Don't let my downplaying of what "Raiding" is insofar as its place in the wider spectrum of crime as some misunderstanding on my part on the concept.

Every historical raiding group you named and every contemporary raiding group (Somali pirates, for ex.) comes from somewhere, and goes back to somewhere. Thats part of whats missing in this "raiding" equation, as proposed. ALSO, when caught NONE of those groups is just re-released to continue raiding wihout penalty. This is another part of what's missing from this OP.

I'm all for suprise raiding. I (and many others) feel that RAIDING is a great idea BUT under no circumstances should it be, by its srructural mechanics, an essentially risk-free auto-queue Ambush match paid out of district assets.

You seem hellbent on making it unprofitable entirely

No, I'm focused on it not being a risk-free auto-pub paid from my high-risk efforts.

Its NOT risk free when you actually ass yourself to defend your district is it?
That's your "risk- mitigation" right there.

Also when these groups didn't just steal from you they killed and burned everything they could find too.
So no matter what you did you lost something right? I think its fair for you to have to lose something when you either don't or can't defend your district.

If you get everything you lost back then where is your risk?
if you really want to push down that road then I have no problem pushing for you to pay isk to repair your burnt ass house.

That isn't balanced, that a group can pick who to take and when and then attack and whoever happens to be there (unless its EVERYBODY who happens to be there ) defends. Thats not mitigating anything, thats an autoloaded ezmode.

You do that now only with a 24hr warning. I personally have suggested that there be a window of opportunity around a districts attack timer. If you cant get enough people online around your primetime then YOU should not own land.

BTW- Every single one of those pillaging groups you describe was killed, dead never to to rob/****/pillage ever again ever, when caught or successfully opposed. Which I also proposed as a possible risk mitigatory element, that losing a raid would disable those raiders' raiding ability for a period.

Its great being immortal isn't it? I have also suggested that a corp cannot raid a single district more than once per 24hrs does this not sound fair to you? You kill them enough times they will learn that you are not an easy "target"

And I'll repeat again, if raiding is a low to risk free activity with almost guaranteed profits for the raiders direct drom the disrricts assets NO ONE will hold districts, they will accumulate no assets and then become useless for raiding. And PC will be what so many lament it is, a playground for super-vet pro-teams to stage epeenstroker contests while "the community" QQs.

No kidding right? Conversely raiding has to be viable enough to convince "the community" to participate.

Seems to me we're in agreement on the fundamental ideas if not the specifics of the details. Details very few in here outside of the Devs will dictate.

raiders risk a pittance and possibly an MCC build. Landowners realistically risk losing a significantly amount of accumulated assets after cumulative effects of constant raids over time.

Suck it up, cupcake.

BTW- Every single one of those pillaging groups you describe was killed, dead never to to rob/****/pillage ever again ever, when caught or successfully opposed. Which I also proposed as a possible risk mitigatory element, that losing a raid would disable those raiders' raiding ability for a period.

Try this
this thread has most of the basic ideas lined out within.

Right there is why there shouldn't be a way to counter raid. You said it perfectly Every single famous raiding group was very successful until they were famously opposed and destroyed. They got away with so much because no one could/would oppose them. Show up and beat your raiders and they don't raid you again simple as that.

Of course they will. Especially if they risk almost nothing to do so and can do so at-will. I fully expect (based off the OP description) to spend the majority of my time fighting raiders (and raid defenders) who were just spanked off the district but since there's little to no penalty for loss after match end they just re-queued another raid attempt. As I've said a few times, Auto-queued Pub matches paid from districts.

You are right at first.

As you keep defending you district against their raids they will learn that you WILL be there and WILL defeat them and pick someone else to attack.

You hope, I'll believe it when I see it.
What will also happen and then happen more often if what you describe becomes true is raiders will look to "softer" targets or districts that aren't defended (yes, like we should) and raid those, knowingly unchallenged. Which then affirms even more my assertion of raiding just becoming a 0-risk autopub, unless some other balancing element is put into place to shape it into something more meaningful as a game element.


tl;dr : Since raiders will have the enormous advantage of hand-picking the lowest possible risk matches for themselves there should be something to balance that risk/reward-wise for defenders. Whether it's defeated raider cooldowns (destroyed strategms/MCC etc) or retribution attacks or the potential of defended districts being able to field lopsided matches in favor of defenders or any of a bunch of other ideas. Something needs to be instituted as a balancer.

Raiding should not be an all or nothing game mode the point is to get new-berry corps feet wet in competitive gaming.

We all know that there is a significant paywall when it comes to even playing in PC in the form of battle losses (proto losse / no EOM payout).

Allowing corps to pick and choose their targets is hardly any different than what we have now. You can easily choose the weakest looking corp / district from the starmap the only thing preventing this now is player agreements amongst the biggest name corp. If CCP goes with the window approach. It will require large and active corps just to hold land with small corps being the pirate groups.The larger the corp and the more players during the raid window the less likely the attack succeeds. This is the balancing factor. The reign of small elite corps owning land is over with these changes they will have to recruit large pools of players to maintain and "garrison" their interstellar empire and that is not a bad thing.

