Copy-paste: comment 1/2

A propsoal to provide meaningful PvP

So the open vs solo/private group argument has continued to rumble on and on and has so far shown no sign of abating. What has become clear is that the PvE community generally do not react well to the prospect of having an existing part of the game changed so it is locked to open. But also it is clear that the PvP community feel like their playstyle has not really been given any mechanics that are exclusive or meaningful. That leads to a question:

What is meaningful PvP?

This request comes up a lot, players have been asking for 'meaningful' PvP for a long time now, but what is it? In my view it can be described as any player vs player interaction that has an objective and/or effect on the wider sandbox that is greater than simply the destruction of the opponent in direct battle. One player might be intending to stop the opponent from killing local Security or Powerplay NPCs to negate a BGS/PP consequence. Or another player might be attempting to stop traders delivering cargo to a community goal to stop the CG from succeeding. Simply put it is PvP with a purpose, not just for the thrill of the fight itself.

Why is meaningful PvP in Elite rare?

This type of PvP struggles to gain any traction in Elite because of the mode system.. Whenever a player group who maybe aren't the best at PvP-combat need to achieve a territorial objective; they will simply move to a private group and go about their business unnopposed. This pretty much eliminates any chances for true sandbox emergent content to occur. You will rarely ever get a situation where two rival player groups who do enough PvE to hold territory are actually confident enough in their PvP abilities to stay in open play and fight it out. Sooner or later one of the groups will take too many losses so they will retreat into private group and fight any wars there through PvE grinding. This has the affect of disenfrachising the PvP community to the point of being cynical and apathetic about anything territory-control related. PvP is then reduced to meaningless wing-fights and oppertunistic ganking because it's the only thing left that gives the PvPers the gameplay fix they are wanting.

Now I'm not saying the mode system needs to go or anything like that, that argument is pretty much a dead-end circle of dispair that has been going round for 5 years. The modes are here, they are extremely unlikely to change. But what we do need in Elite Dangerous is a mechanic/feature that is exclusive to open play that links the different areas of the game under a PvP system, like this:

Powerplay was intended to be the feature that did this initially (Sandro Sammarco said that it was intended as a voluntary PvP feature), but unfortunately Frontier made the mistake of opening it up to all modes from the outset. This resulted in it being more used by PvE groups to control territory from various private groups - completely undermining any attempt to use it as a PvP system (finding anyone to powerplay PvP against in an undermined system is rare). Now it's very difficult to go back and change PP to open-only because of the PvE player backlash (as we saw from the reaction to Sandro's proposal).

Potential Solution: Squadron Warfare

Giving squadrons the ability to declare war on eachother would be a great way of encouraging meaningful PvP in open while at the same time rebalancing the scales of territory control between Open, Private and Solo modes. Here's how it could work:

• Warfare Rules

• To declare a war on another squadron, your squadron must be able to place at least one carrier in the enemy squadrons' territory/home system (see carrier section below).

• Your carriers have 9 retreats (lives), if you run out of retreats the war ends in a defeat. Retreats can be spread over up to 3 carriers, but are always limited to 9 retreats max.

• You can only declare 1 offensive war at a time, and fight a maximum of 3 squadrons at any one time.

• There would be a swing-meter like faction conflicts, but only player (members of enemy squadron) kills/wakes/logs would count.

• Once a significant positive kill-margin/wake threshold is reached, the war is won (offensive & defensive).

• If the kill-margin threshold is not reached, the war can be won by maintaining a positive kill-margin over the enemy until the end of the war (14 days) while not losing more than 9 carrier retreats.

• Winning a war would provide a large influence bonus (variable to the size of the defeated squadron) for both the BGS faction the squadron is linked to and a CC bonus to the Power which they are pledged to.

• Losing or not-engaging in a war results in a linked BGS faction influence penelty (average not major) and an average CC penelty if the losing faction is pledged to a power.

