My friends were board one day and one of us who was involved in faction warfare said he would run some complexes and asked if we were interested, although we’d get no LP. We said sure, why not, we had nothing better to do while waiting for an ice belt. He said the way it worked was that he enters a site, clears it of hostiles, and then sits and wait for a timer. If no one entered the site, the timer would finish. In the meantime, the rest of us would just squat on one of the gates, give him intel, and shoot any flashies while avoiding taking gate gun fire ourselves. If he needed us, we would warp to his site and blow up anyone harassing him.
Well basically nothing happened, he just went in 6 sites with a hurricane and waited out the timers. Some people came and left in local. He showed a screenshot of himself and an NPC that he didn’t need to kill.
Isaid we should have gone into the sites (even though it is a suspect offense) so that we could position the kitchen sink fleet in optimal range of anyone coming in. Range was problem for the AB Blaster Burtix fits. If we had to warp to the site when someone appeared on gird, we’d spent a lot of time trying to position ourselves, while if we squatted the site, everyone can puit themselves at a distance the ylike.
Another person argued by not entering the site and camping the gate, we gave the impression we were just a gate camp and someone might enter the site without knowing we were buddies with the guy actually running the complex.
On site 7, 3 guys from the 24th Imperial Crusade in a faction navy battlecrusier, an imperial navy crucifier, and a t1 battle cruiser warped to the site. I asked my friend if they were friendly, and he said, he honestly didn’t know. He said that group should help him if the enemy militia arrived, but he didn’t know if they were hostile since they yellow boxxed him. The 4 of them just sat there and the timer went out and everyone left.
So first question, is third party help fleet much use to a lone faction warfare participant? Most of our fleet were solo PVP ships, not something we made with this fleet in mind. If he gets blown up, I don’t think he gets any LP for any ships we kill if we avenge him. A FW participant needs to kill him.
Next, is camping a gate or being in the site better for third parties? The usual way to third part these sites is see someone in the site, go in, and blow them up. Here, we’re not blowing up our friend but just waiting for someone to try to stop his progress. By not entering the site, we can surprise someone who checks the site with D-scan and sets it to a narrow cone. On the other hand, since any competent low sec player checks local, it could be argued anyone seeing 7 people of the same corp in local should be alert. In this case, there is no surprise and the decision to only go in the site if he needs help means a lot of ships will be misplaced.
Third, do players from FW player corps and players from FW NPC corps of the same militia get along together? My friend honestly didn’t know if those guys were going to shoot him or not. Let’s suppose a hypothetical player in an Ammar Militia corp was fighting 1 vs 1 against a Minnmatar one (or 2 vs 1 if you count the NPC, but NPC BCs aren’t that strong anyways) and he sees someone from the 24th Imperial Crusade show up on grid but it’s a random player he doesn’t know. How likely is he to help the first player and how likely is the 24th Imperial Crusade player to just get on a killmail for both ships? I mean, it obviously depends on the player, but surely one type is more common than others.