Tldr:
I would like to see a revamp of the UI involved with the empire war system and not necessarily changes to the war mechanics. Currently, it is difficult to see all parties involved in a war with someone else and the current war report setup leaves no incentive for groups to try to organize against a larger aggressor. A revamp should focus on making it easier to see all involved parties of a war (A is at war with B and C; D is assisting B but is at war with C), highlighting potential corp contacts (such as a founder or ceo), and changing war reports to include credit for a kill for all groups involved.
In my Eve career I have participated in all kinds of activities including empire-based wars on both the aggressor and defender side. One of the more impactful wars was when a larger group war deced a lot of corps in their local active region. With my corp being just a handful of people, I knew that unless we could limit their numbers when engaging, they would be too organized and numerous. They had a solid group of 10-15 disciplined pilots, but some of the groups they had war deced were alliances with 1000+ people.
I spent hours going through all of their active and pending wars noting down CEOs, Founders, and anyone mentioned in any of the corp or alliance bios as contact people in preparation. I joined their public channels, sent eve mails, tried direct convos all to try to form an intel channel where these groups could talk and attempt to organize instead of just feeding them kills one ship at a time. It was tedious, most groups ignored me but I did get some to join the channel.
It all finally came together in one fight, one of the larger groups planned to hit one of the aggressor’s camps and passed the plan to the channel. I was the only one in my corp on at the time and I had been watching the camp in a Falcon just eyeing up a Vindicator with 50+ kill marks on it.
When the trap was sprung I was able to jam that Vindicator and a few other ships on the field. It ended with them losing a few ships and getting out what they could. They were forced to reform and reship before trying to take back the field. I was so excited to see my hard work of trying to connect these groups together and fight back start to pay off because my corp could not have done it alone. Best of all was that sweet sweet Vindicator kill!
Eagerly, I opened our war report to look at the stats and see that Vindicator and Deimos kill… only to find nothing there. I waited, thinking it may just need some time to update. I soon found out that if the final blow is landed by a person with a different war (even if you share the same war targets) that kill will not go on your war report! This was a big moral hit for us to find out even if we supported groups with larger numbers our war report would not reflect the effort or accomplishments we worked for. It certainly would show any losses we suffered on their war report though.
It turns something similar happens for structure kills too. In a different war we took a structure to 20% haul only to have to evac when a different, much larger group we were at war with entered the system to attack that same structure. Despite us doing 80% of that final damage we were not listed on the kill mail. All three groups were at war with each other, we all did damage but only one party was represented. Again, no kill mail for the war report.
The main problem is the ridged framework the empire war system sits on top of. It seems to have been designed with the idea that it will only ever be two groups fighting each other. Improve that, make it easier for groups to organize, give everyone credit for a kill on a war target they participated on and maybe the groups referenced by CCPs metrics will see a way they can play. If they cannot adapt, I don’t see anything wrong with CCPs historically stated view of wars being avoided by remaining in an NPC corp. There is nothing stopping players, new or old, from forming in their own chat channels, playing together, and being in an NPC corp.
It does not make sense to me to introduce a new kind of corp or mechanic limiting war decs just to avoid empire wars or introduce changes to game mechanics that have been in play for years without having a clear objective, full plan, or time table to follow.
