EVE Search - Sticky:Inferno 1.1 Sisi features

CCP Soundwave wrote:

Jade Constantine wrote:

CCP Soundwave wrote:

We've been talking to some of the merc corps/alliances and having no meaningful choice in terms of picking a defender basically nullifies their business. What we wanted to do was put in an incentive to look harder at exactly who you ally with, meaning that successful merc corps would be able to market themselves better.

I agree that in an isolated sense, the 4500 vs 9x 500 people is a bit silly, but at the end of the day, making sure you can't just ally a large number of people was something put in to revive the merc business somewhat. We can evaluate that later, but I'd really like to see how people who do this for a living fare with the changes.

Regarding the recurrence, we're definitely looking at that.

Well here is A solution ... please critique it if you see a problem.

1. Concord fees per defending ally are only payable if you are in the process of adding an ally that would take the total size of the defending force over the total size of the attacking force. This will make it prohibitively expensive to massively outblob a small wardeccer (as in small scale mercenary actions) while still allowing a massively outmatched defender (ie 9000 vs 100) to add many alliance for free so they can balance the fight.

2. Introduce 2 week contract periods with auto renewal if either side likes the deal (ie its free) You don't like a war don't renew.

3. Consider leaving mutual decs alone because this alone gives the defender chance to assemble a counter force that can make an aggressor NEED to negotiate an end to the war. There is no reason to deny allies to a mutual declaring defender - all this means in essence is that the defender is removing the attackers automatic right to back out of the war while saving them the wardec fee. Its a transactional tactic - it could be left alone (especially with the 2 week contract periods allowing allies to leave).

4. Then if you are feeling adventurerous - improve the system a bit with iteration -> Once the defender starts paying concord fees (because they have added so many allies they now outnumber the attacker) - let the attacker add allies on a 1-1 basis so the war can escalate (both attacked and defender having the chance to up the stakes by shopping for appropriate allies etc.) With this scale of fighting (ie both attack and defender are relatively matched in numbers - EACH allied choice will matter a lot and people will shop for the right mercs on their capability and reputation.

I think that solves the problem.

Giant ass Goomswarm / Test decs vs little corps and alliances can be dogpiled and frankly they should be. Its fun, its a game, we play for fun and everyone said they liked that.

Small merc decs against similar surgical targets are likely to make the defender think carefully about who they hire because these will attract concord fees and let the attacker escalate if too many are hired.

This serves the needs for huge ass mayhem wars for fun. AND serious small merc fights for profit. There is no need to disadvantage one part of the community to protect another.

Can you see anything wrong with this solution?

I think the biggest issue here is that we're trying to solve different issues. I'm trying to bring the merc trade back into EVE and you're trying to add some measure of fairness into wars, which Isn't really a design philosophy in EVE.

Why would I want to balance a fight? That's never really been the goal in EVE and the war dec system wasn't built for that either. I understand that it's annoying when a big alliance war decs you, but that's hardly new to EVE. Big alliances get annoyed with bigger coalitions outnumber them and so on. That's a fact of life in EVE and we're not likely to change that direction anytime soon. The other thing is that war dec prices are determined by the value you get from them. If you want to go to war with someone, a higher number of potential targets should be more expensive. If you're a smaller alliance, this makes you a less attractive target, unless you've made someone angry in which case you're responsible for any social repercussions you've created.

Letting attackers add allies conflicts with the notion that attacking someone is risky. If you decide you want to go to war with someone, the consequence is that he could punch harder than you anticipated. If this is just about stacking up allies, the power of that choice fades away a little bit.