Indexing War Declaration Costs to EVE’s Economy

[Second_Born]

Proposal: Indexing War Declaration Costs to EVE’s Economy

I would like to suggest a review of the economic model behind war declaration costs.

This is not a proposal to remove war declarations, restrict high-sec PvP, or make wars prohibitively expensive. Wars are an important part of EVE Online.

The issue I would like to raise is much narrower: the cost of declaring and maintaining a war should remain economically relevant as EVE’s economy changes over time.

1. A fixed ISK fee loses economic significance over time

The current war declaration system uses a fixed ISK cost.

The problem with any permanently fixed ISK price is inflation and the long-term evolution of EVE’s economy.

The purchasing power of 100 million ISK today is very different from what it was many years ago. One useful reference point is PLEX.

Historically, the market value of enough PLEX for approximately one month of game time was measured in hundreds of millions of ISK. Today, the market value of the PLEX required for 30 days of Omega is measured in billions.

Meanwhile, a war declaration costs 100 million ISK per week.

This means that even if the nominal price of declaring war remains unchanged, its relative economic cost becomes progressively smaller as the EVE economy grows.

Proposal: index the base war cost to an economic benchmark

Instead of setting the war declaration fee permanently at a fixed ISK value, CCP could link it to an economic indicator.

PLEX could be a particularly useful benchmark because it has a large and liquid player-driven market and provides a convenient long-term reference for the value of ISK.

For example, the base weekly war declaration fee could equal a fixed percentage of the rolling average market value of the amount of PLEX required for 30 days of Omega.

The exact percentage is not important to this proposal and should be determined by CCP using economic and gameplay data.

The important principle is:

If the EVE economy changes substantially, the economic significance of declaring war should adjust with it.

A rolling average could also prevent short-term PLEX price volatility or market manipulation from causing sudden changes in war declaration costs.

This would remove the need for CCP to periodically reconsider whether a fixed ISK fee established years earlier still makes sense.

2. Progressive cost for extending the same offensive war

There is a second issue worth considering: maintaining the same war indefinitely currently has essentially the same weekly economic cost.

I suggest considering a moderate progressive increase for consecutive renewals of the same offensive war.

For example, purely for illustration:

Week 1: 100% of the base cost
Week 2: 110%
Week 3: 121%
Week 4: 133%
Week 5: 146%
Week 6: 161%

This example uses a 10% compound increase per week.

The 10% value is only an example, not a proposed final balance value. CCP could determine whether the appropriate number should be 5%, 10%, another value, or perhaps use a different progression entirely.

The objective would not be to prevent long wars.

Instead, the system would create a gradually increasing economic decision for the aggressor:

Is continuing this particular war for another week worth the additional cost?

If the answer is yes, the war continues normally.

If the aggressor is actively pursuing strategic objectives, fighting, destroying structures or applying meaningful pressure, paying the increasing cost may be completely justified.

But maintaining large numbers of inactive or low-effort wars for long periods would gradually become less economically attractive.

This could potentially encourage more active prosecution of wars rather than simply keeping them open because the renewal cost is economically negligible.

3. Why the relationship between risk, cost and potential reward matters

Structure warfare provides an interesting economic comparison.

Upwell structures can represent billions of ISK in hulls, modules, rigs and other assets. Quantum Cores also create a guaranteed economic component to a successful structure kill.

There is nothing inherently wrong with attackers making a profit from successful structure warfare. Quite the opposite — meaningful rewards provide incentives for conflict, which is an important part of EVE.

However, the cost of acquiring the opportunity to attack potential targets should remain meaningful relative to the contemporary economy and the potential rewards involved.

If the cost of declaring war becomes extremely small relative to both general ISK values and potential structure rewards, it becomes economically practical to declare many wars, test many potential targets, and concentrate resources only on the most attractive ones.

That strategy itself is legitimate gameplay.

The question is simply whether the economic cost attached to enabling that gameplay has kept pace with the rest of EVE’s economy.

