Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Yup. It's an AP macro called “don't use AP; instead, press D and multitask while you warp”. Works wonders.
♥ the new warp-and-activate command.

Anyway, people cheating is not a reason to change something — it's a reason to nuke the cheaters.

Good thing that I'm not doing that then.
I'm calling cheating cheating.
Yes they do, and most of them fail at it as well. I have yet to see a game where the same mechanical background tasks are not needed. That's still not a reason to change it, though.

please check my #87 for the latest revision of this proposal..

TL/DR first. reworked post. i propose a balanced change:

• introduce delays on purpose (stupid AP is not as smart and fast as you are!)
1. departure from gate. AP decloaks you, but until alignment starts it takes 2 extra sec (needs to calibrate to find target). 2 more sec for gankers.
2. arriving at gate. warp drives deactivates, but AP performs jump around 4sec delayed (needs to talk to gate electronics). 4 more sec for gankers (about half of 1 smartbomb cycle).

• autopilot distance. change from 15km to 18km
• new skill. autopiloting, reduces distance 2km per skill level, effectively to an 8km-warp-to-gate at level 5. (gives at least 10seconds until a frig gets to jump)
• new skill. advanced autopiloting. allows to define modules which are automatically turned on when subwarp-travelling between gates/stations. requires autopiloting level 5. 1 modules can be activated at level 2, 2 modules on level 4, 3 modules on level 5.

people are lazy. if you make the autopilot attractive by offering closer to optimal times to travel, people will use it more often, yet with these changes, autopiloting becomes not safer. so more prey. maybe more dangerous than before / more deaths due to autopiloting.
gankers should be much compensated by the new delays and 18km in default mode, at level 3 you get 14km which is about the current value.

time used for current autopilot per gate (15km, close to zero delays, assuming instant accelleration):
100m/s ~ 150 sec
150m/s ~ 100 sec
400m/s ~ 38 sec

time used for proposed autopilot per gate, no skills (18km, 6 sec delays, assuming instant accelleration):
100m/s ~ 180 +6 = 186 sec
150m/s ~ 120 +6 = 126 sec
400m/s ~ 45 +6 = 51 sec

time used for proposed autopilot per gate, maxed skilled (8km, 6 sec delays, assuming instant accelleration):
100m/s ~ 80 +6 = 86 sec
150m/s ~ 53 +6 = 59 sec
400m/s ~ 20 +6 = 26 sec

thus with these changes, times can be longer or shorter compared to the current system.

---

reasoning.
in my early days i was favoring changing AP to WTZ (i think i actually proposed that once), but that has changed... simply introducing WTZ for AP would change the game onesided and should not be done in that form...

(imho the recent addition of the warp+jump button was not changing the game, merely replacing the tedious "manual warp, activate AP, jump, deactivate AP, wait, manual warp, ..." cycle with a more convenient manual step. right now using the new button can be very dangerous)

when travelling, people can get you in any situation, when you are vulnerable:
1. departure from gate. i agree, most ganks do happen during alignment while trying to go to warp. easy target, not/slow moving, away from the gate, ...
2. approaching gate. but gankers do keep scanning you if you go the last miles afk. this makes it a little easier for scanners, usually few gates ahead of gankers. there are ganks happening here. guess thats part of learning - learn there is a break-even to ganking. not the worst way to learn it, as these are the easiest ganks they usually give you a wakeup call before you loose more on 1.
3. docking. there are also people scanning/trying to gank you in front of a stations before your docking request is accepted from the station. and with AP going to stations now we will see even more boosted thrashers in front of jita. as it is currently possible to exploit the docking "timer" i am not sure if this is an exploit or by design. (personally i would like to see utilizing the docking delay an exploit. or it should be explicitly stated that this is allowed and the delay could get influenced by corresponding corp and faction standings - "preferred docking handling for valued capsuleers")
4. arriving at gate. even with WTZ you can run into smartbombing when arriving at a gate. and this does not only happen in lowsec - though in lowsec people are usually better at doing this and it is used more often ^^. this utilizes a) you passing their ship, b) you stopping sometimes still inside their AoE raidus, c) gate jump is delayed / "timer"

locking times get quite short (decent gankers are boosted several times, destroyer->frig lock in 1sec. BS->industrial lock in <3sec). more interesting are the delays, which are utilized in 3. und 4.

autopilot...
- reward. you get from A to B without interaction, rejoice. penalty should be a somewhat longer duration, there should be some disadvantage to travelling manually. but maybe not as long as it is currently. but also consider also the hauling business.
- security. going afk should leave you more vulnerable as travelling manually, give gankers a chance, there are also some who try to learn it ^^

while non-consensual combat is and should be a core principle of eve, the variables, how easy ganking is, how long fights last, should be open to discussion. personally i would like to see things changed this way.

it DOES change the game. the 15km afk-travel is used quite often to gank, if not that, then to scan you gates ahead. ganking became harder if you removed the 15km. there would also be no more penalty for afk vs. not-afk.

my proposal tries to give something to both "factions" while overall speeding up travelling and making it a better game - for everyone. if you read the first paragraphs you should grasp what it is about. the math is to clarify and start discussion on it. rest is reasoning.

