Player Features and Ideas Discussion

You dont need formations, you need organization.

If you dont want your bombers to travel in a blob then train your pilots or squad commanders. Tell each squad commander to always warp within a certain distance. Run training sessions on sisi. Have certain people as certified bombers squad commandrrs. And yes this is a lot of work, but ive been in 150 man bomber gangs that are this organized. It does work. Although it did take a few hours of practice.

And in the big fights make sure each pilot knows what their role is. If you want a certain ship to be spread out over the fleet to clear tackle then tell the pilots. If you want long range ships near the back tell them to anchor on the logi.

All large fleets can function well on TS with 2 fcs. One primary and another logi fc. Logi fc should have a logi channel in game and a whisper list on ts. Each fc should be the anchor for their own division of the fleet.

I dont support giving more powers to the fc if it detracts from better organization. This game is about working together. Train your pilots and fcs, organize them and use this to defeat your blob enemy.

Set align point- call warp to character - count down to zero - all squad commanders warp their squad on zero to predetermined ranges (squad 1 at0km, squad 10 @ 100kms)

Will they arrive at the exact time down to the fraction of a second? No
Will it be damned close? Yes

a good organization will make you achieve this, it will not be the axact same split second, but it'll be really really close, so close that the slight delay won't even matter

How would a mechanic that enables squad commanders to set a warp in range and land on grid at the same time as everyone else detract from fleet warfare as opposed to having the same thing happen but everyone arrive at different times (by having all squad commanders warp their squads individually)?

Summary: These formations take away the advantage of properly trained pilots and organization.

How? If the FC directed the squads to set a warp-in range and then warped them together how would that be any different than telling them to warp their squadrons at range by themselves?

The only difference is the fleet lands all at the same time with my proposed method. The fleet lands scattered at random times with the current method. My proposed fleet formation would't detract from trained pilots. On the contrary, by giving the FCs/wing commanders/ squad commanders a better tool to organize fleets, my proposed method encourages better organization and planning so that people don't just show up and hit F1.

I think it's important to define the word "blobbing" with respect to what I mean when I say it. When I refer to "blobbing" I mean an entire fleet of different ship types bunched together in a giant "blob" (for lack of a better term than "sphere") just warping to the same point in space with little tactical consideration.

On the contrary, a fleet arriving at the same time, but spread out in different warp-in ranges for tactical considerations would not be a "blob".



Should we get rid of the "orbit" command and just click around in space to make a circle? It's just math right? Go out and practice in your ship to figure out long it takes to change directions (both for agility plus the average server lag time for the command to be accepted) and just make it happen?

That is possible with third grade math as well, but I would certainly not enjoy playing nearly as much if the game was focused on click-timing instead of making decisions.

If the game were fully joystick compatible and all the tracking solutions and what not for guns were handled by no-kidding hand-eye coordination, as well as formation flying, as well as turning the ship to align, etc. I would totally be on board with your thought process on this one. In fact, that would be awesome to have to manually fly your ship around in fleet fights. However, the game isn't designed that way. It's going to take quite a few technological advances in bandwidth/computational power for a game as large and complex (with as many players) as this one to handle that sort of an operation.

From what I understand, the idea of a sandbox game is to give players tools to interact with each other and let them create their own method of play. What we have currently is a fleet organization system of fleet -> wings - squads which enables the subdivisions to warp independently of each other (which is great). However, creating a new tool that also gives them the ability to arrive at the same time, at different ranges, would allow the players more latitude in fleet warfare and, in my opinion, would lead to more dynamic and engaging fights.

Question:

1. How can you go “make a cup of tea or take a bathroom break” if you’re in a DPS ship with multiple targets? Let’s say you land on grid against a comparably sized fleet. You set anchor to another DPS ship (like the FC) and shoot at the first primary target he calls. If you left at that point to “make a cup of tea or take a bathroom break” how would you start shooting at the next primary target, or the next?

