Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Ghost Hunter]

Opposition stopping timer while anywhere in a timer's complex room is dangerous. They'll need to disable cloaking from affecting the timer, or it will instigate a whole new wave of AFK cloaker whines.

Not really a fan of the NPCs basically being paper weights, as the DPS they suggest will probably be ignorable to everything unless there is some kind of scaling upwards damage value over time. I am much more inclined to making the NPCs a useful ally to have in a fight, but they seem to dislike anything involving NPC involvement with players.

I don't understand the cynosural jammer mechanics in the context of FW. A Tier 5 system would be a major stronghold, presumably, and people fighting to claim it can wait 1 measely hour for the cynosural jammer to wear off before they bring in their supercapital blob? Not to mention people can just pre-stock capitals in systems they know will become Tier 5 and could be a problem for them later.

[Seriphyn]

Also the moment I try to leave FW, CCP decides to make it awesome again in the next patch.

Damn it.

Fucking tell me about it 

At any rate, I saw the first bit about upgrading systems earlier...however, I only just saw the NPC/plex changes for the first time, which has annoyed me since 2008/09...damn, finally.

[Gottii]

Opposition stopping timer while anywhere in a timer's complex room is dangerous. They'll need to disable cloaking from affecting the timer, or it will instigate a whole new wave of AFK cloaker whines.

This.

[Shaalira]

I don't understand the cynosural jammer mechanics in the context of FW. A Tier 5 system would be a major stronghold, presumably, and people fighting to claim it can wait 1 measely hour for the cynosural jammer to wear off before they bring in their supercapital blob? Not to mention people can just pre-stock capitals in systems they know will become Tier 5 and could be a problem for them later.

1.  It makes a number of assets in that system more secure.

Example:  You have a POCO or a POS coming out of reinforced at 08:00.  You spool up a cyno jammer at roughly 06:50.  Attackers will have to use gates, and any fleet they deploy to finish off the POCO/POS will be unable to light cynos during the fight.  But since you live in the system (and control the cyno spooling), you can have your cap ships already in place.  If the enemy waits for the cyno jammer to wear off, then you'll have repped the POCO/POS already, and they'll have to reinforce it all over again.

If the enemy comes in before your cyno has finished spooling, that's in itself a tactical advantage.  They've played their hand and committed their cap ships to a fight without the possibility of surprise reinforcements.  You can decline the fight or escalate to your advantage.

2.  It gives the owning group an advantage when beseiging assets in that system.

Cyno fields can be used offensively to cover fleets that are bringing an enemy POCO/POS into reinforced mode.  Those fleets can carry on their work without worrying about hot drops, and just watch neighboring systems with scouts.


As an aside, it does give FW groups a legitimate shot at controlling local moon goo, should any be well-organized and motivated enough to try it.

Of course, to do so, they'd have to win occupancy from the enemy militia.

[Esna Pitoojee]

My feelings about the cyno jammer is that it is "to little, to late" - that is, capitals and supercapitals have become so proliferated at this point that it will be little trouble for people to move spares into a system beforehand and leave them logged off/docked up in preparation for a battle.

Specifically, I fail to see why nullsec alliances, currently acting so upset about their ability to jump through staging systems being potentially curtailed, couldn't log off 5+ supers in those couple systems and make mincemeat of any cyno jammers anyone dares to put up.

[Merdaneth]

Some things might be improvement, but still lots of things wrong about this change. My primary objection is (and always has been):

It is stupid to defend something that isn't under attack

Having to defend something that doesn't need a defender other than 'being present' and leaving the defender nothing to do will always lead to alt play. Alt play will lead to gunless frigates and non-fights and a straight numbers superiority. It is not rocket science...

[BloodBird]

Cruisers murder AFs, sadly. That is why the previous plexing incarnation saw AFs used very rarely. Why fly a 30m+ isk AF when you can fly a 6m isk cruiser that does everything better, and easily kills that same 30m isk AF?

I'm not sure this holds true anymore. In the past, my FW toon used to fly Thorax'es in a variety of fits due to highly positive cost-vs-effect - The cruiser was relatively inexpensive, I know how it performs in most situations, it's very versatile, and I knew as a rule of thumb that I could engage frigates, faction frigates, AF's, interceptors, EAF's, destroyers, cruisers, some BC's and some Hac's and recons and such with a moderate to good chance of winning, or atl kill a few enemies before it dropped.

