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The Slow Agonizing Death Of Small Group Warfare

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Neesa Corrinne Einherjar Rising	Posted - 2008.08.13 03:38:00 - [1] I've been playing EVE since just before RMR went live. At that time a small pack of 5-10 people in PVP, especially if a couple of them were in HAC's, was an exhilarating experience. Over time, however, change after change has slowly removed the effectiveness of small gangs and very soon they won't exist at all anymore in the current climate. 1) Warp to Zero. A lot of people would argue that "this change was necessary" and that "any idiot can still get kills... adapt or die... blah blah." It doesn't change the fact that this simple game mechanics did have a drastic effect on small gang PVP. Whether you had to adapt to new tactics or not, it still was a significant change. Gangs had to get bigger now in order to have people on both sides of the gate... the first step in eroding small gangs. 2) Jump Bridges. Small gangs were still fairly viable up until this point. You could send recon's to probe out an alliances weak spot and then send your gang through that hole in their defenses, cause a little havoc behind their front lines and then try to make an escape before they could catch you. Jump Bridges changed all that. Now a gate camp blob of 50 people can camp several chokepoints all at once. All they have to do is leave a scout near the chokepoints and keep their gate camp on one of the gates. Hostiles come into a system near a jump bridge and the whole camp of 50 people simply jumps to intercept. The ability for ridiculously large fleets to camp several chokepoints simultaneously is a huge advantage to blobbers and a ridiculous hindrance to small gangs. 3) The Power Creep. As the game progresses and people accumulate more and more skills and bigger and better ships, the standards for warfare begin to change. At one point a few Battleships at a gate camp meant a bit of planning was needed before engaging them. Now any given corp will have 1-50 capital pilots on standbye to hot drop on them if anything goes down. Planning is barely needed unless the gate camp is fairly sizeable. I remember finishing training for the Vagabond, getting into one and immediately becoming somewhat of a celebrity in my small corp for training one of the best PVP ships in the game. Now it's capital ships online. 4) Need for Speed. The first speed initiative took a little of the edge off of a fast moving guerrilla force. It forced a lot of the ships to make a choice between speed and agility, but most forewent the agility and kept going fast. 5) Upcoming speed nerf. This might well be the final death knell of the small gang. A massive nerfing of speed across the board will eliminate the small and fast guerrilla groups who enjoyed playing EVE by roaming through space quickly and catching people off guard. Personally, I'm in favor of a drastic reduction in speed. I do see the need to make the ships fit back within the parameters of the physics engine, however, with this change and the changes listed above, the small gang will be a thing of the past. Changing the way one or two of the above systems works would make a huge difference in bringing small gangs back into the realm of possibility. For instance: 1) Put a timer on Jump Bridge usage. Being able to use a Jump Bridge as many times as anyone wants with no time limit allows fleets to be anywhere they want any time they want. If a fleet decides to use a JB to engage a small gang, then make it a real commitment. 2) Change WTZ. Bookmarks were bad, really bad. But WTZ was just a cheap cop-out for the programmers. A skill/module/rig based solution to WTZ would have been much better. Give us a skill that changes the "warp-to" deviation to a lower amount, so that people could land, say, 5 km instead of 15 km with maxxed skill level. Give us a low slot module that can help with the deviation or a rig that can help. Using the skill + module or rig would = WTZ... but not for free for everyone. NOTE: I won't be feeding the trolls
Gonada Gallente R0ADKILL	Posted - 2008.08.13 03:54:00 - [2] shaddup whiner, noone wants to hear your pathetic crys of its not fair. if you dont like eve, leave. plain and simple. EvE has come a hell of a long way, put it this way, i remember being in fountain going up against rats with friends in cruisers, cause thats all there was in the game at that time. Please, jump into traffic
Neesa Corrinne Einherjar Rising	Posted - 2008.08.13 04:08:00 - [3] Anyone still smell that fiery burning smell when they fly too close to Geminate? I was gone for three months, so I'm not sure what happened, but damn that smell is awful.
Rusted Seven Caldari Little Ships Go Vroom	Posted - 2008.08.13 04:20:00 - [4] I've always disliked WTZ because it made the small ships I fly just that much more useless.
Malcanis We are Legend eXceed.	Posted - 2008.08.13 06:39:00 - [5] It's odd how so very many people - in different corps - post that they want small gang PvP, yet they can't find any. CONCORD provide consequences, not safety; only you can do that.
