So you have to deal with this already because losing a fight sets you back 80-100 clones on your war of attrition, costing another clone pack to finish the job. The real big change is the geno packs are now only 30mil instead of 80 so the net result is cheaper even counting a loss along the way.

Good point - its hard to notice that even dust has lowsec and highsec regions-

So that means that there won't be another attack (If the attacker wins) until the next reinforcement timer.

With 100 clones going in, (Unless the attacker doesn't lose a clone) The next battle will be at least 23 hours away?

The raid mechanic you know 50% of clones for successful attacks.

Lets say i attack and win, I have more than 100 clones and decide to follow up. What happens to those 40-50 clones i just raided for a successful attack?

Do they go back to my home district immediately or are they added to my clone count for the followup attack.

Next question, do i get a 50% for each followup attack so if i attack say 2 times and its a cargo hub will i get 40 from the district for each attack?

Well I'm pretty sure that they changed the map a bit so that it is a little better to tell now. I don't remember that change seeing much feedback...I'm on vacation away from my PS3, but I'll try to find that in the patch notes and link where feedback would be appropriate unless somebody catches it before me.

It relates more to the decline in number of battles. This is why I showed the graph with the number of clone moves. The number of times clones are moved to start a battle has remained relatively consistent while the number of battles taking place has gone down and so the number of battles being started with clone starter packs has gone down with it.

That make sense?

How exactly is clone stealing going to work with the new "100+ clones means you get to attack again" deal. What if as the attacker I win, thereby stealing a number of clones (let's say 40), but only have 61 clones left after the battle? Does the 40 I stole get added to 61, thus giving me 101 clones and a chance to attack again right away?

Here's an idea:
Remove changes in attrition for clone jumping and allow clones on districts owned by other corporations to be sold to other corporations with a slight penalty.

ex. Hellstorm wants to attack some awesome corp 10 jumps away. Normally, with research facilities the cost for jumping is awful and not worth it. Hellstorm has an ally 13 jumps away. Hellstorm is able to purchase 100 clones from this corp, suffers a 5% penalty, and make the 3 jumps to the target at normal attrition rates.

Clones stolen because of a win go straight back to the district the attack was launched from. They are not counted towards the 100 minimum. They cannot be used in the immediate follow up attacks.

We would like to remove them and would also like to make getting an orbital strike like how it was during the tournament at Fanfest. EVE pilots do something to get it.

All that happens is that if the attacker loses they lose their exclusivity for re-attack and the promise of a fight the next day. After they lose if they chose to re-attack the same district they will have to wait the same period as if they attacked any other district for the first time. So we are not really giving the district an extra defence, we are removing the attackers buff if they fail.

Promising changes yet I see a potential problem having another battle take place 5 minutes after the first one finishes (assuming the attacker has their 100+ clones remaining from the last match). That gives very little time to basically take a breath and go over what went right/wrong in the previous match.

I say have the next match start ATLEAST 15-20 minutes After so that way both sides can breathe, restock any fittings, devise any alterations to strategies, etc.

Promising changes yet I see a potential problem having another battle take place 5 minutes after the first one finishes (assuming the attacker has their 100+ clones remaining from the last match). That gives very little time to basically take a breath and go over what went right/wrong in the previous match.

I say have the next match start ATLEAST 15-20 minutes After so that way both sides can breathe, restock any fittings, devise any alterations to strategies, etc.

Just to clarify this say attacking corp looses, their ally corp initiates follow up attack does corp number 2 also have to wait the 48 hours or would they be able to attack within 24 hours? Essentially being able to tag team a defending district?

What about the followup attack can do you get a second round of clones to steal?

As great as these changes are, I still don't see myself wanting to join a corporation to participate in PC.

The fights don't seem like they'd be much different from a regular pub skirmish aside from everyone wearing proto and vehicles everywhere. How far along are you guys on Skirmish 3.0?

Basically it means you guys are bad at math, calculating ROI, estimating risk, those kind of things... OR what it means is you just want to have fun... in a video game... Who knew?

I'm afraid that the new reattacking system is another buff to small teams of core players, which is already the predominant mode of operation in Planetary Conquest for the moment. Basically it allows for a dynamic timer manipulation at the cost of clones. Here's the scenario:


MLG Pro Skeelz [MPS] is a small corp with around 100 characters in it. Counting alts and activity, their nightly PC contingent is a core of 16 players who are on the bleeding edge of SP gain (18 mil +). As such their win ratio in PC would probably be over 50% without the gear advantage. With it, they're consistently pulling up to 70-80%.