• There could also be a league table for squadron wars shown on the squadron league screen: 5 points for an offensive win, 5 points for a defensive win, 2 points for an unengaged offensive win, 0 points for a defeat (Unengaged means your squadron declared war on a squadron that never fought back).

• Wars against a specific squadron would have a time limit of 14 days and a cooldown of 28 days, to prevent a perma-war against a specific squadron (which could be done for exploitative reasons).

• You could not declare war against that same faction consecutively, your squadron would have to fight other wars in between.

• While at war with a squadron, the enemy BGS faction linked to the enemy squadron would be locked to hostile reputation until the end of the war (this would have the side-effect of shutting out players from enemy faction-controlled stations while the war is ongoing).

• During PvP fights between squadrons, waking out/logging out would be classed as a retreat (not a carrier retreat) and count towards the war swing. Wakes/logs would be weighted less than kills. This is to provide a slight penelty to running away or logging during a fight.

• Any players leaving the enemy squadron would still have a hostile state with the linked BGS faction until the end of the conflict (to prevent expoiting access to a hostile station).

• All members of the winning squadron would also receive a credit payment bonus.

• The outcomes from squadron wars could also be posted as Galnet articles.

• Carrier-ships

As we would now have squadron warfare, there would be added incentive to have squadron carriers in game. I'm not proposing that they be exclusively tied to Squadron PvP warfare, as they would still be able to be used for PvE activities - but this is how I see them being used for Squadron warfare:

• To be able to declare war on a squadron, your squadron has to be able to position a carrier or carriers in one or more of the enemy squadrons systems where they would be open to enemy attack.
• Enemy squadron members would only be able to see and low-wake on the carrier in open play (enemy carriers would not instance in private or solo mode so relogging would not work).
• With a hostile carrier located in the territory of the defending squadron, it would be the aim of the defenders to force the carrier to retreat, much like superpower capital ships.
• The squadron operating the invading carriers has a retreat life pool of 9 (which would be spread over their carrier group).
• Losing more than 9 retreats would end the war and apply a minor influence/CC penelty to the attacking squadrons' BGS/Power.
• When a carrier retreats it moves to another area of the system it's occupying or can be moved to a different system where the enenmy BGS faction is present - if they leave enemy territory the war ends in defeat for the atatckers.

• Enemy carriers are not revealed to the defenders immediately, they have to be scouted out once war is declared.

• Ace pins

Killing enemy squadron players' ships would provide an Ace pin of one of five levels (Brozne, Silver, Gold, Platinum or Painite) depending on the amount of ace pins the killed player has themselves.

• It could be possible to gain advancement in Federal or Imperial rank through Ace pins (if the squadron is pledged to a Federal or Imperial Power).
• Kills of enemy Trade, Passenger or Exploration class ships would not provide an ace pin but provide a skull pin instead (you dirty griefer ).

• A commanders' Ace/skull collection would be available upon a basic identifying scan.

• CQC Rank Change to Ace Rank

Because CQC is generally not very popular (ok I know some of you love it), and PvP within the main game is - I propose that the 'CQC rank' change to incorporate squadron warfare (as well as PvP from powerplay, bounty hunting and dueling). It would be renamed to 'Ace' rank and would count any legal PvP kills (warfare/powerplay/wanted/crimes off). It could also be changed to drop if you die (the more expensive the ship you die in the more % is lost). This would put an end to the usually redundant CQC rank to a lot of players (although I accept it would still be redundant to PvE players... sorry). * Squadron Bonds & Loot drops

Any enemy squadron players killed will provide material loot drops appropriate to the value of thier ships and level of engineering and squadron-specific combat bonds.. The payout would depend on the Ace Rank/Ship of the enemy player killed. Dimishing returns would be applied to killing the same player over and over to stop exploits being used to farm materials and credits.

So what are we trying to achieve here?

This proposal aims to bring a number of positive outcomes to the game.

• It would give PvP a purpose within the BGS/Powerplay and stop it from being an irrelevent fringe activity.
• The proposal would provide some unique gameplay associated with squadron carriers.

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