TTT Drama

[Ramona_McCandless]

You didnt tho

You just rambled incoherently about buffalo

[Altara_Zemara]

Well that beats rambling incoherently ( and endlessly by the look of it ) that you did not ‘get’ the response.

Sigh.

[Ramona_McCandless]

But you still didnt answer the question. Why dont you just admit that youd no real reason why you suggested that and move on hmm? Pride is a worthless thing.

[Io_Koval]

Sorry for the slight change of subject…

Part of me has been thinking over: once the TTT is gone and a significant null interest in high sec eliminated, what’s left in high sec?

Since it’s no secret a lot of CCP Games Employees look at Albion Online and their blue/yellow/red/black zones and go “wow, inspirational” I must say it’s going to be very disappointing if they have a plan that is copying from an inferior and incompatible system.

[Distaine]

Stay on topic plz. Mods can we remove the off-topic rambling please?
CCP took away Sotiyos 1 day before all this. Look at the thread… The End of Highsec for that subject also in General Discussion.

[Destiny_Corrupted]

@Altara_Zemara

You haven’t really thought out scenario 2.

The first and most obvious consequence of (2) is that ganking would cease to be a thing, because I could simply just declare war on whatever group I wished to gank, and would thus have a free pass to attack ships of that corporation without Concord intervention. No need for Catalysts any more. No need even for a fleet. I just turn up in a Raven and blap Procurers, Mackinaws, Orcas, to my heart’s content.

I can see why you’d like this…as it is totally asymmetrical. A single ship could wreak havoc. And with no war HQ there’d be no way to stop you, or anything to demarcate that the war had ‘ended’. The various security levels of highsec would become meaningless. One would be no more safe in 1.0 than in 0.5.

&

@Altara_Zemara

Because there is literally no penalty other than a wardec fee that I’m told was small. No Concord. No visits to Jan to hand in clone tags. No need for a base…I can just declare war while sitting in an NPC station and dash back to it at any hint of opposition. Under this system I can single handedly declare war on Corp X and decimate their entire mining fleet using a single ship.

I simply had a hard time believing that this wonderful state of affairs ever existed.

This is already what the only 3 or so groups in the game that routinely do wars are doing. There’s effectively no counter-play to a war cartel declaring war on your group, aside from bringing in a bigger fleet and taking down their war HQ, which the average high-sec group obviously won’t be able to do. So what exactly is the difference between then and now?

@Altara_Zemara

A better version of (2) would have you pay (A) a hefty fee for a limited duration war in which (B) you also put down a hefty deposit against ships destroyed and lose a chunk of that deposit for every ship not destroyed. So for example if the deposit is 10bn ISK then you have to destroy 10bn ISK worth ( in the short duration of the war ) or lose that portion you don’t destroy. You get a pro rata amount of deposit back for every ship destroyed.

I’ve argued for a similar system, with the additional caveat that the defenders can’t “win” the war and get the payout just by closing EVE and playing DotA for a week.

The declaring party pays a deposit. If the defenders cause enough damage during the war period, they get that deposit, and can dictate the terms of the war from that point on (i.e. end it or keep it going). If they don’t, then the attackers get the deposit back, and get to dictate the terms from then on. Any diplomatic agreements would still be done personally by the two parties.

The cost of the deposit and the amount of damage done during the war period would have to be calculated by a formula that takes into account the size of the attacking and defending parties.

This system would also create the possibility for getting rid of war fees entirely, since they’d no longer be relevant.

---

Also, there’s a bunch of misinformation in this thread (most likely because players have either not been around back then or have forgotten) I’m going to correct:

@Io_Koval

Not quite true. Friendly fire wasn’t a setting. So anyone else could simply also join the NPC corp and kill them without CONCORD intervention.

No, you couldn’t do this. NPC corporations always had friendly fire (at least since as early as 2004).

@Max_Deveron

A corp or Alliance could only have 3 active wardcecs at time , so such things as shadow alliances existed.

A corporation could only have 3 wars; an alliance could have limitless wars.

Declaring additional wars increased the cost by the base cost per each additional war. A corporation declaring a war cost 2 million ISK for the first one, then 4, and then 6 million ISK for the two subsequent wars. Same formula for alliances, except the base cost was 50 million ISK.

@Max_Deveron

I remember in 2011 you couls puit something in someones jetcan and when they took the can they went suspect for stealing your item.

