f13.net forums - FW is live, any experiences?

I haven't stumbled across a comprehensive guide to FW yet, but I'll try and give stuff in a nutshell.

Joining a militia

To join a militia you have to dock at your chosen nation's station and open the Militia Office window. You will be thrown at with some propaganda, urging you to fight but completely on your own expenses. Would it hurt to give me some friggin' bullets, at least? The Militia is nothing more than an extended force of that nation consisting of capsuleers. The consequences of signing up are being at war with your opposing side and getting shot at by their navies when entering their high-sec space. This sounds very obvious until you get blown up on autopilot the next day. You should also be aware that you'll need a minimum 0.5 standing with the faction to join, this includes player corps. When a director joins his corp the corp will be part after the next DT or 24h.

Taking control of a system

FW is basically about CTF with a pinch of King of the Hill gameplay and filled with lots of pew pew delight. Before a faction can claim occupancy over a system you need to capture control points, which are complexes that you can scan down with your directional scanner or by probing (which is said to be faster, but unlike exploration probing it never takes a long time anyway). You cannot scan for your own control points! Control Points are rated Minor and Major. Minor ones can only be entered with ships up to cruisers, industrials included but not T2 as far as I know. Once you have identified the control point you want to attack warp to the acceleration gate, which controls the ship types allowed to enter, and activate it. Once you arrive a beacon will appear showing everyone that the fight is on to take control of it.

Next you have to take the control point by getting within a certain range of it (approx 20km) at which point a countdown will start that will tick down from 15 minutes as long as someone trying to take control of it is in range. This will also alert the NPC defenders, who will start to retaliate by spawning periodically (or annoyingly for those who never give a dying duck about NPCs). Cloaked ships do not affect the timer. Once a side has captured enough control points, including the main one, the central bunker always visible on the overview becomes vulnerable to attack for the next 24h. Assault on this bunker requires massive firepower but will result in the system being captured.

All conquerable systems and their control-points are in low-sec!

Ranks

Expect nothing as diverse as Battlefield2. FW ranks are tied to the standing you have with the militia corporation, not the faction, although faction standing affects corp standing as it always does, so high Caldari standing gives you access to FW agents, but won't affect your rank. Militia corp standings aren't affected by relevant Social skills as far as I've been suggested.

As you gain points from FW you gain standing with your militia corp which gives you higher ranks. Every full point of standing gives you a new rank up to 9.0. Note that you lose ranks the same way you lose standing. Additionally, you gain faction standing for every rank you get by an incremental increase. Ranks are displayed under the new "Decorations" tab in the Character Sheet. Leaving the faction and rejoining later retains your rank.

Things to keep in mind when in a FW player corp

1) Keep your faction standing above 0.5 to insure the corp doesn't get kicked out. Before this happends the corp gets a warning, but nevertheless.

2) There is no two.

What kind of missions do FW agents give?

Same old, same old. They are new missions that are related to the war, some make you haul stuff from one place to another, which isn't as dull as usual considering this is low-sec this time. Others however let you see NPC fleets shoot it out between themselves. It is important to note that once you warp to a FW mission beacon, with the mission name, will appear similar to control-points that others can warp to (and they will warp to, I call them "insta-gank" beacons). Good thing is though, that currently you can freely leave the mission space and let someone else come and do it for you thinking it's a control point plex. When they do you can complete the mission.

How will I know what systems can be captured?

You can see various FW related statistics on the F10 map screen and also some in the Militia Window at stations. I must confess I never did really figure out how to interpret it all :ccp: