The loss of the ar dec fee, the loss of the citadel, the two days it takes to get a CONCORD agent back, the loss of ships all add up as well as the impact of losing a battle to defend all those war dec fees which you now have to pay out on again when the CONCORD agent is up and running again.
It is designed to hurt war deckers but not to make it impossible, you have to balance up your risk of going to war with them.
@Whitehound after the Goons got caught into a perpetual war dec with an entity with multiple allies CCP changed the mutual war dec mechanic to end the lock in. For my idea the mutual war dec is not countered as a paid for war dec so it is not affected by the loss of the citadel or even within the four war decs, but as soon as one party ends the mutual status then it does. Making a war dec mutual is used by Red vs Blue for example, most people do not make it mutualâŚ
Ok, thatâs fine. It would need a slight change in the mechanics to allow groups to mutually declare war without a fee (which theyâd need initially under current mechanics).
You seem to believe that there would be a battle involved. I can almost guarantee you that any force that is capable of taking down a large wardec corps structure is unlikely to get a fight. Why contest a 250 man fleet when you can just jump corp and carry on the war?
I still have seen no suggestion that the large NS groups will consistently contest these structures. Like I said, for the first few weeks, maybe, but the novelty will wear off and the line members of NS fleets will get fed up of their ratting/mining/roaming/gate camping/reddit browsing time being interrupted to sit at a structure 30 jumps from home for 15 minutes 2 or 3 times a week.
So for me, the one major thing I would like to see changed is the Corporation Hopping. I think its a crap mechanic: you wardec the soft underbelly of a large hi sec mining alliance and they simply jump from one of their member corps to the next, thereby making my investment null and void.
Rather, I would prefer it work something like this: The war dec follows the members of the decced corp, for the duration of the wardec.
I donât have a problem paying the 50m isk fee, but I donât like how it is summarily wasted when the decced corp members scatter like cockroaches⌠and also that large aggressive hi sec mining alliances get to shield their miners from the frays they create.
Then dec the alliance, not the corp. You donât dec a player, you dec an organisation. Players are free to move as they wish between corps and this is right imo
Holy s**t 666 posts already! Why is it that threads about wars always get so much attention, yet no word from CCP? Even a statement like we are looking into improving the system will sound goodâŚ
Probably because there hasnât been a suggestion put forward that doesnât have problems. I canât see CCP putting time and resources into an area of the game which doesnât have universal impact.
There are bigger fish to fry, and this area only gets lots of forum attention for reasons that have already been discussed at length.
The problem with dodging war declaration is in people, who want to be identified as a group in the game, but without participating in the corporate warfare. And as long as these player groups donât get their social corporations (a mini NPC corporation with limited features) will they keep creating their own corporations and thereby water-down the pool of corporations. If these players were given social corporations would you get a smaller pool of standard corporations, but the pool would also be filled with more meaningful targets, who are willing to fight. Youâd still get âwar dodgingâ, because as long as it is possible will it also continue to happen, but you would get to see it less often. So thatâs one of the ideas I personally like and why I like it.
The other one I also like is that of introducing intel gathering devices. I can imagine several forms of it, one in example being a new type of probe, the âwar probeâ. A war probe would have a small scan area of 1-4 AU, a long life time of perhaps 7 days, a control range of several light-years (similar to jump ranges or PI ranges) and it would only return CONCORD-registered targets. CONCORD-registered targets would be anything from war targets, militia targets and also suspect-flagged players and oneâs own corp members, but not anyone else. It allows for many uses during war no doubt, but if it can mean that more players will undock during war or that it just helps them to shake the fear of war declarations, then thatâs a good reason to introduce it. When a war gets declared as mutual might one allow both sides to use each otherâs war probes. The function of the war probe would be that of a register, which collects the player names and ship-types between each scan. Thus not scanning for a long time would work as a logging device, and frequent scanning would work as a real-time scanner.
Alright⌠Back to where we were using logic and reason.
You canât choose to change the meta. That is what players do. You have to change mechanics of the game to get any effect of any kind. The only thing you can touch is what is the mechanic to initiate an effect.
You put a quarter (or whatever other object as weâre going coinless) into the machine it resets the score on the Whack-A-Mole game and starts itâs current pattern. The conversion to Eve Online of this game is that the âmolesâ are actually other players so their movement is the random pattern which can change and has a large area (all of New Eden) to play around in.
