tl;dr version: The best way to win CZ "battles" might be to joining the faction of the side you want to LOSE.
Dissertation length argument:
Before Chapter Four dropped, CZ faction balance seemed relatively equal. A player would drop in, there'd be a war being fought (to little or no effect on either side), you'd contribute some amount, and ONLY player contribution (bonds being turned in) really mattered in the determination of the war's outcome.
Then someone came up with the bright idea to have a "Battle Won" and "Battle Lost" mechanism attached to CZ's, with an attendant influence gain or loss. Which sounds cool ...on the surface. Until you actually spend more than 6 seconds gaming the design idea out.
And to that seemingly ill-considered decision, a designer introduced events where the NPC lethality on one side or another got tilted significantly (e.g., the Spec Ops ships that drop in and are much more lethal than vanilla CZ participants). And while those events seem triggered by the presence of a player -- we don't really know that, do we? But even if they do require a player, now that CZ actions contribute influence beyond just combat bond turn-in, players could be dropping in, triggering events, then leaving (or remaining, but only on the periphery, making little or no actual combat contribution), confident that the faction suddenly left to fight against a newly introduced Spec Ops wing would almost certainly lose the battle, resulting in an influence boost or loss -- even without any combat bonds being turned in for that battle.
Unless that influence gain or loss is strictly some bogus announcement, without actual effect, then even the least combat skilled of pilots can tilt battles for the faction they champion by joining their opponent's team, triggering the opposing Spec Ops wing to drop in on the side they actually want to win, then hanging back and letting the NPCs clean up and win the battle. Wash, rinse, repeat.
In this way, a lone pilot can just fly from CZ to CZ joining the enemy side, killing very little, letting the new CZ mechanism win his faction's battles for him and awarding that influence toward the resolution of the war.
That's a problem.
Change my mind.
Dissertation length argument:
Before Chapter Four dropped, CZ faction balance seemed relatively equal. A player would drop in, there'd be a war being fought (to little or no effect on either side), you'd contribute some amount, and ONLY player contribution (bonds being turned in) really mattered in the determination of the war's outcome.
Then someone came up with the bright idea to have a "Battle Won" and "Battle Lost" mechanism attached to CZ's, with an attendant influence gain or loss. Which sounds cool ...on the surface. Until you actually spend more than 6 seconds gaming the design idea out.
And to that seemingly ill-considered decision, a designer introduced events where the NPC lethality on one side or another got tilted significantly (e.g., the Spec Ops ships that drop in and are much more lethal than vanilla CZ participants). And while those events seem triggered by the presence of a player -- we don't really know that, do we? But even if they do require a player, now that CZ actions contribute influence beyond just combat bond turn-in, players could be dropping in, triggering events, then leaving (or remaining, but only on the periphery, making little or no actual combat contribution), confident that the faction suddenly left to fight against a newly introduced Spec Ops wing would almost certainly lose the battle, resulting in an influence boost or loss -- even without any combat bonds being turned in for that battle.
Unless that influence gain or loss is strictly some bogus announcement, without actual effect, then even the least combat skilled of pilots can tilt battles for the faction they champion by joining their opponent's team, triggering the opposing Spec Ops wing to drop in on the side they actually want to win, then hanging back and letting the NPCs clean up and win the battle. Wash, rinse, repeat.
In this way, a lone pilot can just fly from CZ to CZ joining the enemy side, killing very little, letting the new CZ mechanism win his faction's battles for him and awarding that influence toward the resolution of the war.
That's a problem.
Change my mind.
Last edited:
