Archive for the War Category

War Mechanics Update: CCP Still Missing the Boat

Posted in CCP, War on May 21, 2012 by khalia

The patch notes for Inferno are out.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the overhaul to the War Mechanics systems addressed a number of issues, but not the issue of everyone dropping to alt-corps. Included in the patch notes is a small – but no where near complete – item to address the issue of dropping from corps at war:

If you leave a corporation while the war is on, you cannot re-join until the war is over or 7 days have passed. This does not apply to mutual wars.

This is… something? It still doesn’t prevent the corp members dropping en-mass to a second corp and forcing the aggressors to dec the new corp; repeat ad nauseam. The only real effect the change has is to have people drop from the corp to avoid getting shot at while they move their expensive stuff from place to place. That’s a good change, but still misses a huge problem.

As I suggested in my previous post, the changes I’d like to see are:

  • Players can not leave a corporation that is at war
  • War costs double each week the war is continued

I understand that not being able to leave a corporation at war bothers some people. From my point of view, if you joined a corporation, you agreed to be a war target. There are also some other approaches to preventing alt-corp hopping:

  1. Players can only join one player corporation per 7 days; you can drop to an NPC corp, but not join another player corp for 7 days
  2. Dropping from a corp does not ignore you as a war target; the war follows THE CHARACTER for 7 days or until the original war ends

Either of these would be a useful solution to prevent alt-corp hopping.

1 Comment »

War Dec Updates: Better, but missing an obvious issue

Posted in CCP, War on May 12, 2012 by khalia

So I’ve been reading (and watching the videos) for the Inferno updates. The updates for the War Deceleration system are particularly interesting for what they don’t include.

A brief synopsis of the changes:

  • Wars cost more to start (base 20 mil), and cost more for each player in the defending corp
  • Attackers can set a ‘surrender’ condition for ISK
  • When a war has been surrendered, you can’t redeclare war on them for 7 days
  • Defending corps can call in ‘allies’ who join the defending side, possibly for ISK
  • War-shielding and War-shedding tricks have been eliminated
  • Contracts for mercenaries (attacking and defending) have been added
  • Leaving a corp at war will be noted on your character sheet

All of these are good improvements, and I thank CCP for making these changes. However, one of the most problematical issues was not changed: Alt-corp hopping. CCP has not addressed the problem of players changing to an alternate corporation when they have been wardec’d. The last item on the list mentions getting a note on your character sheet if you leave a corporation at war. To be honest, most corporations don’t give a damn – and they don’t have too! If you can just keep alt-corp hopping.

CCP, you need to step up your game. The following changes are necessary:

  • Players can not leave a corporation that is at war
  • War costs double each week the war is continued

These two changes would first prevent alt corp hopping. For the issue of griefing a corporation by keeping wars going to prevent people leaving the corp, we add a penalty of doubling the war cost weekly, which will eventually make the war so expensive that the attacker will be forced to drop it – giving the defending corp time to drop members, etc.

    • 10 Comments »

    Fixing High-Security Wars

    Posted in War on October 16, 2011 by khalia

    Fellow blogger Jester wrote a post over on his blog (which I recommend) regarding high-security wars and the recent decision by CCP to allow corp or alliance hopping and other “tricks” to avoid high-security wars.

    While I enjoy Jester’s blog and admire his writing skills, I disagree with him almost entirely on this topic.

    What lingers for me today about this incident was the inherent unfairness of it. All of us that were fighting were sub-5m SP characters, trying to defend our right to mine veldspar in a 1.0 system. The aggressors were much older characters with tens of millions of SP and ships and income streams that we couldn’t dream of. They could keep the war-decs going cheaply for weeks, and we had no defense against them.

    …

    Some of you are no doubt bristling at my use of the word “unfair”. EVE is a dark, cold, risky universe where you can get killed at any moment, blah blah blah. Fine. I accept that. Wouldn’t still be playing this game if I didn’t.

    …

    Guys, I sympathize with high-sec PvPers and mercs. I really do. But in this, I have to look at the Big Picture, and the Big Picture says that such high-sec war-decs are often bad for the health of the game.

    …

    I’m all for teaching new EVE players that New Eden is dangerous. But I also feel like the true newbies — the ones that are still trying to learn how this game works — should be protected more than they are today. That’s why I say the current high-sec war-dec mechanics are badly broken.

    This attitude is wrong because “true newbies” are immune to wardecs; they are already in NPC corporations. New characters start in an NPC corp for this very reason – they have to learn the game mechanics before they get exposed to the issues of warfare. Even non-new characters get a chance to avoid wardecs, at the cost of an 11% tax, the lack of corporate wallets, hangars, etc. and the inability to deploy and use POS towers.

