Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hello,

Recently I was playing with a pilot who was using an assault frig to do lvl 3 missions. It reminded me of the speed tanking and how most guns have alignment stats. To me the alignment stats seem to be lying in the shadow and are not clearly exposed to the player, not to mention hardly used.

Gameplay suggestion:

The idea of weapon alignment and the ships movement should have an significant effect on combat. The effect should be displayed and dynamic. Depending on the movement of the target ship the weapon alignment should increase or decrease.

Weapon Alignment:

Weapon alignment stats provide the basic starting point of alignment for the target. The speed of the ship at the point when the target is acquired will deduct from the starting alignment value. The alignment information will be further modified based on the ship speed and direction for the duration of the target lock. The alignment stats determine if the weapon will hit or miss a target. If its a hit then the value of the alignment stats would determine the percentage of the maximum damage of the weapon that will be applied to the target. Weapon alignment stats will also determine the basic alignment increase rate. With bigger weapons having slowest alignment increase rate. This would mean that a capital weapon would take a very, very long time to fully align on to a small ship/drone traveling at full speed, it would basically take days. However there still remains a very, very small chance that a capital weapon will hit a fast ship.

Ship speed and movement/direction:

Ship speed will determine the rate at which the alignment increases from basic value to the maximum. Faster the ship moves the longer it takes to align 100%.

Movement/direction would determine how much alignment should be decreased based on the current alignment value. If the ship makes a drastic change of direction the alignment value will be reset back to basic value. If the ship is constantly making slight changes in the direction (orbiting) then a smaller value would be taken away from the overall alignment stats every time the weapon fires based on the degree of the direction change.

If the target ship is sitting still the weapon alignment will increase based on the basic rate of alignment value of the weapon. On the opposite side if the targeting ship is sitting still its alignment will get a boost.

UI suggestion:

Have the alignment percentage displayed on every target icon or on the weapon icon. This way the pilot is aware of the damage the weapons can deal on a target.

I believe this will liven up the space combat as sitting still will have a much bigger effect on the battle. Also as the value and chance of damage is constantly kept dynamic flying skills will now be able to make and predictable fight a lot more unpredictable. If anyone is wondering as to what i am flying and if this will have any effect on my way of playing EVE i would say yes. I am Domi pilot and all i ever do is warp in, park and let the drones clean up the room. So this change would actually require me to play more actively in EVE.

Please be gentle this is my first suggestion. Thanks.

It seems as all the data needed for the work is already there. CCP just needs to expose it and actually add it to the gameplay and UI more.