Cosmoes
Peraka
3
   |
Posted - 2012.05.24 02:09:00 -
[1] - Quote
Ok right now if you defend a plex you get a standing bonus to the FW corp (which I think and a couple of people have also said was nerfed with this patch). standing with this corp gives a promotion at 1,2,3, etc. higher standing than max is no different and it's very hard to think of circumstances where this would go down by any appreciable amount. It does not give any LP, or any faction standing. It also repairs damage from offensive plexing.
This is pretty bad as there's absolutely no personal profit (after the promotions) or even any real faction profit aside from preventing loss as a reason to defensive plex.
Now while the defensive plexing is bad it may sorta balance out as this could be the mechanic that keeps FW from snowballing too hard. The way it would do that is to just bore defenders into oblivion by making them sit there for hours orbiting a button, shooting nothing (not even rats) and getting absolutely no rewards for it. This may work as a means to let there be a comeback from the loosing side but I'd say it's a very bad one.
A couple of suggestions to improve defensive plexing rewards aside from the obvious LP reward.
1. Give faction standing for defending plexes. Right now this doesn't happen except through promotions which are limited to 10 per character. Faction standing can actually go down unlike FW corp standing through dozens of means so this would give a slight reward for players who have been in FW for a while.
2. Defending plexes put LP into the systems upgrades. Obviously would be less than gained from offensive plexing, may need limits such as can only gain back LP that was recently lost etc. This would give a reason
3. Temporary boost to LP gained in system or LP gained over all through FW or LP discounts. Similar to how current over status of number of systems captured and upgrade level increases after defending a plex this is temporarily boosted.
The iHub upgrades... as a FW/industrial player (yeah we exist.... or maybe it's just me) these seem like they will help a bit but it's been like one day and already I see most of the ME research slots gained through this filled up in my area. manufacturing in low sec is just self inflicted pain and while my old 45 mil isk clones are now nice and cheap I don't lose pods often (I honestly can't remember the last one). Now how could we improve this.
1. Make them limited to FW players.... would do practically nothing, jumping 1 or two research/manufacturing alts into FW and keep them logged off in station and never participate you could use all the FW slots you want. Pirates don't really use anything but the clone bay and that isn't nearly enough for them to worry about. If there was actually some way to participate in FW aside from shooting things maybe something here but there isn't aside from selling ships to your allies. Maybe an idea here would be to add a high isk cost to using these slots (10-20 mil) and have that reduced by your standing or promotions.
2. Give better bonuses: research time reduction, research cost reduction etc. These would help more obviously. One thing you should look into is increase exploration sites via upgrades, I can't imagine anyone belt mining in low sec but mining a good grav site is much more realistic. Radar & Magnet are always nice and have some risk based potential for profit that's not too different from what most FW people do. If you add more ladar and we might actually see more booster running people in low sec and that would make me very happy.
Aside from that the only industry I see with some small potential to move here is invention, smaller transport amounts and with datacores coming out of faction stores and god knows how many pos in low sec there may be some crossover. If labs gave some bonus to invention this may actually drive some small scale t2 industry out here...... unfortunately most FW fighting is in t1 ships (destroyers) thanks to limitations on the plex size, t2 modules may work though.
Right now the main issue I'd worry about though (if I wasn't in the minmatar militia  ) is the snowball that seems to be encouraged by the current system.
The best I can come up with here is giving higher rewards for those who have been pushed back to a few systems. When your entire nation is funding a few systems and you've got 60 target systems to choose from earning LP should be very very fast. My idea is the more you control the more you get per LP but the less LP you get the less systems you own the more LP you get and the less per LP. Should keep the profit per LP say with 2-4x scale at any time but if you save LP when your low and spend them when they are worth more later it can be extremely profitable.
can't really think of any better ideas for this problem. it's not an easy one to fix  |