Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Currently, a ship can lock only a limited number of targets, but any given
ship can be targeted by an arbitrary number of opponents. Among other
things, the latter leads to the most effective tactic of "shooting the primary".

What if targeting systems would interfere such that ...
... frigate/destroyer-sized ships can be locked simultaneously by at most 3 opponents
... cruiser-sized ships can be locked simultaneously by at most 5 opponents
... battlecruiser-sized ships can be locked simultaneously by at most 7 opponents
... battleship-sized ships can be locked simultaneously by at most 10 opponents (1 squad)
... capital-sized ships can be locked by an arbitrary number of opponents (as before)

If a ship is already locked by the maximum number of opponents, any additional
aggressor can't lock and gets a message like "your ship's sensors are unable to
lock the target due to interference with foreign targeting systems".

Ideally, this would ...
... enable tactical fleet fights with meaningful roles for individual squads
... provide a much more challenging situation to FCs and pre-ops planning
... require squad and wing commanders to actually lead not only boost
... introduce an actual chain-of-command with somewhat autonomous squads
... give smaller craft and individual pilots an opportunity to make a difference
... revive the idea of paper-scissor-stone and reduce blobbing the primary
... let smaller fleets engage larger fleets, get some kills and disengage
... add more thrill and an element of randomness instead of pure numbers
... stop killmail bias with 100+ pilots per kill distorting isk efficiency / c.o.e.s.

Of course, there are variants ...
... the mechanics could be sig-radius dependent so target painters allow more locks
... some ship classes (e.g. cov ops) could have a bonus/malus to how they can be locked
... possibly new or changed ewar modules, but let's not get carried away

I am aware that this would mean a massive change to gameplay. So I am
not proposing the change right away, but I am putting the concept up for
discussion. And I would like to know what you think about the general idea?

TL;DR: ships can be locked by only so many aggressors for more tactical combat

so i can just throw together an arbitrary amount of destroyers into a gang numbering more then 3 and i can be invincible? since if everyone in my fleet was targetting eachother in order to max out the max number who can target us, we will still have excess target slots to engage the opponent with.

unfortunately this mechanic implemented in ANY way would be so susceptible to gamebreaking abuse that its ridiculous

also, what happens if i do this tactic in high sec and CONCORD warps in, but due to my ship's being maxed on "aggressors" CONCORD can no longer target me to instapop my ship?

As mentioned already, this would be an interesting idea if there could be a clear differentiation between friendly and hostile targeting.

I also think this has been proposed a few times before.

Reduce the number of targets each ship can lock, e.g. frigate = 2, Destroyers = 3, Cruisers = 4, etc., and then allow each ship to be locked by twice the number of ships that it can lock.

# can be locked by = # can lock x 2