Ownership is for the can, not for the item. What baiters did was transfer the items from someone’s can into their own can.

@Altara_Zemara

Well, that’s at least one useful piece of info. And I assume there was also some period of time before the wardec became ‘active’…so I could not just see some passing mining fleet and ‘declare war’ and zap them all there and then but would have to come back tomorrow or something.

Just as today. there was a 1-day waiting period before the shooting could start when the war declaration mail came through.

@Altara_Zemara

So, if I have 10 accounts, each with 3 chars, each having their own corp, I could effectively engage in 90 wars at the same time and go round blapping stuff in my single solo Raven that I contract between accounts ?

On the assumption that your targets would never fight back, sure. But they did, especially against solo players. Also we had counter-war ops that would bait players like you by pretending to be weak miners, then swap in characters to trap you. The Brutix you thought was ratting in a 0.5 belt was actually dead-space fitted with a booster off grid and would melt your Raven while talking ■■■■ about your mother.

@Altara_Zemara

Gosh…well I can see why some want to go back to that, and why it was changed. But what you are then effectively saying is that the situation for station owners was worse then than it is now…as anyone declaring war on them did not even need to have a war HQ.

We didn’t have stations back then. We only had PoSes, and very few players wanted to lay siege to a 150-million EHP bubble full of ECM mods. With a few exceptions (e.g. some of the better moons), wars were about ship-to-ship combat.

[Distaine]

[Xucca]

Aaand you spoiled it!

[Xucca]

@Io_Koval

Part of me has been thinking over: once the TTT is gone and a significant null interest in high sec eliminated, what’s left in high sec?

This^

I have no answer. I hope it is not a half-baked idea (again) without a follow-through plan.

I see potential for some things after TTT, but it’s not without controversy and I think it’s another topic…
For now, I guess some will still find a way to make the constellation dangerous (fun?)… but it might be just another… boring one.

But somehow, I might like it better… High Sec… flat, lame, full of stupidity… Then, perhaps I’d have more fun when they show up seeking ‘true content’ in Null.

[Destiny_Corrupted]

Maybe players will finally start leaving Caldari high-sec a little bit? Like two-thirds of the game’s entire population lives within 5 jumps of Jita. That’s just silly. CCP should introduce a use-scaling tax/broker fee system to spread out the players more evenly.

[Distaine]

It doesn’t matter, high sec will be at even more of a disadvantage than ever before, due to the loss of Sotiyos, than any other space in game. As long as we have war hqs, the single power system will stay the same and no actual opposition will be permitted to rise.
Destiny, on the subject of players spreading out… CCP knew this and planned for it.

This is from the Viridian patch notes
“NPC Stations / Monuments: Manufacturing and Research factors removal. Leveling the field and encouraging industry spread across systems.”

This used to be the method they used to ensure most players went to caldari space. It has been removed.
This meant that by keeping very low numbers of station in the amarr area and massive numbers of stations in caldari space, that players would have more freedom to use industry in that system due to better system cost index modifiers.
They intend for Highsec to be decimated and left in ruins, more spread out and less efficient. If the nullblocks cant have it, no one can have it.

[Io_Koval]

@Destiny_Corrupted

@Io_Koval

Not quite true. Friendly fire wasn’t a setting. So anyone else could simply also join the NPC corp and kill them without CONCORD intervention.

No, you couldn’t do this. NPC corporations always had friendly fire (at least since as early as 2004).

Aren’t we saying the same thing? “Friendly fire was always on (can kill each other)”. Or are you saying they’ve always had friendly fire off (can’t kill each other)? I thought I remember it being on circa 2010 as it was one of the primary motivations for leaving an NPC corporation in the first place.

Thanks for the correction either way.

[Destiny_Corrupted]

You couldn’t shoot NPC corp corpmates without a CONCORD response. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember, so at least since 2004.

[Io_Koval]

Gotcha, thanks for the correction.

[Altara_Zemara]

@Destiny_Corrupted

This is already what the only 3 or so groups in the game that routinely do wars are doing.

Well, not really. You are conflating two separate things. The current highsec war groups primarily bash stations. Sure, a lot of ships may get destroyed in the process, but the activity is centered around the stations. That is a far cry from a system where I could single handedly declare war on some corp and go out in a Raven and destroy their entire mining fleet on my own over some indeterminate period. And where’s the counter-play to that ? Said corp would have to have defenders on standby 24/7 …which would mean they’d have to stop mining to defend, or hire mercs for the job. But all I’d have to do is lurk in a NPC station in my cloaky Raven, and could disrupt mining simply by my presence.

