A far more accurate war to portray the scenario of large vs small would be the romance of the three kingdoms in china where the infamous Sun Tzu wrote his manuscripts on warfighting, after all the kingdom he served was by far the smallest of the three and managed to hold out very well. Unluckily there were not convenient passes, choke-points, or magical shields (in eve's case) that would have stopped the larger enemy from crushing the smaller nation. It was a various sets of delaying tactics division and conquering and many other nice tricks that focused more on doing the most with the least amount.

To comment to the Topic itself: How the FW will work

I understand that what we will get in next patch is Faction Warfare and not Player sovereign control yet, correct ?
Although My EVE experience may be limited. In my understanding FW is actually a PvP between NPC corp ? (sound confuse, isn't it? :p) 4 NPC factions just hire players to fight for them right ? If this is the case, I doubt FW in the next patch will be that different than our current pub match.

It'll still be an NPC issued contact which take place in some planets/districts. When we won that NPC employer take control of it and move on. I don't think there is anything to do with player issued contact/ player controlled district yet. This will basicly be a pub match with more reward and (hopefully) more variety of maps to separate veteran player from newberries from the old pub match. don't get me wrong, this is great enough for now. I still keen to see how full players brawl in null sec will work out. That is where the real problem lies

Just make sure you put in district transfer in dust ASAP.

-districts can be taken and sold off. Just like mercs can be paid to take a planet. There isn't 100% chance they will. Selling a district afterward is just another market for stuff. Dust needs this economy function

Red tides to win means resource cost.

Most obviously in clones, if your 24 cheapo fit militia players are up against my 12 (2 squads) of prototype fit players, you're gonna be spending big on clones (our (implant-less) meatsacks all cost the same, but you have to have more to have a chance at winning). If we're also taking down your cheap equipment as soon as it lands and shooting down your cheap MCCs as soon as possible, you're gonna be fighting resource loss. Not to mention the home field advantage, knowing the good spots (say, a mass driver resupply-drop uplink-revive logi and a sniper/scanner fit scout on a roof locking down a primary chokepoint built in PI mode that your cheapo militia snipers can't even reach). Sure, one of my men is worth thousands of yours, but each one of them might go through multiple battles without even going into armor.

If you field a full 336 man deployment to tackle all 14 of my districts at once, I can pick and choose what is most important (probably, in this case, clone and equipment stockpiles), defend that, and wait for reinforcements.

In terms of priority I would rather see the ability to contract other corporations to take a district for you. That would also mean contracting other corporations to help you defend your district as well.

But i can see large corps like PRO mounting wave attacks if they have to. So if you successfully defend a district they can instantly field a new team and basically repeat the process until they finally take control. part of me worries that taking districts will just end up as a game of attrition.

This almost makes me think you guys are starting to look into alliance mechanics. It would make sense that it would be an option to make a district open to allied corps to help defend, or even to attack.

I see no reason why attrition shouldn't be a viable tactic. It's just important to make sure it's not the ONLY viable tactic.

To be honest I would rather like to see it get harder and harder to take more space. Maybe even exponentially harder. Each district should represent something and none should feel entirely irrelevant. People new and small should feel like they are earning and single organizations shouldn't hold large swaths of space.

Corp A has 24 People
Corp B has 2400 people

Corp A has 100 Territories
Corp B wants them.

Corp A can only fight one battle a time, Corp B can simultaneously attack everything A has in one go.

If pure anti Zerg methoods where instated then 1 man corps would ruin most of dust. Numbers are going to help protect you player empire while you sleep, while you work, while you are logged off, and in more places than you can possibly be at any given time.

Now granted corp A can call in reinforcements and Corps C - Infinity could interfere with corp B's activities as well but who says they can't screw over corp A more. After all most corp gankbears are vultures they will pick at a wounded beast until it dies.

You're forgetting the simple fact that with more people a larger corp can cover far more ground, doesn't matter how small the battlefield is, you must know that there are MORE THAN ONE BATTLEFIELD to fight.

You may call this zerging, but corps that cannot match invaders per battle will be losing most of their ground no matter how good those 24 are, if anything they're going to get skill farmed and resource the farmed the heck out of while heckling the 24 guys to give up and join or quit that corp though morale warfare. After all the only thing more deadlier than a HAV is a propaganda machine that crushes your corp under its treads.