I think you are exaggerating a little bit. Furthermore, I don’t think this really has very much to do with my suggested “fleet formation” concept. Allowing the fleet to arrive at different distances after exiting warp as per my suggested formation mechanic (based off of ship type and/or squadron) wouldn’t have any major effects on this anyways since it merely has to do with where the ships land after exiting warp and nothing to do with target selection, or subwarp ship movement, or setting an anchor, etc.. Additionally, I think you are only addressing ONE type of ship role in this hypothetical engagement: “DPS ships”. Logistics ships can’t “make a cup of tea or take a bathroom break”, nor can anti-support, ECM, fast tackle, etc. (or even DPS themselves). Having these ships land at different distances at the same time wouldn’t change this dynamic. Once again, I do not see the connection between this and “fleet formations” which is the main purpose of the thread.



If “press[ing] buttons” is what you are concerned about (i.e. ensuring that individual players need to actuate some control mechanism in game) then the formation warp could be set up in such a way that each individual player had to set the warp-in distance for themselves (i.e. FC says “Alright everyone set your warp in range and align to XYZ Stargate”, [everyone sets their warp in distances to stargate and aligns], [FC selects “warp fleet at pre-set ranges” and the fleet enters warp], [fleet lands on grid at preset ranges selected by the individual ships]. Furthermore, these default ranges set by the individual players could reset to “0” after each formation warp. That way, players had to be continually involved in the process and it would necessitate coordination over comms (thus giving an advantage to well-trained, well-organized, well-thought-out groups of players).



I fundamentally disagree with you on this one. If I understand correctly, you’re saying that “fleet warp” mechanics shouldn’t exist in the game at all. If this is how you feel (not like fleet warps) then of course you wouldn’t like a mechanic that makes fleet warp more customizable (since you don’t like fleet warp by itself).

As I said, fleet warp makes the game, in my opinion, much better than if everyone had to warp individually. Tactically, it wouldn’t make sense for groups of ships to always have to warp individually. There is no advantage to always having every ship in every fleet warp individually without giving the players the option to warp as one.

Furthermore, if you don’t think fleet warp should exist then why have fleet mechanics at all? If we can’t warp together why even have a fleet, or for that matter divisions of wings and squads (since they wouldn’t be able to warp their subdivisions either [since that would take away from every single person having to press a button to move their ship]). Should the mechanic exist just so we can warp to individual members of the fleet? If so, we don’t need divisions of squads or wings.

I understand that you don’t like the ability to fleet warp already. If that’s the case, then you certainly wouldn’t like fleet formations (I get that). But if your only premise for not liking fleet formations is -> because you don’t like fleet warps -> because you don’t like people controlling other people’s ships then I don’t feel like you really have a point to your argument against “fleet formations” other than the fact that you don’t like “fleets” in first place.

The game is set up to enable small groups of players in fast maneuverable ships to spread out and warp individually (i.e. groups of interceptors shotgunning systems looking for prey and quickly swarming together when necessary). In that instances, fleet warps are not necessary (and are actually cumbersome). However, the game also allows for LARGE groups of different ships to move as a single unit (in which case fleet warping as one is tactically important). As such, the option for ships to warp as one unit OR individually if preferred is important. I am just taking it a step further and saying that ships that warp together should also be able to land on grid at different ranges at the same time as well.

Well, in my experience, when tidi kicks in, 30-35 seconds of shooting one target could quickly turn into a minute or two. Now, granted, I live in a fairly small apartment, so I only have to take a few steps to get from my desk to my stove, so it would only take me 30-35 seconds at most to fill a kettle with water and put on the heat, but anyone who has tried participating in sov warfare knows I'm not exaggerating much.

It's not. Again, my concern is that each player is responsible for flying their ship.

Tactically, it doesn't make sense for groups of ships to always have to shoot individually either. But that's what makes the multiplayer game a game, and multiplayer. If you remove the "multiplayer" part from this, then you're just playing some kind of real-time strategy game, in which you micromanage a group of ships versus another player who is micromanaging his own group of ships.

