Examples of Strategic Situations
A Station-less System with Greater Importance
Imagine the Martoh scenario again, except this time every system is under Gallente control except Kehjari. If CalMil wanted to take Eha, which is closely guarded by GalMil, they will likely have to first capture the surrounding systems or the siege of Eha is a tall order. If you look at Martoh, it is very much a bottleneck for any progress towards taking Eha. Defending a system like Maroh, with its many gates suddenly becomes far more important even though it doesn’t have a station.
Running the Pipe
The area depicted in the image above may not be a hotbed of activity in the real lowsec but it serves as a good example. If the Caldari wanted to march on Aunsou and capture it because it was a key GalMil system (speaking theoretically), they would want to take Gare to help push the influence in their favor. To do this, they really need to capture the entire Barleguet-Aunsou pipe. Supposing that the Caldari captured Barleguet, the task to capture Aulbres would actually only require the normal amount of LP because the pipe only has two adjacent systems. One owned by CalMil (Barleguet), one by GalMil (Garea) and thus both parties split the Influence 50/50. This mechanic continues until the end of the pipe so it effectively takes Influence out of the equation but it does encourage the aggressor to methodically capture systems rather than squirrel around and only fight in a few scattered theaters.
Home Turf
In this scenario let’s suppose that the Gallente are trying to capture this part of lowsec which is very close to the heart of Caldari highsec. Commons sense would dictate that these sorts of systems would likely cause more of a stir among the Joe Does of the Caldari empire since they’re so close to their key systems. In this case, a system like Uedama can suddenly become very important. Even if one or two corporations in this region are left to defend against a Gallente push, the fact that a border system like Uedama has 4 of the 5 adjacent systems permanently counting towards CalMil gives them a great advantage. The best the Gallente could hope to do in taking Uedama would be to require 130% of the regular LP needed to make a system vulnerable. Aside from making sense from a “you fight harder the closer you are to home” standpoint, it also adds the drama to the situation or even a sense of escalation.
In the current system, factions can capture systems a mere handful of jumps from their enemy’s informal capitals and it is no different than capturing a system in the middle of lowsec. The Influence system adds difficulty, and there for significance and accomplishment, to striking close to an enemy’s home.
Strategerize!
Even the fact that I need to break out a DotLan map to explain these examples excites me. The level of strategic thought that a system like Influence requires is much higher than with the current FW system capture mechanics. Theorycrafting and strategic discussion in alliance could bring entertaining content for armchair generals before the first pilot even undocks.
I realize that many people are perfectly happy with being able to deploy any and everywhere and steal someone’s prize system, and that’s fine. The Influence system leaves the door open for that, it’s just more difficult to do. EVE is already a very thought-intensive game, why wouldn’t something as important as capturing systems also require planning and thought beyond which station to base your corp out of?
If careful planning and patience are the hallmarks of EVE mechanics, the Influence system adds another layer of thought to an already intellectually stimulating game and creates more meaning behind plexing system A or B. Even the quiet backwater systems of lowsec can have their day in the sun when the enemy comes storming through the region.
9 comments
Good intentions, but I think this just opens up factions for steamrolling. The argument can go both ways I guess. With the influence constraints imposed, it might be easier to herd the cats and mount a defence. But it can also be used as a way to terminate a large amount of assets by plowing through whatever the herded enemy throws at you (which you would be able to dismantle since you’ve came this far). It might demotivate people from participating all together. Farming might be more difficult maybe…
I’m not sure. I don’t think you’ve discussed the points in enough detail, and I don’t think one brain is enough to do that anyway. The influence mechanic is not novel, has historical evidence to it, and I think for that reason its best to observe other games with the same mechanic for inspiration and practical case studies that can be used in the analysis.
I agree that changes should be brought up, but I think any changes to FW need a different direction all together – something that inspires politics with 3rd parties. Without this element it just feels like a different lobby in the same game. This was somewhat attempted with the solar system bonuses reducing market thingamajigs, supposedly intended to inspire people to bring their commerce to LS, which clearly isn’t that important to the people who capitalise the market, seeing as we only have few dedicated people utilising these bonuses.
The 3rd party is what needs to LEAVE FW not get a stronger foothold. Imho
Why?
I’d agree only if the goal of the 3rd party is troll and jump on the encounters that FW folks create, attracted by the currently stubborn intention to actually avoid creating content amongst themselves (other 3rd parties).
Right now they feed a lot out of the activity we create in our space. It’s kinda unfair because all they give back is an arm’s race that is in a way making low-sec space strangely closer to null-sec status.
Maybe having them play a bit more by our rules (“downsize or die”, “don’t kill off your content”) wouldn’t be that bad.