@Destiny_Corrupted

I’ve argued for a similar system

Well I’m glad to see someone understood the ‘answer’ Ramona struggled with. Yes, the whole ‘deposit’ thing is effectively the same as what I proposed. And it provides incentive for me not to just sit in some nearby NPC station and be threatening…but actually go out and attack or lose the deposit. I like the deposit idea. And I agree that it could effectively make war fees irrelevant, as the fee could be rolled into the deposit.

However, the real issue is that player stations now exist and they didn’t back in the day. So whilst I would have no problem with being able to declare war and attack a corp’s ships, I would argue that one still ought to have a war HQ station to attack any corp station.

[Destiny_Corrupted]

@Altara_Zemara

Well, not really. You are conflating two separate things. The current highsec war groups primarily bash stations. Sure, a lot of ships may get destroyed in the process, but the activity is centered around the stations.

No, those are the minor offshoot groups, and by extension also your own group. Current main players like BF, SRS, MSF (when they’re doing wars), and the new “EscapeFrom Jita” are all focused on farming ship kills, with structure bashes being side-gigs and/or contractual work.

@Altara_Zemara

That is a far cry from a system where I could single handedly declare war on some corp and go out in a Raven and destroy their entire mining fleet on my own over some indeterminate period. And where’s the counter-play to that ? Said corp would have to have defenders on standby 24/7 …which would mean they’d have to stop mining to defend, or hire mercs for the job. But all I’d have to do is lurk in a NPC station in my cloaky Raven, and could disrupt mining simply by my presence.

If you, as a single player, are so good that you effectively shut down an entire corporation, then maybe you deserve the ability to do this? If an entire corporation can’t field some defenders for their ops to deter a single aggressor, then that sounds like their problem. The problem becomes systemic when it’s not one player harassing a group, but rather huge groups harassing groups that are both less competent and smaller, on a mass scale. If you declare war on a 20-person high-sec PvE corporation by yourself, they should be putting up a fight. But when a group like BF declares war on a 20-person high-sec PvE corporation, there is zero potential for counter-play. The defenders can’t even hire mercenaries to fight for them, because there’s literally no one to hire since the current power structure has resulted in a single cartel monopolizing the entirety of the business.

@Altara_Zemara

I would argue that one still ought to have a war HQ station to attack any corp station.

Yes, I’ve always envisioned the system working in this way too. Possibly even by requiring a war HQ in the system with the target station(s) so as to make the attackers require multiple HQs for multiple ops, which would create a defensive resource strain, as they wouldn’t be able to dedicate their entire member base toward the defense of a single timer at a single location.

[Wes_Wyhunnan]

@Destiny_Corrupted

. But when a group like BF declares war on a 20-person high-sec PvE corporation, there is zero potential for counter-play.

I mean, there is, they just don’t want to spend the same money and risk the same assets and organize the same way BF does.

[Distaine]

All the pve corp needs to do is pay the piper and they are better off. Thats how it should be. The issue is how the current mechanics do not support anything but one single power system. BF has every right to what they have earned, but we are all better off without such a one-sided system and im sure they would agree. The nullblocks and groups like EvE Uni are to blame for all of this.

[Wesley_Baird]

Going to edit my post…this Distaine aka Severe is posting that nonsense…you know there are more than 4 of us (at least 6), and you also know we dont cheat…that is pretty low of you dude…seriously, you know better.

Have you heard of the Kernite Project???

[Destiny_Corrupted]

@Wes_Wyhunnan

I mean, there is, they just don’t want to spend the same money and risk the same assets and organize the same way BF does.

There isn’t. If there was a vibrant mercenary market where groups could hire help, I would agree with you, but there isn’t. The only available mercenaries are the ones who are doing all of the wars, and they’re all allied with each other. This creates a very evident lack of counter-play options for smaller groups. Telling smaller groups “you should organize yourselves to be just as powerful as your attackers” is not a realistic expectation. However, telling them to put up some form of resistance is. But the problem with the current system is that because of the way that structures are integrated into the war system as a whole, it’s effectively impossible for any small group to put up a fight because the larger group can always force an engagement on top of the structure.

The way that structures are integrated into the war system is very deficient. It should be possible to use asymmetric tactics and strategy to hurt the enemy, but the system we have today doesn’t allow for that.