When I take off my tin-foil hat I sometimes belive CCP is deliberately creating mechanics that screw over players just to create drama because drama is what sells EVE.

This is reliant on having the organisation to bunker counter-flip at a sufficiently high rate (which no militia seems to currently possess). Failure to achieve this would probably lead to large, rapid oscillations between T5 warzone controls as each 'losing' milita plexes offensively, gains massive LP, flips all vulnerable systems at once and cashes out at T5, before having no systems to plex in and having alts swap to the new 'losing' militia.

When I take off my tin-foil hat I sometimes belive CCP is deliberately creating mechanics that screw over players just to create drama because drama is what sells EVE.

The obvious counter is DPS alts in the hostile militia to bunker bust.

The counter to that would therefore be PVP friends within the hostile militia to kill the bunker busters.

Factional warfare is being dominated by plexing alts quickly driving systems to vulnerable.

Systems are held vulnerable so they can be farmed for LP and to deny the enemy to plex back, bar the few defensive plexes run.

The obvious counter is DPS alts in the hostile militia to bunker bust.

The counter to that would therefore be PVP friends within the hostile militia to kill the bunker busters. (WTB caldari friends)


Warzone control sway is basically = Plexes run - Plexes lost (ignoring vulnerable plexes),

The number of plexes run is essentially a function of the available hostile systems (- home systems) and the number of plexing alts within your militia. Tthe number of plexing alts is primarily dictated by the number of available systems and the availability of a good LP store. So we tend to a function of hostile systems available to plex in (as a fraction of the warzone), raised to a positive power. This has been demonstrated well by the Amarr - Minmatar front, With minmatar holding 80% systems since patch there has been limited plex availability, and Amarr have begun well by getting many systems to vulnerable, however already there is decreased availability for plexes that count and we are beginning to see their drive plateau. .

However it doesn't matter as there are so few plexes run my minmatar that eventually they would 80% vulnerable anyway. Hence the best thing for minmatar is to flip systems to amarr as every one gives another ~60 plexes / day to your capture rate..

This may seem shocking to the few who still think that pvp and good fights are still the driving force of warzone control, but to be honest from what i've seen the effect is minimal compared to the weight of plexing alts.
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In the long term it seems the only way a warzone can be 'stable' is if both sides maintain a similar number of systems, by flipping their own systems to the opposing militia when too many become vulnerable. Through this we would see a similar situation to the pre-patch quasistatic warzone control..

This is reliant on having the organisation to bunker counter-flip at a sufficiently high rate (which no militia seems to currently possess). Failure to achieve this would probably lead to large, rapid oscillations between T5 warzone controls as each 'losing' milita plexes offensively, gains massive LP, flips all vulnerable systems at once and cashes out at T5, before having no systems to plex in and having alts swap to the new 'losing' militia..

Now I know CCP and they aren't stupid so they must have anticipated this, it just seems an odd direction to add yet more meta-game to any area of the game that already had its fair share.

This mother fcker here is called a m-m-mother fckin' bunker buster BUSTER, see mother fckers try and come bust up yo bunker, then your mother fckin busters are gonna come over and mother fcking bust up the mother fckers who are trying to bust up yo mother fckin' bust yo!

I just recently moved to the FW warzone from NPC 0.0, so I am a bit new here. But in my short time here I have seen the alts in both sides of the milita, and I must say it's pretty lame and immersion breaking. To me it seems like an easy fix would be to make it once a system is vulnerable it no longer gives LP for offensive plexing.

The obvious counter is ....

- no LP payout for vulnerable systems
- timer runs backwards if you leave the flag in a plex
- requirement to kill all NPCs in a plex

problem fixed, next

I don't remember minmatar militia having a problem with this when they were the ones doing it.

- no LP payout for vulnerable systems
- timer runs backwards if you leave the flag in a plex
- requirement to kill all NPCs in a plex

problem fixed, next

This will not fix FW alone, but its a step in the right direction.

While it would be better if people had to be at the keyboard to make 200m/hr per alt and requiring those alts to actually fit guns, it still doesn't seem ideal. Still better than the status quo.

It would be quite funny to troll the opposing militia by keeping all systems vulnerable so they can't earn any LP. Although I guess you'd just seed defensive plexing alts soon enough.

In before the "FW sucks because payouts are too large and there are on-demand fights everywhere - Instead we want to be poor and spin ships in station instead" posts.

I just recently moved to the FW warzone from NPC 0.0, so I am a bit new here. But in my short time here I have seen the alts in both sides of the milita, and I must say it's pretty lame and immersion breaking.

I don't remember minmatar militia having a problem with this when they were the ones doing it.

Thats how all of the new blood in Amarr FW felt the first 6 weeks we joined. Then we stopped complaining about being poor, got over it, and became rich.

Who's more foolish? The fool or the fool who follows him?
-Obi-wan Kenobi

Re: Cearain's posts yeah to be honest it seems like there are loads of very difficult fixes but why not just remove LP from plexes?

It seems none of this was really thought through, pre patch and I think its going to be too much effort to make plexing about PVP again, so why not just remove it?

Keep LP for kills, keep LP for system flips, just remove it from plexes. Suddenly people are interested in PVP again rather than making alts in whichever militia is most profitable at the time regardless of current alignment.

Side note yesterday I went hunting amarr plexers in a condor. I found a few that ran away (at keyboard) the only ones I successfully tackled turned out to be friendly alts that I had to let go, I can't blame them as its good ISK, it just seems a very broken system.

TL;DR remove LP from plexes and suddenly all the difficult work arounds aren't needed anymore.

if you remember one occasion of us keeping a system vulnerable denying your militia the chance to take back systems post it here. however because there isnt one and the first time we came across it was when your militia did it. stfu

The time when we have been rewarded for plexing has been a blink of the eye in the history of FW, yet somehow we manged to survive before.

They already have consequence now, which should been enough for the average FW player. The LP on top just seems like it was too much, too soon.

Its a very tricky balance to get right, too much reward and we have the hordes of plexing alts (status quo) too little and people spend a lot of time making ISK rather than PVPing. I'd prefer to err towards the later end of the scale because at the end of the day you can always fly cheap

Even broadcast to the hostile militia a 10min timer is hardly enough time to reship and travel to, especially when you know that most of the time he'll just run.

I think a solution to that problem, Cearain, would be to make plexes a bit more like DED sites.

The npcs could be grouped so that full aggro can be avoided. After they are all dead you could make it so that there are no or limited respawns. Once the npcs are dead the flag can be captured without interference and the plex is good for pvp.

It really shouldn't take more that half an hour around a table for CCP to thrash out a system of plexes that works.