The Good, The Bad and The Enemy Militia

Communications Center General Discussion
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Topic: Factional Warfare,
Please move this post to the relevant section if it is in the wrong area of the forum. Thanks :slight_smile:

As a returning player who focuses on Factional Warfare, my year in Eve was interesting.

Shock! The Caldari Militia were no longer at war with Minmatar Militia, now the only thing stopping me from going to Jita is the -10 Standings.

Dec 2024 I found myself returning to Eve in the middle of an insurgency fighting a militia that didn’t exist last time I played Eve. Suddenly I see Navy destroyers are a thing that exists,

The Factional Warfare system had been completely overhauled, gone was the feeding of LP into the ihub to raise the tier to get more LP.
After all these years can they really have got rid of that strange FW system so easily?

The answer is yes and no, the results of the change seemed to have stagnated things a little. There is no longer a sweeping tide of systems changing sovereignty, this year I have mostly been stuck in the same fox hole.

The FW complexes changed the amount they affect the contested level, the LP they reward and which ships can enter. The changes and rebalance continued, in 2025 we see the FW Complexes become more like the insurgency complexes. No longer is an unarmed punisher with 5 warp core stabilizers the best ship to defend a system. Frigates in general are now far less significant than they used to be for contesting systems. .

2026 has arrived and I will now get to the point.

I was wondering if there is something else that we could learn from how the insurgencies work. The mechanism of insurgencies is a periodically spawning, random epicentre of action, focusing the active players. They mobilize to the designated systems for a temporary objective. I like this.

What if normal Factional Warfare was more like the insurgencies?

Create a periodic random location of a temporary epicentre focusing the players to the action.

The way that could be done is to adjust the way the complexes work so that at the epicentre there are more complexes; with more LP rewards, more multi ship reward sites and each complex has more effect of the contested level. Systems away from the epicentre the reverse applies.

The epicentre of the war and the FOB might be close together and they might not, depending how they spawn at random. There would always be 1 in 70 chance of being the same system or 1/101 for the Gal-Cal warzone

Complexes in systems away from the epicentre spawn less frequently and give lower rewards. This encourages engagement with the insurgency because if you want the dank LP you either have to go to the epicentre of the war or to the insurgency,

Do players think a random element of this kind being introduced to FW is a good idea?

What about the existing system of faction advantage ?

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Did you read the recent dev blog?

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I think this randomness of objectives popping up is a terrible idea. It just increases the theme-parkness of things, where “zones” are set up for certain “activites”. This really is the opposite of a natural, believable universe. Insurgencies just pop up somewhere (along the frontline, but still), with no further reason behind and the creation of that epicenter leads to everyone piling up there, which eventually turns things into a kind of arena fight/KOTH while everywhere else is pretty quiet. It feels gamey and artificial.

I would prefer a system where you can only capture systems adjacent to one your side owns, and maybe the adjacent ones behind the frontline. Pretty much like it is done in Squad, where you can only take the current vulnerable objective and have to defend your adjacent backyard zone. With the difference that there is more than a single chain of objectives you fight along. This would create a relatively condensed frontline like you have in real life, and it would move back and forth during the campaign and give a feeling of progression. Something randomly appearing epicenters do not have and the reason i reject Insurgencies the way they are implemented right now.

Regarding Insurgencies, i would really have preferred a system where activity in a system (and here i mean all empire space, every single system) has an impact on its system security. Similar to how character sec status works.
There is (among other factors*) ship and pod kills in a system, slowly degrade the sec status. There is (among other factors) NPC kills in a system, slowly increase the sec status.
Once a system is at the point to flip either up or down one sec status (so say, from 0.6 to 0.5 or from 0.7 to 0.8, or from 0.3 to 0.4), there would be an insurgency triggered. Depending on who wins it, the system permanently either decreases in sec (pirates won a degrading system), stays on the sec it was (empire won a decreasing system/pirates won an increasing system) or increases (empire won an increasing system). The system would then have a cool down period.
This way Insurgencies would occur in organic places (lots of ganking makes the system less secure, lots of NPC pirate killing makes the system more secure) which are believable from a lore standpoint. Also, the stiff geography of EVE would over time change to what actually happens there. A natural universe. Active mission hubs that clear the area of NPC pirates during mission running would be relatively safe havens, remote areas around lowsec borders would likely erode over time and become less secure - which also makes sense lore wise since there is less activity and more room for lawlessness. On the other hand, empire players for example had the opportunity to shape the geography themselves by pacifying currently dangerous routes between trade hubs by increasing 0.4 systems above 0.5.

*Other factors: for example a ratio of “jumps per day” to “ship kills per day”, volume of systems markets, industry and science activity and other player and NPC activities.

2 Likes
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No, which one, do you have a link ?

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I think that theme park vibe is unavoidable in a Universe where you are immortal and pay the police to allow wars.

The idea of only being able to attack adjacent systems is interesting and there is no reason why that could not also be a thing.

You mentioned the activity of players having an effect on the security level which is an idea I also had. All player activity should have an effect on the Eve environment instead of just being an endless resource to farm. I like the idea that player activity could trigger an insurgency, good ideas but we are being quite vague.

I don’t really see why insurgencies are always in the war zone, they are at war with empire militias to disable the gate guns which do not protect ships you are at war with anyway.

I’m not sure what they get out of lowering the security level of low sec systems in the war zone?

If I can defend a FW complex for LP why would I bother fight pirates over their plexes for the same LP when I can just leave them to it and they will be gone once they have finished?

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It’s not an objective, it’s an opportunity. The effect of defending or attacking in that area is increased so it allows players to take advantage of that. It adds an emphasis because if complexes in this group of systems will have (For example) double effect, it means both attackers and defenders are able to take advantage of that for a limited duration. It would simply be a terrain feature that would help eliminate some of the abuses and exploits of a game mechanism that is too easy to manipulate .

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Terrain is how I see the pirate insurgencies, there is no real need to stop them, the results of the insurgency are as useful to the militia as they are to the pirates. Except for the gate rats. It’s annoying not to be able to go to sleep on a gate.

Director Letter 2026 - Theatres of War
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I get that something vaguely relatable to warfare as we know it on earth would have its appeal but not if factional warfare is the only place in New Eden that happens and warfare elsewhere is never like that. I don’t really know enough about warfare outside of FW to definitively say how it happens. and the only real example to compare it to is Null sovereignty.