The fallacy of how PvP can protect your system from being undermined.

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Powerplay is a PvP thing , and in open you can shoot down a pilot and prevent him from ever undermining your system. sure you would have to play 24hrs a day but if you set up patrols with friends and shifts it would be possible to save your system from incursion
 
Let me counter that. Answers in red.

All in all PvP is about "who is the best?" while PvE is about "who has the most?". And considering I can easily do an unexperienced player Anaconda in my Viper, going into another mode where only assests and credits matter (or time) is just a cheap way of dealing with someone's own weakness rather than improving yourself. :/

I really wish you had chosen to use a different formatting. The red on black was really hard to read.

And i'll disagree with the points you make at the end. PvP and PvE are both about who is best and who has the most. 4 vs 1 in PvP? Advantage the group of 4. PvE - two players, one better than the other, gets more PvE kills, get bounties quicker.

Not sure, you also seem to be talking about powerplay a lot, instead of faction based BGS stuff.

And once again, back to numbers and how you seem to say numbers are not the primary factor.

Let's keep it small and simple. You are defending a system. You are outnumbered 2 to 1 by opposing PvE players.

Both fly into your system. You interdict one, play cat and mouse while he runs (maybe he was once a n00b that you already killed a few times, but now he's got the knack, he knows how to get away with a high wake, so no kill for you today). While you were doing that, the second player has got past you, and somewhere else in the system. You can go looking for him, but then, you have to give up your patrol in SC, which means when the other player comes back, you won't be there to stop him.

That's why it is largely a numbers game. You might be some sort of PvP god, but unlike a god, you cannot be omnipresent.
 
There seems to be a bit of confusion here and I'd like to confirm a few things if that's fine.

  • I'm assuming the term undermining is used not in its PowerPlay context, but rather as a general term.
  • This is about the Background Simulation. Not PowerPlay.
  • An example of the specifics discussed would be the recent 51TH Massilia Corp. fiasco.
If this is the case, I'm prone to agreeing.
By focusing on not directly trying to move minor faction influence, you are effectively shooting yourself in the foot. Walt Kerman's guide to minor factions, as well as the Mercs of Mikunn threads, should probably be among in the mandatory curriculum before submitting a request to be added as a minor faction.
Opinions can differ about whether or not it is right. But it is what it is. /em shrug

Indeed.

The Massilia fiasco as you put it was the motivating factor behind this thread. They even managed to hurt their own progress by PvPing as we understand from their thread.
 
Powerplay is a PvP thing , and in open you can shoot down a pilot and prevent him from ever undermining your system. sure you would have to play 24hrs a day but if you set up patrols with friends and shifts it would be possible to save your system from incursion

Part of the point of the OP though was even if you did as you suggest, you still won't stop everyone - and the more resources you devote to trying, the fewer you have available to more effectively counter via the PvE-based PP activities, for example. That is, if your resources are focused on PvP while the opposition is focused on combating you using the PvE mechanics (even in PP), you will lose the war of attrition simply because even if it was open only you can't stop everyone just because of instancing and matchmaking, never mind timezone differences, the lack of chokepoints and such. While some might want that balance to be the other way around, I think the OP's summation makes it clear that is obviously not Frontier's intent.
 
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I'm not going to explain on the forums (it's not my testing etc to give away), but all of those ships can be countered...

that's good to hear, and perfectly understood about non-sharing, but is there a place/system/blockade where i can test it? i would very much like such a challenge.
 
Right, but undermining is really difficult to counter for smaller groups. Leave it that way only facilitates quantitative and not qualitative. The goal is only to have large groups in Elite?
I find that solo's underminig is not fair play at all. really not.

Quality isn't going to help one bit if you are outnumbered 10 to 1, hell, even 2 to 1 and you are looking at a serious disadvantage.
 
