Assembly Hall

F&I thread: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=182567

The Gap

As Louie Woo summarizes later in this thread, there are four natural responses to developing a defense against incoming damage. Eve today only covers three of them.

Disruption (prevent the shot)

• ECM
• Tracking disruptor
• Target breaker

Hardening (toughen the target)

• Plates / Shield extenders
• Hardeners / Resistance amplifiers / Invulnerability fields
• Resistance / buffer boosts from Command Ships

Repair (clean up the mess)

• Local armor rep / shield booster
• Remote armor rep / shield transfer

Interception (physically block part of the shot)

• Defender missiles?
• (gap!)

We currently are missing a way to intervene and prevent or reduce incoming damage on someone else. Defender missiles only work for you, and only against missiles. In other words, we can't actively and simply protect our corpmates. We can't directly protect our clients. And unless you can fly a Command Ship or are a fleet booster of some sort, you can't contribute to damage reduction during an attack.

I'm proposing both a new role, for a new kind of destroyer, and new modules and skills to use them. Further, the idea is aimed at cheap ships piloted by newer players that should make them integral to a balanced fleet (beyond tackle).

Proposal

New modules:

• Missile suppression / protection over a target
• Turret suppression / protection over a target
• Sensor links for fire suppression / interception

New ship / role: Destroyer that specializes in anti-ballistic, anti-missile, anti-laser, or anti-hybrid warfare.

An anti-laser module, for example, would fire reflective chaff modules in the path of incoming laser fire, with the chance to deflect fire on a targeted ship based on the distance to the line of fire. An anti-missile module would fire real defender missiles to protect a targeted vessel. In each case, some form of sensor link with the targeted ship can help increase the chance of reducing, deflecting, or intercepting incoming fire.

Additional details in these posts:
- Mechanics & Countering Strategies
- New modules and skills

Agreed, but the idea here would be a to produce a rock-paper-scissors kind of counter for each type of weapon. So even if, for some odd reason, it is the Amarr destroyer that specializes in fielding a deflective chaff module, the point is to have a specific, partially effective counter to each main weapon type. Logically this would mean Gallente having an anti-missile boat, Minmatar having an anti-laser boat, Caldari having an anti-hybrid boat, and Amarr an anti-projectile. I'd submit that drone counters drone.

Partly this would function as anti-gank, should miners have buddies willing to fly and protect them. But I think it would be interesting from a tactics and intelligence perspective. If you learn you're going against a Drake blob, bring a line of anti-missile destroyers to the party. Your scouts say "lasers!" you bring the disco ball launchers... etc.

lol.... Anti missile, chaff shooting dessies just don't fit well into the game mechanics....

However, you could ask for EWAR dessies, that essentially do the same thing!!! Tracking Disruptors effect all turrets, and soon missile too.... So, make a TD dessie, and you suddenly have your Aegis Dessie...

Okay. But a logistic ship can have the same effect by having reps on something before the attack begins. If the effect these new ships have, were to be effective without targeting your allies (eg. over the anti-weapons' range, 50k or something), then there were would be a big enough difference in my opinion. How then would the ships mod decide who to protect and who not to? Only those in fleet? By standing? By corp or alliance?

I do see another problem though. A fleet of these ships could be used to make a fleet completely invincible to any fleet smaller than it.

There is a partial solution to that of course. It would be good to see the ships mod shooting projectiles out of space without collaboration ie, they randomly choose a projectile to shoot at. This would mean that the more ships you had that did this, the more likely they were to be shooting the same projectiles (ie negating some of their effect).

Which would mean the more of these dessies you had in a fleet the more likely they would be to end up shooting the same targets and wasting their effect. It would also mean the bigger the enemy fleet (ie, the more projectiles coming) the less likely statistically they would be to shoot at the same projectiles as each other. It might actually scale quite nicely. It would give small fleets more effect against big ones and big ones less effect against small ones... and so on and so forth. That is only a small fix to the problem though. I still think they would be difficult to balance in numbers.

There are a lot of concepts to be ironed out. I'm not giving my support to this thread quite yet. But neither am I dismissing it.

There are already ships that perform the roles you've mentioned aside from the missile defense shield. The Electronic warfare hulls and their T2 variants provide the target suppression you want. A missile defense destroyer is a neat concept but would be under utilized as no one with a bit of sense uses missile ships in serious fleet PvP. There's probably a use for them in PvE, but the existing PvE content is already trivial enough as it is.

Say a logistic ship has reps going on a friendly to the tune of one million shield points every two seconds (ridiculous, but this is merely for the sake of illustration). The friendly has 5000 EHP. An alpha strike hits the friendly for 5001 points. The friendly explodes.

In the case where the friendly is protected by this new kind of ship / module, what would have been a 5001 point strike turns into a 3500 point strike. Still a big deal, but not game-over.


The module protects the targeted ship it is activated on. In other words you do target a specific friendly and protect that ship.


The way I saw it, closer proximity to line of fire, or to the protected target was what would prevent "I Win" fleets. If one destroyer is protecting two ships, it will be less effective protecting one than the other. Because shot angle now matters in the equation, an enemy fleet can simply target ships they have a better position on. Also, a webbing frigate becomes deadly for the the protected ships as it can prevent the destroyer from maintaining position (until the destroyer pops it... it is a destroyer after all).

This creates some fairly new dynamics for fleet fights, I think, and has enough natural counters to prevent invincible fleets. Used well, it could prevent straight blob grinds and require better tactics. I couldn't say what effect this has on CCP's hamsters, although I'd hope the calculation would be simple enough to make it not too onerous.

Besides, in a fleet battle, destroyers should outnumber battlecruisers, battleships, and cap ships.

How does ECCM reduce incoming damage on a target?

But that's why CCP devs get paid the big bucks... They hopefully figure out ways to implement the feature without making it a massive ordeal. Hopefully.

Any additional problems with the idea itself?

Drake swarm is an aberration that functions solely on the fact that we can dump three full fleets Drakes into a system. Smaller fleets rarely see missiles being used as anything but secondary weapons to fill a highslot you couldn't put a real weapon in.

I like this idea for when DUST goes live. Able to defend the heavies from ground based fire would be pretty cool. Already they had an idea in Templar One when a squadron of Catalyst destroyers fire their guns to defend the Moros. Tho a new ship class would be quite neat.