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[Ilithi Dragon]

So as we all know, with the current system in CW, action over a planet over the course of most of the day isn't really all that significant - the most significant action comes in the two or three hours prior to the 2315 Eastern "cease fire" when new matches are haulted, and the planet's final status is calculated after the last matches finish up. We all know the problems and frustrations with this.


To fix this, and make combat throughout the day, PGI needs to have "cease-fire" cut-offs throughout the day, every four to six hours, to really make combat throughout the day valuable. The obvious problem with that, however, is that planets could end up switching back and forth every four to six hours, or three quarters or more of the player timezones will miss out on any given planet battle.

The simple solution to that is to have a two-tier "tick" system, with the current system just being the first tier, and the results of the battles in that tier are tallied every 4-6 hours, and the results of that 4-6 hour "theater" or whatever-you-want-to-call-it being counted as one tick towards the planet capture for that day, with the cycle being set to 4 hours probably being the most preferable, so you have more cycles to make an impact on the fight in. Then, at the end of the day, you tally all the second tier "ticks" to determine who gets the planet.

Now, this would still create the problem where early successes in the first four cycles make the last two irrelevant, which would have to be resolved, but there are a few ways to work around that without much hassle. For example, instead of having a hard cut-off at 2315 Eastern every day, you make it a rolling system, with current planet ownership going by whomever scored the most second tier ticks in the last 24 hours, and then you expand the total contest time out to two or three days, with final ownership being decided by whomever managed to gain the most ticks in that 48- or 72-hour period. This would slow the overall progression of faction advances or expansions on the galaxy map, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.