Akita T Caldari Navy Volunteer Task Force	Posted - 2008.08.13 06:57:00 - [6] The REASON why you can't small gang PvP is that there's no objective worth pursuing that can be accomplised by a small gang. Generally speaking, of course. Exceptions exist, but only serve to confirm the rule. So the only remaining (desirable) objective is to either destroy as many enemy ships as possible with as little losses as possible (blobbing on either side) or to capture territory (via, what a surprise, POS warfare, blobbing again). So, no, it wasn't WTZ, it wasn't the JBs, it wasn't the accrual of wealth and skills, it wasn't any of the speed nerfs. It's the complete and total lack of INCENTIVES to make people WANT to go out in lowsec/0.0 IN SPITE of the risks. This way, the only people you are likely to ever encounter are people who are fully aware of the risks but came prepared, and are bored enough to easily camp, because there's nothing else they can possibly want to do. Hence, BLOBS. Give people SERIOUS incentives to enter the lowsec/0.0 belts, give people HUGE incentives to leave the relative safety (and soon, almost complete safety) of highsec, and you MIGHT just get enough people who AREN'T part of a huge powerbloc with an extensive intel network and having serious logistic capabilities, so you MIGHT actually encounter something other than blobs once in a while. _ THE APPRENTICE \|\| mineral balance \|\| nanofix
Mankirks Wife	Posted - 2008.08.13 07:26:00 - [7] ^^ This Although if you keep up on the devblogs, they've stated that the upcoming changes to sov should encourage smaller pvp engagements. And in FW you can always catch solo / small groups plexing, as long as you avoid the main blob. ---
Eran Laude Gallente The Aduro Protocol	Posted - 2008.08.13 07:29:00 - [8] tl;dr And contract tears please, I'm sure they taste delicious
Rexthor Hammerfists The Movement	Posted - 2008.08.13 07:54:00 - [9] Since moving into lowsec, it might just be the area were located in, i had alot smaller sized fights. The ones with 2-3 bs on each side, apart from the occasional huzzah blob coming up, but i guess youll get to know those and just avoid em. What im saying is, the small gang pvp is still there, you just gotta go and find it. - Any good reason for gateguns shooting drones and thus removing dronebased ships from pirating?
NeoTheo Dark Materials	Posted - 2008.08.13 08:10:00 - [10] Edited by: NeoTheo on 13/08/2008 08:10:47 i agree about the points less on the speed part, but on others.(whoa i am in a neesa topic and not flaming - lol ;)) one of the things that bothers me is how many folks you can fit in to one "fleet", id like to see it halfed. that would at least help. (wouldnt solve anything, but at least youd have to form 2 gangs, gangs atm dont tend to move out untill they have the fleet full or 70 folks, so make the amount that can join the fleet less and maybe they will move out to roam in smaller groups). wont help with general 0.0 warfare, but will certainly help in faction warblob. /theo Neotheo Dark Materials Linkage

Leandro Salazar Aeon Industries	Posted - 2008.08.13 08:10:00 - [11] Originally by: Malcanis It's odd how so very many people - in different corps - post that they want small gang PvP, yet they can't find any. That is because in reality, most of the people whining actually want small gank pvp. Those interested in small gang pvp just adapt silently. In fact I believe this speed nerf might encourage more small gang pvp, as at least my willingness to engage with relatively even odd will be much higher when I know that the enemy cannot disengage at will and is likely to take losses even if they win. And if you are reading this, you have arrived at the signature without noticing...
Kayosoni	Posted - 2008.08.13 08:23:00 - [12] small pvp no longer happens for 2 reason: 1. No one is looking for a fair fight. This can be attributed to eve's harsh death penaltys. 2. small pvp doesn't accomplish jack shit in eve anymore. Back when small pvp happened it was because there was only one thing to do in eve... kill eachother. now the one thing to do in eve is kill pos instead of eachother. delete pos, that will fix this entire problem. oh and make eve have 5x more 0.0 system. ----------------------------------- btw, threatening to close 1 account really hurt my eyes. - xaioguai
Synapse Archae Amarr Demonic Retribution Un-Natural Selection	Posted - 2008.08.13 08:25:00 - [13] Originally by: Eran Laude tl;dr And contract tears please, I'm sure they taste delicious This is rapidly becoming the worst meme in eve history. Just stop posting. Originally by: CCP Garthagk While these forums may not give you everything that you want, they will usually let you post.