4. The goal is not to discourage wars

I think this distinction is important.

The objective should not be:

“Make wars expensive so fewer people declare them.”

Instead, the objective should be:

“Keep the economic cost of war declarations relevant as EVE’s economy evolves.”

An indexed base fee would address long-term ISK inflation and economic change.

A moderate progressive renewal cost would make very long offensive wars an increasingly deliberate economic commitment.

Together, these mechanisms could allow wars to remain accessible while preventing the ISK cost of the system from gradually becoming irrelevant.

There may also be other economic indicators that CCP considers more appropriate than PLEX, and different escalation formulas may work better than the examples above.

The specific numbers should therefore be treated as balancing variables.

The main suggestion is the underlying mechanism:

Replace a permanently fixed nominal war cost with a cost that remains economically meaningful over time, and consider moderate escalation for consecutive renewals of the same offensive war.

I would be interested in hearing whether other players — and CCP — think this could provide a more sustainable economic foundation for the war declaration system.

[Slop4Slop]

I think this proposal has the right idea but draws the exact wrong conclusion from its own economic premise.

If the concern is that the economic significance of a fixed 100 million ISK weekly fee declines over time, then we absolutely should index the cost to the EVE economy.

But why would we assume the correct indexation is up?

The obvious alternative is that a war which has already been running for several weeks should become progressively cheaper.

After all, what exactly is the additional economic burden being imposed on CONCORD by renewing an existing war?

The declaration has already been filed. The parties are already registered. The relevant databases already know that these two corporations are at war. CONCORD’s finest administrative personnel presumably aren’t re-reading the original declaration every Monday morning to make sure nothing has changed.

At that point, the weekly fee is essentially an administrative maintenance charge.

And administrative maintenance should get cheaper with time.

Week 1: 100% of the base administrative fee.

Week 2: 90%.

Week 3: 81%.

Week 4: 73%.

Week 5: 66%.

Week 6: 59%.

Eventually, after a sufficiently long period of uninterrupted war, the administrative cost should asymptotically approach zero.

This also solves the inflation problem rather elegantly. If ISK becomes less valuable over time, the answer isn’t necessarily to make war declarations more expensive. We could instead recognize that the marginal administrative cost of an existing war is approaching zero.

In fact, I think we can improve the system further with a CONCORD Administrative Value Plan.

Because if maintaining one war requires some amount of administrative overhead, maintaining ten concurrent wars clearly does not require ten times the administrative overhead. The same CONCORD employee can process the renewals in one batch. This is basic economies of scale.

So corporations maintaining multiple concurrent wars should receive a bulk discount.

CONCORD Administrative Value Plan

1 concurrent war: 100% administrative fee
2–4 concurrent wars: 90% per war
5–9 concurrent wars: 75% per war
10–19 concurrent wars: 50% per war
20+ concurrent wars: 25% per war
50+ concurrent wars: CONCORD waves the fee because at that point you’re obviously one of their preferred customers.

This would also encourage exactly the sort of economically meaningful gameplay the proposal claims to care about.

A corporation with one war has a reason to consider whether it really wants that war.

A corporation with twenty wars is clearly operating at scale and should receive the corresponding administrative efficiencies.

That’s just how modern enterprise works.

And before anyone points out that this might encourage people to declare more wars, yes. That is an entirely reasonable consequence of an incentive structure that rewards efficient utilization of CONCORD’s administrative infrastructure.

We should not confuse “I would prefer there to be fewer wars” with “the economically correct price of a war is higher.”

Those are two different propositions.

The former is a gameplay preference. The latter is an economic argument. You can make either argument, but wrapping the first one in enough economic terminology does not magically turn it into the second.

If what you actually want is for people to be under fewer war declarations, that’s fine. Just say so.

“I don’t like being war decced as frequently and I think the game would be more enjoyable if that happened less” is a completely comprehensible position.

