The reason the last big war really ended

PvP Gameplay Center Warfare & Tactics
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What will follow is a detailed explanation how brokenly overpowered this combination of mechanics that was being used is. And why the war had reached a impasse.
I don’t care what all the propaganda said, written below is the reality (i was there), i think we should all want the game to be better and less static.

So in the end of the last big war goons and its allies were pushed back to just a few systems in which they had enough sov to have cyno jammers active, from here on forward i will call goons and allies the defenders and everyone else that tried to take those last systems from them the attackers.

The combination of mechanics that are overpowered together look like this:

  1. You put citadels as close to each gate of the system you got cyno jammed as possible, you put spare fighters inside those citadels (obviously you also have these citadels at your actual cyno jammers just in case but you wont need them)
  2. You put a lot of carrier alts on top of those citadels
  3. You put 100 or more large anchored bubbles on top of each of the gates into the system
  4. You get some hac fleets or other heavy tackle fleets with lots of logi and scrams fitted sitting on the gate the attackers will come into
  5. You get interdictors with web bubbles fitted
  6. Warp Scrambling was made to stop microwarpdrives.
  7. Booshing fleets were nerfed to hell with its current limits to booshing (skill urself for example used to have 200 man Eagle fleets with 16-20 booshers that would all move around together in a single ball)

Because of the tidi generated by the very large numbers of people and fighters involved on both sides there is lots of time to get setup on the gate the attacking fleets are going to enter the system, off course you got those bubbles up well in advance earlier in the day/week

The attacking fleets enter the system, you start spamming web bubbles and spread your scramble fleets out and your fighters and SSF should already be on the gate by now.

The attacking fleets starts decloaking and you immediately scramble as many of them as possible so they cant mwd while the fighters start killing literally everything, because for some reason fighters can apply great damage to literally everything, from frigates to battleships. And the attackers being aoe webbed by bubbles and scrammed by your heavy tackle fleets helps a lot off course.

The attackers can try to bring anti fighter fleets but in heavy tidi they will never be able to kill fighters faster than the defenders replace them and the defenders kill the attackers much faster than they can kill the fighters to begin with. Even if they bring specialized assault frigate fleets or destroyer fleets to try clear the fighters… for some reason SSF fighters (that are supposed to be anti fighter fighters) work great against those frigates and destroyers.

This exact scenario happened about 3-4 times over a course of about 2 weeks at the end of the last big war and even though the attackers had more numbers getting through this combination of mechanics 1-7 created was pretty much impossible. And now a year later nothing has changed, the same will happen again.

The combination of 1-7 is simply overpowered and some changes need to be made asap.

I propose 2 changes (you can put both into the game but either would be great):
1 put a limit on how many large anchored bubbles can be put within a radius of each other or on top of a object or gate, i think 5 is a good number
2 make it so carriers can no longer apply massive amounts of damage to subcaps or remove their ability to target subcaps completely

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Nullblob turds mostly hang out on r/Eve. So, if you’re going to post it anywhere, you should post it over there.

Of course, don’t be surprised if you get a… less than enthusiastic response.

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I love you too, lets fix eve together. You cannot deny that a large amount of the player base lives in 0.0 and for eve to continue for another 10 years we will need those players to keep playing. We don’t want them to quit because they know that at the end of a big war, when the defenders get down to a few systems , they cant take those last systems because of some broken combination of mechanics.

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Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying one way or the other whether or not sov mechanics need to change. Moreover, I hate telling people to go to r/Eve. What I am saying is (1) this isn’t the best place to post sov null proposals because sov null guys mostly hang out on reddit, and not here and (2) you’ve said a few things that might get you some hostility (i.e. suggesting that caps be unable to target subcaps). I mean, speak your mind. Just… bring a thick skin.

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I think CCP is just as likely to see this post as a post on R Eve, a slim chance but just as likely.
And yes i can imagine some people would not like it when their shiny toys can no longer destroy everything floating in space the instant they press a button. But this stack of mechanics needs fixing.
Making it so people can no longer anchor more than 5 bubbles within a 200 or 250km range of eachother would already be enough of a change to prevent massive amounts of carriers being used the way they are now.

I am not asking for CCP to implement both those suggested changes. all i am asking is for them to have a look at cyno jammers + citadel carriers + hundreds of bubbles + web bubbles + scramble hacs its been a year and we lost like 10k? average concurrent players. Changing things up really wont hurt at this point.