Now lets add a condition that you must hold a wire in to the machine to have the mallet strikes count for the score. You now must hold a wire with one hand and swing the mallet with the other to gain points in your Whack-A-Mole machine. It changes the game by making it a tad more difficult. You can adjust to this by playing the game with two people where one focuses on holding the wire in while the other continues the striking. Now lets turn the machine randomly left or right while youâre doing this. Added complexity to make the game more difficult.
So here we are. Deploy an intel device (hold the wire in) while you watch the ever moving board (watchlist benefit) in order to shoot spaceships (gain points) while you play Eve Online (Whack-A-Mole Spaceship Combat.)
Itâs a small change. You can lose points because these moles (players) can now fight back. You now have a thing that can be used to tell you that you can score points. Keep that wire attached and you can continue to play scoring points. Accidentally disconnect the wire? Better reconnect it and get back to scoring points. Leaving the wire disconnected? Well you can quit anytime you donât feel like keeping the conditions going to score points.
You donât target the meta because that is what the players build around the mechanics. You make a small change to the mechanics and the players will find a way to do what they want with it. There will always be a meta because that is what players do. I can no more change the meta than prove that the sky is neon purple at midnight.
So there we go. A small change where the attacker gains intel with risk of the intel device which keeps the war going so that they have a reason to fight and their targets also have a reason to fight. Or we can keep the status quo and remain with no reason to fight because thatâs the best way to end a war dec. Make the deccer bored.
What makes anyone think that anyone is going to actually fight back with this changed? The oneâs who will fight back already do, so what makes you think that indy corps or nullsec groups will bother?
There is no appetite in the game for more structure grind
Itâs not the intel gathering I have a problem with. Itâs the idea that one needs to put some object into the game to start a war, to keep a war going or to give a reason to fight for it.
Think about the following: theoretically could one play EVE without any wars. One could just build more and more stuff and shoot NPCs. Right?
So where does war come from?
War comes from players and it is part of the meta. Itâs what players always wanted from the beginning of EVE and itâs entirely the players doing it.
And what do players fight for? They fight for anything imaginable really. For kills, for resource, for territory, for tears, for lols, ⌠there are countless reasons and I donât even want to list them. Itâs boring to list them.
So when you believe it needs an object to provide a reason to fight then Iâd say youâre burned out and just donât want to fight anymore. We do have countless things in EVE to fight for and over. And when you think players donât want to fight and first need a new object, then youâre just not seeing the real problem, which youâre trying to solve.
Anyhow, Iâm willing to look at how you want to implement it. So Iâm also asking you, what happens when the war becomes mutual? Whatâs the point of tying the timer to the object when this happens?
This is not about null space so please do not add in random additional conditions.
The majority of those who donât fight back choose that because even if they actually cause damage to the aggressor the war will continue and the only change would be the aggressor now knows to pick his target a bit more carefully in the future. They gain no benefit from losing ammo at a target that will only come back to fight again. They know they have no method to force the enemy to stop the war dec. They have no reason to fight because that would give the aggressor entertainment (win or lose itâs still a fight) and that would only encourage the war to continue.
ISK isnât putting any risk into the game. War is not about âWe can only fight when I have an advantage because I declared warâ ever. If someone wants to fight a war then let them. Give them something to fight over. If they defend the device and cause more damage then they have gained content. If the defenders go absolutely batshit crazy fight mode and camp the attacker to death so that he canât fight a war or keep the device to make the war fueled then we have had a battle even with ZERO shots fired.
So would you say that giving the attacker a device which tells them they can shoot targets a bad idea?
Itâs a conversion from ISK to an object. Consider the fact that Eve Online is about destruction. Your words remember?
(will add the quote in later⌠itâs pretty far up)
We have an exception to this rule called War Decs. War Decs do not have any destruction that doesnât already exist in the game attached to them. They directly prevent destruction by adjusting a rule of Concord will put you in a pod to Concord will ignore it and let it continue.
You shove a quarter (ISK) into a machine and now you have someone else forced to sit at that machine waiting for you to play. You have no need to play to cause this effect. A one sided directionless event that goes wherever you want for no risk at all to you beyond what you choose to take. You can take no action for eternity and it continues so long as you shove more quarters (ISK) into the machine. In effect you can never play the game and your opponent waits endlessly for you to decide to play or quit. This is denying content that is designed specifically to allow you to fight.