The last few times I've flown it in FW I've found AF's and faction frigs nearly impossible to kill because fittings that would own them hard some months ago can't even land a single hit these days - I especially remember engaging a Dramiel on a gate at point-blank with blasters utilizing null (Used to mean dead Dramiel in the past) and I was forced to de-aggro and jump because even sicking drones on him, pointing him, webbing him and shooting with null I couldn't land a hit.

I know they boosted AF's, possibly faction frigs too, but I can't remember anything about buffing their signature radius down to nonexistence.

[Merdaneth]

Cruisers murder AFs, sadly. That is why the previous plexing incarnation saw AFs used very rarely. Why fly a 30m+ isk AF when you can fly a 6m isk cruiser that does everything better, and easily kills that same 30m isk AF?

Only because the metagame has changed. Used to be much easier to kill cruisers, but that was before every cruiser worth flying fitted a full flight of warrior II's and a med neut.

[Lyn Farel]

I don't understand the cynosural jammer mechanics in the context of FW. A Tier 5 system would be a major stronghold, presumably, and people fighting to claim it can wait 1 measely hour for the cynosural jammer to wear off before they bring in their supercapital blob? Not to mention people can just pre-stock capitals in systems they know will become Tier 5 and could be a problem for them later.

1.  It makes a number of assets in that system more secure.

Example:  You have a POCO or a POS coming out of reinforced at 08:00.  You spool up a cyno jammer at roughly 06:50.  Attackers will have to use gates, and any fleet they deploy to finish off the POCO/POS will be unable to light cynos during the fight.  But since you live in the system (and control the cyno spooling), you can have your cap ships already in place.  If the enemy waits for the cyno jammer to wear off, then you'll have repped the POCO/POS already, and they'll have to reinforce it all over again.

If the enemy comes in before your cyno has finished spooling, that's in itself a tactical advantage.  They've played their hand and committed their cap ships to a fight without the possibility of surprise reinforcements.  You can decline the fight or escalate to your advantage.

2.  It gives the owning group an advantage when beseiging assets in that system.

Cyno fields can be used offensively to cover fleets that are bringing an enemy POCO/POS into reinforced mode.  Those fleets can carry on their work without worrying about hot drops, and just watch neighboring systems with scouts.


As an aside, it does give FW groups a legitimate shot at controlling local moon goo, should any be well-organized and motivated enough to try it.

Of course, to do so, they'd have to win occupancy from the enemy militia.

I understand the tactical value of this, but there is flaw in my opinion in the system. Since you can shoot the cyno, and since the cyno jammer will be deployed around the system hub, it is not really hard to my eyes to break it down and then make your cap ships come. The main issue is that you don't have a POS to defend your cyno jammer. Of course, if you have caps ready around, and not the enemy, why not yeah. Or do they plan to let players also deploy POSes around the hub as well ? Sounds weird to me.

Tbh I feel like Esna, it is not enough. It also sounds very complicated and thus subject to exploits and "anti-game" tactics to me. Maybe it will work, maybe not, but I am very reserved about that.

Cruisers murder AFs, sadly. That is why the previous plexing incarnation saw AFs used very rarely. Why fly a 30m+ isk AF when you can fly a 6m isk cruiser that does everything better, and easily kills that same 30m isk AF?

I'm not sure this holds true anymore. In the past, my FW toon used to fly Thorax'es in a variety of fits due to highly positive cost-vs-effect - The cruiser was relatively inexpensive, I know how it performs in most situations, it's very versatile, and I knew as a rule of thumb that I could engage frigates, faction frigates, AF's, interceptors, EAF's, destroyers, cruisers, some BC's and some Hac's and recons and such with a moderate to good chance of winning, or atl kill a few enemies before it dropped.

The last few times I've flown it in FW I've found AF's and faction frigs nearly impossible to kill because fittings that would own them hard some months ago can't even land a single hit these days - I especially remember engaging a Dramiel on a gate at point-blank with blasters utilizing null (Used to mean dead Dramiel in the past) and I was forced to de-aggro and jump because even sicking drones on him, pointing him, webbing him and shooting with null I couldn't land a hit.

I know they boosted AF's, possibly faction frigs too, but I can't remember anything about buffing their signature radius down to nonexistence.

It depends of a lot of things. It depends of the ships involved. Not long ago I killed a thorax in my vengeance without any effort while being also aggroed by a crow. It was easy, shoot the drones, then take care of the thorax at point blank range to get under the guns.