But if we’re going to insist that the proposal is fundamentally about keeping the economic significance of war declarations aligned with the economy, then we have to consider all the ways economic significance can change.

A war that has already been running for months is not the same economic proposition as initiating a new war. The marginal administrative effort involved in maintaining it is presumably lower. The participants have already incurred the initial cost. The paperwork is already in the system.

There is no obvious economic law stating that CONCORD must respond to this by charging progressively more money.

If anything, CONCORD should be embarrassed that it hasn’t implemented bulk pricing already.

I would therefore recommend replacing the proposed 10% compound increase with a 10% compound discount.

And rather than indexing the fee to PLEX, CCP could index it to something that actually reflects the administrative burden of the service.

For example, the number of CONCORD employees who have to physically look at the war declaration.

If that number is zero, the fee should be zero.

If the war has been running for six months and nobody at CONCORD has looked at it since the original declaration, perhaps the game should actually refund some of the previous administrative fees.

This is the kind of dynamic economic system EVE deserves.

More wars? Lower unit cost.

Longer war? Lower maintenance cost.

Repeat customer? Bulk discount.

That’s not an exploit. That’s economies of scale.

And if someone doesn’t like the resulting incentives, that’s fine too. But then we’re back to discussing the actual gameplay outcome they want rather than pretending that an arbitrary compound price increase is some inevitable consequence of economics.

I eagerly await the follow-up proposal:

“CONCORD Administrative Value Plan: Why Corporations Maintaining 20+ Wars Should Receive a Complimentary Fax Machine.”

Finally, if we’re going to make wars progressively more expensive merely because they have continued to exist, I would like to know what CONCORD is actually doing with the money.

Because if the answer is “nothing,” then we’re not talking about a meaningful economic sink.

We’re talking about a recurring subscription fee for a database entry.

And I can think of no better candidate for a volume discount.

[Jump_Now_Jump]

Yeah, CONCORD loves cash. Sounds reasonable. But never free…! There should be discount to motivate yet another war and to keep manufacturing running.

I mean that there shoud be discount for wars.

[Slop4Slop]

Having given this proposal further consideration, I believe we may actually be thinking too narrowly about the economic benefits of war.

Given the critical nature of destruction within the Eveconomy, merely adjusting the administrative cost of war declarations is addressing the symptom rather than the underlying problem.

The economy does not need us to make wars more expensive.

It needs more things to explode.

There are several related changes we could make to ensure that the economically productive process of turning ships, structures and accumulated wealth into wreckage is both more accessible and more difficult to avoid.

Why Destruction Is Good for the Economy

It is worth dwelling on this point, because destruction is sometimes treated as though it were simply wealth disappearing.

That is an incomplete analysis.

When a ship explodes, the materials used to construct it are removed from the economy. This creates demand for replacement materials and, consequently, for the miners, industrialists, haulers and everyone else involved in producing and moving those materials.

Destruction also creates ISK sinks. Manufacturing costs, broker fees, sales taxes, industry fees, contract fees and the various other costs associated with replacing destroyed assets all take ISK out of circulation.

This is not merely theoretical economic activity. These are actual people with actual ships and actual bills to pay.

The miner needs something to mine.

The industrialist needs something to build.

The hauler needs something to haul.

And, presumably, all of these people would like to continue feeding their families.

The humble explosion therefore performs an important economic function: it creates a recurring demand for all of the economic activity required to replace whatever just exploded.

And, frankly, there is another consideration that should not be dismissed simply because it cannot be expressed neatly on a spreadsheet:

Explosions are cool.

This is an important economic externality that I believe has been insufficiently studied.

A ship sitting safely in a hangar represents a considerable amount of invested wealth, but it is not particularly interesting.

A ship being blown apart by a fleet of angry capsuleers produces wreckage, killmails, stories, grudges, forum posts, propaganda, and potentially several more explosions.

One of these outcomes is clearly superior from a game-design perspective.

Therefore, when evaluating mechanics intended to promote economic activity, we should not look solely at the ISK balance sheet.

We should also consider the explosion balance sheet.

And on that metric, I believe we have considerable room for growth.

End the Athanor Shell Corporation Meta

First, mining at an Athanor while not being a member of the corporation that owns it should generate a suspect flag.

This seems like an obvious economic reform.

The current structure mechanics also enable a particularly silly form of war avoidance: putting the Athanor in a shell corporation whose only meaningful purpose is to own the structure, while the actual players who use and defend it remain elsewhere.

If the members of Corporation A are the ones actually mining at and benefiting from Corporation B’s Athanor, there should be some mechanism by which their interaction with that structure creates meaningful exposure to conflict.

Making non-members who mine an Athanor suspect-flagged would accomplish this neatly. It creates an actual risk/reward relationship around the structure rather than allowing everyone involved to hide behind the corporate ownership technicality.

You want to use somebody else’s Athanor?

Fine.

You are now suspect.

Someone else wants to defend the Athanor?

Fine.

Now you have a fight.

Someone gets blown up?

Excellent.

The mineral gets replaced. The ship gets replaced. The modules get replaced. The hauler eventually gets replaced. The industrialist gets paid. The miner gets paid. The entire beautiful machinery of the EVE economy gets another turn.

Most importantly, the structure ceases to function as a convenient piece of legal fiction whose primary economic purpose is helping people avoid shooting each other.

Everybody wins.

Except whoever just exploded.

Who, economically speaking, has done their part.

Scale Back Structure-Based War Immunity

Second, structure-based war declaration immunity should be substantially reduced.

I would propose a very simple threshold:

Any corporation with more than 20 members should be freely deccable by anyone.

The exact number is obviously subject to extensive economic modeling that I have not performed, but 20 feels like a very scientific number.

The basic principle is that once a corporation reaches a meaningful population, it should no longer be able to effectively opt out of one of the game’s primary mechanisms for converting wealth into destruction.

If you have more than 20 people, congratulations: you have successfully assembled enough economic assets and human beings to become an interesting target.

You should therefore be available to shoot.

This isn’t about punishing large corporations. Quite the opposite. Large corporations presumably have more ships, more resources, more logistics, more infrastructure, and more economic activity.

In other words, more things for the economy to replace.

A corporation that has accumulated enough organizational scale to support dozens or hundreds of players should not simultaneously be able to construct an administrative arrangement whose primary economic function is making itself difficult to fight.

That is precisely backwards.

If anything, the larger you get, the more important it becomes that other players have a mechanism for imposing destruction upon you.

Again: this is not a bug.

This is the economic engine.

Claim Stakes

For some time, I’ve been mulling over the idea of placeable claim stakes.

The basic idea is that a player could deploy a small, relatively fragile deployable that establishes an officially recognized claim to a high-security grid.

No structures on the grid, because we’re not trying to create another citadel mechanic.

Instead, the claim would create a limited, localized conflict relationship.

The owner of the claim could initiate a limited engagement against somebody who subsequently trespasses on it, while the claim itself would be destructible. Attacking the claim stake would carry a suspect flag, giving other players the opportunity to intervene.

Essentially, it would create a tiny, player-created microwar.

And this is exactly the sort of thing we should be looking at if we’re serious about making destruction a more accessible part of the economy.

You shouldn’t necessarily need to organize a 50-man fleet, negotiate a war declaration, and conduct a week-long corporate campaign in order to generate some conflict.

Sometimes there doesn’t need to be a reason.

Sometimes there just needs to be a thing worth fighting over.

Sometimes I should be able to put a little sign in space that says:

THIS IS MY PATCH OF SPACE.

And when you ignore the sign, we get to shoot each other.

If my claim stake gets destroyed, I replace it.

If your ship gets destroyed, you replace it.

If my ship gets destroyed, I replace it.

