Absolutely no gaping holes in this mechanic, no sir, it's totally ready for rollout.

At the very least, by release you should allow Allies to release themselves from a contract by returning the fee.
This prevents the most ridiculous exploitations already mentioned.

You do not want to make it possible to trap a merc corp in a perpetual war they cannot leave between two corps they are not able to affect.

Eg:

Corp 1 has 100 members who like to grief. They invite a few friends to form a Corp 2 and the second corp declares war on them.
Corp 1 is now a defender against Corp 2 and it looks reasonably legit.
Corp 1 offers some ISK to MercCorps 1,2,3,4 to join their war.
Now 4 MercCorps are aiding Corp 1.
Corp 1 declares the war mutual.
Corp 1&2 change CEO to an alt.
Corp 1&2 have all members leave and join Corp 2 or another Corp.

Merc corps 1,2,3,4 are now in an infinite, free war they cannot leave without disbanding, potentially against the people they allied with.

Just one possible infinite-war exploit.

I don't have a problem with infinite war exploites that encourge fighting, its the ones where they can get out of the fighting that erks me.

Still standing behind my charge 100-200mil to start a corp stance

At the very least, by release you should allow Allies to release themselves from a contract by returning the fee.
This prevents the most ridiculous exploitations already mentioned.

You do not want to make it possible to trap a merc corp in a perpetual war they cannot leave between two corps they are not able to affect.

Eg:

Corp 1 has 100 members who like to grief. They invite a few friends to form a Corp 2 and the second corp declares war on them.
Corp 1 is now a defender against Corp 2 and it looks reasonably legit.
Corp 1 offers some ISK to MercCorps 1,2,3,4 to join their war.
Now 4 MercCorps are aiding Corp 1.
Corp 1 declares the war mutual.
Corp 1&2 change CEO to an alt.
Corp 1&2 have all members leave and join Corp 2 or another Corp.

Merc corps 1,2,3,4 are now in an infinite, free war they cannot leave without disbanding, potentially against the people they allied with.

Just one possible infinite-war exploit.

Say your 10 man corp has a legit beef w/ some guys who've been greifing you. Your corp declares war on the another 10 man corp. Little did you know it was a front corporation for goon and a trap. You've been baited and now you realize you've just accidentally dec'd the entire CFC and it costs them nothing. This could be a good thing or the most massive mistake you've ever made in eve. The point is that you have absolutely no way to judge the potential risk. By declaring one war you could literally be opening yourself to a wardec from all of eve and essentially you'd be paying for it.

Why would anyone ever dec anyone in eve again? Any massive alliance that wants to can jump in against you and for you to bring in your own allies requires them to dec war and thus incure the massive costs of dec'ing the mega alliances. You're literally exposed to all the risk in the affair AND you're paying for it. This is nothing more then an attempt to kill wardecs all together. A poorly veiled one at that.

Say your 10 man corp has a legit beef w/ some guys who've been greifing you. Your corp declares war on the another 10 man corp. Little did you know it was a front corporation for goon and a trap. You've been baited and now you realize you've just accidentally dec'd the entire CFC and it costs them nothing. This could be a good thing or the most massive mistake you've ever made in eve. The point is that you have absolutely no way to judge the potential risk. By declaring one war you could literally be opening yourself to a wardec from all of eve and essentially you'd be paying for it.

Why would anyone ever dec anyone in eve again? Any massive alliance that wants to can jump in against you and for you to bring in your own allies requires them to dec war and thus incure the massive costs of dec'ing the mega alliances. You're literally exposed to all the risk in the affair AND you're paying for it. This is nothing more then an attempt to kill wardecs all together. A poorly veiled one at that.

I think you are looking at this incorrectly. Dont think of it as a game where they try to promote Wars, instead think of it as if it were real life. The goal is to stop corps from war declaring for the hell of it. Highsec wars will be more in line with nullsec in the sense that you cant just carelessly attack anyone without any risk of losing. If a nullsec alliance invades another groups space, the defending nullsec group will rally up all the help it can get! Why should highsec be any different?

