Archive:DecShield
Please note that the effect of DecShield has been nullified in Retribution expansion.
A War Declaration Shield (DecShield or Dec Shield), was a game mechanic that the University used to discourage casual War Declarations by making them more expensive to the potential aggressor. Together with the WSOP, DecShield aim at prevent war and shorten war so that unistas can focus on learning about different aspect of the game mechanics in a controlled environment.
Basics
Prior to Inferno the cost to the declaring corporation or alliance was based both on the number of wars that they currently have in process and the number of wars the target corporation or alliance have, as this equation from the Evelopedia shows:
- cost = B * (N+1) * (W+1)
Where B is the base price, N is the number of wars the agressor entity has, and W is the number of wars the target entity has. As you can see, these are multiplicitive factors. As the target entity, you cannot influence B or N, but you can increase W by having 'friendly' corporations declare wars on you.
This has been done by creating a series of 'shell corporations' with alts and having them declare war against you, thereby upping the cost. Note that it is very likely an exploit and/or breach of the EULA to use trial accounts for this purpose, and as such E-UNI utilizes alts on active accounts of members and alumni, which are checked daily for their status.
Changes in Retribution Expansion
In Retribution Expansion, CCP implement several major changes that essentially disintegrated the mechanic of decshield. Here is a forum thread on the subject [1].