Watches the pod people slowly take over EVE…
( Oh…he’s screeching ‘Think of the noobs !’ )
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Thanks for finally providing a concrete list of suggestions!
The main issue was that you were shouting but not explaining what you were shouting about.
If you had been more clear from the start you could have noticed that far more people would agree with you than you expect.
For example I’m also in favour of a hard limit to the amount of wars, or for there to be done something against holding corps.
But instead of discussing the topic you prefer to boast how you have experience and how others don’t and how others are wrong for not having the experience you have, which is why your threads get nowhere.
Edit: edited my post since you edited yours. I’ll answer you in my next post.
I think EVE HS wars have problems and that the rise in price was not the right solution.
First, HS wars fill two necessary roles:
- to allow players to have legal fights against another competing group in HS
- to allow players to get rid of HS structures
However HS wars seem to also fill a third role, which may not have been intended but is what wars have grown to become:
- to get cheap kills in trade hubs by spamming wars against many groups so you get a steady supply of unaware players who make the mistake of undocking while at war
I think this third role is a bit problematic. Not necessarily bad, but the scale of it is, where from the last time I got figures it seemed that very few war groups were responsible for the majority of the wars just for cheap kills, while very few wars were the ‘hs group decides to fight another hs group’ kind of gameplay wars seem to have been intended for.
Next, war HQs, and structure-based eligibility for wars. I am not a fan.
On one hand I think it’s good that a war HQ causes war deccing group to have stakes, to give the defenders something to shoot when the agressors would otherwise dock up when outnumbered.
On the other hand the war HQ creates an incentive for war deccing groups to merge into larger numbers to split the initial cost and risk, which is part of the reason we see the large-group-spamming-wars dynamic we have today.
This brings us to the raise in price change: I fear this only reinforces the war spamming large groups to exist while making wars less accessible to a small group that wishes to start a war, by making it significantly more expensive to start one. The large group can probably afford it, and anyone who cannot will likely join a large group instead to do warring, which I think is the wrong incentive.
And for the defenders the structure-based eligibility also caused some what I think are unhealthy situations, where huge groups of players (including some of my alts, I too make use of this situation) are war-immune because they simply do not place down structures and instead live out of NPC stations, or worse, out of Upwell structures placed by holding corps.
Structures vulnerable, members not. That cannot have been the initial intention of this design.
And besides the problems causing holding corps, the other problem I mentioned is that many players now are war-immune with very little drawbacks, which makes the few players who do decide to go war-eligible much more of a target than if there were many more of them.
And then there are the problems of players hopping between war-eligibility and players bypassing war cooldowns with similar tricks, which I think should be tackled.
I wonder if you think about the war dynamics in HS the same as I do, or if there are differences.
My suggestions:
-
Keep wars accessible. Reduce the initial costs, lower the stakes.
For example let players start one war without war HQ. Place a HQ for additional wars. Initial war is cheap, say 100k, with only additional ones getting more expensive to start, for example 200k for the 2nd, 300k for the third etc or some other scaling. -
Restrict war-spam, with increased costs and stakes.
Place a hard limit to the amount of wars with a medium-sized HQ. Let players raise their hard war limit by placing a Fortizar as HQ instead, and still with scaling costs for additional wars mentioned in point 1. -
More war-eligible players. Any group with more than a certain amount of players becomes war-eligible even if they have no structures.
While this won’t entirely stop holding corps it makes them far less useful when the defenders are likely war-eligible anyway to due to their size -
More reasons to be war-eligible. Add an NPC tax to any war-immune corp, and allow corps to choose to become war-eligible to remove the NPC tax even without structure requirement. Be tax-immune or war-immune, not both.
NPC tax on war-immune corps has the added benefit that it means players have to put in effort to make a corp better than the NPC starting corps, rather than just promising a tax haven with zero effort. A good thing, in my opinion! -
Cheaper wars against larger groups. They have enough people to fight back if needed, it’s the small groups that need protection.
-
Do something about the war cooldown circumvention. I do not know enough details here to make a sensible suggestion yet, but do something. I’m open for suggestions.
Thoughts?
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You put effort into that post. Nice work. I’ll need time to read it thoroughly, analyze it and give you a proper response.
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The issue is whether one wants wars to be open ended or have some definitive end point. War HQs do at least define an end point. But I agree its a daft one. I also think way too much of the war mechanics focuses on timers and battles around stations.
I’d make player stations be part of a war, but not the defining criteria for it. To prevent never ending wars I’d scrap war HQs and simply introduce a timer for war duration. You pay a certain amount for a 1 week war, double that for a 2 week war, etc. I’d even introduce the concept of a ‘skirmish’…a very brief war of maybe an hour or so. And a cool off period so that one has to wait weeks or months before declaring war on the same corp again.
Those mechanics only exist because the war is forced to focus around a player station. Big blob shows up and destroys station…end of war. That provides almost no room for guerilla style tactics, partisan type activity with others helping across a wider area, and so on. I’d make EVE wars much more like asymmetric real wars…waaaay more fun !
And I’d end all the swapping corps nonsense…which is one of the daftest mechanics in the game.
Seems good suggestions.
I’m not sure how hauling corps, who need to be war immune, will like the NPC tax you’re proposing but that’s not a huge issue.
I also assume that mutual wars are free? So if someone wanted to do the RvB thing again, they could.
The supply chain is surely a valid target in any war. But its hard to see how one could force it to be, as a corp’s haulers, etc, could simply be under a different corp. The only way I can think of is to make the act of supplying stuff to a war decced corp station automatically add the supplying corp to the war. That is also much more like real wars…where supplying one side in a war opens one up to being a target oneself.
I’d forgotten this, above, but there is actually already a restriction. If the defender’s war HQ is destroyed, the agressor corp cannot then declare war on them again within 2 weeks.
I don’t think you are thinking about this correctly.
There are hauling corps, right, like PushX and the Frogs. They are juicy targets, any highsec pirate worth their rum would pay handsomely to be able to attack their haulers.
They have their haulers in a corp, which I suspect is not the main corp, but it wouldn’t be impossible to work out which corp(s) it was.
If those corps are wardeccable, it will go badly for the haulers.
I assume in the dark ages they used to have haulers in NPC corps and have to pay taxes, now I expect they are in 0 tax holding corps so they can do stuff and not pay tax. I imagine they will not like Gerard’s changes.
These hauling corps are neutral, and they would not be able to do business if they were wardeccable.
Yea, I was more thinking of a different spammy aspect of wars when I wrote that.
Not consecutive wars, but how many simultaneous wars groups have.
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But that’s my point. You cannot demand neutrality. Certainly such situations have existed ( for example ‘lend lease’ during WW2 ) and been the status quo in many wars…but it is entirely down to the two sides in the war whether they accept a ‘neutral’ supplying side as actually being neutral.
Why shouldn’t it ?
Well then they will stop hauling, as it is not profitable, and not only will everyone have to haul their own stuff, but a playstyle will be removed from the game.
I mean that won’t happen, they’ll just haul from NPC corps or do you want them deccable too?
You joined like 2h ago and already telling people to piss off? Some attitude.
^^^ this ones had a quid put in her! Calm down Edi
wow!!
Not sure what that means, but the OP started the topic to talk about the newbie wars… I’m the one that made a statement saying that narrative of “poor” and “novices” is BS. How can you kick me out? I’m the one that put that crap in motion. I made a question, and the answer is pending.
You have no authority to say that, you are welcome to ignore them tho. Lots of people do.
YOU ARE WAY OUT OF YOUR LEAGUE!
I don’t care enough to even speak with such people anymore. Enjoy the game I’m done with it.