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Friendly Fire
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Die Unknown
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#1 - 2013-01-27 14:27:18 UTC  |  Edited by: Die Unknown
So by now we've all heard about the 2800+ ship battle that has just taken place. I will be the first to admit that this is one way in which eve is unique to all other MMOs currently out there. The news of the battle have now spread beyond eve-centric media and as a result will be attracting many new players. However, if those newbies stick around long enough they will inevitably discover that blob warfare is the most boring and least inspiring aspect of eve universe.

While blob warfare will never go away, and nor should it, introducing strategy to it should only be of benefit to all. So my questing is this, are there any technical or game-breaking limits to giving all weapon systems a flight path? For example:

  • While the turrets aim to shoot at their intended target, if something crosses the path of projectile/light beam, it will take the damage instead, even if friendly.
  • Missiles, although being smarter and able to go around objects already have a flight time and explosion radius. Making explosion radius they currently have, into an area of effect system, would mean that if any ship is too close to to the intended target, it would also receive some damage. Furthermore if your missiles run out of fuel and explode prematurely, any ships near will also receive damage.

So what's the point? The idea is to introduce a second tier of strategy to combat while making blob warfare exponentially more difficult to manage.

  • Hide the brittle EW/Logi (and Soon(tm) on-grid-only boosts) boats behind meatier Battleships.
  • Put your ship behind an enemy in effect forcing a one-v-one engagement.
  • No more zoom out, point and click down a long list. Pilots will have to put thought into what they can and can't hit.
  • Fights will last much longer since it would not be possible for whole fleet to have only one or two primarys.

There are obvious limitations to this at first glance; namely high sec warfare. The only solution I can think of, would be to make non-participants in high sec to be ghost-like entities, much as they are now. I'm sure there are other aspects to this I haven't thought through yet. So to iterate then, what technical and/or game-breaking limitations are there to such a mechanic?

TL;DR: Alarming lack of dolphin porn.
baltec1
Bat Country
Pandemic Horde
#2 - 2013-01-27 14:44:34 UTC
more soul crushing lag is just what we need.
Kalle Demos
Ironic Corp Name
#3 - 2013-01-27 14:59:17 UTC
What they will also find is CCP saying they will fix lag but not actually doing anything
Dave Stark
#4 - 2013-01-27 15:00:33 UTC
nothing stops you shooting people in your fleet, friendly fire exists.
Arduemont
Rotten Legion
#5 - 2013-01-27 15:16:56 UTC
Although this would be a nice end game for Eve, it's ultimately impractical and there will always be more important things to implement. Even if there was nothing else that needed changing or improving, it would still be a greater priority to get more people into fleet fights with less lag.

People who take part in large fleet fights want less lag, and people who don't go into large fleets won't get effected enough for a change like this to be implemented.

It's a nice idea, but the hard truth is that it's not worth it.

"In the age of information, ignorance is a choice." www.stateofwar.co.nf
Die Unknown
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#6 - 2013-01-27 15:21:30 UTC
Dave Stark wrote:
nothing stops you shooting people in your fleet, friendly fire exists.


You misunderstand proposed mechanic. Friendly fire is there to stop overview-only gameplay and introduce more strategy and complexity.

I doubt that many people still remember the days before tracking and signature radius. Mechanics like these are needed to make the game have more depth.
iskflakes
#7 - 2013-01-27 15:22:51 UTC
CCP could implement a flight path if they wanted to.

-
Azitek
Serenity Labs
#8 - 2013-01-27 15:23:46 UTC
Under the conditions you described, it seems like missiles would become heavily favored. Because you could have 200 maelstroms blobbed up, but 100 of those would be taking damage from the others, resulting in lower DPS output and effectively lower EHP for your enemy to grind through. Or you could have 200 ravens, 0 of whom are taking damage from the others, and all of whom are applying damage to the primary, albeit delayed damage. It seems like this would just change the blob from turret-based to missile-based.
Dave Stark
#9 - 2013-01-27 15:27:12 UTC
Die Unknown wrote:
Dave Stark wrote:
nothing stops you shooting people in your fleet, friendly fire exists.


You misunderstand proposed mechanic. Friendly fire is there to stop overview-only gameplay and introduce more strategy and complexity.

I doubt that many people still remember the days before tracking and signature radius. Mechanics like these are needed to make the game have more depth.


i understand the mechanic, but you described line of sight not friendly fire.
Sentamon
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#10 - 2013-01-27 16:05:09 UTC
baltec1 wrote:
more soul crushing lag is just what we need.


Doubtful that you'd see more then a couple hundred ships on the same grid with systems such as line of fire, collision damage, and ships explosions causing damage to all nearby ships.

What you have now is the worst of all words because people just mindlessly pile in and the side that brings the most is pretty much guaranteed a win.

~ Professional Forum Alt  ~
Die Unknown
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#11 - 2013-01-27 16:13:41 UTC
Azitek wrote:
Under the conditions you described, it seems like missiles would become heavily favored. Because you could have 200 maelstroms blobbed up, but 100 of those would be taking damage from the others, resulting in lower DPS output and effectively lower EHP for your enemy to grind through. Or you could have 200 ravens, 0 of whom are taking damage from the others, and all of whom are applying damage to the primary, albeit delayed damage. It seems like this would just change the blob from turret-based to missile-based.


Missiles would indeed be unique in this way. However, in the case of 200 ravens one would only need to move your fleet inside their blob and they will be doing just as much damage to them selves as you while you are able to hug their ships and deliver 100% dps.
Destination SkillQueue
Doomheim
#12 - 2013-01-27 16:16:07 UTC
Sentamon wrote:
baltec1 wrote:
more soul crushing lag is just what we need.