I was under the impression that performing macro mining/ratting/warping was against the EULA and could result in a ban...I fly myself places, you should fly yourself places.

autopilot to 0km jump through warp to next gate, land at 0km jump through how are you going to be able to catch the industrial ship, scan him, then pop him without chasing it half way through the region.
The drawback is you can't warp to 0 while autopiloting, if the botter gets caught, that's the botter's problem.
If you get suicide ganked you shouldn't have been carrying so much stuff.

Now with the jump button warping you to a gate, it becomes much easier to get around, instead of having to click at least twice, OMG, you only have to click ONCE!
If you want to walk away from your computer it should not be as if you are flying the ship yourself.
I also propose a more invasive bot-scanning program to help combat botters. (seems to be a hot topic.)

i do spend much in time in highsec, i travel a lot, i would like to see afk travel time reduced - i know what i am talking about. and dont get me wrong, i do not want ganking to be made easier (check with the post i linked to EUNI ganking bounties), BUT...
- autopiloting, how it works, has direct relation to ganking
- if you want something, you also have to give something. balancing... everyone needs to see an advantage for his use case and still be able to live with the changes on the other side of the medal. imho with my solution this is possible. as Cendres Ange pointed out, adding delays / increased align time could compensate for reduced approaching time. slower ships profit more.
- i feel disco ships are used very seldom in highsec ganking, as an incentive to shift the distribution of used ganking methods in that direction (variety and options are key!) i proposed the idle-before-jump delay.
- if you carry high value goods (above ganking break-even) you should haul the stuff yourself anyway. autopilot out of usecase here.
- if you fly empty, you would profit from my suggestion using autopilot. if you think you should profit more, you could argue about moving from 8km at perfect to maybe 5km, leaving only 2500m to travel.
- concerning afk vs. non-afk and yield (hauling business), the time reduction is max. 40% in regard to the time spent due to afk mode. i think this is ok. especially considering that hauling isnt that profitable and not that entertaining to do it actively your whole life.

The main problem is that suicide ganking should have never been mentioned in this thread on the first place... too many trolls working hard to defend it no matter what. And there's no way to reason with a troll, so why waste time arguing...

Now, focusing on autpilot, with the last patch we have AP to stations and a button to warp+jump in one click, so it's pretty clear that CCP is working to make travel easier and faster. It seems logical to have an improved (or actually de-nerfed) AP system which warps to 0.

I feel a really easy way to balance this would be to simply make AP come into full alignment before warping out.

What i mean is they align to the destination and the ship must hit full velocity before AP will warp it out.

Still faster than existing AP, but give plenty of time for gankers to gank in the same manner as low sec gate camps.

P.S.

I agree that ganking shouldn't have been mentioned.

Nothing in high sec has been balanced around ganking, but gankers have found a way around existing mechanics.

It's not up to high sec to conform to gankers, it's up to gankers to conform to high sec.

its clear reading all the responses that the only arguement against this change that stands up, is that afk'ers should be penalized. me personally dont feel this is something i could care less about. really what is happening is non industry people are arguing that someone flying a frieghter with AP should be a gank target. There have been alot of great suggestions for creating aballance. the one that is most logical is just to have a few second delay before the gate is activated and a delay before aligning and jumping to the next one. El Alasar, you gave a very thought out suggestion, and though it is a good idea, i reallly dont see why auto pilot should be so restricted. if there was a skill for it, i think it should max out at "within 0" (if some one spends one to two months training for it they theyve earned the right imo)

simple solution(as suggested above)
warp to zero, activate gate after say 3 to 5 seconds, then align and jump only after the ship hits 98% of its max velocity. (if gankers cant get their target with that type of delay, then they need a new carreer...). and that is enough of a delay to allow players who manually jumps to get through considerably faster.

but the system as we have it is far to gimped. everyone here who says they want to manually jump would be greatful in the long run when they no longer have to. there is nothing exciting about flying to a destination 10+ jumps away. and even if AP was reduced to 0, you would still be an idiot to fly thru low sec with it on.

(hitting max velocity in my providence took over a minute and a half almost two minutes for those last couple of m/s. warping away from 0 m/s took 42 seconds. (in both cases i sent my ship in the opposite direction it was facing)). -thats almost double the time it takes, and if that is not enought of an advantage for you for manually flying, then i bet you are a ganker is disguise

Lesson 4: Ask for a better AP system?