What about calculating the risk? How many players will be afraid to undermine (PP) or to ruin the minor fraction influence if they could be affected in Open only? As I understand, the OP‘s point is: nothing should be changed because nothing is absolute. There is no way to stop undermining or decreasing minor fraction’s influence by PvP. Oh, yes, nothing is absolute but *relatively not so difficult* is something different from *absolute safety*. Moreover undermining with Cobra or Clipper is something different from undermining with T-9. And everyone deserves a chance to face his opponents in shared BGS. Just for fun.
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BTW, my personal feeling is: I don’t want to ruin someone else’s BGS play with my trading, BH or selling exploration data. To ruin someone else’s efforts in *shadow* mode is below my dignity.
 
I am not employed by FD, therefore i cannot speak for them. However, good news! It means I am allowed to have my own opinion! Yay!

Then your Moderator title with that illumated background ought to be retitled as Biased moderator...which sounds a tad rediculous no? How then are you functioning any different that anyone else here that expresses their personal opinion? Whats the point of wearing the title of moderator only to express personal biased, non middle ground opinions?

I thought the function of moderators was to focus on the forum rules and only that--otherwise you lose credibility and fast
 
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Quality isn't going to help one bit if you are outnumbered 10 to 1, hell, even 2 to 1 and you are looking at a serious disadvantage.

Well, there are some godlike asian (and a few selected US/EU) players that can take on an entire opposing team on their own and win.
It's just .. why would I take on the top player of some faction I would attack?
I'd avoid him or let him chase me around the block while the rest of my team slap the not so good players on his team and capture the objectives (strategy tested and proven in Guild Wars I "omg, Koreans, we lost"... yea, right :D )
 
Then your Moderator title with that illumated background ought to be retitled as Biased moderator...which sounds a tad rediculous no? How then are you functioning any different that anyone else here that expresses their personal opinion? Whats the point of wearing the title of moderator only to express personal biased, non middle ground opinions? I thought the function of moderators was to focus on the forum rules and only that--otherwise you lose credibility and fast
They are free to express opinions. They are not free to moderate threads in which they have expressed an opinion.
 
Then your Moderator title with that illumated background ought to be retitled as Biased moderator...which sounds a tad rediculous no? How then are you functioning any different that anyone else here that expresses their personal opinion? Whats the point of wearing the title of moderator only to express personal biased, non middle ground opinions?

I thought the function of moderators was to focus on the forum rules and only that--otherwise you lose credibility and fast


Mods aren't allowed to have second accounts to avoid accusations of bias and sock puppetry. Also Mods are not allowed to mod a thread they are heavily involve in.... So in this thread, AA as the OP is not going to be infracting people who disagree with him.
 

Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
They are free to express opinions. They are not free to moderate threads in which they have expressed an opinion.

Mods aren't allowed to have second accounts to avoid accusations of bias and sock puppetry. Also Mods are not allowed to mod a thread they are heavily involve in.... So in this thread, AA as the OP is not going to be infracting people who disagree with him.

Exactly.
 
What about calculating the risk? How many players will be afraid to undermine (PP) or to ruin the minor fraction influence if they could be affected in Open only? As I understand, the OP‘s point is: nothing should be changed because nothing is absolute. There is no way to stop undermining or decreasing minor fraction’s influence by PvP. Oh, yes, nothing is absolute but *relatively not so difficult* is something different from *absolute safety*. Moreover undermining with Cobra or Clipper is something different from undermining with T-9. And everyone deserves a chance to face his opponents in shared BGS. Just for fun.
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BTW, my personal feeling is: I don’t want to ruin someone else’s BGS play with my trading, BH or selling exploration data. To ruin someone else’s efforts in *shadow* mode is below my dignity.

Ah, now this is a good point. But first, can i please ask you to use the right word, its faction, not fraction! ;)

And my point with this thread isn't that something shouldn't change. That's a topic for a different thread. This thread is meant to be squarely aimed at why if you are defending (or even attacking) a faction, you are best focusing on PvE activities, not PvP, because the PvP gains you nothing except, possibly slowing down those who are working against you... unless of course, you outnumber those attacking, so you can afford to do both (PvP to stop some of those attacking in Open, while at the same time, PvE to counter those who get through in Open and those working against you in other modes).

