Faction Warfare - A Logical Outcome

When I made my post about Faction Warfare and the LP Metagame a while back, I missed one fairly crucial element:

You still get LP for plexing on behalf of your allied militia.

Faction Warfare - First Impressions

As some of you might be aware (or at the very least might have guessed based on some of my recent posts), I've spent the last couple of weeks trying out Faction Warfare. I'm not done with it by any means, but I feel like I've seen enough to at least post my initial thoughts.

Based on the current state of play I decided to join the Amarr; I figured that joining the underdogs was likely to present both the greater challenge and a larger number of targets, and so far that's proving to be correct. I also decided to go into FW solo, signing up under my own corp rather than joining one of the established groups - obviously this is going to change my FW experience considerably, but I expect it'll be a better baseline for a new PVPer signing up to FW.

Faction Warfare, LP, and the Metagame

There's an interesting post over at @Gamerchick42 regarding the metagame of FW. While I recommend reading that whole post, I can summarise it with a few basic facts:

• You do not gain any LP for defending a system in FW.
• You do gain LP for capturing a system in FW.
• Purely from an LP perspective, it actually makes sense to allow your opponent to conquer a system rather than defending it (which you receive no LP for) and then capture it again once it's taken (which you do receive LP for), providing you're confident that you can take it back.
• A faction which currently has high warzone control will gain far more isk for a given amount of LP - and thus, a given number of systems taken - than a faction which has lower warzone control.

Susan's conclusion is that it's in the interests of the minmatar militia (which currently has tier four warzone control out of a maximum five) to allow the amarr (who have tier one warzone control) to take systems from them and then to take them back later - this generates large amounts of LP for the minmatar, and while it also gives LP to the amarr their lower warzone control score means that the resulting income is far lower.

On the surface this might read like a reformulation of the old 'we didn't want those systems anyway' argument (and given Susan's recent move towards propaganda-heavy posting I'm sure that's partly the intention), however the logic is sound - if LP is your primary concern, then this strategy would maximise your income.

Let's look at a few possible applications of this. Please bear in mind that I don't personally endorse any of these behaviours, since I believe they would make FW less fun for all involved parties. I do however think they make for an interesting discussion.