If somebody third-parties the fight and loses something, they replace it.

This is called an economy.

The beauty of the system is that it creates conflict without requiring the participants to pretend they are engaging in some grand strategic military campaign.

Sometimes there doesn’t need to be a reason.

Sometimes there just needs to be a thing worth fighting over.

The Broader Principle

Taken together, these changes point toward a much healthier approach to the economic problem.

We shouldn’t be asking:

“How do we make wars expensive enough that people stop declaring them?”

We should be asking:

“Why are there so many ways to avoid having things explode?”

War declarations should be accessible.

Structure ownership should not be an elaborate mechanism for putting your actual membership behind a legal fiction.

Large corporations should be meaningfully exposed to conflict.

And players should have lightweight mechanisms for creating localized conflict without having to navigate an increasingly elaborate system of opt-outs and immunities.

Because at the end of the day, the EVE economy does not consume ISK.

Ships consume ISK.

Ships are consumed when they explode.

The more ships that explode, the more ships people need to build.

The more ships people build, the more minerals they need.

The more minerals they need, the more people mine.

The more people mine, the more economic activity there is.

And eventually someone explodes another ship.

This is a virtuous cycle.

We have spent an enormous amount of time trying to make conflict safer, more avoidable, and more administratively inconvenient, and then seem surprised when people complain that the economy needs more destruction.

Perhaps the answer is not another economic lever.

Perhaps we simply need to let people shoot each other more easily.

So yes, by all means, let’s continue discussing the appropriate administrative fee for declaring war.

But simultaneously:

• Make Athanor trespassing meaningfully dangerous.

• Close the shell-corporation war-dodging loophole.

• Make sufficiently large corporations freely deccable.

• Introduce lightweight localized conflict through claim stakes.

• Reduce the number of mechanisms whose primary purpose is avoiding interaction with other players.

• Produce more explosions.

With enough destruction, we can save the EVE economy yet.

And if this results in somewhat more explosions than anticipated, I am confident the resulting increase in demand for replacement ships will prove that the model was working exactly as intended.

[Geo_Eclipse_Oksaras]

A war dec is a bribe to CONCORD to allow people to be shot/podded.

[Jump_Now_Jump]

Will ask AI to review AI as soon as there will be some fresh water. For now everything is forwarded to /dev/null

[Second_Born]

I think a war in highsec should have a purpose — an objective the attacker actually intends to achieve.

Attack the structure, fight for control, destroy the target, disrupt an operation — whatever the objective is, pursue it. If it takes longer, the attacker should absolutely be able to extend the war.

What I don’t think should be the objective in itself is maintaining continuous legal pressure on the same corporation for weeks or months simply because the cost is trivial and “maybe something will happen eventually.”

Continuous pressure should be possible, but it shouldn’t come at pocket-change prices.

That’s the distinction I’m trying to make with this proposal. I’m not arguing against highsec wars. I’m arguing that maintaining the same war indefinitely should represent an increasing economic commitment.

[Slop4Slop]

I find the evolution of the rationale here considerably more interesting than the specific proposal.

The original argument was presented as an economic one. The concern was that the fixed cost of declaring war becomes increasingly insignificant relative to the growth of the EVE economy, and therefore the cost should be indexed accordingly.

Now we’re being told that the real principle is that “a war in highsec should have a purpose”, that an attacker should have an objective, and that maintaining continuous pressure for its own sake is somehow the thing we need to discourage.

Those are rather different arguments.

In fact, they’re different enough that it raises the obvious question of which one was actually the reason for the proposal in the first place.

If the economic argument was sincere, then the economic consequences of making prolonged wars more expensive should presumably be the thing we’re discussing.

If the actual concern is that people shouldn’t be allowed to maintain prolonged wars unless they are actively pursuing some sufficiently serious objective, then the economic-indexing argument was apparently just the preferred justification for achieving that outcome.

And this is where the whole thing becomes rather revealing.

