There's a nail with a headache in here...

I think the key part you mentioned is EVE players not being able to take a district at all if enemy mercs are on the ground. If that were the case, then it would be a HUGE incentive to employ Dust mercs in any invasion, AND I think it has the added benefit of not having to add in any extra financial trickery with regards to increasing incentive. Doing so may break other things in the delicately balanced economy EVE's got right now.

So, an ISK incentive without an ISK faucet sounds like a pretty good plan to me. No mercs in the district you want? Cool, zoom your destroyer over the district and plant your flag (maybe a quick 10 to 15 min process?).

But if you do this, then whoever owns the district will get a distress message saying your district is under attack, and they have those 10 to 15 minutes to spawn their corp guys on the district and stop you. No Dust mercs logged on? Time to put up a contract and cross your fingers. Don't take space you can't keep.

Hi! I'll add my part in sort of a story.

So (fairly) recently there were merc battles between caldari and something else. I forget, but I'm sure someone remembers. It was for story stuff, there were unfortunately no rewards.

Player: Ok, if we are fighting for Caldari we have to AFK in the back
Me: wtf no
Player: come on, everyone is going to be doing it (insert wall of text here)
Me: Don't care.
Player: [i ]But you have to care! It's (insert more text here)[/i]
Me: Nope, still don't care. I'm here to shoot people in the face.
Player: But it's an important part of the story!
Me: Don't care about the story.

at this point the player became angry

Player: How can you play this game and not care about the story? There's so much going on. You shouldn't be playing it if you're not into the story (or something like that, forgot)
Me: Look, I just put over 1.5 mil ISK into play on the field, and I don't have unlimited time so I want to earn as much SP and ISK as I can per match. This stuff doesn't pay for itself.
Player: Look, if it's ISK you care about I'll reimburse you for your tank and give you 5mil if you run around killing blue dots and making it as easy as possible for the red dots to win.
Me: Oh? How much do I get if we still lose?
Player: I'll reimburse you for your tank and pay you 1mil.
Me: ok, NOW I care. **** the Calamari! DEATH TO ALL BLUE DOTS!

Anyways, I hope that you, the devs, will be able to make the fac war stuff not lose the merc aspect. I was extremely happy that this was happening, because (for me) this is how the game should be. I'm mercing stuff, idc for who or why.

The difficulty might be for corps that do stuff EVE side too. I'm in a corp and alliance that I'm pretty sure is in fac warfare. From what I've heard, they have to do a bunch of work to get on a side or something and fight for it, but once they are there it's hard to switch. I don't want this to happen with DUST. Sure, the corps can tell the Dust players what to do (and pay them!) but I would be very unhappy if the game did not allow me to merc for other sides/people, or made it hard to do so.

So please, do the stuff for peeps who care about Eve and lore. Hopefully you can also make it so that the people who care more about the $ and killing other mercs can enjoy fac warfare or whatever w/o getting forced (by the game) to care about lore and factions.

I'm not against corps choosing what they want their peeps to do, I just want to have the freedom for them to choose.

I got a bit worried about this because I saw stuff from Eve players (it was a meeting or something?) They said they were afraid that Dust mercs wouldn't care about who they were fighting for and why. I just don't want to be forced to care, unless of course, I'm getting as much ISK as I can from the highest bidder. =]

You may want to fight but have no one to fight so you get to pub stomp

Also, 15 to 25 mil ISK is the break-even point against a good team. (This includes tanks, gear, etc., etc.)

50m is where you start to make a good profit in 8 v 8. "Good profit" as in it's worth it for the players to go all out, and if they win they'll make enough money to pay for gear lost and additional gear for the next fight. Given 50 mil isk contracts, I feel like I would make enough ISK from proto vs proto battles against skilled players than I would from Pub stomping.

Sagaris and Surya (well fitted) are between 2mil and 3mil isk each. Lose three, and that's six to nine mil in tank alone. The good dropsuits (proto load out) seem to be around 200k ISK each. If each player dies five times, that's one mil isk lost for each player. For eight man teams, that's 8mil isk.

That also doesn't include other vehicles (like LAVs, dropships, etc., etc.)


The large contracts are unusual, but this is just what I've seen from the few large contracts that I have participated in.

=[ I thought we agreed that we'd be on different sides of fac warfare. I don't want to spend my whole life destroying noob corps and pub stomping!

Maybe we'll have to go talk to What the French. Hopefully they can take your place xD.

A lot of talk about mercs owning districts versus capsuleers owning districts. Speaking of which, mercs and capsuleers are both not part of my browsers dictionary and so have red lines... should add them...

Anyways, back to the topic at hand. DUST versus EVE ownership. STOP IT! Corporations own things. Corporations are in both games. Corporations can have DUST and EVE players. So yea, the question that needs to be asked is how do we get DUST players and EVE players to care about both sides of this. DUST players should care about things in space, and EVE players about things on the ground.

I came here to say something, forget what now because I saw this and had to respond to it. Bah, next time.

"

lol, but what if the corporation is pure dust side? still need a way to control the system

Now take that 8v8 and push it to 24 v 24 and you see my concern with it. I know what we lostvs teams in the tourny with 15 v 15 and its gets expensive quick.

