The more districts you own the more places you will be able to be attacked from. The way they describe it, you will be able to be attacked at 100% efficiency from all districts in your system each day, the at decent efficiency from what will probably be like 25-30% of remaining districts. Just because you have lots of money it doesn't give you a win button. If you own 10 districts that is 10 man-hours x 16 members you will be vulnerable. You will be responsible for 160 man hours of defense time FOR DEFENSE ONLY. If you want to increase your attacking logarithmically you have to also find enough attacking teams good enough to make that pace of advance worth it.

You're wrong on that one Trolls. It all comes down to how many districts are available. And the fact that even a 20 man corp can hold one or two district without that much problem means it's gonna be pretty crowded, pretty fast.

So, flipping districts and dont care about fights wont work as at some point, there wont be any district left to flip.

When you run from the defenders, don't you lose 100 clones? So if 14 of those 16 planets are defended, won't you lose 1400 clones? More if you lost some when moving them. You'll also have given those 14 defending corps a load of biomass income so they can fight you better in future.

If you move 100 clones to attack a district on a planet 2 jumps away, but only 60 survive the travel, then you lose the battle, what happens? You are supposed to lose a minimum of 100 clones.

Do you only lose the 60 surviving ones?

Or does the attacker need to send enough clones to ensure that at least 100 arrive safely?

Sorry if this has been answered already.

There are only about 250 districts to start with, so I don't see how a corp like PRO will hold many districts.

They will take one to start with (if they're quick enough that is, 250 other corps might take all the districts before them).

After that 3 things can happen.

1. PRO doesn't attack anyone and nobody attacks them. Very unlikely.

2. PRO attacks someone with their 100 clones (that's all they have to begin with). The defender also have 100 clones. PRO will lose. They don't get the district and they lost all of their clones, so their own district is practically up for grabs.

3. PRO doesn't attack anyone, but is being attacked themself. Both sides have again 100 clones each. PRO will lose the match and the district as well.

If 2 or 3 happens PRO is left without districts and will have to attack someone buying a pack of 100 clones. They will not win any attack they make, so they will have to take out more than 40 of the defender's clones (or more than 60 if the defender has the SI that produces 60 clones each day) because when they lose the defender will produce 40 clones more for the attack from PRO the next day. If they only take out 30 clones the defender will have 10 clones more than in the first match.

In a 16 vs 16 battle I can see a lot of corps winning over PRO without losing more than 40 clones. How will PRO ever get any districts then?

it states if you loose you get no isk

But what about loot ?

What I just want to confirm is:

If I get one spy into another corp he could pull in 5 other guys for my side and because of friendly fire make it essentially 22 vs 10 and any kills they got on my 'commandos' would come out of their pocket?

This is going to be a murder fest :)

ISK goes to the winning side based on the total number of clones killed in the match.
Loot goes to both sides. Side A gets stuff from side B, side B gets stuff from side A.

We discussed this a lot internally, which one of the two rewards should only go to the winner, and we ended up with ISK going to the winner. We really want one of the two to go to the loser as incentive to show up and fight even if they know they are going to lose.

Thanks for the clarification.

I can see the corps with better KDRs specialising in long range attacks: only 20 clones arrive safely to fight the 100+ defenders, but that is enough to do the job. Larger corps with lower KDRs would specialise in short range attacks. Room for everyone.

Different planets will have different numbers of districts, some systems will be right next to other systems with temperate planets, some systems will only have 1 temperate planet and be behind 2 or more systems with no temperate planets; which means to attack you from outside the system people needed to travel more systems which means more attrition.

We are currently thinking PI bonuses, POS fuel reduction, POS manufacturing bonus, and more but only for corporation and alliance members on the planet or the moons of that planet. Would love to hear more suggestions though.

If Corp A has 100 * 20,000,000 isk to be able to buy the mercs required for such a feat, fair play. I don't see this being plausible though.

Possible scenario :

Corp A with 100 members split and make 100 corp.
They put in the same alliance.
Each corp take a distric.
Then, they all going back to the 1st corp --> they own 100 district the first day.

