â
I wrote about what I consider to be the folly of this approach a few years back:
Okay, so maybe CCP is getting what they want. But apparently the players arenât. So instead of engaging in wars, the targets find ways around them. Itâs not hard, just play an alt until the warâs over.
But if the objective is to get players to engage more in wars, even if theyâre the target, then we need to consider âWhat is the reason for a target to engage in war, rather than avoid it?â. As far as I can see, they would have only a few rational reasons:
They think they can win it.
They have something to gain by it.
They have a practical method to inflict some noticeable portion of harm on the aggressor, so they can at least feel they âhit backâ.
Then the greater question becomes, what features can we add to wardecs that create more of a tug-of-war scenario, rather than a âsteamroll the weak targetsâ situation.
Again, wardecs arenât my thing so I havenât spent much time on this. But the general idea is to give more options that are more in line with the defenders approach to the game. IE., expecting an indy corp to suddenly switch over to full-PvP-combat mode because they got wardecced is nonsense, itâs not gonna happen. Give them options to fight the war in different ways.
Hereâs a couple examples:
Reputation
Have a system for reputation standings. Successfully engaging in various game activities during a war gains you rep. Different types of activities have different gains. Thereâs various rewards or bonuses you can earn by increasing your rep points. Losing with no or few activities loses you points.
Defense Contracts
Expand the contract or corp project system to have âProtect asset X from situation A to situation B for Y reward with Z collateralâ. It can be âdefend citadel X for 2 weeksâ or âprotect freighter X from system A to system Bâ, but this alone opens up all kinds of options for a full war economy.
War Bonds and Objectives
Reduce the NPC war fee. Make the aggressor post a significantly larger war bond. War bond size determined by the size of the wardeccer. Then present both sides with a list of War Objective options. Each side picks two sets of objectives from their list. War points are added for ongoing completion of objectives (kills, ore mined, freight shipped, whatever). When enough points are completed, or some time limit is reached, points are counted up and the war bonds are distributed according to points obtained.
Both sides now have a reason to pursue action during the war, both sides get to choose ways to accomplish their own goals, and wardec corps have to be a little more discriminating about who they dec.
Of course, better yet would be to implement all three notions, which would mutually reinforce the entire war ecosystem. Or some other set of ideas. The overall point being, donât add more limits. Put more options on the table, put ways to create gain (not âremove lossesâ), put choices for how to deal with a wardec. Non-PvP corps arenât going to shift to combat mode to fight off a dedicated PvP war corp, thatâs fighting the enemies preferred battle in the enemies preferred way on the enemies chosen ground.
You donât need to be Sun Tzu to realize thatâs a bad idea.
It is not rational under the current mechanics, absolutely.
The way that war decs evolved shows the problem was always a lack of prey that fought back, blanket war decs and camping of hubs and pipes happened because that was the only way they could get their fix. Then it ended up with senseless pointless war decs that made many switch off.
We will never get away from steamroll the weak, that is Eve basically.
At this point taking down a war HQ does apply to your three points, they win it, they get freedom from war decs from that entity for a period of time, it costs the enemy various war decs and their fee and the simple fact that they canât war dec them for a period of time and it is hitting back. The problem is that CCP made it impossible for the defenders to fight on an even playing field with the larger war deccers.
When I was in the war dec discord the war deccers were looking for reasons to fight, and they always ended up penalising the defeneder for avoidance, it was laughable.
Reputation, it depends on the bonuses you get, these ideas were floated before but their benefits were so small to be laughable and not worth risky expensive assets.
defence contracts wonât work if you still end up as a small group acting as a small fleet without the ability to actually group up in larger fleet with allies.
War Bonds and objectives, this was one of the things pushed by war deccers, the question is who funds the war bond, it will be the defender and they will end up paying for a war dec against them because it will be another tax and an annoying one at that. Also it is artifical, for example moving item x to y, can I log in an out of corp alt and do it, create loads of them and win the war? I donât like artificial things like that in Eve, and I think most will be turned off of it.
I tried to push the idea of an easy to kill observatory that removed CONCORD protection for an entity in a system, a constellation, a region or all of hisec. Seemed the best way to do it so even the most feeble could jump into a cheap frigate and suicide the damn thing. The war deccers hated that one! Defence was not their thing you see, having to baby sit something was not them, they were hunters.
Donât discount the desire to resist that many people have, it is actually quite powerful, and if CCP had not made it so damn hard with their stupid mechanics it would have worked to some degree.
For you maybe, but a lot of players have lots to do (that doesnât include losing ships every 5 minutes) that they find fun.
Even more important is the fact that we enjoy it, we enjoy doing what we want in game when we want to do it without it including ship kills.
So itâs up to players like you to try and get your thrills where thereâs plenty of action rather than wanting the rules changed to make HS a duck shoot again.
If CCP did change the rules, and IF I ever got wardecced, as in the past I still have a character outside of the corp that I can still log on and mine, mission, explore whatever so it just becomes a very minor inconvenience that costs me nothing, but the corp setting up the wardec loses their isk, thatâs a win for me
I think youâll find that most players have that backup plan.
No they clearly arenât your thing as you are still theorycrafting a straw man.
Mining and industrial stations get put down to make ISK. A Moon mining station is essentially a giant mining ship. You keep trying to present ONLY the âwhatâs in it for them with a wardec ?â side and completely leave out whatâs been in it for them with making billions for months from their station. The latter is precisely what balances the former.
You are focusing solely on the fact that someone comes along and bashes the station as if the station was just sitting there minding its own business and not doing anythingâŚwhen it fact its been chewing up some Moon for months and making the corp billions. And if the corp then cannot afford to turn those billions into a decent defenceâŚwhose fault is that ?
Given that groups like WM and Blackflag canât be everywhere and WM in particular tend to operate in quite localised areas and may not return to any one area for 2 years or moreâŚits likely some corps just give up on defence and decide they will rebuild as soon as the wardeccers have gone. Which may well be cheaper than losing ships defending the structure. That is one answer to your question.
The fact that some corps donât properly bother with defence is not a game mechanic issueâŚit is a corp issue. Also its worth pointing out that for the wardeccer its really not as simple as âlets go bash XYZâ. Some stations run by smaller groups are actually protected by larger groups or even other wardec groups. Iâve had numerous times when Iâve asked â why arenât we bashing those stations over there ?â and the answer has usually been politics, other agreements, etc.