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How viable would it have been to have mjd desi’s booshing the fighters away from their fleets so they take a long time to travel back?

I agree with the tracking all drones have which is just rediculas I’ve been 1 shot in a mwd’ing af by a fighter before, it was rage inducing, but that was only becuase the citadel was able to 1 shot my cap with a neut turning off my mwd and pointing me (death sentence.)

I don’t see how a retribution fleet can’t break through this tactic thou? They should be faster than the fighter’s and who ever the fighters are going after can just pull the drones far away from their fleet while the rest fight.

Retri fleet can kill all the tackle sitting on gate too. The retri fleet can delete the closest bubbles to the gate opening up a spot so people warp from them and get normal ships in there and continue.

Would love for CCM to bring out some type of Drone emp e-war that disables drones in an aoe for a little bit or something cool.

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CCP is aware of carrier balancing problems. In their words they are both too strong (due to the skynet issues you have raised) and too weak ( in most other situations) at the same time. Tricky to resolve.

The solution is not to simply remove their ability to affect subcaps since, as far as I understand it, attacking subcaps is their role yes?

As for the whole concept of an invulnerable gate camp given enough manpower and materiel, I am undecided as to whether it is good game design. Perhaps?

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Hi, to be clear I am coming here from an angle where I have 0 experiences with such battles as I was never part of nullsec alliance. And I never really learned all these shiny toys you guys use there as early in my career I realized that its gonna cost me hell lot of money to learn all of that and I don’t actually want to be part of these so called epic battles (which I experienced in Placid once and got total aversion to this so called end game content that CCP used to propagate so much at that time).

Anyway, what I read here sounds absolutely fantastic. A small group able to fend off large group. I didn’t know it is possible.

To me this looks as a good design actually. There is single gate that you have to pass and therefore it makes sense that defender will hold an advantage if they prepare well (which they did). What you are describing doesn’t sound to me like some abuse or exploit of mechanics such as what is happening with citadels in highsec.

So yes, I think that they should be able to defend their space, if it shrunk into last 2 sectors. At least if you keep coming through gate. If cyno can’t be used then what about wormhole access? Sure wh won’t allow caps to pass, but at least you would pass through that trap at gate and could attack it from another angle.

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(post deleted by author)

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merged two identical Threads to one.

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@ResonanceOfWar Both retribution and harpy fleets were tried several times, SSF fighters are way superior at clearing out the assault frigates than the assault frigates were at clearing out the fighters.

@Danuvia_Za gate camps should never be unbreakable, the large anchor bubble spam in combination with the skynet fighters and heavy scramble fleets with web bubbles is way overpowered, fights should happen in a system over the cyno jammers. At least there is a chance the attackers can enter the system with their capitals like that. The attackers have/had capitals sitting on standby that cant get in , that cant fight , that cant die, i think most people including CCP wants capitals to be used and die. If they are going to keep this impenetrable gate camp its not going to happen. People are happily going to sit under their cyno jammers. When both capital fleets were in range of eachother even keepstars were only attacked when the system had build enough sov to be cyno jammed because of the way these gate camps get really overpowered.

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What I see here is a lack of dedication. You have more peoples. Wouldn’t you clearly win if you brought everything at once? Wouldn’t you eventually wear them off if you tried really hard?

Should really be total eviction and annihilation of nullsec block that easy so it happens with one war dec just because you have the numbers?

What I see here is that you scream “nerf my enemies”, what is shocking here is normally the one who is screaming it does that from a position of weaker. Yet you are doing from a position of stronger.

I can’t obviously know what have you tried and what haven’t you, but did you really explored all options? Did you really tried hard enough to ask CCP to nerf you enemies? I honestly doubt that.

If you are thinking about waging that war again here some tips from me:

  • Use sleep deprivation strategy against them, keep coming, whole day, every day, ´don’t be risk averse, sacrifice those ships, eventually if they have less players they have to lose.
  • Bring full force at once when their numbers are weakest due to the timezone. Don’t be risk averse of losing those caps due to their setup, if you want to annihilate them completely you have to take high risk as well.
  • Use WH access. Scan a wh chain to get there with your spies, if they are constantly rolling them with multiple players, then maybe try to roll your way into it with wm with static null. Sure that is not easy to do and requires a lot of time, but when they can be constantly rolling any whs appearing in their sysstem I am sure you could be trying o roll a nullsec static wh two hours every day with attack fleet on standby too. How long can it take? Month? Two? If you were really serious about that, you would try it.
  • What about filaments? Sure they are random and bring in only 15 ppls, but isn’t there some mechanic to increase the likelihoodness to get in there with them?
  • And the last suggestion is to fake loss of interest. Let them be for month, two, three. Eventually they start being careless, they stop guarding that gate or put much less players there. Then make a suprise attack to get control around that gate and from that advance.

