Originally by: Reto
what is your opinion about eves current direction of fleetwarfare over smallcscale warfare?
it is known that currnetly major alliances build up their capital pilot rosters and capitals becoming by far more important than conventional ships in fleetcombat.
where do you see the future of this development?
will eve become a fleet players game only where ppl need big amouts of time, money and manpower to get involved in pvp?
or do you see smallscale pvp gaining more importance again so the solo players with less rescources and time at hand have a bigger impact on warfare in general?
A lot of people are looking at putting intermediate goals into the sov process which should help a lot. I know I am[and go into greater detail in my document]
But before we get into that lets talk about low-sec and empire. In low-sec and empire there is really no reason to have large gangs. Gang sizes are determined only by the number of pilots you are willing to have come and fly with you. And its mainly all about fun and not about pushing grandiose goals. This means that any blobbing that is happening in low-sec is happening as a conscious choice by at least one side involved.
Earlier in a discussion on local I was talking about what would happen if players had perfect information. And the conclusion i came to was that with perfect information fights are either entirely non-existent or are brought closer together in terms of force strength. This is because not only do you know what your enemy knows, but you know he knows what you have. Which means that if you bring anything he can't fight well enough, he will always run away. And if he brings anything that you can't fight well enough, you will run away, and he knows this. So if you bring 3 t1 cruisers he can't get together 10 HACs and expect to get a "good fight". This type of thing is good and bad, but it shows how more information pushes smaller and less lopsided fights. Which gives us a bit of insight into why this sort of activities proliferate in low-sec when there is no reason to bring fewer people to a fight. Hopefully factional warfare will be that reason.
In 0.0 though we can implement goals for forces that do not scale in difficulty of completion all that much as gang size decreases, and offer fixed returns to each side for their destruction and defense. Such there is a reason to fly a tech 1 cruiser into hostile space and make yourself a target and there is a reason to come and try to kill it immediately rather than waiting for a support fleet to come[since he is hindering your income by doing his deeds]
Lets say NPC haulers spawn at gates and stations and provide passive income for alliances if they make it the run of their slow-boat if they are attacked members of the alliance get a flash on their map browser if they are close. They would have high bounties and drop high quality small loot an have decent amount of hit points with little or no repair ability[say, 120k EHP] Each time one survives that alliance gains in excess of the bounty/loot drop. Each time its killed they do not.
Such there is incentive for alliance members to scramble to defend the NPCs at a moments notice[or they will die and the alliance will lose income]. There is incentive for small forces to go out and kill these NPCs, since each one they kill is direct money in their pockets. And there is no reason for friendlies to kill these NPCs[as it does more harm to the alliance than it does them good].
Someone(i don't know who) took this idea and expanded it to moon mining. Where an NPC would travel some distance from the moon to the POS to deliver the minerals which could then be ransacked depriving the alliance of some of that POS's income while enriching your own[as you return and sell that moon juice]. This is also a good idea that follows the same model I laid out with regards to goals for smaller gangs and both are examples of what we can do to promote a smaller gangs viability.
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Question to all Candidates: Future of Warfare in Eve
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