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Jester’s Trek: Three approaches

December 16, 2013

I got lots and lots of really good comments on my tent-pole post last week, Overwhelming Force. And I was really pleased that a lot of you just GOT it. The post was necessarily a little bit subtle — well, as subtle as a post full of WWII references can be — but a lot of the comments I’ve gotten particularly via EVE mail and on Skype, really got the heart of what I was trying to say. Darkwater wrote (and it’s the comment of the week, edited slightly):

Perhaps Null should just be left alone for those who like to play that style of game. It sucks, but apparently a lot of people enjoy that type of gameplay.

The new space they plan to open up though, that might be a great way to introduce new and better mechanics to a section of EVE space for those who enjoy the type of tactical gameplay that you enjoy. There is absolutely no reason that CCP just just copy/paste systems and mechanics that already exist into the new space they are opening up. They could literally change all the rules when it comes to it, and invent lore to support it.

It’s a golden opportunity for them to shake things up and open the game up to new and different play styles, require all players to relearn how things work, ect. Think of it almost as EVE 2.0, without actually making a brand new game.

And yeah, I have to admit there was a certain amount of “there’s no fixing the current kid, so let’s make sure the next kid is perfect” in my thinking. 😉

Lots and lots of you brought up the idea of cool-down timers to try to fix the current kid — er, rather to deal with the current ludicrous fleet mobility — and it’s something that I’ve wrestled with from time to time particularly when the cool-down timers are attached to ships. What’s to prevent rich alliances from just switching supers/dreads/carriers/whatever like the Pony Express used to switch horses? So when these suggestions are thrown at me to reduce mobility, I always respond “Well, if it’s a cool-down timer, how about putting the jump cool-down timer on the pod?” Nobody I’ve presented that to has been able to come up with a major downside to the idea. Can you?

But a comment that I really want to highlight is the alternative view, written by Abdiel Kavash of FCON. It’s long — really long, practically a blog post in itself! — but if you’re interested in this topic, it’s worth your time. Call it the counter-point to my post. The whole thing is worth reading, but I want to focus on one particular bit:

…there is one coalition in the game that values strategic victories more than masturbating over killmails. That coalition is right now leading an offensive in no less than three distinct fronts in an effort to separate enemy fleets and lure their forces away from strategically important objectives by chasing killmails of some marginally relevant alliances. (Reminds you of something from the post?) How well this will work we will see in the following days and weeks.

That same coalition in not so distant past captured two regions by using nothing but fast stealth bombers, running in circles around enemy fleets and never putting our significant assets under the danger of enemy supercapital Overwhelming Force. This is pretty much the definition of guerrilla warfare taken to the extreme.

You mentioned logistics and supply lines. Some time ago, in the middle of a typical back-and-forth sovereignty struggle (I’m sorry, I’m bad at remembering details, I couldn’t tell you which battle or which system this was in) a sudden call went out for one particular outpost timer. A broadcast storm so massive one would think VFK was under attack. Why was this timer so much more important than anything else in that war until then? Our spies found out that the enemy alliance was keeping all of their SRP replacement ships in one station. Dozens of billions of ships, now inaccessible due to our station capture and lockout. This was a turning point in that war, unable to replace lost ships the enemy quickly fell.

Now, dig into this wall of text and you — or at least I — realize that he’s right. What IS the CFC southeastern campaign except a massive diversion of enemy forces away from where those enemy forces would rather be fighting? This gives an entirely different spin to the idea of overwhelming force. The classic horror of warfare is the idea of fighting on two major fronts simultaneously, but the CFC has now grown big enough that they can do it if they have to… but they can often prevent having to do it through diplomacy… simultaneously! It was a really interesting way to think about the on-going war.

“Nerf diplomacy” I believe the saying goes…

So thanks to everyone for all your comments! Really interesting stuff!

– Ripard Teg

If you would like to read more we invite you to visit his blog here.