When one rationale encounters resistance, we apparently just reach into the bag and pull out another one.

First: the economy.

Now: wars should have a purpose.

Perhaps next we’ll discover that it’s actually about immersion, or sportsmanship, or the philosophical nature of violence in New Eden.

At some point, when the justification for a proposal keeps changing while the desired outcome remains remarkably consistent, it becomes reasonable to suspect that the desired outcome came first and the rationale was assembled afterward.

That doesn’t make the desired outcome illegitimate. People are perfectly entitled to say “I don’t like indefinite wars and want the game to discourage them.”

That’s an entirely straightforward preference.

What is considerably less persuasive is presenting that preference as an economic necessity, and then quietly abandoning the economic rationale once it becomes inconvenient.

It does, unfortunately, make the original concern about economic integrity somewhat difficult to take seriously.

If we’re going to discuss war mechanics, I would much rather see people state the gameplay outcome they actually want and defend that directly than construct an economic argument around it and then replace the argument with an entirely different principle when convenient.

Because there is a perfectly good economic case to be made for the exact opposite conclusion.

Protracted wars are not economically inert simply because the attacker has not yet achieved whatever arbitrary “objective” we have decided a war ought to possess.

A prolonged war can generate destruction over and over again.

Ships explode.

Modules explode.

Ammunition gets consumed.

Structures get damaged and replaced.

Industrial capacity is utilized.

Minerals are extracted to replace destroyed assets.

Haulers move those minerals and finished products.

Manufacturers build the replacements.

Market transactions generate broker fees and taxes.

Industry generates fees.

And, most importantly, accumulated wealth gets converted back into stuff that can explode again.

That is not an economic failure.

That is the economy doing exactly what an economy in EVE is supposed to do.

In fact, the idea that a war should become progressively less economically valuable simply because it has continued for a long time seems backwards.

A war that has existed for six months has had six months in which ships could have been destroyed.

A war that exists for another six months has another six months in which ships can be destroyed.

If the concern is the health of the economy, I am struggling to identify the economic harm caused by allowing people to continue purchasing ships, modules, ammunition and replacement structures.

Perhaps we should introduce a new concept:

The CONCORD Economic Stimulus Through Sustained Hostilities Program.

Every month that a war remains active, CONCORD could issue a small certificate recognizing the participants’ ongoing contribution to the industrial economy.

After three months, the participants receive a commemorative medal.

After six months, CONCORD sends everyone involved a mineral coupon.

After twelve months, the war is officially classified as an Important Economic Activity.

Because if destruction is good for the economy, then a war which continues producing destruction is not somehow economically invalid because nobody has managed to check the “destroy target structure” box on a form.

And if absolutely nothing explodes for months, then perhaps that is the economic problem worth discussing.

Not the duration of the war.

The absence of explosions.

This is also why I remain unconvinced by the idea that prolonged pressure is inherently some kind of economically undesirable behavior. If someone wants to spend their resources maintaining a war, they are spending resources. If their opponents respond by fitting ships, moving ships, replacing losses, changing operations, hiring mercenaries, moving assets, or otherwise reacting to the pressure, that is economic activity.

The fact that the activity is inconvenient for somebody does not make it economically meaningless.

Indeed, that inconvenience is rather the point.

EVE’s economy is not a spreadsheet where the objective is to preserve everyone’s asset balance indefinitely.

The economic system exists largely to support a game in which people risk and destroy assets.

So if we’re going to appeal to the economy, let’s actually follow that argument all the way through.

More destruction means more replacement demand.

More replacement demand means more industrial activity.

More industrial activity means more demand for minerals and hauling.

More transactions mean more taxes and fees.

More losses mean more reasons to earn ISK.

And more reasons to earn ISK mean more reasons to participate in the economy in the first place.

And, as previously established, explosions are cool.

I therefore continue to think that the most economically coherent position is not to make prolonged wars progressively more expensive until everyone gets bored and goes home.

