Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Let's just ignore the "all is fine in EVE" for now.

This is more or less a thread about a particular subject that has been bouncing in my head a lot. I doubt much has changed since the last few months of my inactivity. I want to suggest some ideas but somehow, I see there needs to be some things discussed yet again. I know some of this has been talked time and again, but unless CCP puts it on the dead horse list, I think it is okay to talk about it.


One issue for instance of "nerfing instant warpout, in favor of more fleet confrontations" is that if the other side has the bigger numbers, then it is instant death for the small fleet that can't get away fast enough. However, I still think there can be things done in smaller steps - and if all of it sucks, just revert back to normal :).


Most of us know that there is a lot of "I don't want to lose my ship" mindsets when it comes to confrontations in 0.0 and elsewhree. Call it a streak of bad luck, but I for one can only recall a multitude of fleet confrontations involving our FC warping us in and out, in and out until the others just pulled off. I know muscle-flexing is a tactic, but all that was clearly due to being able to warp out that fast.

And no, this is not about me wanting to get kills. I want fights.
But fights should also include a bit more of "not dying that fast either" or "if we fight, then at least it should be long", along with "okay, you caught me, I'm not instantly dead".

The opposite is often the case, with roaming fleets warping off.

Fights of course get long when time dialation kicks in, too. But I'm not about that.


The game's mechanic of FTL propulsion is laid out that you can always warp out as long as you are aligned and somewhat above 3/4 above your max speed. This makes it just a tad too easy for getaways. This is somewhere okay for small ships, but it can get ridiculous with big ships.

So, after that blathering, what would you think of these gameplay changes:

edit: Somewhat, maybe there could be the ruleset "FOR 0.0 space ONLY", so highsec/lowsec can remain the same (aka, carebears be unharmed in hi/lowsec). Just give it an interstellar phenomenon name :P.

• Aligning helps, but when hitting the warp button, your ship still needs a few seconds to warp out (Interceptor/Frigates being fastest; the big ones needing of course longer). Note: Modules etc shall exist to allow instant warpout for a trade-off penalty.


• Across-the-board hitpoints increase to ALL ships, excluding capital ships and Orca.


• A very slight decrease to ALL weapon dmg, across-the-board


• A moderate/significant increase in Interdiction Ships as well as other methods and tools of generating shortlived, projected bubbles to prevent getaways (as well as ships/modules that can project anti-bubble-bubbles :P)


• (I'm not too fancy about this one for this suggestion), have logistics ships and the likes be more about temporarily buffing resistances and lowering incoming dmg for xx%, rather than just flat out heals. This however is bullcrap considering Incursions/Missioning. So, not that cool.

This is not perfect, but I am trying to figure what else I am missing out on here, aside to anybody's disapprovals.
One of course is what I mentioned above, where a smaller fleet would or could be easy food for big fleets; although, if you are playing around on a big alliance's playground, you're asking for it...

Anyhow, this combination of mentioned ideas is to raise survivability if caught and not dying instantly while also not allowing people to get away that easily.

Ever since the love patch came for Interceptors, it is easier to catch bots, but maybe with this, fleet fights can still happen. This would also force FCs more to plan ahead if they really want to confront or disengage.
I have a few love ideas for the FCs, but that's another thread.

How would this work in your eyes?
Crap?
Worthwhile?

Please elaborate if you find problems.

it's bad, because all that will happen is instead of needing 10* ships to alpha you, we now need 15* ... so the blobs get larger, and we're right back here.

Get things to favor small gang (or rather, make small gang ~useful~ in sov warfare), and you'll probably see what you're looking for start to happen.

*Totally made up number.

I'm all for eliminating instant warp from standstill but I've put a lot of thought into possible solutions and I cannot find one that I feel okay with.

A minimum delay to warp could work but you have to balance it with the time it takes a given ship to warp as well as any pre-alignment they did before they chose to warp. Any ship already aligned should warp instantly and no ship should be delayed by minimum warp time longer than it takes them to warp from standstill.

It's already a pain in the arse to travel in anything bigger than a cruiser, does it really need to be worse?

Right, but anything to "buff" survivability of one (or multiple) ships in a fleet engagement means that the blobs get bigger ... so giving reasons to run a 10 man BLOPS gang (or bomber or recon or whatever else can fit a Covops Cloak*) will help do away with huge fleets that alpha everyone, if only on the "roaming gang" front.

If you need big fleets supported by (super) caps to harass a system, you're only gonna use big fleets supported by caps.


* yes, I realize BLOPS only fit non-covert cloaks.

Then nobody can insta-warp while pre-aligned. That's bad.

