So, it’s back but the UI really doesn’t like the game. 
Chat tab text just disappeared.
Oh, goodie. Now the game server may be back up, but the chat server sure as ■■■■ is down. 
Getting corruption to lvl 5 lets you use bubbles, bombs, etc. Using these items, if they accidentally wing a militia member, neutral wreck, etc, results in massive standings losses.
So basically FW characters cant use them at all, and only neutral pirates can. Minmil is using neutral Sabres lol. My alt lost tons of standings bombing a neutral pirate gatecamp because of wrecks lol. This is kind of defeating the point. Please fix.
P.S. Give asteroid belts back to NPC space. I’m still mad about that.
5 Likes
During the past few days since the launch of Havoc, I’ve collected a number of comments and complaints made by fellow corpmates and militia pilots while being involved in the process of suppressing insurgencies.
In regards to the stages of “suppression”
- bonuses related to NPC bounties payouts are not really a benefit, as the focus of pilot activities will revolve around completing objectives, not farming NPC in belts or anomalies.
- bonuses related to security status gains are not really a benefit, as the focus of pilot activities will revolve around completing objectives, not farming NPC in belts or anomalies.
- bonuses related to LP payout increase, are not specified if they apply to all types of plex sites captured (both militia and pirate), or just for the militia. We did not observe an increase in the gurista LP payout, however.
Also to consider in broader terms, when insurgencies spawn in the warzone area, empire militias will need to deal with two threats, the pirate militia spreading corruption, and the opposing militia who is taking the opportunity to attack frontlines within the affected systems. However, the pirate militia only needs to focus on its own content to win, this creates a difficult balancing situation as one side will clearly be at a disadvantage fighting against two different groups in vastly different locations.
On a logistical note, pirates can dock in any station, they are not restricted like normal militias. This of course makes the effort to try to stop pirate advance, or their ability to reship, futile.
Suggestions:
- Remove NPC bounty bonus, and start from the get-go with LP gains bonuses 5->10->15->20 (no bonus increase to stage 5)
- If you wish to maintain the security status gain, it should be gained by killing pirate militia pilots, otherwise, remove it.
- Regarding docking rights, an easy solution would be to enable Suppression 1 and above to remove the ability of pirate militia to dock in stations on the system, regardless of the level of corruption. The alternative could be to disallow docking from the start and allow it for pirate militia once corruption reaches stage 2.
- At suppression 3, we should be able to stop corruption from spreading to the neighboring systems, making it a strategic choice to work on the edges of the affected area. This does not prevent the system from reaching corruption 5, but if we reach suppression 3 before corruption 3, the corruption does not spread.
- The named pirate NPC that drops the special item should in addition have a bounty or contribute to suppression progression. Albeit the counter-insurgency site will give a reward crate for exchanging such an item, the fact you need to transport the item back to a specific location in high-sec at a later time/date is mostly an inconvenience to a lot of militia pilots that operate with low-security ratings given the nature of engagements in low-sec. This is not the case for the pirate militia, who can kill the empire named NPC and cash in directly at the laundering site in the system.
Points that should be clarified:
- Does killing NPC pirate roaming gangs contribute to the progression of suppression?
- What type of activity is considered to measure and calculate the final payout for the overall contribution against an insurgency, some of our pilots received wildly different amounts.
regards
AC
6 Likes
Yeah, same sentiment, pirate play, and even third party play (beside PvP I focused on the roaming NPCs), look much more appealing.
First let me say awesome expansion. The new content and how the insurgency works is great for the most part. As all feedback posts are some what critical in nature, I do want to say you all did a great job.
Things to consider though:
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With the current mechanics, there is negative incentive to base out of Zarzakh and the FOB for pirate militia. We are much better served just setting up ship depots in the center and 4 corners of the war zone and never utilizing Zarzakh for anything other than the LP store. You are forcing just way too much hauling on everyone. Think of the people that go away for a week on a short notice work trip. when they come back to the game, its a negative experience.
a. Zarzakh: Make the connections into Curse and Venal frigate wormholes. All any militia need is an interceptor to get there to enlist or run the epic arc.
b. Zarzakh: If you are going to add bubbles, give us bookmarks.
c. The FOB should jump everyone’s ships and clones to the new insurgency. If it gets killed, sure, asset safety everything and destroy the clones. -
The normal faction warfare maps are an awesome addition to the game. The insurgency map is just hot garbage. No one has ever liked the in-game map and how it works. I would have thought the popularity of Dotlan would have shown this.
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Where is our 20v20 Warehouse Raid from the Fanfest slides?
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Isn’t it time to revisit pirate ship build costs? Please?
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Normal FW pilots are blobby, and prone to just sitting on a gate camp being lazy. Can you provide them a little more Cheese on the Suppression ladder to get them into plexes so I have someone to hunt?
Thanks again for a great expansion.
2 Likes
Not going to call anyone names as that is super productive… but I will say the ESC Menu is Superbad, and not as in good but bad as in OMG this sucks donkeynads
Also, Project Manager can’t you know, manage projects. “Server is unavailable, Please come again”
Love the Pirate stuff, good content and expensive pods.
3 Likes
weird how we never had chat issues with the old system, but now its constantly broken with CCP apparently being unable to fix it.
4 Likes
I think the biggest feedback I have about the insurgencies is around logistics; I think the FOB disappearing and moving all assets into asset safety when the pirate win will really disincentivize the use of the FOBs. I think in the ideal world, if the FOB is destroyed, all assets should be moved to asset safety, but when the insurgency wins assets should be transferred to the next theater or back to ZZ.