Fleets have many features beside fleet warping. Container sharing mechanics that make cans and wrecks white to your fleet members, a shared chat that is a good usability feature, fleet bonuses based on fleet, wing, and squad commanders and their skills, certain EVE voice features for speaker priority and such, managing the location of your fleet members through star map, "warp to fleet member" as you mentioned, broadcasts, all cyno mechanics are tied to fleet (otherwise how do you figure out who has access to which lit cyno?), and so on.

Fleets were an essential tool long before fleet warp existed, and even back into a time where aggression rules didn't apply to fleet members. That was a scary time in EVE, when joining a fleet was essentially trusting the value of your ship to your fleet mates, even in high and low sec.

You're the one bringing up all these other things. I'm just considering your idea on its merits:

Currently: In order to warp a fleet to various positions on a grid, a fleet commander must decide where he wants his squads, communicate this information to his commanders, then communicate the order to warp. Squad commanders then press "warp squad".

If everything goes as planned, if the players are competent, then they end up at their assigned distances, at roughly the same time (give or take a few seconds).

If things don't go as planned, if the players are not competent, then you end up with a big jumbled mess of ships trickling onto grid at different times and wrong distances.

What you are suggesting removes a lot of this request for competence from multiple players (one person executing the warp, and doesn't need to coordinate with other people executing warps, doesn't even need to know they exist), removes the need to do things in a timely fashion (you have as much time as you like to type in the distance), and removes the element of precision altogether (everyone fleet warps together, everyone lands together, the game plays that part by itself).

Your opinion is that doing things which are challenging and are affected by the human element is not fun.

But all of EVE is that. It's an MMO. We're here because of the other players, and they are here because of us. Everything in EVE is set up like that. The market is fully manual, all limit orders, all the time, even though it would be simple to implement some automation features to do the 0.01 ISKing for you. Players have to build and sell each other everything, even though it would be no issue to implement vendors that sold ships at set prices (which is something we had in the past, and was gradually removed as the playerbase grew to take over those features). And so on, and so forth.

This "life on manual mode" (I won't use the S-word, that would only cause another digression) is a fundamental property of EVE that makes it unique from other games, and it is the overarching why many of us play the game. Your idea seems to go in the opposite direction of that, and that's why I think it is bad.

Again: Better tools to help players play the game - good. Features that take gameplay out of the hands of the players - bad.

But the only thing you are changing between that and what is already in the game is that you are removing the warp speed factor. You can already "set" your warp-in distance per wing, per squad, and per ship. You just have to also consider the other dimension - time.

Like most of the autopilot features already in the game, the "fleet warp" autopilot feature sacrifices precision in one variable (where you land) for a gain in a different variable (when you land).

If you want to land your fleet at the same time, then you can use fleet warp to gain absolute precision in time, while sacrificing the option to spread out your fleet.

If you want to land your fleet in precise locations on the grid, then you can sacrifice the precision in time that the autopilot gives for the luxury of warping to different places.

Finally, if you don't want to compromise, then you have to add something yourself - you have to develop your skill in selecting both precise locations and precise warp times - and then you will have none of the drawbacks of relying on the autopilot.

All your idea does is remove that compromise.

Now you're just throwing different ideas into the mix.

None-the-less, my initial reaction to this new idea is similar to the previous one; this seems like something which interceptors and covert ops can already do by positioning themselves (or creating tactical bookmarks) as warp-in points on the grid. So at first glance, it seems like this is another idea that just removes a fun and interesting challenge for players to discover and take advantage of mastering, and delegates that gameplay to a built-in automatic feature.

And I think there's nothing stopping you from doing similar things with the myriad tools we already have in game, and I think it's even more awesome when you achieve something new in the sandbox, rather than just using some feature that was put into the client.

That's what awesome means to me.

Why not try employing some tactical personnel in covert ops frigates or interceptors to provide ad-hoc warp-in points? That's what those ships are for.