    Another fallacy is the “health of the game” argument. The assumption underlying this is that we want new players to keep playing the game. The fallacy behind this assumption is that not all players are equal. I do not want the EVE player base to increase with players who lack the resilience or determination to keep playing when the odds are against them. If you stop playing after your shiny new Hulk is killed by suicide gankers, then this is GOOD for the game.

    EVE *is* unfair. That’s why many of us like it. That shouldn’t change.

    This said, here are my own suggestions for fixing the current high-security warfare problems:

    1. The corporation or alliance declaring the war must produce a certain number of ship kills, pod kills, or ISK value destroyed in order for the war to continue for another week. The formula for this is determined by the game, not by the group declaring war, and is based on the number of players in the target corporation or alliance.
    2. The war can be ended early if the target corporation agrees to pay a certain ISK value to end the war. This is a fixed value based on the number of players in the target corporation or alliance.
    3. When a war has ended either due to surrender or due to the group declaring war not meeting their goals, or from voluntarily ending the war, the target can not have war re-declared on them from the same aggressors for the same length of time as the war took place. If war lasted six weeks, the target is immune to wars from same aggressors for six weeks.
    4. No member may leave a corporation while the corporation is at war. Members who are forcefully removed from the corporation may not re-join the corporation for one full week.
    5. No corporation at war can join an alliance. No corporation in an alliance at war may leave the alliance. Corporations in an alliance which are forcefully removed may not re-join the alliance for two full weeks.
    6. Warp scrambling of any sort prevents a ship from docking or using a gate.

    I’d go into greater detail about the suggested changes, but the ideas should be clear if you think through the implications. I also have to be awake at 0500 local time and need my fucking sleep.

    Leave a comment.

    32 Comments »

    Tearful Taste: Alcina Eva

    Posted in Delicious Tears, War on August 20, 2010 by paul

    Wartargets missioning in Dodixie of all places. This happens, then this, then this:

    [06:27:31] Alcina Eva > Paul Clavet Khalia Nestune Zarago Vemiska Your ass long face told you the same! FC!
    [06:28:55] Alcina Eva > Paul Clavet You like that in Germany a long octopus, Paul, you are brothers Why?
    [06:30:23] Alcina Eva > Paul Clavet Do you think you can do with the duck brothers? Very good!

    10 Comments »

    Plan B: Always the best.

    Posted in Combat, War on August 17, 2010 by captain

    So I had logged in and was playing carebear with an alt of mine, while Khalia and Paul were bashing some POS left completely undefended, when Zarago piped up about a war target in a Machariel doing missions up near Ichoriya.

    We all started burning over, some closer than others, I was around 20j out, and we waited until everyone was stationed a jump or so out of his mission system. It turned out a Golem showed up before we all got into position as well. While we waited for Zarago to give the call for a warpin, someone *cough*Paul*cough* told half of us to jump into system. Seconds later, Zarago told us he was still in mission, regardless of us botching the jump!

    We all sped in, as our target went through the first mission gate, Jerks hot on his trail. When I warped into the second room, the Golem was in the process of GTFOing, and we couldn’t point it. Redirecting to the Mach, I noticed I was getting an assload of damage, probably due to burning right at him.

    I warped my Cane out at about half tank, going to assist Khalia who was trying to get the Golem to engage. I landed at the gate they were at, and the Golem warped. On Vent, Jerks were having a hard time keeping the Mach down, as it was burning away at max speed. After a while, it warped, and managed to evade our tackle on the outbound gate.

    On Khalia’s mention of logging to make them feel safe, Zarago moved us all into our target’s first mission room, and we all logged. About 10 minutes later, he was back in a shuttle on the gate into his mission system. He jumped through, and burned back, clearly testing the waters. Not to spook, we waited. About a minute later, the Golem jumped through the gate. Yay! We got word that he was warping to his mission, and Vent went crazy while we all logged in and started a new fleet going.

    I warped to his mission gate, as did everyone else, save for Paul, who apparently logged into neverland or somesuch. We called point on the Golem, which started falling, three of us hitting him with everything we had. Seconds later, Kido Shihan’s Golem went up in a ball of flame, with Paul landing in his Raven as the cinders faded.

    Jerks got screwed over on the drops, but not all was lost. Noticing he was dual-boxing, getting his other shuttle character out of harm’s way, the Kido’s pod landed on gate, which we proceded to kill. Zarago also ended up getting the other character’s shuttle.

    As an added bonus, we ran a locator on the pod we popped, and we noticed he was now around 40j out.

    I think I speak the truth when I say that this will not work again. At least not on this guy.

    1 Comment »

    When All Else Fails, Use Denial

    Posted in Delicious Tears, War on August 14, 2010 by khalia

    Jerks dropped the war against Ludi Sacerdotales yesterday. We’d got our laughs out of them and were doing more interesting things like taking down POS towers.