Akita T Caldari Navy Volunteer Task Force	Posted - 2008.08.13 08:25:00 - [14] Originally by: Kayosoni oh and make eve have 5x more 0.0 system. Ah, yes, because already having less than 20% of the population spread across more than 60% of the game world isn't thin enough yet ? _ THE APPRENTICE \|\| mineral balance \|\| nanofix
Kayosoni	Posted - 2008.08.13 08:31:00 - [15] Originally by: Akita T Originally by: Kayosoni oh and make eve have 5x more 0.0 system. Ah, yes, because already having less than 20% of the population spread across more than 60% of the game world isn't thin enough yet ? are you ******ed? why do you think there is 1000 man fleet fights? 90% of 0.0 systems is shit and pointless to inhabit. Not to mention back when eve was actually FUN to play, there was only 5000 people playing at one time (now there is 25000). so, logically, make eve 0.0 5x bigger and we'll be able to fit the 25000 people in enough space that eve will be fun again. ----------------------------------- btw, threatening to close 1 account really hurt my eyes. - xaioguai
Leandro Salazar Aeon Industries	Posted - 2008.08.13 08:35:00 - [16] Originally by: Kayosoni Originally by: Akita T Originally by: Kayosoni oh and make eve have 5x more 0.0 system. Ah, yes, because already having less than 20% of the population spread across more than 60% of the game world isn't thin enough yet ? are you ******ed? why do you think there is 1000 man fleet fights? 90% of 0.0 systems is shit and pointless to inhabit. Not to mention back when eve was actually FUN to play, there was only 5000 people playing at one time (now there is 25000). so, logically, make eve 0.0 5x bigger and we'll be able to fit the 25000 people in enough space that eve will be fun again. Would be enough if they made all of 0.0 like the NPC home regions, i.e. every system gives the same chances for rats and officers, and truesec only affects minerals anymore. But I wholeheartedly agree that all the non-homeregion 0.0 with truesec below -0.75 does not make much sense and needs fixing. And if you are reading this, you have arrived at the signature without noticing...
Synapse Archae Amarr Demonic Retribution Un-Natural Selection	Posted - 2008.08.13 08:42:00 - [17] Originally by: Kayosoni Originally by: Akita T Originally by: Kayosoni oh and make eve have 5x more 0.0 system. Ah, yes, because already having less than 20% of the population spread across more than 60% of the game world isn't thin enough yet ? are you ****ed? why do you think there is 1000 man fleet fights? 90% of 0.0 systems is shit and pointless to inhabit. Not to mention back when eve was actually FUN to play, there was only 5000 people playing at one time (now there is 25000). so, logically, make eve 0.0 5x bigger and we'll be able to fit the 25000 people in enough space that eve will be fun again. Why is it bad to have a rare thing to fight for? Space needs to be worth something. We just need fighting dynamics that allow us to fight for it in a more meaningful and fun way. I'm much happier that my enemy is right next door. I dont have to go so far to fight him. Would just be nice if we had a reason to fight in anothing but lag-topia. Originally by:** CCP Garthagk While these forums may not give you everything that you want, they will usually let you post.
ThroatWarbler Mangrove Decorum Inc Tygris Alliance	Posted - 2008.08.13 08:56:00 - [18] IMHO, it's far more simple than anyone has posted. "Small gang" warfare is becoming less because there are simply more people playing Eve these days. Seeing as numbers are one of the most important parts of any military strategy, people are naturally drawn to fielding as many participants as they can. Thus, numbers have slowly climbed. People like winning and, apart from the occasional "beer fleet", played just for fun, the risk-averse will either seek to establish an overwhelming superiority or refuse to engage. If there is a desire for more small gangs then form more beer fleets. Expect to die but hope to take as many with you as you can. Aim to cost your opponent more isk instead of more ships. Fit odd setups to confuse most gangs who will likely turn out in some cookier-cutter fits. Turn out in single-make fleets for lulz. And so on. Play for fun, not to "win". Don't be a slave to killboards or space-holding. Of course, the chances of the whole Eve community doing that are zero, but I like to be an idealist ;)
Kaar Art of War	Posted - 2008.08.13 08:57:00 - [19] Rells' alt spotted. --- ---
Arachna	Posted - 2008.08.13 09:02:00 - [20] Totally agree with OP, the sad thing is that ccp is promoting this big lag fests and they make it look in the trailers that its playable... All my rl friends who i started playing this game with left because of this reason.