2 Likes
At the moment cannot send contracts to different alliance’s. Another Alliance’s cold not send any contracts to mine.
ccp always act like a bad garage company.
1 Like
I don’t play FW, but this makes a lot of sense
It’s also bugged e.g. when toggling ‘Inactive Client Muting’ in the ‘Audio’ tab it scrolls back to the top. Such stuff makes it even worse.
Out of curiosity, would giving the pirate FW rats bounties alleviate the uselessness of both the bounty and sec status increase perks in your opinion?
As far as I can tell, I got no end of event payout, even though I did a number of sites. I entered and left the militia a number of times, maybe that is why I was left out?
As for the bonus that don’t help the militia effort, one of the devs said that is the point. Some of the modifiers are not for the militias, they are an attempt to pull 3rd parties in to the war zone. I think it is very misguided as even if these 3rd parties were aware of the bonus, there are so few npc’s the kill in faction war space and it is so suicidal to try that it really make no sense.
1 Like
That is an idea I considered at some point, but it would break the balance of gains between the empire side and the pirate side, we would be creating raw isk on each NPC killed in the area just by running complexes or the mining ambush objective.
If you add a bounty only to the roaming named pirate NPC that spawns on corruption stage 2, it would make it a bit more interesting to hunt down and resolve the issue of a lackluster value on the reward crate cashed in the Intaki Counter-insurgency center.
But even then, promoting the concept of “farming NPCs”, detracts from the main goal of promoting conflict and chaos between players and fighting over strategic/tactical goals of the event. So I personally don’t like giving any benefits to something that is not directly or indirectly related to fight back the insurgency.
Right now most militias are used to gain LP and use it to finance their activities, I would try to maintain that mechanic as it has proven to be functional (albeit militia LP stores need to remove the darn dog tag requirements).
1 Like
Feedback specific to Angels Cartel Militia -
Overall, I love the expansion, some of the stuff going on, and the general direction of the game. However:
There is currently no significant use for the FOB so long as the insurgency begins in a system with a station. In fact, the FOB is detrimental because it takes 5 days for my items to asset safety to a local station after victory. May as well use the local station instead from the outset. This is pretty silly, and very anti climactic.
Angel cartel rats (not the FW plex rats) should be blue to Angel militia members. If I am looking for NPC patrols in insurgency systems and happen upon them at an asteroid belt, the angel rats will fire on me as I fire on the minmatar mining vessels…? Lol.
Gurista / Angel militia members should not be welcome anywhere in high sec and should attract attention from FacPo immediately. That Angels have access to Jita is just… silly. To the extreme, really.
Gurista / Angel militia members should NOT have docking access to any low security (or high security) station until corruption 5. What’s the point of the FOB if I can dock at any station in low sec? Suppression 5 should prevent docking rights in these systems, perhaps?
Staging from Zarzakh is not worthwhile, and would be a waste of energy. This is unfortunate; I have no reason at all to be in the new system (which is beautifully designed). Bubbles in Zarzakh are a bad idea. Zarzakh is effectively a NS highway to the other side of the map and nothing more? I suppose the industry bonus there are worthwhile at least?
IMO, corruption increases far too quickly. The insurgency opened on 11/16 and was completed 11/19, with several systems reaching level 5 corruption after ~24 hours. Is this duration of insurgency intended?
Gotta run but I’ll add a few more things as I think of them
3 Likes
who would in their right mind come farm NPCs in a bubble-camped corruption 5 - suppression 1 system with a mere 5% bonus to bounties? I mean, if someone does indeed consider it to be worthy, he or she will just become prey to be killed by the pirates or even empire militia who see any neutral as a potential aggressors (we get blopped fairly often by neutrals).
It doesn’t make any sense we earn a bonus that was chosen to NOT benefit the empire militia fighting to secure the area, but a 3rd party who wishes to kill some NPCs???, but every single pirate corruption bonus does help them directly.
2 Likes
I really like that faction warfare now has some effect on the game for those not directly involved in the conflict. I haven’t been interested in FW before because it seemed a bit pointless, as a neutral industry-focused player it made no difference which faction controlled which system. But a system being corrupted would be a big problem, and so I should have a strong incentive to help the local militia to suppress key systems, to prevent corruption reaching the systems that matter to me.
The problem is, with the insurgency lasting such a short time, it is not really worth a big effort to stop it: much easier just to wait for it to pass. I can keep the factories running on stockpiled materials for a few days and catch up on hauling once the insurgency is over. If the insurgency was to last longer, a few weeks say, it would be different. I would then have a good incentive to devote time and resources to helping prevent the insurgency reaching important systems, or to work out how to keep operations going in a corrupted system which could be interesting too.
2 Likes
Did you even finish reading my post? You literately just restated what I said at the end of my post, just with a bunch weird emotion and extra question marks. I didn’t make the bonus, I’m just relaying a message, and I in no way endorsed it as good design, in fact it could be argued I did the opposite.
As for the bonuses being universally good for “the pirates”, you are way off base, you should really stop thinking in such absolutes. “pirates” isn’t a monolithic group, it is just other players, just like you, doing there own things. Some of them are farming, some are looking for “good fights”, and others want to camp gates.
There also is no reason from a game design standpoint for the bonuses to be balanced anyways, it really depends of what they are trying to achieve. Honestly it would be impossible to have them be “balanced” in first pass in a game like eve anyways. Only thru iteration after players have started to learn and exploit the mechanic would any kind of balanced be approachable.