I know that districts are own by the corp, and not the alliance. Just to be sure that you thought about this ;) !!!

Edit :

Can be extend :

Corp A with 100 members.
Make 20 corps with 5 members.
Take 20 district in the same system.
Let principal corp attack all the district and make back the original corp.

Is it intended ?

One of the things that makes this far more difficult is the EVE bonuses need to be stack-able. The possibility of one corporation, or alliance, owning more than 3 districts on one planet is very high. Each SI bonus for DUST is per district, so no problem, but the EVE bonuses are much broader. If we don't let them stack there is no point, EVE side, for owning more than 3 districts and one of each SI. Any stacking we do though would obviously have stacking penalties just like modules in EVE.

I don't follow, what looks like an issue?

You can't merge corps.

Corp A would have to produce enough clones to be able to attack/claim the fake-corp's districts. This would take days/weeks.

Ok, we'll start with 250 districts.

Take the 12 first corps. All of them make 20 corps each with 5 members in it, and a 20M wallet.
20x12 = 240

The first day, the all district will be "own" by 12 corps.

400M ISK ? WTF already have them today, and build is expect after fanfest. We've got all the time to make more and more ISK. Just a little logistic management...

Mayeb I'm going too far, but if the defenser choose the time for attacks ... Well, hope you see what I'm pointing out...

How will attacks during the Reinforcement timer work? Can someone set an attack to hit 1 minute before the timer ends? Or does the attack need to be completed at a certain time before the 1-hour period is up?

The big corp wouldn't just absorb all the small corps' clones. Big Corp would have to attack and kill all those small corps and produce enough clones to do so. As I said to Gloo Gloo, there's nothing stopping all the other smaller corps that aren't fake from jumping in and stealing from the fake-corps before your big corp can get there. And it will be dead obvious which corps are unable to defend themselves because their player counts will be tiny.

Or need a delay when you leave a corp, join another, and be able to engage in PC.

Don't really know, but it looks like an exploit (not an issue, sorry ;))

Okay, you're getting more realistic now - yes a 16 man corp may be able to adequately defend a planet every single day. However, that is still a separate corp. You couldn't count all the clones of 10 separate corps as one total for the big corp because you'd have 10 * 100 clones, not 1 * 1000. That's not a corporation, that's effectively an alliance.

In order to eventually become one big corp again, the main corp would have to attack 9 districts - in order to produce that many clones you're talking probably 18 days, depending on attrition for how spread out all those districts are. In that time you may also lose many clones from being attacked by other corps and your fake corps may also lose their districts too.

Your numbers are slowly wittling down and eventually you will see that what you are concerned about isn't realistic.

And remember your split corps can remove their clones the day before the main corp expands into that district. Allowing no loss to the alt corp and no loss to the main corp cause all they have to do is put 100 clones in there to claim it.
If another coro tries to swoop in and take it the battle in sues.

This makes having your 10 smaller corps the advanced conquerers, then each day the main corp comes in behind the smaller corps as they abondon the district and keep advancing. The main coro is just acquiring each district that was left abondoned the day before.

And the corps would require 3 mercs so they could pull in the rest from the main corp as battles are required

I envisage a mad land grab on day 1 in which every district goes. Every corp will have just 1 district and will fight like hell to keep it, while every corp that didn't manage to get one will be battling like hell to get one. If you're lucky enough to not be attacked in the first few days, you might just be able to produce enough clones to be able to attack someone else next door to you in 2 days but that's no guarantee of winning.

It is only an advantage on day one where you can buy lots of starter packs and try and take a bunch of unowned districts. Once things get past that initial flash point it will be far better to be in one corporation and having the ability to transfer clones between districts.

How are you still not getting this? Having 5 corps does not give you 5 times the number of clones to use on any attack. You could still only attack with the same number of clones as a single corp.

Actually, you are wrong. The key reason for the limit on Genolution purposes is not to stall empire growth, but to prevent an organization that has a strong foundation from attacking all the way across the galaxy. Maybe they can take their members through the squads thing, but the logistical advantages of their existing infrastructure do not apply.