Immense Elitists [IEL] is a much larger organization. They have 500+ characters, and so they can run two teams simultaneously if they want to on a given night. They have two very competitive teams with but with average 9mil SP per players (so they're out-geared by MPS)


IEL have a numbers advantage and so they attack 2 of MPS's districts. District 1 (D1) is attacked with 150, and D2 with 166. D1 and D2 have the exact same reinforcement time. Let's say for the sake of argument that the two battles queue up at the exact same time, and that both are Cargo Hubs.


MPS see that they can't defend both at the same time. Here's what they do. We're going to assume that the FIRST battle on D2 lasts just as long as the battle on D1.

MPS fight D1 on the first battle. Their gear and skill allows them to win handily. D1 locks by the new defense rules.

Meanwhile they don't show up to D2 for the first battle. It takes just as long. IEL have 150 clones by the end.

The second fight for D2 initiates. IEL and MPS fight, MPS again win handily. The district locks due to the new defense rules.


If IEL reattack IMMEDIATELY on both districts, this will be the state of both districts when those attacks happen:


D1 = full on clones | generates 160 between two days

D2 = 450 - 150 (first defense no show) - 100 (second defense win) + 80 (second day's reinforcement) = 280


So now MPS defend D2 in the first attack and noshow on D1. Same outcomes, IEL reattacks:

D1 = 280 by the same math as D2 the last time

D2 = 280 - 100 (win first defense) + 160 (two days of reinforcement) = 340 !!!!!


So basically a core team with a gear advantage can now defend DOUBLE the districts in the same hour of reinforcement. Now there are some things to be said about adjacent hours, but in general keep in mind that this is costing IEL a lot of clones as well and morale isn't improving by facing the same team of 18mil+ SP players who you can't beat with tactics because of the gear difference.

Also keep in mind that IEL has to have tons of resources to do this: at least 6 districts because of some timer mechanics I discussed previously.

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I already dropped Fox a line about this other thing, but so that we can all chew on it together:

You can't beat competitive teams with 100 clones in a PC match, simply from experience. I'm afraid that the 80 clone number was skewed by corps who fought in the first week or so of PC for 1 or two matches and then stopped attacking as their clone pack assaults failed.

If that's the case, the 100 clones per clone pack number is too low in general. Leaving it at this number will make corps wishing to clone pack go very selectively for those organizations that can't sport strong A-teams that have a high chance of killing your 100 clones before MCC victory is anything like possible. That is to say, they'll strangle new corps in the crib.


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Ani had something to say about the cost-benefit analysis of holding a district earlier, and I'd like to emphasize some commentary on a line from the dev blog:



I know that ROFL has poured over the cost-benefit analysis of districts extensively. Running a corp in PC is kinda more like running a government than a corporation. Your goal is not to make money, it's to provide a service and also (as quoted) to have fun. Most people will fight until the coffers run dry because what else is there to DO with the ISK?

There's also a very sticky point to the mathematics, and that's the opportunity cost of fighting for a district. Fighting over a district will, in general, cost you 1 mil ISK per person per battle in gear. We'll ignore the opportunity cost of the clones you use in the battle, as that will even make it WORSE.


Fighting a PC battle takes about an hour: at LEAST 30 minutes of prep time (almost definitely more), and about 25 minutes of fighting.

In pub matches you can make about 750k/man-hr. This ISK is virtually guaranteed. For one PC battle then it's 12 million you could have been making in pubs with that 16 man team. (750*16*1)

Fighting a PC battle for clones at 50% win ratio (assuming binomial distribution, which we haven't been able to test against) is like this. Gear loss is 16mil no matter what. 50% of the time you get clone ISK back. I'll use the new clone number and approximate 250 destroyed clones.

.5(150*250) - 16000 = 2750k = 2.75mil


Keep in mind that 16million is lowballing horribly on gear loss. It's much higher with tanks and the current price of gear.

So you could either get a guaranteed 12 million ISK playing for an hour with those 16 people in pubs, or you could get an EXPECTED 2.75mil ISK in a PC match. That expectation is a horrible number to use, too, because it ignores so many other factors involved with PC matches. Risky factors.

Going into PC is an opportunity loss of ISK unless you don't get attacked, AKA don't fight, AKA don't have fun.

Regarding the attrition, we want to create localized warfare which was the reason behind the attrition in the first place. However we feel it was too much of a penalty with the current values, we instead have some other ideas for later on which will make location more of a factor especially when we roll out additional regions.

We would like to remove them and would also like to make getting an orbital strike like how it was during the tournament at Fanfest. EVE pilots do something to get it.

3 is a really big one and is why we are working on designing a system in which ISK is earned by members of corporations who own districts actively and corporations can TAX that.

Your numbers are off, if at any point a defender takes a loss their facility goes offline and remains offline.

There is, however, a lingering question. Does the district still generate clones on the next reinforcement cycle if the defenders lose a battle and then win the second battle? The answer is no. If a battle is lost the district will not generate clones on the next reinforcement cycle.