I think you're overlooking one key element, that is, the fragmentation within each faction. Collaboration between parties only works if each party pursues it as a unified effort. At this point, this just will not happen.

Game theory can be applied to any group of agents who are in competition with each other, so it works at the level of small sub-groups and individuals.

Agreements between small groups of players who are enemies, but who know what they are doing, may well be more effective than investing energy into building co-operation between friendly forces who are incompetent.

Asking for the Militia to change and suit what you just stated is like having a celebrity ask for the "Media" to stop reporting bad news on her.

Like "The Media", "The Militia" is made up of many corporations and entities with their own agenda and interests. Those agenda conflict with each other. Trying to get all or most of the corporations to see eye to eye on this issue is an endless process unto itself.

Be careful about referencing RvB as precedent. RvB does have great success if you want a controlled environment. But many people avoid it because it is considered contrived.

Appreciate the idea though.

Effective in which way? How do you measure this effectiveness?

You are not even pointing out the problems you propose a solution for.
In addition you do not state how the problems you want to solve with FW are comparable to those economic applications you use game theory for.

Plus: "May well be more effective..." is a sentence without content. Of course it is true that it MAY be more effective, but it may also be more effective if rivaling parties do not cooperate. As I said: It is highly depending on how you measure effectiveness.

So why don't you just try again by properly describing your problem setup, then stating how game theory is applicable in this setup and then actually applying it? Or point out how somebody applied it to a certain problem and make clear how this application is directly transferable to your own problem setup.

Not fighting would be more effective than fighting ....

Is that because one side is much stronger than the other?

.

I'm surprised you don't know the answer. But yes. Gallente outnumbers Caldari greatly at the moment. Minmatar and Amarr tend to be equal.

What is your motivation for starting this thread?

It was like this a little bit about a year+ ago, when LateNite and Predator Elite would just convo each other to see where each other was and roughly what they were in. A lot more fighting happened back then with several engagements per night. vOv Was more fun, too, imo; instead of this stupid "okay, lets go absolutely crush them with everything we've got" mentality which doesn't engender a lot of :goodfights:

Also Caldari and Amarr are just wrong. They should surrender. Then we can all move on to concerning every thing else.

Terms of engagement are precisely what we DO NOT need for more FW - you can currently arrange fights on whatever terms you like all day long with can flagging or whatever you want. People aren't doing this now, therefore they're not going to do this.

From an RP perspective, we both know that the Caldari would rather go bankrupt and the Amarr would rather commit heresy than surrender to their respective enemies.

I wasn't certain if he was alluding to something else [maybe that it is better not to fight at all, than to negotiate with an enemy].

Furthermore cooperative behavior leads to more resources for all, but sociopathic behavior will not only decrease your own resources, but will decrease resources of your enemys even more.

You are actually wrong.. In the past various FC's with-in both Cal & Gal Militias used to talk with each other from time to time and set up semi arranged fights. It wasn't like ok you bring this ship and we bring this one, but more along the lines of saying he we will ship down or reship to match your gang.

I think they used to also agree to not primary each other's FC's in order to let the fights last for a bit but this part didn't always happen with them all. In fact Im' pretty sure some of them used to share a joint channel in order to get the fights rolling a bit faster as well as to team up from time to time to high a large target. (ie temp blue each other)

While on one hand it tends to cheapen up the PVP but on another hand they were typically some of the better fights as each side was typically pretty evenly matched.

The sort of fighting you get in, sayt, a 32 vs 32 FPS game where there are no lasting consequences is not sustainable in EVE when the "rules" are optional. All it takes is one group refusing to play by whatever rules you come up with and it's doomed to failure.

There are lasting consequences in-game for this stuff, so people are going to take any advantage they can get. Ultimately it's going nowhere because people on the sides lacking momentum can and will simply 'opt out'. FW is just an elaborate multi-party dueling system with nothing keeping participants from just blobbing it up, which seems to be what people don't want.

Optional PvP flagging always ends up like this because not enough people will do it. Perhaps a simple solution for this would be to pay militia pilots for time spent flagged and undocked - a stipend. I think a lot of noobs would be willing to take the risk for a million or two ISK a week.