I really think the only way for corp battles to important to mercs is if there is a lot of npc direct and indirect compensation. if the districts if only think of value then it will force dust mercs to have to hold/own districts to make a profit and frankly thats a horrid idea.

Not sure I follow what you mean. I mean, I know you mean DUST players need to control the system. If they want to do that get to know people in EVE. DUST players should not be able to control space without friends in space. Right? . Right?

I think anyways...

A lot of talk about mercs owning districts versus capsuleers owning districts. Speaking of which, mercs and capsuleers are both not part of my browsers dictionary and so have red lines... should add them...

Anyways, back to the topic at hand. DUST versus EVE ownership. STOP IT! Corporations own things. Corporations are in both games. Corporations can have DUST and EVE players. So yea, the question that needs to be asked is how do we get DUST players and EVE players to care about both sides of this. DUST players should care about things in space, and EVE players about things on the ground.

I came here to say something, forget what now because I saw this and had to respond to it. Bah, next time.

...So (fairly) recently there were merc battles between caldari and something else. I forget, but I'm sure someone remembers. It was for story stuff, there were unfortunately no rewards.

You guys are assuming, and maybe correctly so based on how things currently work, that corporation battles are only ISK sinks. Nice thing about EVE is the winner gets the losers loot... mmmmm loot.

don't they already have PI without us mercs?

ssooooo.......

mercs with PI, without eve capsuleers.....

PI is trash and is likely to be removed fro eve online soon.

This is something new both dust and eve players can build on temperate planets if they own them. Not random planet mining. Btw it's not planetary interaction, the features promised were never delivered, at ALL.

Finally eve players will be able to build outposts on planets to build tanks for dust players, which then feed into the real time market. If an area is at war so long it produces less tanks, the price goes up, wars are turned.

The only part that should involve EVE on those POD fights in the first place are OB. Perhaps some PI bonuses regarding taxes or extraction rates for pilots of the alliance\corp but not much more. Then, when adding orbital artillery and other stuff in a later expansion, the interest for pilots that dont PI will rise. Pretty much like the vision of the 0.0 discussed in cast 514 where dusters are seen as a tool of war just like any other ship rather than another component of system SOV.

So yeah, i freakin can't wait to see that devblog !! Hurry up dudes, we're waiting !!

Yes please also include getting back 10% of your own lost gear if you are on the winning side, just like in eve online.

Forgive my EVE ignorance as I've never played it, nor do I have much of an idea as to how our games will merge effectively, but would not a role for EVE pilots be to actually get Dust mercs to a planet in order to attack a rival Dust corp's district or planet? I know I have heard a bunch about EVE pilots needing mercs to take districts and planets, but I have heard about Dust mercs (possibly?) needing EVE pilots for orbitals. However, I haven't heard much about the mechanics of how we Dust bunnies will get to planets for conquest. I guess up until now I assumed there would be "NPC" ships that always successfully transport us mercs to our desired location. Thus, how we always start in our warbarge waiting to assault the planet in our MCC.

It would be alot more interesting, though, if we had have or contract our own EVE pilots to get us to attack destination safely and if there was a chance we didn't always make it due to intercepting spacecraft or planetary defenses.

Oh so here is one idea for the devs. Let corporations work for gaining a homebase district. This would require upkeep and large investment in building and player count. Say you need 200 mercs to start.

Then make it so your home system can not be taken. Untill you drop below 200 members. Meaning once you push a corp back to one district, you can only win the war by convincing them it's too expensive to stay in the corp and they bail, leaving the district open.

Long term this would be awesome. However we have to be REALLY careful about this type of thing. CCP stated a long time ago that the two games would be developed to not rely on one another. If one stopped existing for some reason, got hit with an asteroid for example (or had a circus elephant run through the server room. mad props if anyone gets that reference.) the other should still work.

Maybe a bonus for having EVE players do it though?
Or EVE players required to get DUST players to certain planets?. Discussion on this kind of topic is always awesome though. Love hearing how you guys think the games should interact.

he said it, they're working towards something like that, i KNEW it!

he said it, they're working towards something like that, i KNEW it!

was Caldari vs. MorduGÇÖs Legion.

We go into battle against several corps running all proto gear and I am convinced at the end of they day even though we lost the contract they lost more ISK. It's silly.

I view there being a tangible future benefit to DUST mercs being allied with specific corporations and alliances, in order to have a home, infrastructure, industry, etc. Meanwhile, a friend says that as "mercenaries", DUST players should be responsible to no one, not ally with any specific EVE forces, and work for the highest bidder, in whatever realm of space that might be.

Why just your stuff? If you hold the field why not loot the whole field? Honest question.

It is. That's why most peeps play pub matches in MLT gear. In corp battles, it's more like "don't be an idiot and lose it" or just don't use it at all. I like using weaker gear in pub games because it's more fun, but there needs to be some time when I can pull out the nice stuff.

I definitely agree that there needs to be a time to use all the nice stuff, but there also needs to be a place for start up corps to battle other corps around their level outside of public matches.