Anyway, back to your main point, the risk.

Let us take the situation with SDC's system being undermined as an example. That worked very well, because there was a large group of people who undermined them from Mobius or solo. There might have been some doing it from Open as well (IIRC there were some groups involved in Open).

By bringing the risk factor in like you suggest, would this have worked if it had occurred in our fantasy Open only environment (and of course, the reason it happened would never have happened in this fantasy world, since there would have been no Mobius for SDC to infiltrate in order to kick off this action in the first place!), but let us assume that SDC had done something else that had attracted the ire of around 20,000 members of the community, many of which felt the need to strike back.

Naturally, can only speculate here, and there are a number of possible outcomes. We no longer have the PvE only environment, so those PvEers would be more used to loss, used to either (reluctantly) getting involved in PvP or at least experienced at running from it. There would also be less players involved in general, because the more hardcore PvEers would have either long ago stopped playing ED, or simply removed themselves from the more populated regions of the bubble in order to avoid PvP.

What happens in this situation, especially when factoring in risk. There would be a decent number of players who, despite their anger at SDC would have decided to not get involved in any in-game action, because they simply are not willing to take the risk. What %? Unknown, but its not going to be anywhere near 100%. Remember, there was a lot of rage, and, once you are committed to playing on Open, you have to accept the risk of it.

What is the risk? The risk of losing your ship, which is the insurance cost, any cargo, and time. How do the PvEers offset this risk? Well, cargo is largely not going to be an issue directly, since unless they are trying to affect the BGS via cargo deliveries (which was badly nerfed a while back - with good reason), the only cargo you might be carrying would be mission based cargo, which you largely don't care about losing if you die, you don't pay for it.

It really comes down to loss of ship. You can offset the impact of this loss in two ways. Either fly a cheaper ship, or you make sure you are flying something which can always escape.

This brings us back to one of the main points i made in the OP.

Two of the most popular ships to fly while affecting the BGS would be the CM3 or the Clipper. The CM3, most PvEers who have been playing for a while simply won't care about losing anyway. But its fast enough to run from most encounters, having the highest boost speed in the game, and a very thin profile, making it hard to hit from behind once you get some distance. For those with access, the Clipper is ideal, unless they need to get to an outpost. Fast, powerful, plenty of room for cargo, good enough for almost any PvE encounter. You can be taking both combat and non-combat missions, as well as room for a SRV bay for doing any planetary assault missions.

Therefore, even factoring in risk, i'd say you'd still have more than enough PvEers getting involved in this action, in order that SDCs faction would still have been toppled. Slower perhaps, the PvEers wouldn't be trading in Anacondas and T9s, they would have largely given up on some activities, focusing on those where the chances of success were higher or fit with what they could do, but there are usually enough missions of various types to find something that will work in your favour and to the detriment of your target.

Still, its rather speculative without a real example to go by.
 
I thought the function of moderators was to focus on the forum rules and only that

You are wrong as others have noted.

All of us were regular forum members before becoming mods. Many of us active posters. Not sure how many people would be willing to be moderators if we couldn't express our opinions in threads, or start our own.

And sure, we are biased. All of us have our own biases. Some of the mods are PvE focused, some are PvP focused, some are in-between enjoying both. And we have our own baises about other things, and we have our own complaints about the game.

I presume you have never seen any of my posts about the state of powerplay, or my opinion of FD leaving broken missions in the game for months? They are not complimentary.

The main thing is, when we do moderate, we do so as impartially as possible. This is why we have a moderator chat channel and forum, where when in doubt we can consult with other mods about any major decisions such as issuing infractions and whatnot.

Hope that clears things up for you.