EDIT: One more idea. Try to sway their players on your side with your spies or neutral alt that you bring there via gate (which will have full minute to spam this advert). Promise them money, position in corp/alliance, whatever, try decompose them from within.

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@Vokan_Narkar Its been a year now , this stalemate is something of the past now, i am merely trying to prevent it from happening again

I am trying to make it so the top FCs and strategists and alliance leaders that understand how these mechanics work together and see they haven’t changed don’t have to worry about these stalemates happening again. I am trying to give them more incentive to go to that point in wars. I want to see more capital fights not cyno jammer hugging. If you know you will run into these impenetrable gatecamps why bother going to war? why bother if you can’t finish the job?

Bring everything at once you say, well there is the problem, you cant because of the cyno jammers the defenders have twice as many ships , the defenders have their caps, the attackers dont, the way sov works is that you need to destroy the ihub to take down the jammers, thats never going to happen when people can make hundreds of bubbles + skynet carrier gatecamps like that.

They attackers did bring full force, the attackers had the same number of subcaps as the defenders had subcaps+capitals. Also you are working with people not machines, they are not all jobless people that can alarm clock and get up at 3 am to all enter a enemy system together.

We are talking about 1200 vs 2000 here, so no viable filaments or wormholes or anything like that… Just a gate and gate camps being overpowered that need fixing. Its very much the core of the game, its the combination mechanics that makes taking a system near impossible unless you have like 3-5x the numbers.

The combination of mechanics:

  • The way sov works (no matter how much of a region you control, a systems sov is fully determined by the ihub in the system itself) letting you keep your cyno jammer up while you sit in your carriers in that system no matter how much space the attacker holds around you
  • CCP removing booshing fleets, previously the best way to move fleets around
  • CCP making it so warp scrambling disables mwds (and much earlier CCP made pretty much all ships much slower with the “speed rebalanced” patch), more nerfs to moving around
  • Allowing people to put a unlimited amount of bubbles on a gate, reaching hundreds upon hundreds of KM in diameter
  • Allowing Carriers/Supercarriers to sit on a citadel in fighter control range of a gate thousands of km away
  • Adding AOE web bubbles to the game
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Thanks for not being upset on my post :wink: . Okay I see I was wrong in many assumptions like that caps can use gates in null.

Still can you explain to me why my other ideas doesn’t work? I mean, if the stacked bubbles are problem and were there not been that many of them you would handle the problem, couldn’t a smaller force brought there via wh do something about those bubbles?

But okay, I clearly admit I have no idea what I am talking here and as such will hold further commentary.

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Use blops fleet to kill jammer.

Yes you will feed but lot less then trying to het thru hell camped gate.

You can easili cyno several covert fleets inside.

You can use 200 ab bombers to covert cyno on the carriers and delete them.

Stuka fleets are still op just cause you cant boosh and have some counters does not make them absolete

Before enemy even realize what happening all carriers will pull fighters to theter and munins retunr from gate to fight you. You push rest of the fleet thru that now undefended gate and start mayhame.

You are literary talking about extermination of people and nations.

Of course if you push enemy into a corner it shud be hard to finish it.

Eve shudnt be just abou bloobing smaller oponent and yes papi forces was much more numerous then goons.

You are supose to use strategi block enemy from ratting by constant bloharasment and im not talking abou paying some lazy guy to just cloacl one ship in system whit cyno. Am talking abou constant bomberfleets inside enemy pocket for whole day killing everything and constantly reffing all the stuff.

But that require determination on side of the ataccker.

If you as ataccker cant force your people to actuali want remove your oponent space. Then you already lost.

So stop being lazy and start thinking strategikly.

And work on your aliances if your people are so weak that thex cant do anything else then bloobing eneny then failing war is entirely your fault.