Trolls, what you keep describing is an alliance, not a corp. As soon as you split into more than one corp, regardless of true affiliation or using 'ringers' as back up in battles, you are putting both isk and mercs into a separate entity that will need to be constantly monitored and administered. You will have to take people you trust to do the job properly out of your main corp and give them tens of millions of isk and that person will have to log in every day without fail in order to see if an attack is coming, then be able to contact the main corp to ask for 'ringers' to help in the defense. You might be able to keep this up with 2 or 3 sub corps but any more and you'll soon run into problems.

Also, you'll have to keep in mind that any corp could lose their initial district on day 2 or 3 to another corp (no corp is invincible) and that's instantly 21.6M isk down the drain. How much isk do you want to risk throwing away?

I don't think there's a problem here at all. I see a trade-off, which is exactly what we want from the game.

As I understand the argument, large corps have to decide between alt corp (high admin, fast expansion, weak defense) or single corp (low admin, slow expansion, stronger defense once established) strategy. Smaller corps don't really have this problem.

That's wonderful isn't it?

No right answer, and bigger isn't entirely better.

They want this game to cater to relatively small corps (first and foremost). If they allow big corps to take as many districts as they possibly can on day one, the small corps won't have a chance.

Splitting up into smaller corps and you're no longer a single corp but an alliance of small corps (even though 90% of your members are still in the same corp). There's no problem with an alliance of small corps, they encourage that I believe.

This idea of splitting the corp and trying to get all the districts taken on day one into the mother corp requires you to not be attacked from the get go, which just won't happen. If you take a lot of districts, and there's others doing the same, there's a lot of corps left without a district at all, and they'll come for yours from day one.

It can also succeed if you're a supercorp that only loses 40 clones or less (or 60 clones if you have a Production Facility) every battle no matter the opponent. That's unlikely though.

Edit: And for being worried about 90% of the players in a big corp to never get to play, that's in my opinion entirely your own fault for not having good enough players all around. They can also always play FW battles, which will be in the Mercenary tab in the Battle finder.

On the other points. If you're a big corp (splitting into smaller corps), and you take 25 districts on day one. How many of those do you think you have on day 2 / 3 / 4 when they're being attacked and you have to use all of your mercs in your corp to defend them? With a lot of work in doing so as well, since you have 25 different corps and have to manage them all, get ringers into all the battles using people in the subcorps, dealing with disconnections where you have to get new guys into the battle.

Trolls, anything you do to cater to the size of big corps will just make them instantly dominate as one instead of dominating as separate smaller corps that are vulnerable because you can't share clones between them.

If you want to go through the hassle and expense of splitting into many smaller corps to try to gain an advantage, that's fine. You're definitely going to lose a lot of isk and not necessarily going to be able to expand or consolidate as fast as you can. Let's say on day 1 you split into 10 corps and claim 10 districts without conflict. Day 2 every single one of your districts is attacked. You manage to successfully defend all 10 of them but lose 60 clones on each. Not only can none of your districts move clones (each could possibly recover to 100 but you need more than that to launch an attack), people will see that they're vulnerable and have low merc numbers in their corps and you will definitely be attacked again the next day, whether by the same attackers or new ones with another bunch of 100 clones. Unless you're doing well enough in every battle to lose less than 60 clones (40 without the prod SI), you won't be able to expand at all and your empire of small corps will slowly wittle away.

In fact this scenario is true in the case of single corps too. Every corp, no matter of size or splitting will find it difficult to maintain clones enough to be able to expand because it will be constant war.

As for your analogy - CCP Fox Four earlier said that you can only buy 100 mercs because you have nowhere to store more without a district. This makes sense. It's like the hotel owner telling you, sorry we've only got one room and due to insurance purposes only 4 people can stay in there tonight (this actually happened to me and my friends roadtripping the southern states a few years back and we had 10 people!).

You can choose not to defend and automatically lose 100 clones and a district's worth of clone production per attack you ignore, you mean?

If someone attacks, you HAVE to be there to defend, or they get an empty battlefield to play with, and they kill your MCC. Because you lost, you lose 100 clones. And because you lost by MCC destruction, that also shuts down clone production for the next cycle.

