[PROPOSAL] War-Dec Review

[Alain Colcer]

First let met emphasize a few concepts:

- EvE is non-consentual
- PvP can happen anywhere at anytime
- People will always look to shit, fuck, and just plain harm other people in this game

War-decs therefore are a tool that "allow" two groups of people to engage in the behavior described above using a freeform framework.

Aggressor will be the term referred as to the party starting the war
Victim will be the term referred as to the party on the receiving end of the war

Now, let me add my view on a few of the key aspects of what involves wardecs:

- The wars are always defined by fights between two sides, 3 corps can be wardecced against each other, but it still can be interpreted as "us" against "them".
- Mutual wardecs is a change on the relation aggressor-victim, and therefore represent a clear message of aggressor-aggressor confrontation, there is no victim. Such relation means the wardec can continue as long as the involved parties desire.
- Wars should not last forever, an aggressor that is able to renovate the wardec indefinitely despite any offers from the victim to end the conflict is an unbalanced mechanic, and could be interpreted as harassment. Exception being the mutually declared wars.
- Wars that involve disproportionally big aggressor against small victims could be considered unfair, however life is unfair, wardecs should allow this kind of confrontation, but add a disincentive.
- Wars should have meaning, objectives, goals or simply demands that can be met ingame.
- Wars should have the option to incorporate "friendly" parties on your side, regardless if you are the aggressor or the victim.

So in essence, wardecs in eve could behave in the following framework:

- War Declaration Statement: a free textbox to communicate your intentions or smack/troll against your target (victim)
- Duration: begin date to end date. Starting date must be 24hrs from now, end time must be under 3 months.
- Demands: linked to an ingame contract. Victim could pay isk, assets, hand over ingame items, etc. Meeting these demands ends immediately the war-dec. It could also be empty, indicating negotiation is not feasible.
EDIT:
- Cooldown: after the war ends, the victim has a 1-week cooldown period, and its former aggressor or allies of the aggressor cannot declare war again.

Now the interesting and dynamic part, THE COST of the wardec is calculated taken into account:
1- Time duration (how many days)
2- Amount of people in the aggressor corp/alliance
3- Amount of people in the victim corp/alliance
4- Amount of people as allies on the aggressor side
5- Amount of people as allies on the victim side
6- Mutual status

The price will be cheaper if the war is short
The price will be cheaper if aggressor+allies is a smaller group than the victim+allies
If the war is mutual, the wardec fees are reduced to 25% of what it would cost, and can be renewed indefinitely.
Wardecs fee are always charged, even if victim and aggressor are of equal size and have a mutual war ongoing.

The above framework provides emergent game play, mercenary services, the ability to enable surrender conditions, incorporate the amount of people involved on both sides as balancing factor and most notably a known end date.

To a carebear corp who is being griefed, the tools to hire protection or just "hide during the war" are valid
To a bloodthirsty corp who seeks fat juicy targets, and fight against all odds, it would mean shelling less isk and therefore an incentive
To a RedVsBlue scenario it means the war fees are very very convenient as long as there are no large differences in the ammount of people involved on each side.


Now i ask, How would you exploit this proposal?

[Varcaus]

Declare war for x amount of time then have everyone rejoin corp.

[Alain Colcer]

fair enough, could be fixed if wardec fees are refreshed every downtime.

[xanral]

To fulfill one of your issues there should be a cooldown period so A cannot redec B. The cooldown period should probably be 1 month or the length of the wardec, whichever is higher. Otherwise they could just redec with 1 week contracts forever.

I don't think mutual wars should cost anything.

You should probably consider the types of corps likely to be wardecced and to be the wardeccers and see how your system holds up in each case. Example:

A WH corp might only wardec another as an auxiliary action to a WH invasion. Probably their war would only need to last a week but allowing the other side to bring in 20 HS allies would make declaring the war counterproductive. Price really wouldn't matter as long as it was less than a billion for that week (and even then might not matter).

A small HS PvP corp might welcome 20 additional opponents but be unwilling to pay much for a war due to lower ISK making potential than a group likely to be rolling in ISK.

Not saying that the solution has to make each type of group/playstyle happy but that should be considered past just simple exploits.

[Alain Colcer]

I forgot to add the cooldown, it should be a 1-week "ban" in which the the aggresor or any of its former allies cannot declare again against the victim.

One week is enough time in eve terms, and would probably allow the members to recoup some of the losses.

[Sponk]

Supported for making numbers on both sides count towards fees. (I suggest it would scale by the number of war targets times a multiplier between 0.5 and infinite based on the ratios of attacker vs defender.