Having seen the new war mechanics in action, I find that the idea is solid, but the current implementation needs something else to ensure consequence and give meaningful choices to both parties in a war. Currently there’s very little of that risk vs reward that stands at the heart of EVE.
As a declaring entity in high security space you can easily drop the war long before your war headquarter is in any real danger, thus avoiding the loss of the headquarter but more importantly you avoid the consequence of being unable to declare that same target again for the next two weeks. Considering how long it takes to take down a structure those two weeks seem relatively low as well.
So I’d personally like to see the following changes to add real consequences and choices.
1) If a war headquarter is reinforced or in a repair cycle, the declaring entity shouldn’t be able to drop the war on their own, only through surrendering or having their headquarters destroyed.
This is an important change to add consequence for declaring as well as give defenders an actual chance to fight back. With this change you’d have the chance to fight for your headquarters and risk losing it when it gets attacked, or offer a surrender to try to save your structure. You’d no longer be able to simply avoid the fight but would have to actually defend, successfully, your structure to avoid the consequence.
2) Increase the time penalty for not being able to redeclare from 2 weeks to at least 4 weeks if not more. This goes for both surrendering as well as losing your headquarters.
Two weeks is just too short a time, doesn’t really give you any reward for fighting back an incessant aggressor. Increasing this will give people more incentives to fight back.
The structure can’t be saved because the defender can just re up the war if they want with no cooldown period.
The two week period should maybe follow even if the attacker reverses. That’s about it.
Given wars have been need into irrelevance already, I propose an alternative for the next iteration if it turns out that wars are still a problem, although I can’t imagine how that would be:
increase the base time of a war from 7 to 30 days.
I feel this would be more keeping with the time frame CCP has settled on for highsec structure combat. It would also prevent aggressors from letting the war lapse before a vulnerability window has expired, at least without triggering the two week window. And, it would restore some of the risk you say is lacking to the aggressor as it would force them to commit for 30 days, instead of this overly safe 7 we have been suffering with all these years.
That, or you know HTFU and go shoot their structure with your own war. It is in space and vulnerable to you even if they choose not to continue paying for the war at some point. In the last CSM minutes CCP indicates they want wars to be about structures, so go shoot one if you don’t like someone declaring war in you instead of asking for even more game mechanic changes to allow you to earn safety so you can farm in peace.
Yep I would agree too as the timers in HS really make it tough to do it all in just one week some times thus doubling the cost for the attacker…
One other suggestion I’d make is that the attackers station must be in the same region as the defender. A smart attacker (cough) would make it REALLY inconvenient (via jumps) for the defender to attack. I mean, do you really want to warp 30+ times with a BS fleet three times (round trip)…
Also, station HQs cannot be places in islands…my other suggestion…
Fair point, I assumed any suggestion would be ironed out for kinks. This particular one could mean a forced surrender if you didn’t pay your bill and your headquarter was under attack. Then that would solve the loophole you mentioned.
If you considering the fact that if an attacker engages a defenders structure, the defenders have no such option. They would have to fight to defend their structure for as long as the attacker pays the bill or offer a surrender and hope to get that accepted by the attacker to avoid that structure fight.
Ultimately, the goal of my suggestion was to add a similar consequence to the attacker, to give actual consequences for them dropping the war instead of defending their structure.
Turning the ending of a war into a surrender or applying the no-declare period if you drop the war when your headquarter is attacked like you suggested, would of course also add some consequence, so that would be another option (albeit less bloody). As long as there’s some consequence, even though I obviously prefer the more conflict driven one I suggested as that would also give defenders more of an incentive to actually fight back, which would help turn wars into actual fights to a higher degree.
So if your defending structure is being attacked when the war ends, you have to pay the surrender bill, no option right?
I mean that’s the mirror of what you suggest.
If you want to kill their HQ structure, then you can instantly declare an attacking war, which means it can’t be saved and you can inflict financial harm on them and ruin any other wars declared from it.
It might not stop them from re-declaring on you, but honestly, at the point you’ve just blown up their HQ structure they aren’t likely to come back to you unless you dropped super shiny ships and fed them kills in the process of doing so. They aren’t in the business of picking loosing battles as a wardec corp.
What about the lack of consequences for those who hide structures in holding corps,
who are easily able to farm them back within less than a week, while safe?
Corp A drops the war to avoid losing their structure.
This is what’s possible now, there’s no actual consequence for Corp A’s decision to avoid defending their structure.
The fact that Corp B could declare back and continue fighting isn’t a good enough consequence in my opinion, as that initially lets Corp A off the hook without any real consequences.
They should, in my opinion, only be left with the following choices:
a) Fight for their headquarter and either win and be able to drop the war after, or lose and suffer the consequences of having lost their headquarter.
b) Offer a surrender and be at the mercy of Corp B, just like Corp B would be if they surrendered to Corp A.
Currently they can choose neither by dropping the war before losing their headquarters, and that’s what I’m suggesting CCP to change.
In the scenario of Corp A dropping the war and Corp B attacking the headquarter after Corp A already dropped the war, then it should be as normal. I’m only talking about the scenario where they either try to end the war manually or let payment slide to stop the war while their headquarter is already engaged.
First of all, they wouldn’t lose their “headquarter”, since Corp B declared, they are simply losing “a structure” in a war which doesn’t have the same consequences in terms of not being able to declare Corp B in the near future.
Second, I want an immediate consequence that you cannot avoid. There should be a consequence of dropping the war to avoid fighting over their headquarters regardless if Corp B decides to declare them right back.
This is about getting a consequence of avoiding the structure fight, it doesn’t really have anything to do with consequences of losing a structure or a headquarter (as those already have associated consequences tied to them).
With CCP’s recent change defender corporations would have the chance to destroy the War HQ and have a 2 weeks of forced period but now it is clear that aggressor can drop a war before the final timer of the structure and and re-declare the war even they lose the previous War HQ, thus evading the forced 2 weeks of peace even though defenders succesfully destroyed the structure somehow (assuming that defenders declare the war on aggressors after aggressors drop the war on them). So Cassiel’s scenarios show that the mechanics can be exploited and needs a rework.
In practice, I feel like 14 days is a better idea. It fits with the newly increased wardec costs (used to be 50 mil base for 7 days, so why not 100 mil for 14 days), and it allows any possible combination of timers to be overcome without needing to re-declare. A 30 day war should probably cost more than 100 mil. (Maybe make that a separate option?)
Great points…That being said, regional lines do act as arbitrary boundaries now for things like markets so lore wise it might work even if common sense says otherwise…