Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The Proposal, tl;dr version: Increase lock time on a target in direct proportion to the combined sensor strength of every other ship which has locked that same target.


I apologize if this has already been considered and rejected, but I couldn’t find something similar in Features & Ideas. Most PvPers think large-scale combat sucks because blob tactics are paint-drying boring (shoot primary, shoot next primary, shoot NEXT primary, die in a fire). Numbers largely determine the outcome, and only the FC needs to fire off more neurons than however many are necessary to hit F1. If only large-scale combat disincentivized the ubiquitous target-calling tactics.

CCP was on to something with the target breaker module, but that’s not a gamechanger. But what if the premise behind the target breaker – dissuading the blob – was extended to Eve’s core mechanics? What if every attacking ship which locks a target increases the lock time of the NEXT attacker in proportion to its sensor strength? If additional locks are established on a target while a ship is in the middle of targeting, time is added to that ship’s lock cycle.

Example: A rifter and a hurricane warp on top of a poor merlin in an asteroid belt. The rifter, having better scan resolution than the cane, locks the merlin first and applies a scram. The merlin locks back and the two frigates open fire on each other. The hurricane initially has a 7 second lock time on the merlin, but during its targeting cycle the rifter’s lock extends that to, say, 9 seconds. This proves unfortunate for the rifter pilot, who is quickly defeated by the merlin, which in turn warps off before the cane locks it. (Yes, I realize this is a godly merlin, a fail-fit rifter, or both for the fight to be over that quickly. Bear with me.)

This is a simple example to illustrate the mechanic. It has no real effect here; indeed it might just annoy the hurricane pilot. But its value lies in fleet-sized battles. In your typical BC-through-capital slugfest with hundreds of ships on grid, the dominant tactic is to concentrate all firepower on a single ship at a time (hence FCs screaming about not shooting the primary). But this proposal undermines that tactic, because each new lock on the primary extends the locking time of every other attacker. As long as the locking penalty is sufficiently punitive, the superior tactic will be to divide fire among many ships. The penalty shouldn’t be so strong as to favor a series of individual battles, but it should be strong enough to force FCs to balance the benefits of concentrated fire against the drawbacks of the locking penalty.


Let’s think through the major consequences:

• Standard target-calling becomes suboptimal, and will be replaced by more flexible tactics. This will require that…

• Fleet command becomes more decentralized. If the dominant strategy is to divide fire among many targets, one FC can’t possibly coordinate the target calling. Decision-making will be dispersed among wing and squad commanders, and fleets will have to rely more on the judgment of individual pilots. Therefore…

• Player skill will matter more to the outcome of a battle, and…

• Players will learn more from fleet engagements. Thus…

• The overall quality of Eve PvP will improve. The net result…

• Fleet battles will be more fun and more interesting.


Other benefits:

• More reason to bring small ships to fleet fights. Their lower sensor strength means smaller locking penalties, which means that swarms of assault frigs (for example) could get away with ganging up on a single enemy in a way that a horde of maelstroms couldn’t.

• Being targeted in a fleet battle is less likely to mean instant death. Player skill, character skill, fittings, and so forth give you a fighting chance.

• Fleet fights will last longer, since fleets can no longer concentrate fire as effectively. (I think this is a benefit. I’d like large fights to last longer if they were more fun.)


There are some complications:

• How much of a locking penalty? Of course this is the big question, and I’m not familiar enough with the math involved to work this out on my own. But the principle for figuring out the penalty is clear: strong enough to disincentivize target-calling-as-usual, but weak enough so pilots don’t feel permajammed when they try to lock something that’s already been locked. It might be that making this work in a non-annoying way would require first reducing base locking time across the board.

• What about logistics pilots? If lock time is affected by the number of locks on a ship, logistics pilots would have difficulty repping allies being fired upon (more generally, any buff that requires a lock would be harmed in the same way). But there’s an easy fix: fleet members don’t affect and aren’t affected by the locking penalty when targeting other fleet members. This also hurts neutral RR, which is a happy unintended consequence.

• Won’t fleet coms become a nightmare? Probably, at least until corps develop new etiquette. But in a way this is a good thing: one FC barking orders at 300 slaves is part of why fleet battles suck. More participatory fleets would be more chaotic, but also more fun.

• You think this will fix blobbing? No, I don't. Greater numbers will always be an advantage. But I’d much rather be the underdog in a fleet fight with this proposal enacted than with the status quo.


It’s quite possible that I’m missing something obvious that makes this proposal a nonstarter, or that I’m wrong about my predictions of the consequences. So please criticize away. I’ll edit the proposal with any useful comments, and freely admit failure if someone convinces me it won’t work. Thanks!

Thanks for the comment Corina, and good point on structure bashes. I imagine those all have a very high sig radius in the first place, and so the lock time still wouldn't be too long (at least if devs get the severity of the penalty right). But one could also skip the locking penalty entirely for structures. I'd keep it for caps though - it's the whole point. If you're taking down a titan you've already committed to spending a long time killing it, and its huge sig radius prevents the locking penalty from providing too much of a shield.

As far as your Jita scenario, I have no problem at all with accepting that consequence. Being able to bottle someone up inside a station is dumb anyway, and the fastest locker receives no penalty because he's also the first locker. If you want to camp the undock, bring a seboed interceptor.

I like this idea a lot, but it would have to be combined with a stacking penalty for remote reppers as well (which should happen anyway imo). I'd also tune it to have very little impact for the 2nd and 3rd lockers, but after that it started getting onerous.



Very good point there, although I think dividing the fleet into firing groups is actually a good thing. It might be worth making logi's excempt from this, or perhaps reducing the penalty if ships are in the same fleet.