I’ll use the current situation because its the best reference i have. We live in gal mil Low sec near Snuff Box. They can field and drop multiple supers and dreads at any time day or night for the most part if the situation occurs. This makes it so we have to have our fleets completely in another area of space just because of their overwhelming number of highly SP trained pilots. The reason they have them and we don’t is because this is a militia designed to recruit the new players and grunts to press F1, not to fight capital and super gangs just because your trying to fight a Caldari tower with a T2 cruiser gang, your brawling it over having a grand time. all of a sudden 15 Archons drop and 2 dreads and you just try to warp off and cut your losses. They need to make non FW low sec more appealing as well as fixing the issue in FW. It takes FAR more content away then brings it. Unless you just roam in a frig all day. If your out in T1 cruisers, don’t forget to scout every system in 5 directions all the time if your in range just because your trying to enjoy FW. FW is drawing so much attention from outsiders its unbelievable. other then the smaller groups of corps that bring 10 or 15 members that solo most of the time, which is fine. However having a fight in a large with T3 cruiser and Guards while trying to save a system from being flipped only to have everything ruined by that 3rd party and just take every once of enjoyment out of the next week while we try to work at the system while the 3rd party is always there knowing that’s where the entire 2 parties are focused.
TL:DR
“A wise man once said, its never wise to fight on two fronts.”
– Iggy Azalea 2015
It is an interesting idea, but it could potentially open the system for abuse. It does open up a strategic risk like aspect to FW. Furthermore the choke point systems become either easier or harder to take relative to which side of the front line of the war zone is on.
Your article got me thinking about the ability to ‘skip’ the front line and capture systems all over the place willy nilly. What if you could only take a gate into (or out of a system) as long as your faction owns at least one side of the gate? No more enemy factions more then one jump deep into the opponent factions space (high sec or low sec). The opportunities for concentrated front line warfare would be epic. And geography would play a crucial role in the ability to defend (or attack) two front line systems at the same time by the same group of people.
Of course you could always use a jump drive or bridge to reach into enemy territory but then you must also use a jump drive to get back out again. Since combat titans are far out of reach of the militia’s it would likely be black ops hit and runs deep beyond the frontlines.
Just a thought I had after reading your article. cheers
I don’t think this suggestion would improve FW game play.
Being forced into a slugfest with a (potentially) more prepared and dug in opponent kills options, choices and freedom in how the war zone moves and (currently barely) changes. It benefits the militia who is all clumped into one to five systems and has stockpiles of cheap and disposable ships, while it punishes the militia trying to harass the “backwater” areas by virtue of their progress being slowed my -mechanics- and not -other players-.
If you do not want to lose systems that are “behind” your lines then you should try to defend them. That might mean spreading out. Amusingly, that almost represents the ability of one force to harass enemy logistics because attacking “behind the lines” forces your enemy to either accept those losses while pressing forward or redeploy to secure what they already have.
I think this is an unfortunate outcome of the fact that most of what the four great empires do just takes place in the realm of lore, and is seldom shown in the game. Supposedly Caldari and Gallente have ginormous militaries, larger than any player null entity, that slug it out all the time. Yet, apart from occasional events like the Battle for Caldari Prime, that action never shows in the game, leaving it entirely to the capsuleer militias (that lore-wise would only be a small fraction of the total military might of the empires) to actually move the front.
Using “front” here as the imaginary line on the map between Caldari- and Gallente-controlled systems, not an actual separation line between military forces. The lack of actual frontlines follows not just from the ease of logistics, but also from the low density of military forces in the warzone at any time. If the tanks of the Wehrmacht had infinite supplies and the density of military forces on the Eastern Front no larger than that in a FW warzone, chances are they would have been able to roll straight to Moscow with little to no fighting on the way.
It would be nice to see navy npc rats around in some capacity in the warzone, just to make it look and feel like a real warzone where empires clash, even though they shouldn’t play a too active role. Maybe spawn in a way similar to highsec navy rats in certain core FW systems whose capture, by all reason, should be unfeasible. Or just make them hang around the stations of the militia and navy npc corps.
As for warzone geography, I once thought about it in similar terms as the author, though I’d go for a simpler system less prone to oddball stuff from things like weird geometries. First, lock FW pilots out of all enemy stations, just like FW lowsec stations. That would already impose front formation. Then, add a supply mechanic. Any FW system that can trace an unbroken route of friendly-controlled systems to its own side’s highsec is considered to be in supply, a system that can’t is considered to be out of supply. If a system is out of supply, the number of victory points needed to capture it is halved. If a system is in supply, and adjacent to an enemy system in supply, no modifiers apply. If a system is in supply, and not adjacent to any enemy system in supply (or enemy highsec system), it’s considered secure behind the front line and capturing it requires 50% more victory points than usual.
Such a system would create opportunities for strategic maneuver warfare, giving advantages to those who can take key systems and cut off others, giving it a discount at amount of plexing needed to capture them. Or allow dramatic actions like cutting off a pipe straight through, causing the enemy to lose supply to a number of systems but also pressing you hard to defend the one system in the middle of the pipe, since it too would be just as much out of supply.
Fix for farming;
A non upgraded system spawns rats as they do now. A system upgraded to 5 spawns 6 rats. One extra for each level. This alone would justify keeping systems upgraded and would heavily impact the opportunistic farmers snatching LP from homesystems while no one is looking.
Fix for FW occupancy;
Hostile factions can no longer online POSs inside hostile systems. This alone would make deploying very far behind enemy lines difficult, but wouldnt impact the day to day of faction war.