Against a rupture however, I would have had serious issues, mostly due to neuts.

[Ava Starfire]

A Thorax is an easy kill, generally (Poor wolf only has 2 mids, no web for me!) but a Rupture or Arbitrator is another story altogether... which are the 2 cruisers everyone flies.

[Merdaneth]

A Thorax is an easy kill, generally (Poor wolf only has 2 mids, no web for me!) but a Rupture or Arbitrator is another story altogether... which are the 2 cruisers everyone flies.

And everyone flies those because most other cruisers die to AF's and frigs?

[Ken]

Opposition stopping timer while anywhere in a timer's complex room is dangerous. They'll need to disable cloaking from affecting the timer, or it will instigate a whole new wave of AFK cloaker whines.

This.

Cloaked ships don't affect the timer already.

[orange]

I know they boosted AF's, possibly faction frigs too, but I can't remember anything about buffing their signature radius down to nonexistence.

-50% Signature Radius increase from active MWD.  Not non-existence, but they don't balloon up as much anymore.

[Rodj Blake]

I can't see the part where they say that they will rebalancing the plex NPCs.

I assume that it must be in there somewhere, since without that some factions will still have an easier time in FW than others, with predictable consequences.

[kalaratiri]

I can't see the part where they say that they will rebalancing the plex NPCs.

I assume that it must be in there somewhere, since without that some factions will still have an easier time in FW than others, with predictable consequences.

FW COMPLEX NPC CHANGES

We will be talking about complex NPC changes only here - we know FW mission NPCs need to be tackled as well, but for now let's focus on one problem at a time. Before we list the changes, the main activity we see for Factional Warfare is PvP. PvE should not override PvP in this feature, as such the NPCs need to be very specialized to meet the goals you mentioned in this thread.

* NPC attribute revamp: this means two things. First, making sure no faction has an advantage over another. For example, having some factions use missiles while other have turrets is a no go. The other is to make sure we prevent, or at least significantly reduce AFK farming without hampering PvP when it does happen. Current FW complex NPCs will be scrapped and replaced with new ones that have the following characteristics:

* Very low damage output - they can kill you if you stay in the complex without taking care of them for 15 minutes, but their damage potential is so small it won't hamper players if attacked by others while capturing.
* Very high speeds: no matter what your fitting is, they will catch you. No endless Benny Hill music scene anymore.
* No EW: no electronical warfare or any kind, as this would be destabilizing when PvP occurs
* Have Sleeper AI: that means they will change targets according to your threat
* Active tanking: NPCs will have an active tanking according to the complex size they are on to discourage players to tackle larger sites with undersized ships. For example, while Minor sites could have a frigate NPC easily killed in your own frigate, Major could have battlecruiser or battleships NPCs with a active tank extremely difficult to tackle on the same frigate.


Why do the active tanking point matter you say? Because:

* NPCs contest capture timer: as long as there is a NPC in the area the capture timer is paused, just like with an enemy player. Capture timer is only paused when attacking a complex. Defending a complex with NPCs of the same faction would not cause such pause. Coupled with the active tanking point above, it means that if you can't kill the NPC reasonably fast, you can't capture the complex.

* NPC number reduction: currently NPCs spawn by wave of 3-5 on a timer. Thus if you don't kill them in time you can be overrun by a large number of them. That was particularly a problem with EW NPCs, as while a few jamming NPCs is annoying but not a big deal, having 10-15 of them jamming you would prevent you from doing anything. Our goal is to change them to spawn sequentially one at a time, so the next NPC would not arrive until the previous one was killed. Again, PvE should not take over PvP in Factional Warfare.

* NPCs only spawn when no PvP is happening: NPCs spawn at a semi-random period of time, and only when the complex is attacked while there is no defending player. Technically that means NPC prevent AFK farming. NPCs do not warp away when a player from the opposing factions arrives. However, since they have very low damage and no EW, this shouldn't be much of a problem.

* NPC standing aggression revamp: it's currently very blurry to know when NPCs attack you and when they don't. Part of the NPC revamp is to have clear attack rules to know when they are going to attack you or not. A fallout of that is also to make standing gains from PvP / PvE more consistent in FW, as we have a lot of confusion with this as well. We still have to design details on this specific points, but there have been excellent suggestions on this thread we will look into.

Bolded the bits of particular importance.