So Iâm moving the machine into space so you have to actually take an action to get the effect. Your targets will KNOW you started tracking them (but now they have a reason to find the device so that they can continue being untracked) and they can choose if they wish to do something about it. The risk of leaving you tracking them or finding the device and hoping you arenât camping it with 30 friends is entirely theirs to take. Defending the device is your choice to make. Attacking the targets is your choice to make. No choices are really removed beyond putting that risk back into war and giving it the teeth it so badly deserves.
This is incorrect. Fighting is part of the meta. It happens in high sec, low, nul, and wormholes. We donât need war to fight. What war gives is the ability to fight in high sec with less risk to your ships. It gives this risk unilaterally to both sides of a conflict. They can shoot you, you can shoot them, and Concord will grab popcorn.
And none of that is touched by the change. Some is actually added really as mercenary corporations could declare war on targets and be paid a bounty for destroying every war device you have. Thatâs a meta decision though and not a mechanic.
I go out with 29 friends to fight people who have declared war on us. We know where they are because we have done our homework. We go there. They hide in an NPC station waiting for favorable odds or for us to get bored. They show up in our area. We return the favor of docking up and waiting for them to be bored or for them to make a mistake that would make the odds easily in our favor.
Thatâs not war anymore. Thatâs status quo. War has become fluffy bunny poops. War is musical chairs where the chairs are only for the ones with the unfavorable conditions and when the music stops a clown walks in with a baseball bat to hit anyone not sitting in a chair. There are infinite chairs. This is boring enough to change.
Timer doesnât count down anymore. Intel device still costs fuel to use. Intel devices are no longer necessary to keep the war going forever because you agreed that concord should sit out mutually. If one side quits then the other side is now forcing a war on you and intel devices need to be re-deployed in order to force the war to continue to go. Concord agents are making a buck because they have something that you are paying to keep operational that they get entertainment from. If both sides signed up for the entertainment then both sides are streaming to Concord entertainment their attacks and they still enjoy the comedy.
Itâs like Battlebots. You didnât show up to see marvels of engineering. You showed up to watch robots kill robots in glorious combat.
No, this is about hisec. The majority of fruitful wars put in by wardeccers are against nullsec entities. Adding a new structure to bash is very unlikely to draw these groups into hisec in the long term. It seems pretty clear that these are the only groups who could realistically take down an established hisec wardec groupâs structure. Most of the main groups do structure defence on a regular basis anyway as part of their services so know the best ways of dealing with a fleet that is capable of taking down a structure.
As I was saying above, those who want to fight already do. This mythical idea that what indy groups and mission running corps are waiting for is a structure to bash to get them out of a wardec is laughable to be honest. Having these structures will almost certainly add nothing to the game in the long run other than making it nigh on impossible for smaller wardec groups to get established.
Wars already have something to fight over - the right to have your ship in space during a wardec. Attackers already have a device which tells them they can shoot targets - the âDeclare Warâ button.
Structure based warfare is pointless on a mutual level in EVE.
People do not wage war to play a game of âcapture the flagâ. They wage it to deny space, deter competition, remove an offending structure, stimulate a specific market (niche, I know, but it happens) or make someone who has offended suffer.
This is how mercs operated before the watchlist changes, and how some few still do after.
Honestly, the reason why isnât relevant. Someone pays, someone gets the tongs put to them.
Attackers already have it harder than they ever had in the past, and defenders have it easier than they ever had in the past. There is no reason to implement weird changes that serve no purpose in the grand scheme of things.
And the device will give them their watchlist back. Itâll tell them that their target corp is there. It forces the defender to be either willing to accept they are tracked or fight to end that tracking. I am putting the teeth back into the wolfâs moth and sharpening them.
Thereâs already a fully dysfunctional âintel deviceâ in the game.
Itâs called a âlocator agentâ.
They used to be pretty cool, until CCP gutted it.
A simple fix should not be replaced with an overly sophisticated mechanic, because it will get botched to hell and back. Also, unless this thing works on a constellation level or greater itâs a complete waste.
We use these things called âscoutsâ and they do pretty much everything that youâre describing, but on the run.