It was like this a little bit about a year+ ago, when LateNite and Predator Elite would just convo each other to see where each other was and roughly what they were in. A lot more fighting happened back then with several engagements per night. vOv Was more fun, too, imo; instead of this stupid "okay, lets go absolutely crush them with everything we've got" mentality which doesn't engender a lot of :goodfights:

Except were in some of your examples if someone doesn't follow the pre arranged standards a person can be removed, they can't just simple be removed from your faction in FW. You could do other things of course to try to control the behavior of others but ultimatly you'll just end up with more infighting among factions.

Liberty- I don't think it's impossible to have both sides (or a few corps from both sides) come to a mutual understanding and terms of engagement. For example, you could have a sort of Frig Friday for militia members or some variation of that. This would benefit many folks especially the newbs who are trying to learn . FCs and vets will have more experienced pilots coming with them on fights knowing that they won't have as many fail fits.

OP, mutually agreed rules in combat arise when both side think that the rule will cover a weakness they have, but that adhering to it themselves will not get in the way of winning.

Classic example, the Geneva Conventions.

So if we are locking from a war perspective on this, its better not to cooperate but instead actually try to gain significant advantages over the enemy militia. Will this lead to less battles? Sure, but actually the "goal" in faction warfare is not to fight as much as you can, but actually to fight not anymore because you secured all resources for your own militia / faction.

Do you always talk like this?

This thread makes my head hurt. The whole point of factional warfare is that it's just that, warfare. There is no mutuality in warfare beyond issues that the two sides believe are not relevant to victory. Video games as a whole are a competition, and FW is no different. We compete to see who can dominate the arena, through teamwork, individual skill, mastery of game mechanics, etc. Good fights are not the goal of FW or EVE in general. Is it nice when they happen? Sure, but no one ever wants a fair fight in EVE, and really fair fights themselves would be pointless.

It would be one thing if this was an FPS where individual skill determined a huge portion of the outcome, but we play a giant spreadsheet with pretty colors. Hits are chance based, dependent on a variety of mathematical variables that you have limited control over. Thus a truly fair fight determines nothing, because the human factor is so miniscule. So the way we determine who is the best is through what people call tactics and strategy. We change our ship types, we try and hide our true amount of forces, we use different targeting doctrines, we use fleet formations, we try and dictate range, all in the name of winning the fight. If we didn't, then we'd never know which team truly deserved to win, and the entire point of the game would disappear.

There are no mutual goals in FW. The only aim is to destroy the other side, through system capture, fights, morale, or all three. When it stops being this, the sandbox will be gone and we might as well be playing arena in WoW.

Wait a moment. Are you actually saying that people in Eve (in every war theater) should not, rightly I might add, consider their opponents as sub-human pieces of s..t and give them some measure of respect?

You are playing altogether wrong game here....

[quote=Ehn Roh]
Basically this, your example of the fps scenario describes much better what I was going for before.

As to the stipend... I would foresee many cloaked undocked ships sitting about :P

Not if you base this on actually being part in kills. A few millions per week for staying constant in militia is not game breaking and will help starters. A few billion per month for the best contributors to achieve goals in faction warfare can not be gained with out actually doing something. The real exploit in such kind of systems is that enemies start to trade to abuse the system. Because you can count on it, if there is something to exploit with cooperative behavior it will be done.

Isn't it possible that both sides might lose, if they get drawn into fighting complexity and randomness rather than each other? There is a threshold of time cost and opportunity cost beyond which it is no longer worthwhile participating in the game.

Mutuality therefore exists in the fact that there is no game to be had if your opponent does not partake in it.

Also, there is evidence that players voluntarily choose to create sub-wargames such as fighting in the PLEX mission areas or arranging fights in some way. These sub-wargames are compatible with the sandbox experience as they are not universal and they reflect the free choices of the players concerned, who presumably arrange them for a reason.

Don't you think that, one way or another, you will end up fighting some type of wargame in FW? Perhaps an awareness of choices can improve the nature of the wargames that occur.

I am making an assumption though - that both sides want to fight.