It is to make war itself more accessible, remove some of the increasingly elaborate mechanisms for avoiding conflict, and let the economy enjoy the consequences.

With sufficient destruction, perhaps we really can save the EVE economy.

And unlike the rationale for this proposal, that one has the advantage of remaining the same argument from one post to the next.

[Slop4Slop]

@Jump_Now_Jump

Will ask AI to review AI as soon as there will be some fresh water. For now everything is forwarded to /dev/null

I don’t blame you; I’m not reading it, either.

[Arthur_Aihaken]

So tired of this AI slop. If you can’t express your thoughts without AI - they’re not your thoughts.

[Second_Born]

Not every player responds to economic pressure by buying more PLEX with real money. Some players try to sustain their accounts through activity inside EVE. For them, prolonged war doesn’t only create replacement demand — it can also reduce their ability to generate the ISK needed to replace those assets and maintain Omega.

[Lucy_Alfrir]

TL:DR

[Slop4Slop]

I think we’re having some trouble staying on the topic of the thread at this point.

The original argument was that war declaration costs should be indexed to the EVE economy because the existing cost becomes economically insignificant.

Then it became that wars should have a “purpose.”

Now the concern appears to be that prolonged wars can make it difficult for individual players to earn enough ISK to replace their losses or maintain Omega.

These are three different arguments.

And, importantly, an individual player’s ability to earn enough ISK to replace their losses is not “the economy.”

The fact that Bob has to run another ten missions because someone blew up his battleship is not evidence that the EVE economy is unhealthy. Quite the opposite: Bob running those missions, buying another ship, paying the associated taxes and fees, and putting that ship back into space is economic activity.

Likewise, a ship being destroyed doesn’t make the ISK and materials involved in replacing it cease to exist economically. The destruction creates demand for the mining, hauling, manufacturing and market activity necessary to replace it.

So we’ve now gone from “war is too cheap relative to the economy” to “war should have a purpose” to “war might make individuals too poor.”

That’s a remarkably impressive journey for a thread supposedly about one economic metric.

At some point it might be useful to identify the actual desired outcome and then make that argument directly, rather than finding a new rationale every time the previous one gets challenged.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to support the radical economic proposition that ships exploding is good for the EVE economy.

More explosions, more replacements, more production, more mining, more hauling, more taxes and fees.

The economy can cope.

Bob may have to run a few missions.

[MILINT_ARC_Trooper]

Hmm…Well the maybe the question is this.

If we did a proportional cost system…declaring war on a large corp…by the amount of targets…or as some would say custom offices…would mean too costly a war declaration. IE…only another large corp/alliance could wage war in highsec.

I get the OPs Idea…for a way to cause a price escalation. But again that would mean larger corps could either sit out the attacker till their wallet is dry. Or a corp can pay mercenaries and head shot the HQ [Which currently happens too much…and allows a few groups to control alot of items in highsec with very little reprecussions]

If such a system was to be implemented…we need to change the underlining logistics of all structures in highsec and lowsec. Timers, Fuel (especially for the Custom Offices) so there is more potential ways to “papercut” targets. Also part of the changes would be wardecs allowing for sabotage of structures through hacking or siphoning even in highsec. So there is alot more interaction and chances to open weakpoints and opportunities to attack.

Maybe even a whole new set of mechanics…to allow “justification”

Wardec…is just plain wardec. But without a justification…the cost to start one, or keep one going should have some costs.

So we need some new adjustments and ways to accrue ways to lower costs.

Vendetta- You can declare Vendetta on a group or corporation…lets say you have been ganked by a particular player and their corp or alliance consistently. Well now you can declare Vendetta…and it limits your actions to a specific player/corp/alliance only. It can’t be spread or batphoned in. Once you declare this particular type of War Dec…you can engage with that player, corp, alliance only. Its very narrow focused. But you have to have justification…so every time you get ganked/killed…you accrue “credit” that can be used to justify and declare a Vendetta War Dec. Very constrained target parameters…but unrestricted warfare between the targets…until expires.

