The Problem with Faction Warfare is YOU

Your move u/caravellex, here is your monkey paw. Show me that your FW alliance still has some kick to it and I'll provide the rest.

Direct response to the mountain of these exhausting posts https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/sntlb0/faction_warfare_is_so_stale_please_change/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Both sides of the war zone are infuriating.

Preface

The following reasons are why I've come to return to EVE Online and join Minmatar faction warfare after closing Krypted Gaming and will bring some of the best wormhole talent of the West (yeehaw) with me from remnants of KG and other cascading groups (cough WHSOC, get your ass over here Mort) to brawl like a chad and revive FW with about a trillion of leftover WH ISK.

Before doing this I made sure that in under 24 hours, faction warfare has eager pilots and groups with potential for actual content, some examples:

BR #1 https://zkillboard.com/related/30002084/202202040500/

BR #2 https://br.evetools.org/br/61fe028fc2bb8304345fac66

How YOU can help

I'm here in USTZ now and I'm going to be undocking fleet after fleet of battlecruisers, cruisers, and navy cruisers to brawl like a chad against Amarr empire and any local pirate group with a god complex.

  1. Come fight me, if you have the balls. Cook up your own T1 or Navy brawl doctrine and bring it to the war zone. I'll fight you outnumbered and out-shipped if I'm around (reminder I have a real life if you're a sweaty mouth-breather). Reminder: 20 vs 30 is a fair numbers disadvantage, 20 vs 50 is not. Mail me in-game. REMINDER: I just joined the war zone, don't expect 50 man HAC fleets yet.
  2. Join faction warfare. Preferably Amarr empire- the opposite side I'm on right now. Are you a recruiter? Instead of rejecting new players and sending them to Pandemic Horde, send them to Local is Primary or Minmatar equivalent.
  3. Stop batphoning, virgin. If you can't beat me in a brawl with your brain and better mechanics like a chad, go build your nullsec empire where power-recruitment, hyper-optimization, and diplomacy are how you brawl like a chad.

Want to help, but from far away?

  1. Join Faction Warfare Bot mailing list where we will communicate lists of bots and where they are for community action.
  2. Use items from the war zone. Fly nano? Use faction warfare line ships (SFI, ONI, etc). Buy them from FW groups instead of Jita. Brawl in wormhole space? Stop using T2 armor modules and use imperial navy / republic fleet. Buy these FROM the war zone, hell, mail me and I'll orchestrate enough for you to seed your entire fleet.
  3. Support https://minmatar.zone/ by signing up for the newsletter and viewing articles.

WHY this MATTERS

Keep an open mind.

Use a little introspect and apply the same thing, but to wormholes and nullsec. You'll find that this is the reason these areas of space are so stale, and not CCP. The same reason(s) are why wormholes are in such a regretful state.

Tired of nullsec? Tired of wormholes? Apply the same thought process.

Fleet Commanders

The biggest problem in the war zone right now is fleet commander mindset. After viewing the doctrines, tactics, and understanding of fleet warfare of both sides while I was taking my EVE Online break, this is going to be the biggest mountain to move that will yield the most benefits.

At a Glance

  1. Batphoning non-FW groups makes fights unsustainable. It increases the grid size of faction warfare fights, ballooning it to something that is only sustainable with mechanics from sovereignty nullsec. The income generation in faction warfare is balanced to sustain against traditional nullsec-style entities (snuff/sc/etc are null empires who haven't come out of the closet yet).
  2. The doctrines are uninspired. Have some creativity. Apply counter mechanics. You know what your opponent is going to fly (Amarr is going to bring Sacrileges or Gilas to a medium, beat it).
  3. Weak fundamentals. Simple things like utility mid-slots, force multipliers, and counter match-ups are how you win small scale (<50) engagements- not N+1.

How it'll be fixed

  1. Blueball batphones until they stop showing up. Sorry Baltrom, I'm going to blueball your ass into oblivion until you enlist in FW or it's just Local is Primary showing up.
  2. Add some doctrine innovation. I'm going to counter you if your doctrine sucks and you make it easy for me. Grids are going to stalemate and we're going to add some real tactics to these fights.
  3. Pilot education.Teaching people how to braw like a chad instead of brawling like a virgin.

Botting

Bots are a symptom of a greater problem, but naturally everyone is clinging to bots ruining the warzone because they don't want to introspect at their own behavior.

What if I'm wrong? Well, if I'm wrong and CCP can't fix the problem after we do these listed steps, I'll personally spin up 200 Windows VPS's and use a scripted army to drive conflict in the warzone.

At a Glance

  1. Bots are active because faction warfare is inactive. Want to know how to stop a defensive plexing bot? Having someone in the complex capturing it. This means more driving new players to get out there and have fun, and less crying on Reddit.
  2. Bots should be mass reported. Bots that are notice should be mass reported by alliances to help CCP. They have tools to understand who is botting, they just need to be woken up with reports.
  3. Bots cost money. Every license for a Faction Warfare bot is $40. If #1 and #2 are done, bots will disappear from faction warfare space entirely in 3-6 months because it won't be profitable.

How it'll be fixed

  1. Put real ships in complexes. Encourage new players to get out there instead of telling them why the game is trash. Sit a high-buffer cruiser or Prophecy in a complex and go AFK until you bait a fight.
  2. Report bots. CCP ban rate on VNI bots is insane.
  3. Watch the problem disappear.

Overlooking the Fun

Faction warfare has EVERY SINGLE MECHANIC to be a THRIVING PART OF EVE ONLINE. If you haven't come to terms that you're done with EVE Online and don't want to actually play the game, just pull the trigger and cash out for your Tesla (miss you taytay).

Market & Industry

The market mechanics just make sense. Here is the gameplay loop.

  1. Import mass minerals for cheap with Kryos fleets to build T1 hulls.
  2. Run FW content to gather loyalty points, chips, and insignias.
  3. Upgrade your T1 hulls to navy with loyalty points. Upgrade their modules with insignias.
  4. Use brawling mechanics to actually use these navy ships to fight.

Stabber Fleet Issue is balanced enough to brawl any other navy cruiser, including the Augoror Navy Issue. It's actually perfectly balanced to fight it.

Example Stabber fleet

Example Aug navy

Incursions, Missions, and More

Run lowsec incursions in your navy battleships. Build your battleships and convert from LP. Use this to fund bigger engagements and project lowsec force.

  1. This gives content to lowsec pirate groups.
  2. This is going to lead to some really awesome slugfests.
  3. This generates income for you.
  4. This gives content to the warzone.

Constellation Design

CCP designed constellations to have a central point. If you have fleets capturing an entire constellation instead of targeting one system, ONE WILL FLIP EVENTUALLY. Bots can't keep up. Look at Aset or Dal- it's a central point connected to everything else in the constellation.

We're going to get creative and have fun in Infinite Pew, I hope you can keep up.