I see three groups of people in faction warfare complexes.
First are the LP opportunists. These guys sign up for the LP, don’t care about which side they sign up for, they just want the LP. If the price of certain modules change, they will swap sides. These are most likely to swap to a null sec lifestlye in a week or month.
Second are the one faction farmers. I don’t know why, but some people play exclusively for one faction but seemingly focus on the complexes for the LP. these are basically like the first type, except they don’t switch sides.
Third are the dedicated militia players. These guys play for one faction, but they actually try do other things besides gaining LP. While the first two types would be rather annoyed if someone interrupted their complex unless they were an easy kill, the third type often doesn’t mind going 1 vs 1 in a somewhat equal fight.
Are complexes usually completed by the first 2 groups? When I hear about faction warfare, I often hear about dedicated militai players or even whole corperations who are heavily into FW. But 3 weeks of poking around command operation areas and looking at people in local, I get the impression that the first two groups of people are very common. Do the dedicated FW players punch above their weight? Or are most complexes just completed by people looking for LP? When reading the forums, I got the impression dedicated FW players largely determined when systems because vulnerable by plexing and killing oppoistion pilots, but after lurking, I get the impression complexes are often completed by people looking for the LP and don’t care if the system is vulnerable or not.
If you have a system where you can farm large amounts of iskies then… people will farm large amounts of iskies. FW income, if done “right”, is quite silly.
There is at least two reasons to care if system is your militias or not.
If its not your system and its not Frontline you cannot dock or undock anything except your capsule
The fewer Frontline systems there is the less lucrative sites there is to farm
The people that dominate FW are the ones that can co-coordiate which systems to push and also form fleets big enough to bash the ihub. It takes a while. The most lucrative complex is the Battlefield and it usually requires a kind of security farmers cant provide.
On the surface it looks like FW is good content but it has some issues. For example a battlefield (BF) is easier to hold than to take. Primarily because you know exactly where the enemy will land if they slide in. Every battlefield layout is also the same and there is a lot of arbitrary NPC killing involved.
But you would almost never try to take a BF from the enemy because it usually only pays a small reward + you have to undo any progress they made if you manage to drive them out. For example a fresh BF takes approximately 45 minutes to capture but lets say you drive out someone who has been capturing it for 30 minutes then you have to spend approximately 30 minutes + the original 45 minutes to capture it. FOR ONLY A FRACTION OF THE REWARD
And thats just scratching the surface. For example two BFs always tend to spawn at the same time so each militia just pick one each and farm in peace. The LP store is also a mess and the closest one to for example Amarr is 12 jumps away and thats if you go through Ahbazon.
The core mechanics of FW are also unnecessarily complicated. For example there is a Contested and Advantage percentage in each system + the different types of systems and the fact your stuff gets locked up if a system switches from Frontline to enemy Command line.
There is more issues than that. For example the shipcaster is not easy to use unless you know all the systems by hand. And there are more issues still.
I have no problem with people who want moolah. I’m just curious as to how much of it is dominated by them. Reading many battle reports and people who post blogs and screenshots gave me the impression faction warfare is dominated by dedicated FW players. So I figured most complexes are completed by them and which systems are vulnerable would be mostly dedicated by actions of the dedicated players.
But after lurking around command operation systems, I noticed people in the complexes are usually just farming for LP. If most complexes are completed by the dedicated militia players, that means the dedicated players punch above their weight and determine the status of the system. On the other hand, if complexes are largely completed by the farmers, that means the status of the system is mostly determined by where the farmers decide is best, a combination of looking for lots of LP, but also a place that’s not too crowded. In this case, the vulnerability of a system is largely decided by farmers. Also either 1100 to 1400 is a bad time for the Ammar militia and isn’t representative of them overall, or their pilots are very bad and don’t know anything other than targeting someone and hitting F1.
The fact that LP opportunists and faction farmers exist and there are a lot of them is something I can tell for sure. However I don’t know if they complete more complex than the dedicated militia players. Which is kind of why I asked around. Do people with much more experience in low sec than me think the vulnerable/stable status is largely dominated by the farmers or the dedicated militia players?
Look at it like this. How many players actually do solo pvp of any kind compared to how many players grind pve of any kind. The reasons the majority of people are drawn to FW is because of the income and because CCP isn’t very good at balancing FW income can get downright silly if you minmax it (and that is after they… balanced it).
The difference is that minmaxing FW generally means sticking to a specific (pirate) faction and doing a specific thing in a specific area and then just multibox the crap out of it. If you hop around Caldari FW areas you’ll find a whole bunch of people from well known grind pve null groups (this is where you realise that FW income can be SO good it’s better than grinding in null) and they will defend their farm even from other players part of their FW faction. And by defend I mean kill them, taking a standing hit.
This all means that your experience in FW and how botted/farmed it is really depends on which FW faction you’re part of and what kind of FW you do (offensive, defensive or grind). Personally I think that FW income should be nerfed hard to where it can only be somewhat profitable if you are active at the fronts rather than grinding in the rear.
From what i’ve seen and heard it’s mostly farmers/opportunists deciding what systems will flip.
Although i also regularly notice coordinated efforts by dedicated militia members to take certain systems, that, when they are combined with a campaign on https://www.evepandora.com/ seem to be fairly successful