Two FW plex change ideas

[Vasim_Vio]

Currently, it is easy to defend faction warfare plex with afk alt bots - just get an alt with unfitted ship inside plex and leave it there for 10/15 minutes while attackers have to shoot rats constantly. Even if someone find and kill it - you’ll lose few hudred thousands ISK just, which is nothing comparing with potential gain (up to 40k LP that translates roughly into 40 mil ISK at least). And in certain timezones it can be fully safe as opposing faction don’t have enough people to hunt these. Even if there are some enemies - you can use cheap dual-plate punishers for this and survive long enough to bring your alts fleet to defend it.

So, my ideas how to deal with that:

1. Make defender to sit in 5km radius of warp-in point beacon to defend it. Respawn the beacon 15km away from current location every minute (current 30km circle of zone border can be used for this, so beacons will be not far from center of the plex). So,defender will have to move ship every minute using at least AB (no unfitted ships can do it anymore). Also, both defenders and attackers will have to move through zone constantly too if they want to stay at their optimals to warp-in point. This will make life for botters harder without huge stress on active players.

2. Make a list of currently contested plexes in warzone, so people can read where they needed most and afk botters will have more troubles to defend plexes.

[Rail_J_kar]

Plexing could require a person to do a a minigame (like what is required with hacking) to initiate the countdown. Eventually bot creators might be able to figure it out… but that that point, you just need to change to minigame (if not the ui, than at least the back end event handlers… which will break all the bots again.)

1. What you’re suggesting is like using a sledge hammer to drive in a tiny nail. I get that you’re annoyed you can’t catch targets… but you’re going to affect much more than botters with a game design change like this.

2. Advocates of removing local in null often complain that local is free intel. What you’re suggesting here is 1000% more so. There is some potential for the addition of intel tools, but imo, those tools should require more time investment by the players to get access to that information.

For example, it doesn’t make sense that you’d get free intel on people defending their own plexes, just like a player alliance wouldn’t get a message about an enemy repairing a structure. However, if an enemy were to attack one of your structures, the alliance does get a message. So in that case, it would make sense for the militias to get a populated list of hostiles attacking their facilities.

As for intel on defenders, CCP could give players the ability to drop structures in system to populate a similar list. Such a structure would be able to be shot in the same way a supply depot would be though, so you’d have to defend them if you want to keep them around.

Alternatively, give each fw system an intel site that operates like a bf flag. If the intel structure belongs to the other faction, all you need to do is sit on it until the site flips to 100% for your side, and then you’ll get the relevant intel data for your side.
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imo. CCP should make use of the hacking minigame mechanics… but reskin it to make it fit the conceptual idea of marines storming a facility for offensive plexing. And for defensive plexing, the marine minigame could be used in order to get the counter back to zero if an enemy had already attacked the structure.

In order to capture it in it’s entirety when on defense, something else lore appropriate, like base logistics. Maybe you’d have to fly back and forth from your faction’s supply depot to the plex in order to deliver supplies the structures need for operations. Or just move objects around within the site itself, in a puzzle like format.

The minigame should make it more difficult for botters to plex and will divide the player’s attention a bit away from dscan, but in order to make it so it’s not entirely annoying for active players, dscan would need to be automatically updated like the overview, which is something that should happen anyway.