Now, can i ask you to not make any further off-topic comments? Otherwise a mod (not me!) will have to start deleting your posts, and possibly start issuing warnings or infractions. Pretty please, with sugar on top. ;)
 
Regarding Wolfberg.
Traffic Reports showed between 200 and 300 ships at the start of the "siege" (not really the entire mobius group :) ) and about 80-100 at it's end.
Given the number of defenders in their low 20ies, a fraction of that attacking force (maybe not even the best PvPers .. just the wealthiest commanders who could afford to throw rebuy after rebuy at the opponent just to keep him busy) would have been enough to bind all the combat PvP force of the defender in some ultimately useless skirmishes, while the the other 40-260 commanders could have done what they did anyway.
 
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Sir.Tj

The Moderator who shall not be Blamed....
Volunteer Moderator
Then your Moderator title with that illumated background ought to be retitled as Biased moderator...which sounds a tad rediculous no? How then are you functioning any different that anyone else here that expresses their personal opinion? Whats the point of wearing the title of moderator only to express personal biased, non middle ground opinions?

I thought the function of moderators was to focus on the forum rules and only that--otherwise you lose credibility and fast

Ok,

Moderators are entitled to have an opinion and to voice that opinion on the game here on the forum. They are volunteers and as such not direct employees of Frontier.

As a rule a Moderator who participates in a thread then they allow another member of the team to moderate the thread if necessary.

If you feel a Moderator has broken a forum rule you are free to use the report function to let another Moderator or the Community Manager to investigate.

Just because a Moderator creates a thread that you disagree with then why not post a constructive counter argument in that thread.

Calling out a moderator on content they are entitled to post is not the way to do it.

Basically discuss the post not the poster.

Thanks.
 
that just goes to show how terribly designed and poorly balanced powerplay can be. It's such a garbage-half done feature, it serve no purpose what so ever.
 
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While if someone is outnumbered they will most likely lose but I can see where they come from with the idea that their style should be able to have equal positive for their preferred faction as a pve player would which makes sense within reason
 
While if someone is outnumbered they will most likely lose but I can see where they come from with the idea that their style should be able to have equal positive for their preferred faction as a pve player would which makes sense within reason

It's not PvP vs. PvE.
They want trade or multirole ships (which have a larger impact on the BGS simply by the multiple roles, higher number of missions and non combat activities runneable by them) pitted against pure combat ships.
1 vs. 1
Sounds reasonable .. if the goal is to recieve a "I win" button.
 
And my point with this thread isn't that something shouldn't change. That's a topic for a different thread. This thread is meant to be squarely aimed at why if you are defending (or even attacking) a faction, you are best focusing on PvE activities, not PvP, because the PvP gains you nothing except, possibly slowing down those who are working against you... unless of course, you outnumber those attacking, so you can afford to do both (PvP to stop some of those attacking in Open, while at the same time, PvE to counter those who get through in Open and those working against you in other modes)
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Oh, this is the Frontiers’ aim. Due to the fact that the game does not provide enough gameplay options, the players must be involved in pointless and worthless overgrinding. The quantity beats the quality. *The 300* and Herodotus should be forbidden in 3300:D
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BTW: The SDC/Mobius incident should not define the rule. Yes, there are some people killed by cars, should we forbid the cars? O.k. I’ll speak in general: The law is built on principles. There are no principles in ED universe at all. And the SDC/Mobius incident is a pure example what could be happen in the world without principles. You can kill everyone without penalty and he can undermine your BGS’s efforts in *shadow* mode. Did this make both sides happy? I doubt. Yes, there is no happiness anywhere but something must be made to make all things in game more reasonable and there should be some rules preventing excesses. IMHO ED is not designed for multiplayer and this is the reason why we don’t have any principle regulating Player to Player interactions. My principle for BGS is: If you want to affect the shared universe, you must share the same universe with others. The quality should have a chance against the quantity.
 
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