EVE General Discussion

A lot of work, by many people have spent innumerable resources on creating the "Beauty of EVE". Congratulations. I have given CCP over $1,600 in the past four years in subscriptions via multiple accounts so I fully support the product you are providing. It is my hobby and I'm glad to do so.

The Beauty of EVE includes the whole of all the work included in the recent missile effects and launchers. The gun turrets, new nebula, planet textures, V3 skin shaders, engine trails, new asteroids, mining laser effects, and so much more that the talented CCP developers have given us. Everything is becoming beautiful except for one ugly thing...

Formations.

I heard your answer at Fanfest regarding formations and I am not arguing with you, because I agree when you said, "I don't see what advantage having your ships in space would provide". True. Exactly true. However, when I was watching the video of fanfest I so wanted to jump through the camera, approach the microphone and eye to eye ask you...

"Please do it for the Beauty of EVE. I agree no bonuses should be given, but at least let your developers try it, and also make it optional for the fleet commander to turn it on or off. My idea would be to simply align all ships in the direction that the fleet commander is, or he designates, or he can also choose to not use it all."

Please reconsider your position because even the EVE Promotional Videos, like the one just released show ships in wonderful military alignments that you would expect for an important internet spaceship game.

Maybe it's just my Amarr upbringing, but Jamyl's coronation was a thing to behold.

The Beauty of EVE awaits

If you really really want a formation you can just go to the effort of setting it up, using keep at range on your fc combined with manual flying will end with any formation you wish.

Even real formations aren't pixel perfect, if looks are all you want you can set it up, with no need to waste dev time.

The trouble with formations "not providing any advantage" is that people will get the idea that they should, and then you might end up with rookie fleets getting rolled because they use the mechanic. The thing about having automated movement is that it will have some effect on the game because it's not clientside like all the graphical upgrades.

Maybe you can enlighten me as to how your position on the battlefield has as little effect as engine trails do. I thought distance between ships, speeds, and transversal velocities all mattered a lot.

You know those small and agile frigates that go really fast in Eve? They're not that small. They also weigh a lot (1 million kg for a Rifter).

Realistically, Jamyl's coronation parade thing probably took ages to set up, since those battleships (Apocalypse, 97 million kg) and dreadnoughts (Revelation, 1.2 billion kg) move like giant bricks. There's very little way to make them fly "in formation" other than making them move in a straight line after starting in an interesting position relative to others around them. It would be like making aircraft carriers move in formation rather than fighters.

This idea would be "cool" to implement, but it would either be extremely slow, and rather unfeasible for anything other than just for one-time showmanship, which can already be achieved; or it would have very complex effects on fleet mechanics and the way fleets work, including possible exploitation of the system for weird combat benefits (make a line of battleships so long that you easily get a warp-in on the enemy, for example).

Either way, it requires a lot of effort and thought on CCP's part, and it's a bit naive to ask them to do it on a whim of just "it would look so cool".

A cataclysmic aesthetic...interesting.
The voyeur of utter destruction as beauty.

I like your ideal. Instead of a mass clusterfuck of ships, there could actually be formations of a fleet before the battle begins. The problem is, how hard would something like this be to program.

When the helicopters came over, I heard Flight of the Valkyries in my head.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz3Cc7wlfkI

I used to play a Games Workshop tabletop game called "Battle Fleet Gothic", and they had a pretty good point to ship formations.

1: Not all turrets could fire at the same target... Fire arcs had a role (obviously you can't shoot through your own ship)
2: Not all sides of a ship are equally well armored, so being hit in the rear would do more damage (hehe).

Formation bonuses could reflect the experienced military commander's ability to position his ships so that you don't have your own ships crossing into your own line of fire, and so that you never expose your weakest points to the enemy for long.

Show me the barrel rolls. o_O

Everything in the Eve trailers is made using the existing graphics engine, plus careful scripting of action. Nothing happens in them that can't happen in game. Formations are hard, but not impossible, and for anything other than photo ops (which you can take your time on anyway), they are utterly impractical.

SO NOT TRUE!!!

They have another graphics/movie engine that they use to script and make these trailers. Only when it says "Game Play Footage" is when they use EVE.

EDIT: There was a complete video on how they made videos. Their own CCP built trailer program is called "Jessica".