[2020] So how does outfit wars scoring actually work and other questions

We have a handful of articles going out tomorrow that have more detailed information on the different components of the update. Until then though, Outfit Wars scoring works as follows:

• Facilities and Large Outposts are now worth 15 points on capture, and 6 points per tick.
• Small Outposts and Construction bases are now worth 5 points on capture, and 2 points per tick.

Like outfit resources, outfits who own the base get ticks every 5 minutes, whereas you only need to participate in a base capture in order to get the capture points for it.

Scoring in general will definitely need clearer messaging, and points tuning will undoubtedly take place after this beta season is over. Player behavior is guide a lot of those decisions.

Regarding your other questions...

Does the extra starting an alert and ending on count towards the points too?

Yes.

If another outfit scores enough to join OW, can I leave my outfit and just join them instead?

You can, yes. Though realize that there are only 48 slots available to an Outfit on Desolation itself. One of the hopes here is that some of the supermassive outfits start forming subdivisions (or have attrition in general) when there are players within those outfits that want to participate in an Outfit War, but are never afforded a slot there. We'll see how it actually plays out though.

Unrelated question, is any of the war asset usage available in the API? I'd like to know if one of my outfit members uses a war asset while I'm offline or such.

No, not currently. Not incredibly sure what it'd take to get us there. However, part of our initial design was to have an "Outfit Log" that would report and timestamp different noteworthy events performed by members, like: players joining the outfit, players being promoted, players starting crafting of war assets, players using war assets. That had to get set aside due to the monumental scope of this project, but is something we could circle back around to if the demand for something like it is high enough.

This has been considered, and we're willing to change it in the future depending on how the meta shakes out. What we need to gauge during this initial pass is how strongly players are willing to maintain territory their outfit owns. The fastest way for large outfits to earn resources won't be to zerg down a lattice, but to split up their forces to cover the most ground. Whether or not they'll know how or be willing to do this remains to be seen.

Some controls we have access to are not only the tick rates and capture values, but we can also enable "defensive captures" which allow outfits who resecure a base to put their name on it. This would help enable that QRF gameplay you're talking about, and would undoubtedly create more faction infighting, as some outfits would wait until bases have almost been captured before swooping in for a resecure, but it could be exciting, too.

Goal wise, if we can create fights at bases you don't normally see around the map, and movement is more fluid than what's on Live right now, that's good. If it becomes a ring-around-the-rosie of outfits avoiding each other, ala World Domination Series preseason 2, that's bad. This initial cycle is going to reveal a lot of things to us about player behavior, and we'll be ready to make adjustments for not only the second cycle of Outfit Wars, but the resource system as a whole.