We need to address d-plexing. I just killed an unfit punisher d-plexing an open complex. I think we should add limits to what kinds of ships can d-plex, to make faction warfare more interesting, and less tedious.
My Proposal Overview: (It’s a little complex, so I’ll try my best to explain it.)
Make it so that only the “max” ship class and below can d-plex a site. This wouldn’t impact novice, or small, sites because only frigates that aren’t t2 can fit in both of them; however, this impacts medium through open, and creates risky/interesting opportunities for faction warfare pilots to bring out their bigger ships, and fight bigger ships.
TLDR:
Make it so that only Destroyers and Cruisers can d-plex Mediums.
Make it so that only Battlecruisers and Battleships can d-plex Larges.
Make it so that only Capitals and Battleships can run Opens.
All the limits on what ships can enter a plex stay the same, so that you can still force offenders out of a complex.
Reason:
Killing the rat is the barrier to entry for o-plexing; however, there is none for d-plexing - besides the ship class restrictions and the time investment (besides the obvious fight, which both already share). This feature would also bring bigger fights to systems that are actively being d-plexed because to d-plex efficiently would require at least one battleship to be used to plex an open, and at least one battlecruiser to plex a Large complex - AKA, far fewer alt accounts that you stick in a site, without a care to if they die or not because “it’s too cheap to not do this”.
I’m very open to how we could improve this more, and I really hope we can make faction warfare more interesting.
imo, the fw mechanic would gain a lot by grabbing some inspiration from infinity : battlescape.
Objectives need to be physically destroyed in order to be accomplished. Granted, EVE is a more complicated game, so there should be room for other objective types, such as hacking sites, but just sitting on a beacon for a pay day is just asking for people to game the system.
In other words, the d-plexing mechanic should probably be changed to something else, such as the defense of an objective after the attack has been started. IB uses ai behavior paired with objectives to determine if the attack is successful or a failure.
Personally, what I’d really love to see, is CCP licensing that game engine to create a companion game that exists on the same server as the EVE client. It would control ships from the fighter size up to corvettes and would be responsible for taking out specific node installations that EVE ships would just bounce off of (the shields around the stations in the video.)
I mean… these do tend to be the most farmed sites. Only people i see farming anything bigger are the people using cheep bots that don’t discriminate.
Not to mention defensive farmers like this aren’t really that big of a negative to faction warfare. After the stab exclusion they’re no longer hard to manage the effect they have on the warzone and that was the biggest problem with them.
However they do provide a major service to players new to pvp. They are still useful to teach many core mechanics like sliding and scanning. And that’s nice but above all they provide a major confidence boost.
Sure there really isn’t much pride to take in this sort of kill but a kill mail is a kill mail to someone new to it.
Honestly, I agree that it’s a good confidence boost, but my change wouldn’t remove that opportunity. It would fix somebody in a frigate de-plexing a whole system in the off-hours, and increase the risk of de-plexing all the sites in a system by needing a larger ship to do it. There is probably a bigger opportunity for players that are newer to pvp to find a battleship trying to de-plex in an open instead of constantly finding only a frigate in a novice that always warps away. Also, because players usually don’t have a station in system - holding breath on adding same rules to citadels, I’ll probably die first - that means scanner probes, gate camps, and generally engaging content that you mostly only find in Null could also be more available in low-sec.
A problem that is already fixed under the new system. Contested systems are never dead long enough for one guy to grind back down, and back water systems won’t be doable by one man in a night even if he never sees another soul.