Doubtful that you'd see more then a couple hundred ships on the same grid with systems such as line of fire, collision damage, and ships explosions causing damage to all nearby ships.

What you have now is the worst of all words because people just mindlessly pile in and the side that brings the most is pretty much guaranteed a win.


No the worst would be lowering the threshold for soul crushing lag/server crash. Currently you need to gather players from everywhere to get the game to become that way and it still usually stays somewhat playable these days. The improvement to even a few years ago is pretty remarkable. If you significantly lower that number, it becomes a tactical weapon. Single entities could fill up that limit on their own and deny the fight from even happening when they wanted.
Grey Azorria
Federation Industries
#13 - 2013-01-27 16:22:37 UTC
Kalle Demos wrote:
What they will also find is CCP saying they will fix lag but not actually doing anything

~3,000 players dukeing it out on a non-reinforced node and the game still being playable (albeit laggy) when battles less than half that size used to crash the entire server even on reinforced nodes...

...Yeah CCP hasn't done a damn thing.

Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.

Sometimes when I post, I look at my sig and wish that I'd follow my own god damned advice.
Die Unknown
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#14 - 2013-01-27 16:48:04 UTC
Destination SkillQueue wrote:
Sentamon wrote:
baltec1 wrote:
more soul crushing lag is just what we need.


Doubtful that you'd see more then a couple hundred ships on the same grid with systems such as line of fire, collision damage, and ships explosions causing damage to all nearby ships.

What you have now is the worst of all words because people just mindlessly pile in and the side that brings the most is pretty much guaranteed a win.


No the worst would be lowering the threshold for soul crushing lag/server crash. Currently you need to gather players from everywhere to get the game to become that way and it still usually stays somewhat playable these days. The improvement to even a few years ago is pretty remarkable. If you significantly lower that number, it becomes a tactical weapon. Single entities could fill up that limit on their own and deny the fight from even happening when they wanted.


When tracking and signature radius mechanics were introduced, that also added massive amount of data crunching. However the depth and strategy added trumps the issue of increased lag. Otherwise we'd all be asking for CCP to get rid of this resource hog in order to combat lag.

On the other hand, since the difficulty of managing fleets rises exponentially the bigger they get, having larger fleets would not necessarily be of benefit and instead large alliances would have to fight smarter. Do you think that a blob of 200 ships is being flown by 200 people? Most players have at least one alt, and plenty fly 5-10 clients at once. As CCP has taken great strides in combating lag and allowing more and more ships to participate in a single battle, so are people running more and more clients. Simply, the only way to win right now is to have more ships than the other guy, thus 2800+ ships and more lag. Allow for greater depth in combat, and you'll see less people feel the need to bring out multiple alts.
baltec1
Bat Country
Pandemic Horde
#15 - 2013-01-27 18:12:00 UTC
Sentamon wrote:
baltec1 wrote:
more soul crushing lag is just what we need.


Doubtful that you'd see more then a couple hundred ships on the same grid with systems such as line of fire, collision damage, and ships explosions causing damage to all nearby ships.

What you have now is the worst of all words because people just mindlessly pile in and the side that brings the most is pretty much guaranteed a win.


We would deploy into smaller fleets but have the same numbers in these fights and most likely crash servers/set nodes on fire in the process. CCP has made massive steps forwards in the fight against lag. I remember 400 ships causing soul crushing lag for several systems, now we have playable fights involving near enough 3000 ships.
Sergeant Acht Scultz
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#16 - 2013-01-27 18:19:29 UTC
baltec1 wrote:
We would deploy into smaller fleets but have the same numbers in these fights and most likely crash servers/set nodes on fire in the process. CCP has made massive steps forwards in the fight against lag. I remember 400 ships causing soul crushing lag for several systems, now we have playable fights involving near enough 3000 ships as long as your OS is XP.

removed inappropriate ASCII art signature - CCP Eterne
Jaiimez Skor
The Infamous.
#17 - 2013-01-27 18:32:34 UTC
Kalle Demos wrote:
What they will also find is CCP saying they will fix lag but not actually doing anything


Please do find me any other game on the planet that has over 2500 players in the same instance (grid/area) in one go that doesn't have a single bit of lag?

It's okay I can wait.

CCP have some of the most powerful servers on the planet and pretty sure the most powerful in the gaming industry, they are doing their best but everytime they do something to allow us to do 1000 man fleet fights without lag we bring 1500, they make it handle 1500, we bring 2000... They're fighting a loosing battle give them some love.
Bienator II
madmen of the skies
#18 - 2013-01-27 19:17:51 UTC
would create a new discipline: navigate your ship in highsec between the missioner and the npc

how to fix eve: 1) remove ECM 2) rename dampeners to ECM 3) add new anti-drone ewar for caldari 4) give offgrid boosters ongrid combat value
Sentamon
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#19 - 2013-01-27 19:21:41 UTC
Bienator II wrote:
would create a new discipline: navigate your ship in highsec between the missioner and the npc


Doing 0 damage with your safety on might take a whole 3 lines of code.

~ Professional Forum Alt  ~
Bienator II
madmen of the skies
#20 - 2013-01-27 19:32:27 UTC
Sentamon wrote:
Bienator II wrote:
would create a new discipline: navigate your ship in highsec between the missioner and the npc


Doing 0 damage with your safety on might take a whole 3 lines of code.

so whats the point? Keep safeties green and ignore the feature

how to fix eve: 1) remove ECM 2) rename dampeners to ECM 3) add new anti-drone ewar for caldari 4) give offgrid boosters ongrid combat value
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