The payouts from raiding will be much less than being a land owning corp anyways, it will not cause any real strategic loss other than the diversion of troops to these areas, and raids will cost CP, isk, and possibly a MCC. This will ensure that there is a large and active PC playerbase which will pull most of the high SP players from pubs.

From what i have understood you will lose clones from moving your MCC. This means to me that raiding will be limited to within a certain radius anyways which will limit the impact of a single group of raiders.

We both want the same thing and that is a large and active PC community.

Raiding should not be an all or nothing game mode the point is to get new-berry corps feet wet in competitive gaming.

We all know that there is a significant paywall when it comes to even playing in PC in the form of battle losses (proto losse / no EOM payout).

Allowing corps to pick and choose their targets is hardly any different than what we have now. You can easily choose the weakest looking corp / district from the starmap the only thing preventing this now is player agreements amongst the biggest name corp. If CCP goes with the window approach. It will require large and active corps just to hold land with small corps being the pirate groups.The larger the corp and the more players during the raid window the less likely the attack succeeds. This is the balancing factor. The reign of small elite corps owning land is over with these changes they will have to recruit large pools of players to maintain and "garrison" their interstellar empire and that is not a bad thing.

The payouts from raiding will be much less than being a land owning corp anyways, it will not cause any real strategic loss other than the diversion of troops to these areas, and raids will cost CP, isk, and possibly a MCC. This will ensure that there is a large and active PC playerbase which will pull most of the high SP players from pubs.

From what i have understood you will lose clones from moving your MCC. This means to me that raiding will be limited to within a certain radius anyways which will limit the impact of a single group of raiders.

We both want the same thing and that is a large and active PC community.

New Concept: Member Donations
Corporation Members can also "fuel the war" by donating their own Components, generating Command Points.

"If CCP goes with the window approach" everything will be balanced is = to
"If CCP goes with the deactivatable raiding strategem from raid loss" everything will be balanced which is = to
"If CCP goes with the Raid Reprisal battle-mode" everything will be balanced etc etc etc
See where we're at with this? A lot of good ideas but none of them are part of the proposal and all of them seek to address a facet of balancing this idea that also doesn't exist in the OP. On the bright-side I for one am very encouraged to see the community outpouring of intellect in recognizing this issue and proposing ideas to solve it.

btw, Theres very little indication that once raiding becomes a "thing" that it will mainly be performed by small pirate corps. As it's proposed raiding will definitely be an ez iskmaker for all the existing large corps. Hell, you needn't look any further than recent Molden Heath corporate merger history to find full pro corps consolidating their ranks in anticipation of the prospects of raiding. Large corporate landholder will have the personnel (with the SP base to be effective) to spread around and repel raiders across timezones. Smaller corps? Not so much. Which will most likely lead to fewer small corps actually having districts since after being constantly raided they'll be incredibly easy to flip by any interloper group. Not exactly a formula for robust PC growth.


I'm still optimistic about raiding though, any addition that can expand the possibilities of Mercenary Employment is worth at least trying to form and balance. Done well I think raiding will be an excellent mode. Deployed imbalanced or otherwise broken somehow*cough*just about every patch/fix/update ever*cough* and I think raiding will do far more harm than good.

So now not only will players who spend hundreds of thousands of AUR on warbarges have a damage bonus giving them a significant advantage when it os pro v pro but they will also be able to lock their district at a cash price?

Thankfully this is only a concept and not the final stage. If players only generated CP through completing daily missions then I think this will make it more "free player friendly".

unnecessary hyperbolic statements

New Concept: Member Donations
Corporation Members can also "fuel the war" by donating their own Components, generating Command Points.

Spitballing

We are mercenaries. We fund fight the wars of other men. We have taken to the skies, but we still fight because we are paid to fight. And good pay has never been in higher demand.

---

Corp as Employer, Merc as Employee, Components as Compensation:

An Active Merc generates Command Points for his Corp by completing Corporate Missions. These Command Points can be used by an Active Corp to expand into new Resource Bases, harvest / fortify / modify existing Resource Bases, or attack-occupy / attack-raid the Resource Bases of other Corps. As Active Mercs are requisite to Corp Activity, behind every Active Corp are guaranteed to be Active Mercs. Corporate uses aside, a Merc is a Merc, and Mercs get paid. Common corporate compensation is Isk, but Isk is easy to come by. The compensation a Merc really wants -- the good stuff -- is Components; have to keep the rust-bucket afloat, and whatever's extra can be readily converted to Isk.

Active Corps need Command Points, so Active Corps want Active Mercs.
Active Mercs need Components, so Active Mercs want Active Corps.
Active Corps need Components to attract and compensate Active Mercs.
Active Corps get Components faster by participating in PC and Raids.


TL;DR: Symbiotic relationship best relationship.

All this argument come down with Aurum.