Here's hoping your points are heard and acted upon.

Reactivating Mercenary matches as a way to form up war parties on the fly would be good. Create some opposition for organized corps. It's kinda like a PUG so you don't pay the damn collateral given the fact that 90% of the time organized corp Vs random grab bag of derps, scrubs and rage bus riders are unlikely to win unless they can cook up organization and coordination, FAST.

why not go full stupid and make it so that it costs 1 AUR to sign up for a pug.

I think this option should be something that becomes available if a corporation is a no show to a contract that has already been accepted. That way like Telc is saying the collateral is still a factor, but teams that don't show up are punished by loosing their collateral and giving the opportunity for randoms to fill up the corp match to mount an attack/defense of the district. If an attack contract goes unanswered I think there should be some fair system in place where the district is automatically awarded to the attacker (maybe after no defender accepted the contract 3 times in a row).

Having a clock in Eve time would be fantastic. It is hard to coordinate with pilots in Eve time, and with Dust players in different timezones. I'd prefer it if there was a clock in the neocom. I'll probably get used to converting the time eventually, but I'd love a clock that shows Eve time anywhere in the game. I think part of the problem for some Dust players (like myself) is because we are coming from the console FPS world into the Eve universe, which we are not used to. I think getting Dust mercs to use Eve time will make it easier to go from Dust to Eve. Setting up an Eve account is getting kind of tempting :O.



I think this is to make it easier for Eve pilots to get to certain locations on time. I would love timestamps on chat messages. As a Dust merc timestamps are more important to me, partially because I have to convert the time to a 24 hr clock and then GMT, and because it makes stuff easier to coordinate if we know what time it was said.

After re-reading what Kain Spero posted, I realize that my chat stamp request is slightly off-topic from what Kain Spero had in mind, so sorry about that. I believe Kain Spero wants to make it easier for Dust mercs to tell Eve pilots when and where they need to be. As a merc, I am instantly teleported to a system, but apparently Eve pilots need to fly and go through gates and stuff.

From personal experience, I have seen most of my support organized out of game instead of in. It would be nice if the process was streamlined.

The issue with a miss once and flip system is that a REALLY REALLY large corp could put out a massive amount of contracts that could let them flip entire constellations by just winning the lottery of placing the contracts when few people happen to be on.

If you did a no show and flip system it would have to be balance by limiters like only x number of contracts per corp, but even that could be abused with alts and alt PSNs. Think of this way: automated systems in a district can repel an attack, but only for a certain time (2-3 unaccepted contracts etc.) until the attackers are able to seize the district.

This is now one of my favorite quotes. I might just add this to my eve side signature.

I totally agree with bringing the logistics side to it. It also an important way for Eve to be able to push back against Dust.

The main thing though is that I think this should be limited to Nullsec warfare. In Faction warfare the Navy from each faction would be providing the War Barge and the MCC for the engagement. In null it would need to be player provided.

The key here is to make sure that the gameplay is fun, but add layers of complexity (like War barge logistics) as Mercs and Eve pilots travel down the rabbit hole.

I worry about introducing the lag time for a player deciding they want to fight and being able to fight.

Maybe if the current system of contracts is left in place for dueling, grudge matches, srims etc. then that wouldn't be an issues.

I think the mechanic would be fine for Null, but it may be a case of too much too soon with Faction Warfare. I agree that it would be neat, I just wouldn't want to add it to the detriment of moving players from pub matches to something with more meaning.

It may be that your linear progression idea could play a factor in this though. What I mean by this is maybe war barges are only placed in systems that are on the current front line systems of the war and so you can only spawn contracts in those systems. As one milita pushes the warbarges follow suit and move the ground game as well as the naval conflict forward.

Hmmm.......

We already have the 10 min timer for a War barge. Maybe make that timer actually the travel time for a NPC war barge??

I would still want to proceed with caution. Lets make Faction Warfare not broken first, but long term this sounds like a golden idea. Imagine being on the War Barge, but instead of seeing the planet below you see yourself warping/jumping through space.

Just remember that war barges most likely travel via jump drives rather than warp drives. Maybe they cyno into a system 30 mins before a match and the opposing faction has to know its coming and scan it down. Mercs then begin deploying to the war barge at match time.