Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hey guys, I just wanted to throw out an idea and see what the community thought about this idea I had to try and (at least temporarily) fix power projection for major null-sec blocs. I see that there was another thread up about this, and and it seemed as though that thread was discussing things a little farther into the idea of null sovereignty than my idea, so I figured I would post another one for this.

Basically, my idea is to add mass limits when jumping to cynosural fields. For a basic example (obviously numbers would have to undergo severe balancing), a cyno would only be able to support two super-carriers going to it before "collapsing", and the character that lit the cyno would be unable to move or light another cyno until the normal cyno timer has run out. This would prevent massive movement of fleets across the universe without severe cost to the alliance attempting it, and would still allow for a small amount of capitals to be moved around at once, thereby (somewhat) eliminating the blob factor of just lighting a cyno and laughing as a million slowcats hit the field.
Obviously this mass limit would apply to bridges and covert cynos as well. A simple explanation for this occurrence could be that the cyno creates a miniature wormhole, and (as all wormholes do) would collapse after moving a certain amount of mass through it.

If there is something that needs to be balanced or an issue with the mechanics or lore, please feel free to comment about it. This was just a cool idea that I thought of one day in class, and wanted to see if it would be viable, as well as what the community thought about it.

Alliance leaders would just send twenty cyno frigs instead of one.

What about cyno beacons?

Limiting factors for power projection are fuel amount and skills of the character in the ship. Making a cyno have X amount of charges (like a WH) would only serve a purpose of removing fuel requirements for ships to jump and bridge.

I actually had not considered that. Perhaps jumping to a cyno would cause a polarization, preventing someone from lighting a cyno for x amount of time after jumping to one. Or perhaps recon ships could get a large bonus to mass allowance, making it difficult to move capitals without those bonuses.

This.

Or pilots would just bring their own and fleetem up as needed. More cautious (or paranoid) cap pilots I knew always had their own private oh crap cyno on standy just in case not only the main op went sour, but the evac system for caps was compromised as well.

Or for when they just wanted to go to bed and fleet was not showing signs of heading home. Drop fleet, make their own with cyno and get the hell out setup basically.

While my response might not have been a very good solution to the problem, the capitals that lit cynos would still be stuck in space for 15 minutes after lighting them. While it certainly isn't the worst thing in the world, it would definitely slow the ability of the fleet to jump across multiple jumps with this tactic.

How about this: split the current cyno functionality into more mods. One that can be fitted on subcaptials, but only admits (unlimited) jump freighters and/or one carrier/dread. One which can only be fitted on captial ships, which admits multiple carriers/dreads and/or one supercapital, but takes x amount of time before it activates. And finally, a cyno mod that can only be fitted on supercaps that will allow an unlimited amount of supercaps to jump, perhaps also after some delay.

This means that you can still instahotdrop carriers and dreads, but only one for every cyno. If you want to drop even more capitals, you'll have to cyno in a well tanked dread or carrier that can survive for the amount of time required to activate a capital cyno. To deploy supercapitals, you'd have to take it a step further by first jumping in one supercap and then keeping it alive until it activates a supercap cyno. Or alternatively, the capital cyno fitted to a carrier/dread could also admit unlimited supercapitals, but after twice as long as it takes to activate it for one supercapital. In short:

Subcapital can cyno in 1 carrier/dread
Carrier dread can cyno in ONE supercap and unlimited carriers/dreads after x minutes
Supercap can cyno in unlimited supercaps after y minutes.

So, it's a tiered system, where you can cyno in as many ships as you want from the same tier as your ship, but only one from the tier above; and there is a delay before the cyno activates so that you have to keep it defended.

Edit: now that i think of it, it would make it very hard to move supercapitals around. Oh well.

Unless your 3k man group wanted to use more than two supers, or a handful of caps, in which case you'd need a big ol' pile of cyno alts too.

PL is a 2k man group. How many cyno alts do you think they'd need to deploy to a warzone? How many do you think would be required for the next BR-5?

How many would be required for, say, twenty incursion runners to deploy a couple of regions away in carriers?

Minimum of one hundred and twenty five to move a fleet of supercarriers one jump...

Alright then, can you tell the class why you think the battle of BR-5 shouldn't have happened?