More man power usually will equal more freedom to respond, attack, defend, and resource, one team of 24 guys may be their best deal and the rest are cannon fodder or non combatants part of the logistics, supply, and command chains.

I think that depends on a number of factors-

Transport: In EVE, there are distinct routes one must travel to attack systems with say, Tech moons. This does not seem to be an issue in Dust. That can actually help promote conflict as getting there isn't an issue.

Abundance: With 4,000? temperate worlds yielding ~40,000 districts... Not much incentive for conflict unless there are 10,000 or more active corps.

Profitability: If the potential profits from a planet are too high, EVE Alliances will get back-flooded with ISK from their ground pounder members and only TEST and Goon will own anything after a bit. If the profits are too low, nobody will fight for anything except as a last resort.

Diversity: If districts produce a variety of resources, that can be a conflict driver. Requiring player corps to control a wide variety of resource types to achieve optimal profitability or manufacturing efficiency is another factor. For instance, if Magazinium and Lumaminium are both needed to make Assault Rifles, then corps would want to control two districts instead of one.

My solution- Resource depletion and renewal. Make districts "play out" after awhile and require expensive retooling or an annoyingly long cool down period. That makes districts profitable, but only if you keep conquering fresh ones or are patient enough to wait for refreshment. The crummy districts would also make a good source of PVE- from Rogue Drones to scavenging materials. They are also less likely to be well defended, giving newer corps a shot at taking them.

Sun Tzu was actually borned way before three kingdoms era. The one who managed the smallest Shu kingdom to last suprisingly long against overwhelming larger Wei kingdom was Zhuge Liang.

Dynasty Warriors made me learn a lot about that part of chinese history
Btw, Zhuge Liang actually wrote a book about Sun Tzu's book.

*throws a smoke grenade into the room*
*knocks out FoxFour with his fist*
*FoxFour wakes up in a dark room with a single hanging light bulb over his head that is barely working*
*sees a shadowy man sitting behind a table with a nova knife carving the words 'there is no fate but what we make' on the table*

[Maken Tosch] - I know you are wondering why you are here. I can assure you that it will be much less painful if you cooperate. Now, what does the dev blog say?

*voice from the distance*

[old woman] - Honey! Your cookies are ready!
[Maken] - Ma! I'm in the middle of an interrogation!
[old woman] - Don't talk like that to me. Now come here and get your cookies! I made them into dinosaur shapes like you asked!
[Maken] - *sigh* I'll be right back.

Screw Dynasty Warriors. I got introduced to it by Destiny of the Emperor back on the NES. Then I went and played the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games and it into the rabbit hole for me.

This is indeed a valid concern. One that we have been thinking about as well and one that depending how we tackle it will drastically change how many districts an average corporation can hold per active member.

That being said, if you can't win fights you shouldn't hold the district. To help balance this we can do things like ensure the victor gets good rewards, that the attacker has risks that they can change and manage, the defender always has a reason to defend, the rate at which a district can be attacked, and to be honest we still have the same concern.

Once we do eventually get this out to you guys it is something we plan to monitor very closely. The plan is that whatever we do release should be easily configurable, and as much so as possible server side, so we can tweak things quickly to try and get the right balance.

To us it would be a shame if only a small number of organizations owned districts and there was limited fighting. The more battles happening the better. If we got to a point where all the districts were close to be flipped and were continuously changing hands, I would be happy. Some stability is nice, so people can make money, but a constant change is also nice.

one would hope that each of the districts will contain their own specific deterrents and obstacles for attackers so its not just infantry v. infantry skill on the line but more a positive buffer for those who own and a negative one for those attacking.

varying the terrain and what the map has on it so that the same 24p(or those with same skills) cant be suited for every fight. would like to see class specific roles that pertain to the gear that each type of dropsuit can harness ie: heavy's HMG can be used to drop damage levels of gates breaching buildings and structures whereas a scout's speed boost and light frame could pass by automated defenses or pressure plated traps. seeing something of this nature would be exciting.

that said, i would like to see a single district takeover feel more like a dungeon raid where it cant be cleared in one go, attacking corps may need to make multiple trips to squeeze the defending corps till they grab control.

i feel im in agreement with Beers and would like to see a dedicated marketplace for district and/or planet transfer but it cant be solely on ISK alone, a set of exp of the player (if sold to just one merc) and exp of the corp as a sort of requirement IS A MUST! this could be the "wrench" in attackers or defenders planning when it comes to those looking to control the planet.