The Mute Minmatar Einherjar Rising	Posted - 2008.08.13 09:15:00 - [21] Neesa, you know I love you. 1) Warp to zero. Best thing that ever happened in Eve. Warp to zero did nothing to hurt small gang pvp and in my opinion helped small gangs. It is so much easier to travel more star systems in a shorter amount of time, so a small roaming gang can roam further in search of a fight. Of course this holds true for 70 man fleets traveling as well but small gangs will always be able to outmaneuver a large fleet. Warp to zero brought us all a bit closer together and the closer we get to each other the more we want to blow each other up. Warp to zero did hurt the pirating profession though as the 15km crawl to a gate was the best time to gank someone. 2) Jump bridges. Agreed, jump bridges are a huge deterrent to roaming 0.0. The ability of large fleets to get behind a small gang, around a small gang and up in a small gang is ridiculous, it really isnt fun when your 5 man gang gets squashed between two 30 man fleets due to a jump bridge. Unfortunately, I also believe that in the age before Jump bridges it was almost impossible for an alliance to patrol and defend their space. Small roaming gangs could come in, kill at will and the defenders would never be able to catch up. Taking and holding space is a chore and really the defender should have some advantages. 3) Power Creep. This is just something we have to live with. Eve Population keeps growing and more people can fly bigger and better ships. That means gangs are gonna get bigger and we all have to adapt. Truthfully the biggest threat to small gang pvp is that Eve is more popular then ever and too many people like the same game that we do. I really don't want to complain that too many people like the game, after all more people means more targets. As for "capital ships online" yeah, I don't really like capitals but considering our corp eats em for breakfast I wouldn't say that capitals are too powerful or breaking the game. 4)Speed. Fast ships do not promote smaller gangs. 40 man nanogangs are typical these days. Speed does not matter, if you got 40 people in alliance channel who want to roam then 40 people are gonna x up. If speed gets nerfed then those 40 people will be in rr BS or Recons but they will still be 40 people. When I first started playing, the record for concurrent users was 14 thousand, these days it's rare to dip below 20 thousand and prime time numbers are over 30 thousand. The reason smaller gangs are becoming rare is that there are just a lot more people online. I agree with you Neesa that we need more objectives that a small gang can complete. We need reasons to split our forces into smaller units. I don't know what the answer is, so until ccp give us some reason to form smaller gangs then we need to find ways to force the kind of fights we want, it is possible and it's all part of the game. -------------------------------------------------- [green]Please resize image to a maximum of 400 x 120, not exceeding 24000 bytes, ty. If you wo
fairimear Gallente S.A.S Cruel Intentions	Posted - 2008.08.13 09:16:00 - [22] Edited by: fairimear on 13/08/2008 09:17:13 Small pvp is dead for a couple of very simple reasons. 1. To many people in eve now. Very simple but most overlooked is that every 1 has god dam reinforcements 2 jumps away. Sure you get your kill. but they will get you on your way back out. 2. Ecm pure and simple. ECM in game. 2 types of gang in eve. the ones with ecm and the ones without. Guess who wins. And if you both bring ECM u defeat the point of a small gang as you need more ships to counter it. 3. Pos. Why pvp to keep the hostiles respecting your space when you can pos up. 4. Balance. 1 100mill ship or 1 20mill ship can lock down a entire gang. and let a bigger gang wipe it out. 5. to many people with the same level of ship skills. 6 RECONS these ships are so powerful when you get a couple of them together. No gang of 4 hacs would even consider taking on a gang of 4 recons. To much specialization. Makeing your npc hunters SS.
Kayosoni	Posted - 2008.08.13 09:20:00 - [23] Originally by: Arachna Totally agree with OP, the sad thing is that ccp is promoting this big lag fests and they make it look in the trailers that its playable... All my rl friends who i started playing this game with left because of this reason. that's because the epicness of huge capital ship fleet battles which in reality aren't playable at all, is what is marketable and makes them money. most of the people who used to play eve when it was a fun more "cs in space" type game have since quit. (not to mention the people that allowed this game to even be as successful as it now is.) ccp really just gives huge slap in the face to all the vets who played eve for its first 2 years. ----------------------------------- btw, threatening to close 1 account really hurt my eyes. - xaioguai
Esmenet Gallente	Posted - 2008.08.13 10:16:00 - [24] Originally by: Malcanis It's odd how so very many people - in different corps - post that they want small gang PvP, yet they can't find any. Generally because the defender will always outnumber an attacking force in their own territory. And with effortless and instant intel + extreme ease of fast travel you will get a defensive force up in a short time. Vote against the nano nerf!
