Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I attempted to post this alternative idea to the Dev Blog thread on the impending changes to jump travel (aka The Great Jump Nerf of 2014), but the threadnaught is growing so rapidly that I doubt anyone has even seen it - it certainly hasnt gotten any replies, thus I'll toss it into a dedicated thread of its' own in the hopes that it gets some attention:

I have a somewhat different suggestion as to how force projection and jump fatigue might be approached. hear me out:

instead of nerfing all capitals to 5LY at max skills, leave their ranges untouched in terms of max values with skills. Instead, let the Jump fatigue mechanic be a modifier - one that directly reduces the effective value of the pilot's JDC skill level, with the possibility of the effective value going negative, whereby a given ship will suffer a shorter jump range than if the pilot had no JDC skill points. this reduction would begin after the SECOND jump... the amount of reduction in JDC = number of jumps/2. of course, there would be a recovery time to get the effective JDC back up to normal, which would be equal to the distance jumped in minutes (with the time to recover each point being equal to the number of points to be recovered/distance traveled), is cumulative and includes the distance of the FIRST jump. recovery time would be modified by ship class, with blops and JFs having the fastest recovery times, and titans the slowest.

alternative formulae for JDC reduction are possible (a more heavy handed possibility being a direct 1 point per jump reduction in JDC skill for each jump taken during the recovery period regardless of distance... lots of little jumps in quick succession will hurt JDCeff far more than a few long ones, but would have a quicker time to recover - kind of like having a bunch of high-proof shots in a few minutes might make you more drunk, faster than having a couple of shots per hour), but for it to be REALLY interesting, negative values have to be possible regardless of the formulae used.

here's the kicker though (and where things could be made to be REALLY interesting): I would actually prefer it if the JDC penalty were applied to the HULL and not the pilot himself, so as to discourage the use of ferry alts (treat it as a kind of overheating damage that subsides over time, but doesnt prevent trading a ship in station - ANY pilot who boards the ship while the ship is cooling down would feel the effects immediately). also, jump fatigue could be used to negatively affect other aspects of ship performance in much the same way as drug side-effects, except that such effects would be imposed immediately upon JDC going negative, and worsen as the JDC degrades. I would even consider the potential for a misjump to an unintended destination system anywhere within the ships maximum JDC range as a possible risk of a negative JDC value.

in the case of jump bridges, ships would be affected similarly for every ship they bridge, the distance, and the class of each, but as most such bridges are of much smaller ships, the cumulative penalties would be manageable with appropriate modifiers for the ship classes.

example... nidhoggur pilot with JDC 5 makes a round trip of 20 LY in 2 jump... out and back. the first jump incurs a regen time of 10 minutes (in this example, lets assume a ship class modifier of 1 for simplicity), but JDC is unaffected on the first leg. he stops at the outbound destination to pickup some ships for transport, taking 2 minutes (reducing regen to 8 minutes), and immediately jumps back to the start system... regen time goes to 18 minutes, and his effective JDC skill drops to 4. if he makes enough jumps in a short period of time, he could end up in a situation where his JDC skill drops below zero, his effective range becomes a small fraction of what it would normally be for a substantial (but not insane) amount of time, AND (under the optional ideas), he starts to suffer from performance degrading side effects and runs the risk of a random misjump until he recovers to a non-negative JDCeff value. conversely, if he makes ten jumps of 2LY in rapid succession, he would be at a JDCeff of zero for 20 minutes... the next time he jumps while JDCeff has not recovered, he would start getting performance penalties - reduced drone bandwidth, increased lock times, longer cap regen etc., and run the risk of a random misjump (the lulz that could be had... drunk nidhoggur pilot lands somewhere he NEVER intended).

I think this approach would be a much better choice for making eve a bit bigger, while not making capitals completely useless in long-range force projection or killing their utility in logistics - you can still travel substantial distances rapidly, but go out too far, too fast and you'll be REALLY feeling it on the trip back - or even before you get where you're going. I'm going to reserve the next post or two to expand upon ideas presented in the thread.

cmon guys... does ANYONE have anything to say?

I'm not offering this as a compromise for the sake of compromise, but as a potentially much more interesting approach in that it would allow for easier balancing to deal with abuse or underuse of specific ship classes. in my example, I deliberately chose a 1x multiplier on the recovery factor for instance because Tier 1 carriers are used just as much if not more for logistics than for force projection. pure logistics ships like JFs and rorqs might have multipliers of 0.5 to lessen their recoveries even more, while titans and dreads might have them as high as 2x or 3x, or even suffer from a much more drastic reduction in JDCeff.

I think the compromise is longer trip back home. But,,,,beside a hindrance to lol dynamite fishing hotdrops an issue with power projection is some after they jump vast distances the intent is to kind of, you know, stay a while.

Not really a compromise though. Fixes dynamite fishing, kind of, still has the issue that if mittens wants to be far away from home en masse in one day, he still is.

by the way... in case you didnt read the entire thing, I did make note of a more heavy-handed option in that EVERY jump you make regardless of distance could reduce your JDC level by 1 full level. that means if you can go 15LY at level 5, you're back to only 6.5LY in said nidhoggur after 5 jumps, and depending on the exact time multiplier CCP uses for a ship class and distance traveled, it could take you days to recover JDC 5 range. this option would be a pretty severe hit, since you really wouldnt be able to do a max range single jump out and back hotdrop - it would have to be shorter by default.