So in the past where one corp would war dec 10 industrial corps for easy kills, in Inferno they will actually have to fight for those kills. Granted wars will become more rare as they are more risky, but I doubt wars will become a thing of the past. Corps will start wars because they might gain something of value (that is worth the risk), and not just for senseless fun.

If anything, CCP have made wars more realistic and in tune with human nature.

Personally, I'd be in favour of preventing the attackers from corp dropping unless they disband - and the defender gets to keep the attacker's corp/alliance name if they do. I'd just love the competent defender corps to have a pile of vanquished foes (Corp names) to show off.

The payment is all up front. It's a basic one lump some right now, we didn't want to implement a more elaborate payment scheme in the first iteration (like automatic reimbursement fund, etc.) - people can continue to negotiate that informally as they've done in the past. The main thinking here is to allow mercenary corporation to build up reputation over time. The public war history is the first step in that direction, allowing prospective patrons to check out the war history of an offering merc corp. Later on we want to expand the information given here to allow defenders to more easily see the 'worthiness' of a merc corp before deciding whether to hire them. A rating or ranking system of some sorts, maybe in EVE Gate, is also a possibility.

That's a cute idea.

Preventing people from dropping corp though forgets that people are individuals (well except for the alts) and may not want to hang with the CEO. Trapping people in corps will have lots of nasty unintended consequences.

That said, corp names and tickers as trophies is an interesting idea.

Didn't I hear soundwave talking about releasing content when it's finished rather than rushing towards expansion deadlines with unfinished garbage at some point? Oh I guess that was before crucible came out and CCP was still pretending to be apologetic about incarna and hadn't gotten back to the standard practice of releasing unfinished crap.

The not being able to drop corp has been used as for griefing in the past:

Corp recruits new players.
CEO gives them roles.
CEO uses them for target practice.
Members drop roles to quit corp.
CEO assigns them new roles before the 24 hours is up, trapping them in corp.

CCP fix: once you drop roles, new ones cannot be assigned to you.

If a war dec in any way trapped players in a corp, similar actions would be possible.

Say your 10 man corp has a legit beef w/ some guys who've been greifing you. Your corp declares war on the another 10 man corp. Little did you know it was a front corporation for goon and a trap. You've been baited and now you realize you've just accidentally dec'd the entire CFC and it costs them nothing. This could be a good thing or the most massive mistake you've ever made in eve. The point is that you have absolutely no way to judge the potential risk. By declaring one war you could literally be opening yourself to a wardec from all of eve and essentially you'd be paying for it.

Another thing weGÇÖre looking into is to exclude the ally system from mutual wars GÇô if a war has been made mutual, then no allies can be involved and existing ally contracts are cancelled. This mitigates a little the fact that now when a war is made mutual the only way for it to end is by surrender. WeGÇÖll monitor the early experience with the system post-Inferno and make a decision whether this change is needed/wanted.

I can tell you right now, this is needed. Mutual wars and allies will be exploited to trap corps into free wars from day one. If left unfixed, pretty soon nobody will want to start wars or enter merc contracts. Unless that's your intention? Because it looks that way from the changes you are implementing.

I can tell you right now, this is needed. Mutual wars and allies will be exploited to trap corps into free wars from day one. If left unfixed, pretty soon nobody will want to start wars or enter merc contracts. Unless that's your intention? Because it looks that way from the changes you are implementing.

CCP you are introducing a new awesome feature as killreports where you can see the isk destroyed in the kill. Is it really that difficult to pay mercenaries an agreed % of isk per kill????

When you first said "there will be a mercenary marketplace" i was very exited, now i realize that you ****** all it up again.

I can tell you right now, this is needed. Mutual wars and allies will be exploited to trap corps into free wars from day one. If left unfixed, pretty soon nobody will want to start wars or enter merc contracts. Unless that's your intention? Because it looks that way from the changes you are implementing.

If the CFC joined as an ally, the aggressor corp just hit the jackpot! That corp wold be worth big time ISK! "You want to have a war vs the Goons for only 50 million a week? Buy our corp!"

When you offer to ally someone, you must wait for them to respond, or 24 hours (which ever comes first) before making another formal offer.