ArmyOfMe Personal Vendetta Vendetta Alliance.	Posted - 2008.08.13 10:20:00 - [25] Originally by: The Mute 2) Jump bridges. Unfortunately, I also believe that in the age before Jump bridges it was almost impossible for an alliance to patrol and defend their space. Small roaming gangs could come in, kill at will and the defenders would never be able to catch up. Taking and holding space is a chore and really the defender should have some advantages. before the age of jump bridges most alliance didnt keep as much space as some do today. holding space should be a chore and if its to hard for them to defend it without jumpbridges it simply meen they have to much space imo
Crumplecorn Gallente Eve Cluster Explorations	Posted - 2008.08.13 10:21:00 - [26] Originally by: Neesa Corrinne 2) Change WTZ. Bookmarks were bad, really bad. But WTZ was just a cheap cop-out for the programmers. A skill/module/rig based solution to WTZ would have been much better. Give us a skill that changes the "warp-to" deviation to a lower amount, so that people could land, say, 5 km instead of 15 km with maxxed skill level. Wow, did a bunch of WTZ whiners step into a time machine together a while back or something? Some crazy deja vu going on the last couple of days. Anyway, as was the case at the time, +5 for wanting to replace necessary bookmarks with a necessary timesinks, and begging for free bubbles on gates. - DesuSigs
Akita T Caldari Navy Volunteer Task Force	Posted - 2008.08.13 10:21:00 - [27] Originally by: Kayosoni Originally by: Akita T Originally by: Kayosoni oh and make eve have 5x more 0.0 system. Ah, yes, because already having less than 20% of the population spread across more than 60% of the game world isn't thin enough yet ? why do you think there is 1000 man fleet fights? 90% of 0.0 systems is shit and pointless to inhabit. Not to mention back when eve was actually FUN to play, there was only 5000 people playing at one time (now there is 25000). so, logically, make eve 0.0 5x bigger and we'll be able to fit the 25000 people in enough space that eve will be fun again. So, rather than make half of those 90% crappy 0.0 systems worthwhile, you'd prefer to add many times more starsystems overall at the same crap:good ratios ? Please explain your preference. _ THE APPRENTICE \|\| mineral balance \|\| nanofix
Kayosoni	Posted - 2008.08.13 10:26:00 - [28] Originally by: Akita T Originally by: Kayosoni Originally by: Akita T Originally by: Kayosoni oh and make eve have 5x more 0.0 system. Ah, yes, because already having less than 20% of the population spread across more than 60% of the game world isn't thin enough yet ? why do you think there is 1000 man fleet fights? 90% of 0.0 systems is shit and pointless to inhabit. Not to mention back when eve was actually FUN to play, there was only 5000 people playing at one time (now there is 25000). so, logically, make eve 0.0 5x bigger and we'll be able to fit the 25000 people in enough space that eve will be fun again. So, rather than make half of those 90% crappy 0.0 systems worthwhile, you'd prefer to add many times more starsystems overall at the same crap:good ratios ? Please explain your preference. if there wasn't shitty 0.0 to chase people around in to the next system, what would we do??? I don't really have a preference. 90% of 0.0 has always been complete shit. I dunno why it is like this, but I do think it's stupid. honestly there's not enough focus on the features already in solar systems as a means for combat. what happened to random environments that change the "terrain" of pvp? ----------------------------------- btw, threatening to close 1 account really hurt my eyes. - xaioguai
Lord Zoran House of Tempers	Posted - 2008.08.13 10:33:00 - [29] whoever says small group warefare is dying needs to go pvp some more. points at akita oh almost forgot can you send me your tears i'll pay
Akita T Caldari Navy Volunteer Task Force	Posted - 2008.08.13 10:35:00 - [30] Making all warps have at least 5km imprecision at max skills (in a completely random direction), slowing down warp speeds/acceleration by a factor of 3 (maybe even 5 overall), increasing cap amounts (both ship maxcap and cap battery additions), cap recharge time and warp cap usage by the very same factor too (much more likely to cap-out during longer trips, but same peak cap amount regen for non-warp purposes) and so on would go a long way in making EVE feel "larger" without actually adding any systems, and you could just buff a lot of the existing systems. Making the JBs not act instantly but rather, say, have a 5 minutes "charge-up" (or cool-down?) phase would be interesting too. _ THE APPRENTICE \|\| mineral balance \|\| nanofix



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