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As for longer fights, I think it's reasonable to buff ship HP. We really need to reduce logi output, maybe cut it in half. The way I see it, logi should be more about rapid repairs between engagements, and the repairs done during a fight should be merely supplemental. A single logi ship should repair slower than a single DPS ship can tear the HP down. If we give ships more HP overall, then logi will be less important and fleets will be able to get by with weaker logi. Fleet engagements will last similar lengths of time but there will be fewer cases of fleets that lose no ships due to having overwhelming logi support. Perhaps additionally, each ship could receive logistic support from a limited number of ships at a time, or repair modules of a specific type would have a stacking penalty applied when more than one are on the same target.

some fleets just dont fight if they cannot get around enemy logi. so making it harder to alpha through tanks means more fleets stand down before the fight starts.

Making warp take a little longer to initiate means players try to warp sooner. Maybe they warp when ur 1au away rather then as u land on grid.

Players will still be cautious and this will probably lead to less fights.

For the most part, yes, people wouldn't want to bring a ton of logi. But bringing a few would be really useful especially in large fleets when you can spare some. Bringing at least one logi would be great in small fleets where in brief engagements you may leave the fight with multiple ships partially damage and need to repair quick before the next fight. Also you can make a ship last considerably longer under fire. And finally, with logi being less important during the battle, they are less likely to be the first ship targeted. That way you can keep your logi through multiple engagements without giving them absurdly overpowered defenses. Then of course I'd nerf currently existing t2 logi cruiser defense because it's like t3 defense almost.

Giving all ships 50% more HP is a smaller change than the discrepancy in t3 HP. They can be fit with battleship EHP AND logi cruiser sig radius and agility at the same time. I don't have a problem with them having battleship defense as long as they become slow when fit like that, and I don't mind them being fast and slick, as long as they don't have a lot of HP in that setup. But at current they are like large Gold Magnates. There's a reason there was only one Gold Magnate, it was absurdly overpowered. I submit to you that current T3s are just as absurdly overpowered.

And yes I have flown one. I got a loki a while back--took all of about 15 minutes to fit it up and I accidentally stumbled upon a fit that had the agility and sig radius of a t2 logi cruiser with actually more EHP than my incursion Megathron.

More HP actually favors larger groups because they have more guns to bring to bear to alpha strike things and it gives them more time to wait for reinforcements...

As we have seen with super caps, fights dont get longer when you get more HP, they get bigger.

Hmm, I thought of a system alike Time Dialation where it sees if the engagements are likely to be big; just that this other system would see if the fights are small-to-intermediate engagements in that "zone/grid of space", it would "buff hp" ~ If it is some blob vs blob, then not. But somewhere, this will just be redundant.

Okay, the extra discussion somewhat confirms that there'd still be troubles in ever seeing real benefits for "longer fights". Although I feel a bundle of ideas could flatten out a few errors, there are still main ones like reinforcements. I still have to say though, I am aware that certain engagements are/were decided upon who gets reinforcements first, but somewhere I'd have to say that it is logical that if an invading fleet is engaging some SOV bloc home region, then it is already obvious that reinforcements will come - with or without any "longer fights" mechanic. Here would be me hoping that longer fights would at least allow the engaging fleet to kill more stuff, but here is where we also have the "logi ship effect" where the home defence would try to call on more logies.



@Logi discussion
Yeah, would be interesting to talk about logistic ships a bit more.
I for one hate to be stepping on people's feet as there are lots of people who like this "heal priest" aspect of logi.

I don't think it should be just a bland nerf. As usual, things should be "give and take". If it were about my opinion, I think it would be better if logis had a row of tools than just remote reps.

Right now (at least to the point of some 7months ago when I was in 0.0 action), whoever had more logis usually won because they just cover most of the fleet. Enemy fleet tries to alpha one person. Logis manage to heal that guy up just 1% of structure before exploding and it goes on. The rest is well known accordingly to the experience of anybody who's been in 0.0 (or other areas where logis show up) engagements.

This is probably for a different thread, but maybe it would be cool if Logis could raise survivability by not just "heals" alone. This takes more of a route of how other MMOGs handle healing. Currently, EVE has more of this oldschool healing - It is dumb to say this, since EVE came prior to WoW, but yeah, it is like ~mostly WoW.
Without adding in too many other MMOG names, maybe there could be a way so that Logis do:

- Cannot fit all high slots with remote reps (I would say, do not nerf the heal values here, since they simply cannot fit 4 reps but one per ship)
- Bring in a row of hislot modules, like remote resistance buffers. Stuff that could be like a temporary "save from dmg" (dunno, it just raises the target's resistance to some 95% for a certain time) with an appropriate cooldown on the module.
- Command Ships and other fleet buffer could have links that improve range or such of logis. This should be more about ongrid/aura buffs though, like how interdictor bubbles work.
- other small stuff

So that logis are not just nerfed to the ground. I do agree though that they bring imbalance, but really just solely to the fact that the more you have, the likely your fleet is to surviv and even win.

In other words, it would be cool if logies had a set of abilities, not just blunt healing. Stuff like, active buff buddy resistance, passively buff buddy from web-snares, and such. I'd have another idea for how fully healing up ships could work, but that should be only out of combat and maybe with specific drones.Things to tone it down so that you just can't stack healing.