The biggest downfall of wars in high sec is a lack of reason to fight. For the defender, unless you have anchored assets in space, the best possible response to a war is to simply never undock. Hell, better yet, don't even log in. Your opponent will see you as a boring bunch of cowardly no-good carebears, hate you for it, and never bother dec'ing you again. Which is actually a plus for you. Also, your war history will show that you simply do not take losses during wars, and that tells future corps that fighting you is boring as hell.
Another powerfully irritating exploit (and yes I'm calling it an exploit) is to simply dissolve your corporation and form a new one, or have everyone drop corp to NPC and rejoin after the war.

This clearly shows that there is something horribly wrong with the war dec system as it stands. I'm not talking about the mechanics of declaring and maintaining wars here, just what happens while a war is active.

The solution to the issues noted above would need to provide people with a reason to undock during a war, and not just avoid combat.

I had a random thought, and would like feedback on it.

What if killing legal war targets generated in-corp LP (or something similar)? The basic idea is to reward pilots for undocking and fighting war targets with some tangible reward that is directly tied to their corporation membership. Oh sure, freighter pilots would likely still drop corp, but there isn't a very good chance of them undocking in a Domi to fight you now is there?

The reward would ideally be directly related to the value of the target destroyed. What I would really like to see, would be some sort of lesser reward for dying in a war. Give people a reason to undock even against overwhelming, or at least uncertain, odds. I would like to see this go both ways, so even the people declaring war would be getting rewards (beyond just loot drops and tears). I would even be fine with the defenders receiving double the rewards that the attacker is getting.

Any thoughts?

Have to agree in regard to the war system. There just is really no reason for defenders to fight. When war was cheap, keeping a war active for long periods of time against small no name corps gave sometimes sufficient reason for corps to attempt getting the monkey off your back. With war cost now keeping a war going for 3-6months is way to expsensive for low member corps fighting other low member corps. I use to think there should be some incentive some other mechanics in place other than open shooting rights in space.

Perhaps fighting over corporate wallets, or fighting over shares, or the winning corporation getting a small percentage of the taxes implied on the losing corps members. There may have to be other things put in place with wars to accurate validate a "victor". War should be about conquest, not griefing. Being able to hide in stations shouldnt be a means to avoiding the consequences of war, just what those consequences should be... Well..... I gave my opinions.

The #1 reason carebears do not fight in wars is because the people wardeccing them treat them like they are sub-human. They look down on them, taunt them and put themselves on a pedestal above them.

Until the mercs/ganker community learns to show respect to all players irrespective of their career choice, carebears will continue to do everything in their power to avoid interaction with such players. They will group all merc and gank corps into this category. No amount of monetary incentive is going to change this. They just don't want to play video games with them.

My old industrial corp was wardecced by 6 seperate entities over time. 5 of them were mercs; we never undocked once to fight them. The 6th was an industrial corp that didn't like our presence in their area. We undocked and fought them several times with a smile on our faces.

Considering you're an enforcer for CODE., do you really question why carebears refuse to play video games with you?

TL:DR - if u dnt like sitting in station for 7 days, dnt be part of a corp that does it everytime its decced.



TL:DR - use the right tool for the job.

the reason I wouldn't fight a HS war is neutral reppers - fix that without me gaining the aggro of a 20 man fleet every time I go for the logi and I'd definitely consider fighting, even solo (though maybe not in expensive ships then)

There is 1 reason people does not try to defend during Empire wars.

NEUTRAL REPPERS.

I don't disagree with you on any of those points, but it avoids the topic, I'm trying to put forward an idea on how to get smaller corps engaged in warfare in a way that turns "Hey we've been wardec'd" from "everyone dock up for a week" to "lets go brawl in some frigates and have a blast." While anyone with pvp experience will see a war dec as a great time for some fun, less pvp oriented players will see it as something to avoid, regardless of if it's an experienced 200 merc alliance, or a 1 man 3 day old dec corp.

Providing incentive to fight for people who do not have anchored structures would benefit everyone.

It should be noted that there were three events which led me to want to write this post. In chronological order

1) we dec'd a corp and kill 4 orca's across the span of three weeks. They never bothered to mount any meaningful resistance. That may partly be due to lack of know how for fitting pvp ships, I have no idea.

2) I had a discussion with Psychotic Monk about the state of corporations in Eve and what needs to change with them.

3) My corp which only shows 3 active members on the killboards went up against a 77 man alliance. I have yet to see any of them undock. (though I came back from lunch to see one of them had been asking in local if I wanted to fight, I hope to see him again as I would love to fight.)

So yeah, I'm trying to suggest a means to encourage people to engage in warfare they wouldn't otherwise have.

It's funny how you seem to think people will change their playstyle just because they revived a notification mail from CONCORD.

It's simple to know exactly what will happen if you put any kind of reward to "defending yourself" in a war dec. Either it will be worthwhile and farmed or worthless and ignored.

as most ppl who dnt like PvP are more driven by isks, mad isks for PvP'ing will probably make them undock. but they'd have to make more returns doing PvP with as little risk as they do there other activities.

The threat of neutral RR is exactly why 77ppl dnt attack u three. because even if they could get those 77ppl together in frigs, it could be tanked by a single legion with multiple RR support and command links. They have no way of knowing whether u have it or not.

The PvP has no goals to it. The dec lasts a week, pretty much no matter what. there is no achievement in the defenders fighting back and for a lot of ppl (including myself) goals are the incentive to PvP. i rarely PvP for 'good times' even though i enjoy it. I PvP when theres an agenda.

the first issue is un workable, the second is as good as its going to get and everyone has their ideas on how to fix the last issue.

Also, with the vast majority of attackers using guerrilla tactics, it is hard to strike back. Deccing corps rarely have a POS or ppl who mine and mission. there are no soft targets to attack, mostly only combat ready PvP pilots with a bat phone on hand.

i worry making it reward related mean that it can be exploited. Corp A decs their alt Corp B, they shoot their lifeless alts anf get rewards.

Leaning towards a cost punishment basis, though my worry there is that these immovable assets become more of a liability like a rorqual and no one uses them.

Providing a way for the defenders to prematurely end a dec would be desirable. A vulnerable structure that the attackers MUST preserve for the war dec to complete its full term. ive been playing with that idea for a while.

i worry making it reward related mean that it can be exploited. Corp A decs their alt Corp B, they shoot their lifeless alts anf get rewards.

Leaning towards a cost punishment basis, though my worry there is that these immovable assets become more of a liability like a rorqual and no one uses them.

Providing a way for the defenders to prematurely end a dec would be desirable. A vulnerable structure that the attackers MUST preserve for the war dec to complete its full term. ive been playing with that idea for a while.

Yeah this would definitely be an issue, but if the rewards were based on the value of the assets destroyed, but were less valuable than said assets, it would essentially mitigate costs. Thought he insurance payouts would have to be factored in as well to ensure that the two combined don't make war profitable.



My issue with that is why would anyone go to war? To take out pos' and assets sure, but if I'm at risk of loosing things besides ships and pods I'm going to need a damn good reason to go to war. I feel that structure would discourage wars rather than encourage them.



This is a pretty cool idea actually. A war HQ of sorts. Course, nothing would stop me from anchoring it in the middle of nowhere on the far side of the galaxy with gate camps littering the path to it. Unless there were a reason it had to be closer than that.

the decced corp can state the region it must be in? but no more - and the HQ must be erected before the war can go live?
should the defender be forced to put up their own HQ? or is that subject to too much abuse?