And did you even read my comment that RF Gyro was replying to? Because that details pretty clearly why, while this "tactic" might work, it's not an "exploit" and has significant enough drawbacks to be totally fair play.

Except that the hotel also has regular VIP customers who come along, and groups are bumped off the list on a "smallest group first" basis and thrown out of their rooms on a regular basis, so you're actually playing a balancing act between being the too-big-for-our-room group or being the too-small-and-thrown-out group.

And this comparison would only work if, when your POS is attacked, the defending fleet - even though it can include other members of your Alliance as well as the Corp being attacked, is limited to the numbers the POS under attack is capable of launching. That limiting mechanic (which doesn't exist in EVE, but which is alive and well in DUST, balances the advantage with a significant drawback.

The RL analogy applies to the game because you have nowhere to store more than 100 clones without a district.

Honestly, I'm not quite sure I entirely follow your outposts idea - are you saying you could just spend some isk and create a new district to own? If so, this is just allowing anyone with enough isk to create their own empire from scratch without anyone being able to stop them.

Everyone starts with only 100 clones. Yes making many corps will give you the best chance of getting one of the lucky district with the prod SI but you're always going to struggle to expand because you'll be under constant attack.

There really is nothing wrong with your splitting idea if you want to do it - I'm sure many of the big corps will try because they have enough isk to throw away but no one will be able to expand enough to dominate early on because of what I've already said about being under constant attack on all fronts. If you really want to throw away hundreds of millions of isk, be my guest, it won't guarantee you the expansion you're predicting.

I suppose what you could do is anytime you're attacked you just hide and don't lose any clones, except for the 20% that are turned over to the attackers for winning. However, losing stops you being able to produce any new clones and after a few days your district becomes virtually indefensible and unreinforcable.

The big problem suggested here is that you guys think that one corp (split into many smaller corps) will become invulnerable because they can claim large areas of space and then outproduce any other corp in terms of clones.

The big rebuttal is that you will be under constant attack on all fronts from day one. Even if you make a circle of self-attacks/district sacrifices against your own sub-corps to keep your districts locked, you'll never be able to produce any extra clones to be able to expand from your initial positions.

As previously stated many times now - you will struggle to even produce enough clones to attack a 2nd district from any of your sub-corps, when under constant attack from external corps.

I want to open this up for discussion, we are currently thinking of increasing the clone starter pack to 200 clones. This also means an increase from 20 million to 40 million ISK in cost.

There are a few reasons for this, but before I go into that I want to hear your opinions and thoughts without influencing them.

I'd say yes.

As a few people have suggested, an option to buy either 100 or 200 clones would be great, but if the current implementation only supports one purchase option, I can think of a few reasons to go with the 200 clones pack instead of only 100. The biggest argument is that you want it to feel like a Skirmish, and with the current Skirmish mechanics, 100 vs. 100 is just going to turn into a clone count battle. 200 vs. 200 would potentially make for much harder-fought battles, and the numbers would make it more sensible to risk pushing a little past that basline 100 clones if you've got a good chance of collecting 20% of something more than 0 clones at the end of the battle if you win by objectives.

It's a bit of a double edged sword. In the long term, once everything's settled, the only way to get into PC if you've not already, is to use a genolution pack. If you only get 100 clones, that's not going to be enough to take on a lot of districts that will already probably be well stocked up to the 300 mark. With 200 you have a much better chance at succeeding. Otherwise we'd be effectively shutting out anyone who doesn't get in at the start but wants to have a go later on.

Your gen-bombing idea would be good to harass distant enemies with but wouldn't really achieve much long term because even if your alt-corp managed to take a district, it's totally isolated and will likely get horrendously counter attacked. It would distract your target for sure and maybe use up some of their resources but the result would be negligible.

Let's not get into supposition on null-sec just yet; we have no idea what's planned for that.

Here is just a thought I would like to throw out there. Is it possible to add more functions to the MCC's? My main idea is to charge for the purchase of mcc's but I'm sure there could be a lot more ideas to go with it other than just balancing issues.