This week I'll be doing a series of posts about some of the problems I see with high-sec warfare in EVE. I would like to make it perfectly clear that I believe war decs have a definite purpose, and that they should not be removed from EVE. High sec should never be a perfectly safe place. However, the current mechanic and implementation has some drawbacks.
Part 2: Lack of Objectives
Currently, war decs have no real objective other than the right to kill people. While that is fine, I believe the mechanic should be much more goal based. I'd rather have several different possible objectives an attacker can pick when they declare war, with a corresponding set of objectives that are then given to the defender in order to end the war.
For example, the attacker could decide that they want their goal to be the destruction of a particular enemy POS (or poses). In order to select this objective, the attacker would be required to own their own high-sec pos as well, and the defender would be given the objective of destroyer the attacker's pos. If either objective is met, the war would be ended 24 hours later and a cooldown period of days/weeks entered before war could be re-declared between those two entities.
A second option might be a tonnage option, where the attacker can choose how many ton of enemy shipping (within a game selected range ) they wish to destroy. Their options of tonnages would be based upon the size of the enemy alliance, where if attacking a 10 person corp they might be given the choice to pick between the equivalent of 10 cruisers to 20 battleships worth of tonnage. A 1500 person corp target would give them a range of between 200 cruisers to 400 battleships they could pick. The tonnage would not scale linearly with corp size, as that would create unrealistic goals for a high-sec war. In return, the defender would be given a goal of proportional size depending on the attacker's size and choice. So, if the attacker picked a goal that was at the top of the range of their given options, the defender's goal would be set as the top of the range based on the attackers' size.
Another option might be to kill person X a certain amount of times (1-10 times). In return, the defender would be allowed to pick a certain member of the attacker corp, where if they kill that person X times, the war ends. In these cases, corporations would be informed that their opponent had chosen to target a specific individual, but not who that individual is.
Now, these are only some options for objectives, but I believe that mechanics along these lines would help give wars a purpose beyond just pew-pew (not that just pew-pew is a bad thing), and make it a richer experience.
What are you feelings about wartime objectives? What types of objectives and counter-objectives would you like to see?
Being new to EVE, I'm not sure I have the entire concept of war grasped. As I see it, it's a way for corps to fight in highsec. However, the one problem I see with objectives is this: What would the "reward" be for "winning" the objective? As it stands now, it seems like the only "objective" is to gun down as many enemy assets as possible (ships, POSes, pods, ect). Your proposed feature would, as I see it, be more of a "timer" rather than an objective. IE: War ends when you complete objective. The quicker it's completed, the quicker you go about your usual business. Rather than having it dragged on for an undetermined amount of time.
ReplyDeleteWhich, I think, is a great idea. ;)
So many faildec's so little time. I like the concept of war being fought over objectives, I'm just not sure if that wouldn't cause more problems than it solved.
ReplyDeleteGrief decs are already a pain to deal with for small corps and the idea that you can get a giant corp together to simply pester small corps day after day effectively toying with them would certainly be abused.
So, while I totally agree with your sentiment, I'm not sure this is the perfect solution to the problems of the current system. I think further discussion is needed to find a suitable and equitable way to solve these disputes.
Don't mind me, I'm just commenting for the sake of commenting in the comments section.
ReplyDeleteLike your ideas but do agree that other issues would need to be resolved first.
ReplyDeleteThis may be a stupid idea but what if corps could be more integrated in the meta-game by being contracted by various empire factions/npc groups to bring war to other corps or take defense of a certain asset against the attack of another real corp? Of course, this would only happen with corps that have identified themselves as willing to participate in such activities. It would also require some "greater power" to step in and arrange these scenarios.
The positive of course is this would create a PvP interaction in more of a mission style format. I would love to see this type of war objective option occur but I'm sure this is completely pie in the sky...
Nevertheless, I love some of your ideas and I encourage you to keep moving forward. I'm sure there are more ways to make hi-sec a fun, pvp area and not just a carebear haven.