Lest look at volta vs frat example as being totali incompetent leader.

Every simgle system vilta have is hi adms.

Why? Cause insted doing your job frat pay others to do it for them. Skill you trying theyr bet but volta space is to vast for them.

What frat do? Payd one guy whit 50 accounts that log them off when he goes to sleep. Guess what time hes going to sleep. Yes when eu tz start.

Making literary 0 impact on ratting and adms.

This is why frat cant take space and only anchor stuff in ther tz

Thats next level of lazines.

Big aliances basicli think thaf just cause they have numbers they can win everything whit out effort.

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You cannot bring everything at once. That’s not how CCP games work. Due to server limitations that CCP always conveniently forgets when they boast about the biggest fights ever, you can only trickle your own fleets into a hostile system that is already at max capacity from the defenders. You’d lose hundreds of supers and titans and capitals and thousands of subcaps trying to get into the system that you want to capture, while the defender can sit out of engagement range for you while their fighters are right at the gate and their titans in dd range and their sub caps in engagement range, ready to murder the handful of ships that manage to get through the gate.

The way the servers work and limit massive numbers from changing a system or grid favors the impenetrability of such a heavily fortified system.

And before you think about “just bring bombers to kill the cyno jammer”: Bombers are easily obliterated by AF or HAC defense fleets. You’d have to bring hundreds to kill the AF/HAC fleets that will swarm the Cyno Jammer while the capitals still keep the gate secured with ease.

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Lol if you cant bring hundered bombers to wipe enemies that have 3 fleets then you already lost

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@Entranced What if you brought in 10 bs’s with smart bombs? Won’t that kill a ton of bubbles at once since they are stacked it hits all of them? Technically if you can just kill a small area of bubbles your dudes can just warp out of that area.

Could do ecm fleet of griffens to jam all the fighters while the bs’s are doing their smart bombing.

Do a test with some dudes on the test server I’m sure it might be workable.

Mobile Large warp Disrupter II is 264k ehp holy ■■■■ thats insane, each bs deals 320 aoe dps so to start killing bubbles at 10 smart bombing bs’s would be 82.5 seconds, a minute and a half.

If you bring in 30 smart bombing b’s you could take that down to half a minute, the fighter travel time alone might be 15 seconds, with jam’s seems like it could work.

The cost of 30bs with smart bomb’s doesn’t seem too bad to breach their first layer of defence.

Could even do 200 dudes with 1 large smart bomb each same type of smart bomb and tanked to that damage type and start clearing fighters and wearing the bubbles away at the same time.

I would try shield tempest’s and do 2x large exp smart bomb t2 each or 2x em with armor, the auto’s would track the fighters decently well.

Since you can’t use your own drones with the smart bomb’s it might be decent to all use logi drones and place them on logi ship’s before hand and start the smart bombs when the logi have pulled range.

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T2 large bubbles have hundreds of thousands of EHP. You can’t even scratch their shields before your 10 smartbomb BS are dead because they are spread out all over the 12km spawn sphere and the fighters and fighter bombers are already in position on the gate, their subcap defense fleets not to mention.
Then you mention to bring 30. You already have issues bringing 10 BS into a maxed out system, and now you want to bring 30.
Then you top your buffoonery by saying to bring 200 Tempests with 2 smartbombs, when you can’t even get 20 people into the system and load the grid.

That would kill not only your fleet, but also the server due to the sheer amount of damage calculations. That’s also a way to kill the fun for everyone, probably even CCP intended. Not to mention that your idea ignore the fact that not all 30 BS are within range of a bubble. They are spread out, and you would be lucky if 3 or 5 were in range of one.

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For bubble mechanics you only have to clip a bubble with a smart bomb to deal damage to it, increasing the hit rate abit, yea spread is a problem but you can move the bs’s around a lil to the place you want.

About the hundreds of thousands of ehp I already did the math, divide that by maybe 4x because of spread and 200 ships with 2 smart bombs each will clear a huge area of smart bombs in 1 minute.

If everything lags for only 1 minute its fine as the bubbles will be mostly dead by then and the lag would stop when the bubbles are all dead, lets call the lag the defenders fault for placing the bubbles in the first place so they will have to just deal with it or not bubble in the first place.

I would suggest just taking 10 guys spread out in a formation and test it on the test server then X that by fleet numbers and you will get your answer of viability wont even take that long.