    Apparently former LUDI CEO jaksparra (he dropped to an NPC corp) thought this meant they “won”:

    From: jaksparra
    Sent: 2010.08.14 15:04

    jaksparra has added you as contact with Terrible Standing

    Piece of shit that cant afford to continue a war against us. Guess we win.

    Sent: 2010.08.14 21:18
    To: jaksparra,

    We got 3/4 of your members to leave, you’re disbanding the corp, and we’ve had a spy inside the entire time. Not reading our blog, eh?

    We don’t need to waste one of our three wardec slots on you anymore.

    From: jaksparra
    Sent: 2010.08.15 02:01

    You should really check your spy again… LOL you FAIL

    Sent: 2010.08.15 02:04
    To: jaksparra,

    LUDI corp members, two weeks ago: 40
    LUDI corp members, today: 14

    Who failed?

    Sent: 2010.08.15 02:05
    To: Johanes Miller,

    you did.

    Logic? Who needs that! But jak is on a LogicFail roll and so decides to (badly) bluff me, and provide some tears at the same time.

    From: jaksparra
    Sent: 2010.08.15 02:13

    wow, your like a little kid. You have to have attention always. Did you ever stop to think we merged with another corp in o.o?

    Sent: 2010.08.15 02:24
    To: jaksparra,

    Nice try, but no. The members all went to different places:

    LCD DOG – his own self-made corp
    Aaron Sarusake – some other corp, then NPC corp
    Deceius – Test Alliance
    tej kai – npc corp
    Spacemonster72 – NPC corp
    Phantomesk, DreamTrooperX (and his two other alts) – Pwn N’ Play
    MentalMetal, Dominic Fergas – Frimosa
    Maeyanie – Deathwyrm
    your own alt Aglibol and yourself – Ludi and npc corp….

    Awesome job getting everyone in the same 0.0 corp with you! Oh wait…
    This will make a hilarious blog post, thanks.

    From: jaksparra
    Sent: 2010.08.15 02:28

    OMG are you still trying to prove yourself. What a little kid you are.

    Remember folks, if you send a “piece of shit” and “we win”, the other party is a little kid. Obviously!

    6 Comments »

    War! Ludi Sacerdotales, Part 3 – Fin

    Posted in Capers, Come On!, War on August 9, 2010 by khalia

    This will be the post where everything comes to close, where all the fun stuff we’ve been storing up for later gets to come out and see the light of day. This has been delayed a bit, but we do have real lives… amazing, isn’t it?

    Our wardec against Ludi Sacerdotales is still active, but we have suspended most activity against them. Why? We reached one of our end-game goals: The target is disbanding. Ludi has shed more than half it’s membership in the last few days and is down to 14 members from an original high of 40.

    In case you think that I’m speculating about their disbanding, let me explain: We had an alt on the inside the entire time. Both Captain Charismatic and I applied and joined the corporation. When Charismatic’s character was outed, Ludi believed they were in the clear and my spy character was able to follow every move they made. With my access to their corporate chat and Paul’s new intel sharing tool, all of Jerks was able to listen in on the corporation in real-time.

    We had a blast seeing all of the internal tears, horrible fits, completely wrong statements about game mechanics, and the reactions to our manipulating them from the inside. I will be posting a new series called “The Ludi Files” from time to time – because the amount of material is just too large to cover in any single post.

    I’ll start off the series now by talking about Ludi’s attempts to determine our alts. They correctly identified a few of our very obvious alts, but they fingered a number of characters as our alts which were either (a) only people we were friends with or (b) characters that had no relationship with us at all!

    This list has all of the actual Jerks members, but that’s pretty easy to find. It has three of our actual alts and one former alt (character now sold); none of this is too difficult to figure out if you read this blog and checked out some corporate history.

    Now the lols start: BM Dublyoo, Clantyn, Elias Tarmarr, Kel’airy, and Merktlhu are either friendly with us, or from our days in Suddenly Ninjas – but these guys weren’t involved in our war with Ludi and most likely didn’t even know about it. The real hilarity is the rest of the list: Britney Tears, Casiella Truza, Eliason Phasmatis, Miyamoto Mushai, and Novail. These guys are ENTIRELY UNRELATED to us in any way. At all.

    Essentially what happened is that if someone in Ludi saw one of the Jerks on a gate, with a neutral also there, they assumed it was an alt. *facepalm*. They harassed some of these guys, including poor Britney who just wanted to ice mine in peace.

    Finally, they missed a very obvious alt character. During our kill of the CEO’s Scorpion we warped in one of my alts with ECCM fitted up. He was on the field long enough for the CEO to have noticed, and would have turned red to him. No mention of this guy ever shows up. Fail corp is fail.

    8 Comments »