Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This is an excellent statement of the problem.

However, I choose to believe it's just very difficult to solve because of the specifics of my example, rather than impossible. Let's change things up a bit, then, using something other than super weapons and star fuel.

As you describe the problem comes down to the fact that in Eve's combat model ships that need not pause combat are superior to those that must to such a degree that the two types can't coexist. I suspect that this is actually the reason Eve ammo is so plentiful and easy to carry, by the way. Energy based weapons would otherwise be a no brainer choice for all ships because they don't run out of ammo, ever. Projectile weapons can't require ammo that's easy to run out of but is significantly more powerful because that also creates a binary state where any engagement short enough that they don't run out of ammo projectiles win, otherwise energy weapons win.

So what would work then is some new mechanic that changes combat away from "shoot until boom" but doesn't allow a large enough advantage across the board that it imbalances things. So that means keeping both advantages and disadvantages to a minimum, while allowing maximum choices within that scope. Thinking through the idea of short term combat with pauses vs. existing combat, I came up with what amounts to a parasite fighter concept, or maybe a new type of drone... a cheap ship type meant to fight hard for a short time then recharge.

Imagine a tiny, fast ship with an advantage to shields - not a huge one, maybe the shields are sized to take one good medium weapon hit and recharge nearly instantly - but no endurance, like a frigate without a reactor, only a giant capacitor. Too small to have significant armor, but the rapid energy flow from the cap might let it have good shields, at least against one damage type at a time for 30 seconds. Only able to use projectile weapons, missiles, torpedos and bombs because energy weapons need too much power. No cloaking either.

Maybe an in-system defense boat? No ability to warp, but cheap to build because no reactor is required. Maybe allow it to fit non energy weapons of any size it can power (and that anyone cares to buy) so there's a lot of variety, but ammo would be limited inversely to weapon power.

Lack of warp and no ability to use gates limits it to in-system use only without another vessel to transport it, and that's a big enough disadvantage vs. any vessel that can warp in system or leave the system that giving these boats a firepower or flexibility advantage could be balanced. Essentially these ships would be defensively biased... only a significant thread if you're trying to get to something they're protecting. They wouldn't be a threat if you could outrun them or leave.

Although...

Thinking about it, it would be cool if these sorts of ships could be home based on a mothership or carrier too (possibly with additional limitations) so that a carrier would jump in-system, launch a bunch of these ships, fight, and recharge/refit them as needed. The ability to refit them on the carrier would permit them to swap shields for defense against a different damage type, to reload weapons that only fire once before a reload is needed, etc.

To escape, the enemy warps out (if not bubbled) and to follow the carrier must recover these ships then warp. So in exchange for choosing to carry these, the carrier is slowed too, even for short jumps across a system, as compared to drones/fighters.


The ability to build/use cheap ships without warp drives but with more variety in equipment (and limitations) offers a lot of player choice, especially for faction warfare, sieges of starbases, and fleet actions with carriers.

Rating the above against my original example it certainly lacks "refuel from a star" coolness, but it does offer a lot of variety and I think isn't completely imbalancing. I think this might provide variety outside the standard ship model in combat.

Thoughts?


TL;DR; Same basic mechanic but different implementation, proposing a ship with no ability to leave a system on its own or use energy weapons/cloaking, must recharge cap from base, but flexible and fast, cheap to build.

Leaving aside your talk of frigates instantly regenerating shields even under fire from heavier guns, and introducing ships that are unable to use an entire race of weapons (it will never happen)

A: You just described carriers and fighters, although those are drones, not actual players.

B: According to CCP statements, attempting to dock a player inside the ship of another player to be moved around is an absolutely, 100%, complete impossibility barring a total rework of the the code. And no such rewrite is going to happen mainly to add cheap system defense vessels.

C: Between having a half priced cruiser that can't warp by itself, can't jump gates, and is reliant on another ship to move it around, and simply paying full price for a cruiser, 99% of the eve population will pay full price for the actual cruiser.

D: Said system defense/short range ships cannot be more than marginally superior to non limited versions or we are right back to the same reasons your initial proposal will not work.



So the end result are halfassed, gimped ships that nobody will fly because independent ability to warp and jump is far more important in nearly all situations than coming at a discount.

A: This is your thread to post ideas in, not mine. If I had an idea that might complement yours in a workable fashion, I might post it. But the idea is more of a "house built on sand" sort. Kind of hard to hash out specifics until the idea is remotely workable in the first place.

B: I have proposed a few ideas in the past, such as small UI improvements (System location included in timestamps), or ship balancing changes (long since buried in balance discussion threads), and support other ideas I think need to be introduced (Comet mining to break moongoo as sole source of t2, mining rework, move grav sites to signature status.)

But so far the thread has boiled down to the following:

1:You would like a ship that needs to refuel, but don't know how to make it balanced.
2:You would like a player mothership that carries other players in small limited capacity ships, but don't know how to balance it in a way that it would not grant massive localized superiority while making it useful for players to use it instead of normal ships.

As for the part where CCP talks about docking ships inside of other ships, it has come up several times, frequently in connection to Supercarrier/Titan/Rorqual capabilities and how cool it would be for a titan or supercarrier to jump in and spew out players in their ships. But on several occasions CCP has stated how on a very basic level, the code prevents placing one player entity inside another player entity both in space and especially during system transitions. I CBA to go hunt the specific quotes down though. But until you see a fancy devblog trumpeting how this has changed, it's basically not a possibility.