Claim Dispute- You want a particular moon or station point…but someone already has claimed it. Depending on activity or interaction or lack thereof…the player accrues points…so people can do a Claim Dispute War Dec. You are only fighting over a specific location. And any conflict outside of the system where the location dispute is…is Concord offense.

Repossesion (REPO)- this one would have to be tied into a change with how highsec and lowsec stations have “permission” to operate in Empire space. If you do not pay up a station license amount, you have X amount of time. Then people can see an opportunity, and a target of a station under potential repossesion. And the REPO War Dec can be then declared. For some rewards of course.

Imminent Domain- This might be more FW centric. But if a system flips, hostile anchored stations can be freely attacked without repercussions also an alliance/corp whose standings drop below a set threshhold, their structures will become legitimate targets through Imminent Domain War Decs. [This is different from a REPO War Dec.]

Privateer- “Legalized Ganking” any alliance or corp…below a certain threshold, operating inside an empire…but has good standing with a hostile empire and has done missions for them. Can be a valid war dec target within or transiting through a territory. You accrue points for doing missions, FW, or other content for the benefit of the other empire. Then you become a valid target for a Privateer War Dec.

[Second_Born]

I don’t question the right to wage a war without a specific objective. I question the assumption that the economic cost of maintaining the same war should remain fixed regardless of how long it lasts.

[Slop4Slop]

And we’re back to the original argument.

After detouring through “wars need a purpose” and the economic burden prolonged wars impose on individual players, we’re now back to the claim that the cost of maintaining a war should increase simply because the war continues.

The problem is that this doesn’t really establish the premise; it just restates the desired mechanic.

If destruction is economically beneficial to EVE, then a war that continues producing destruction is continuing to generate economic activity: ships and modules are replaced, materials are consumed, industry runs, minerals are mined, goods are hauled, and taxes and fees are paid.

There is no obvious economic principle whereby this activity becomes less beneficial merely because it has been happening for longer.

And again, an individual player’s ability to afford continued losses is not “the EVE economy.” That’s a question of individual income and risk tolerance.

If the actual objective is simply to make prolonged wars less sustainable, that’s fine. But that’s a gameplay preference, not an economic necessity.

At this point, the various rationales have mostly served to obscure that distinction.

[Syzygium]

@Slop4Slop

If destruction is economically beneficial to EVE

While this may be true for the ingame economy , there is another side of the coin.

If the whole wardec mechanic is mainly used to stomp smaller/weaker groups in basically riskless offensive wars that always (mechanically guaranteed) generate profits for larger groups, the whole system hurt the player economy of the product EVE Online on the gaming market.

Because, believe it not, most players come to this game because it promises something. The opportunity to spend months and years to create something own in a vast universe, forged by your own vision. With friends. Over time.
Many players (I’d say most, but thats debatable for sure), do not come to EVE Online to “blow up spaceships” but to build something. And if they see a system in place that allows large groups of many hundred players to basically farm smaller groups for guaranteed profit, then they will simply quit and play something else.

Don’t misunderstand me: I don’t say larger groups shouldn’t be able to attack smaller groups. Surely they should be. But war in HS should be costly. And only profitable if you are extraordinary good. Which means: The costs of declaring war should always exceed minimum drop from a single structure (incl. basic fit and core). If you want to remove it for political reasons (“This is my area!”) or for personal reasons (have beef with their members/leaders) or for economical reasons (eliminating competition) - go on, do so. But it won’t be directly profitable. Burning down that Athanor, Astra, Raitaru… whatever, will cost you money.

So, if it’s up to me: Declaring war on a Corporation should cost 1B ISK. And after that, no more fees as long as it goes on (aka the attacked side stays war-eligible).

[AAmadmaxAA]

war deck might be exclusive region and be smaller calculated to your Corp / alliance’s security status to that region.