Why have a market place for districts? Why not a mercenary market place where you can pay people to defend or attack districts?

I HATE it when DEV's talk like this. I can never tell if they are suggesting things that should be possible soon, or if they are thinking long run. DON'T TOY WITH MY HEART!

I HATE it when DEV's talk like this. I can never tell if they are suggesting things that should be possible soon, or if they are thinking long run. DON'T TOY WITH MY HEART!

I HATE it when DEV's talk like this. I can never tell if they are suggesting things that should be possible soon, or if they are thinking long run. DON'T TOY WITH MY HEART!

If those 24 players can win the majority of their matches why shouldn't they be allowed to keep their district? Possibly even expand? One of the problems EVE has is that we don't limit (aside from server performance) the number if people allowed in a fight or how often the fights happen. The only thing we do is use reinforcement timers to help offset losing stuff when not online.

DUST on the other hand strictly limits the number of people allowed in a match. I will never be able to say this enough, dear god I can't say it enough, but this is just discussion, nothing done or decided. If the winners of a match won more than they lost through things like loot, ISK, and other things, and the small corporation won more matches than they lost, I think they should hold onto their piece of land.

I hope we can find a nice balance when we do this type of gameplay to get us there, not sure we will on the first try, but iteration is good. :D

Well the thing is in a zerging situation its more of a question if the smaller corporation would feasibly fielding at every battle challenged to them. Mind you the zerging corp is wasting massive amount of resources, manpower and time the real objective is to try to stretch the smaller corp beyond their capabilities of feasible defense. I don't want to wind up in a situation where 24 man corp winds up owning 100 planets because of anti-zerging mechanics and the defending smaller group wins by default by not showing up to any of the fights. Now defending a single planet or two I can see more feasible to hold for a 1 fielder team.

Inversely a small corporation should have a more difficult time gaining ground a much larger corporation, the larger corporation will always or should always field their fights against them if its just corp a vs corp b. Even if they win every time they attack its a time slot they're occupied that they are not able to defend another territory on. Corproation B's counter attacks will eventually win out in time as corproation A gets stretched thinner and thinner.

Thing is if you got something akin to reinforcement timers (scheduled matches), you only need to adjust the number of battles per-district needed to conquer it.

If a 24-man corp has 100 planets, with total of 1000 districts, and defending a district is 20 matches over a week (I'd go for a more dynamic value where the more you lose in a row the quicker the thing is taken), then they'd be fighting 20,000 battles over a week.

Not going to happen.

If they fight 10 battles per day, then they can keep fighting for control over 4 or so districts, where matches are (mostly) in their timezones. Some penalty would obviously be applied to their performance when they have less than 24/7 coverage, however that could be compensated by being very good at shooting people in the face.

Dynasty Warriors made me learn a lot about that part of chinese history
Btw, Zhuge Liang actually wrote a book about Sun Tzu's book.

Screw Dynasty Warriors. I got introduced to it by Destiny of the Emperor back on the NES. Then I went and played the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games and it into the rabbit hole for me.

Well the thing is in a zerging situation its more of a question if the smaller corporation would feasibly fielding at every battle challenged to them. Mind you the zerging corp is wasting massive amount of resources, manpower and time the real objective is to try to stretch the smaller corp beyond their capabilities of feasible defense. I don't want to wind up in a situation where 24 man corp winds up owning 100 planets because of anti-zerging mechanics and the defending smaller group wins by default by not showing up to any of the fights. Now defending a single planet or two I can see more feasible to hold for a 1 fielder team.

Inversely a small corporation should have a more difficult time gaining ground a much larger corporation, the larger corporation will always or should always field their fights against them if its just corp a vs corp b. Even if they win every time they attack its a time slot they're occupied that they are not able to defend another territory on. Corproation B's counter attacks will eventually win out in time as corproation A gets stretched thinner and thinner.

Why have a market place for districts? Why not a mercenary market place where you can pay people to defend or attack districts?