Wardecs - Solutions to a plague

By Dom Arkaral - Mercenary, Ganker, Bad Guy

Index

  1. Preface (Causes and Consequences)
  2. Solutions
  1. Cost Scaling
  2. Leaving Cooldown
  3. Limited Watchlist
  4. Locator Overhaul
  5. War Limit
  6. Ideas for more Conflict
  1. Conclusion (None atm)

1- Preface:

Currently, wars consist mostly of what the common folk call “blanket decs” and structure cleaning wars. Structure wars have always been around, in the past to kill POCOs, POSes and whatever treasures lay inside. Today, most structure wars are focused around the removal of citadels.

Blanket decs have also been around for ages, but not to the same extent as today.

It wasn’t always like that tho. In the past, more people were hunting all over New Eden for their targets with the tools that were available at that time.

How did it end up that way?

In early 2016, it was announced that the watchlist (a major tool for any hunters in EVE) would be overhauled in a way that you could only see if your “buddies” were online.

That change effectively prevented the relatively free intel about a person’s online status.

It pleased Supercap, and Titan pilots in nullsec, who were claiming that it was hindering their gameplay. But, on the other side, in Highsec, it stopped mercenaries from continuing their war target hunting activities.Some tried to continue the old ways of the hunt using locator agents, but to no avail. Others went on to become (or return) to hub and pipe camping.

2- Solutions

  1. Cost Scaling

        This idea is not my own, but it’s an idea that I think would work great with the second suggestion solution.

        The idea is to have smaller groups wardeccing bigger groups pay less than a larger group wardeccing a smaller one. This would, to a point, limit larger groups, whilst favorizing smaller groups or people that want to try doing wars.

Here’s an equation that would do the cost scaling some justice.

So in the new equation, the total cost would be X(#members) x Y (answer to the equation above) + 5 (rounded up to 5m) [1]

  1. Corp Cooldowns

        This one is more about people dropping corps to either deny a war to the attacker (by closing corp or swapping altogether), or people dropping corp to avoid defenders. I would set a 4 to 7 day cooldown upon the ability to join/create a new corp upon the leaving of a wardecced corp (as either attacker or defender)

This, in conjoncture with point A would make corp hopping pointless as larger groups sometimes declare war with an alt corp to avoid whoever assisted against them. And with scalar war costs, they wouldn’t be able to bypass the war costs.

Marcus: If people drop corporation during a war (i.e. “Dec-Dodging”), allow them to still be targetable for the initial 7 day war period.

  1. Limited Watchlist

As mentioned in the preface, the removal of the previous watchlist has heavily changed the landscape of highsec wardecs. My solution would be to re-add a limited watchlist to both the attacker and defender IN HIGHSEC ONLY. They would show the online/offline status of players, but with a certain delay (between 5-10 minutes). There would be no notifications (like the buddy list ones), but it would appear in the People and Places tab.

Arden: Having the watchlist only provide online status seems like a bit of a counter-intuitive and frankly, superfluous change if one considers that locators will also provide online status.

  1. Locator Agent Overhaul[a]

        This would basically complement the limited watchlist.

Currently locator agents don’t tell if the person you’re looking for is online or not, which is a pain. I would overhaul them to give the online status of your target, in a slightly quicker way than before. The actual time to know where one is located is a tad too long, I’d cut a minute to it for level 4 and maybe 2 to level 5 agents (to reward those that actually spent the time grinding effortlessly)

  1. War Limits

In an effort to limit the blanket deccers, I would limit the amount of wars one can wage accordingly to their omega member count. I don’t have specific numbers in mind, but the absolute maximum of wars at once should be somewhere between 75-100 for larger groups (200+ members), 25-50 for medium groups (100-200 members), 10-25 for small groups (25-100 members) and 10 for minuscule groups (25- members)

This would help have more separate groups than there currently are.

These numbers seem high, the idea is to limit the wars to a smaller[b] impact and prevent deccing just for raw numbers

  1. Suggestion #41122

Would it be considered op if a small deccing  corp 1-5 players could have a delayed (2-3 min) watchlist, but only if they have less than 5 wars. Decced corps couldn't have more than, idk, 20-30 toons (just throwing numbers)

It would be removed if they got more players or wars.

It would allow small-time mercs like @Arden to go back to our ancestral ways of the hunt.

Only offensive wars would count (so you couldn't find a way to hinder the wl, and I'd give defenders instant wl login notification.

A defender being attacked by a larger group with more wars wouldn't see any change from the current system.

(I'll add this to my googledoc)
I think it's not overpowered for either side, and I think it would send most deccers back to small time stuff

  1. Ideas for more conflict
  1. Moon Mining Refineries Change

Basically, in an interest to have more conflict over resources in highsec, I’d give Moon mining refinery owners the option to have some sort of field over the moon ore to prevent others from simply coming and taking it. This would, in my opinion, create a lot of conflict over the resources generated by moons, and it would make players who wouldn’t fight actually fight over something worthwhile.

Arden: Fully disagree on the point of having a forcefield over the ores. This would in my opinion actually reduce conflict by giving the carebears safety. It will disallow interesting tactics such as ninja mining the belts, or even suicide ganking the ships. Instead, the bears should be forced to defend their belt, the same way as they should defend their station.

  1. Asset Safety[c][d]

        To be honest, Asset safety should be removed in all areas of space.

POSes never had it, and no one cared. Why should Citadels have a mecanic that safekeeps assets that the owner can’t protect?

  1. Coming soon™

This is what I’d personally see being done with wars and highsec conflicts.

Highsec is pretty stagnant at the moment, it’s time that changed for the best of everyone.

                

[1] https://www.desmos.com/calculator/9mvc9uhoms

[a]Claevyan:  if we allow watchlist to show online status in hi-sec then it might be better for locators to show a generalized activity level such as the scum bag has been highly active in the last 10 days (indicating more than 5 logins) or The scum bag appears to have gone dormant over the last 10 days (indicating no logins).

[b]I believe this limits the sandbox experience, now the incentive is to just fill your void of decs on your list and keep pushing that limit everyweek. It builds a sense of limitation in a game where your supposed to want more, you don't limit miners or the moon goo.

The Mercs will just be limited horribly and their prices will triple for the war slots... Making the super wealthy have a private army and yet the little guy will have no where to go.

[c]This would be absolute suicide for EVE.  No one would risk valuable BPOs this way, or anything significant.

[d]I agree fully, and living in wormholes do not use it. However, I could support CCP if they expanded the insurance model and made asset insurance rather than safety. Pay for protection, but it only lasts for a set time. unprotected assets can be blown up or dropped like assets in a ships cargo.