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[Discussion] Entosis Link Tactics and Ship Balance

First post First post First post
Author
EvilweaselFinance
GoonCorp
Goonswarm Federation
#121 - 2015-03-09 14:32:42 UTC
rsantos wrote:

If you can't muster 136 mauluses a night you own to much sov. As if quickly reshiping to a defense fleet would take 4 hours a day!
This beeing said by a 15K man alliance makes me puke! Sry no offense intended.

people who are unable to own sov sure seem to have strong opinions on what other people should have to do to hold sov while demanding the absolute minimum effort on their part
Arkon Olacar
black.listed
#122 - 2015-03-09 14:33:07 UTC
John McCreedy wrote:
Kale Freeman wrote:
What about ditching the whole Entosis link entirely. Make a Entosis deployable. It takes 10 minutes to come online. It needs to be deployed within 25/250km of the objective. Once it is online and there are no more enemy entosis deployables on grid the owner can right click it and instruct it to attack/hack the objective.




It would be an SBU by another name. Every sov holding alliance would anchor them on their structures, much as they do now with SBUs on every gate. We need a system that's balanced for both attacker and defender, not one or the other.


If this had mobile deployable EHP, rather than SBU EHP, this would be less of an issue for the attackers. A few minutes for a gang to grind it down (rather than hours) would be fine.
Deacon Abox
Black Eagle5
#123 - 2015-03-09 14:33:20 UTC  |  Edited by: Deacon Abox
Huffy Dragon wrote:
Make them only fit to command ships and T1 (no faction) battleships.

Time to revive some dead shipclasses
.


I don't fear the entosis-ceptor on grid. I fear the entosis-ceptor crossing an entire region in 10 minutes, escaping gatecamps and ninja-reinforcing everywhere.

Quoted and liked but only for the underlined part. The trollceptor fear is largely misplaced imo. But nothing wrong with requiring a large bulky ship to run these things. Things that conceptually might need a large powerplant and series of human brains for processing power.

Please do revive Command Ships and tech I BSs. The command ship and tech III command subsystem rebalance did not do enough to elevate Command ships. Tech III boosters are still the norm. Of course getting rid of off-grid boosting would be the best solution. And if you could add some command mode (or bonuses allowing the fitting of command mods) to tech III destroyers that might satisfy those that think somehow the fast small gang v blob needs off-grid boosting.

As for tech I BSs, please temper the mobility nerfs. The BS and BC warp and align speeds are agonizing and unfun. That change alone might be enough to bring them back into use (if you are not going to do anything with bombs). Of course a smidge more hp might help as well.

CCP, there are off buttons for ship explosions, missile effects, turret effects, etc. "Immersion" does not seem to be harmed by those. So, [u]please[/u] give us a persisting off button for the jump gate and autoscan visuals.

John McCreedy
Eve Defence Force
#124 - 2015-03-09 14:33:42 UTC
EvilweaselFinance wrote:
John McCreedy wrote:
Kale Freeman wrote:
What about ditching the whole Entosis link entirely. Make a Entosis deployable. It takes 10 minutes to come online. It needs to be deployed within 25/250km of the objective. Once it is online and there are no more enemy entosis deployables on grid the owner can right click it and instruct it to attack/hack the objective.




It would be an SBU by another name. Every sov holding alliance would anchor them on their structures, much as they do now with SBUs on every gate. We need a system that's balanced for both attacker and defender, not one or the other.

Well presumably it would have some kind of ship-level EHP, not millions, so it was relatively trivial to kill.


Same could be achieved under Dominion sov just by reducing the HP on all structures. The entire point of this is to remove the necessity of shooting structures.

13 years and counting. Eve Defence Force is recruiting.

Amyclas Amatin
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#125 - 2015-03-09 14:34:17 UTC
Tora Bushido wrote:
Capqu wrote:
Tora Bushido wrote:
Capqu wrote:
remove interceptor bubble immunity
Dont, as the newbies from high-sec use them to explore null-sec. The size of the ships isnt the problem. It's the speed. So keep your focus speedmods.


thats the problem, newbies shouldn't be able to roam null with impunity in a 25m isk ship
Yes, they should or null-sec will become even more boring without fresh blood. I hope high-sec carebears don't make you worry to much to care Blink

Amyclas Amatin wrote:
When I was a newbie, I actually had to learn to deal with bubbles! Now the general population is pretty bubble ignorant.
First you let them see the bubbles, then you let them learn about bubbles. If a newbie go's to null-sec and keeps dieing at the first gate, he'll never be motivated enough to go there again.


I find my newbies through conscription...

Then fear and cake keeps them in line.

For more information on the New Order of High-Sec, please visit: http://www.minerbumping.com/

Remember that whenever you have a bad day in EVE, the correct reponse is "Thank you CCP, may I please have another?"

Kaylee Fonza
Purgatory Afterglow
#126 - 2015-03-09 14:34:25 UTC
Querns wrote:
Capqu wrote:
if the grid is contested inteceptors are actually useless guys, their lockrange is so pathetic that one or two damps means there is no way they can keep their entosis link active

i think the main issue around interceptors is their ability to move 100% safely behind camps and entosis uncontested systems which should be protected by camped choke points

This is the core of the issue. As a sov haver of any size, I should be able to use the geography of my holdings in its defense. Being able to deny entry to my holdings should pay dividends in the security of my empire. Interceptors ignore all geography because, while traveling, they cannot be caught.

Interceptors also have superlative disengagement ability, which converts the entire process of defending sov from defeating a gang of rabble-rousers to keepign a large group of counter-interceptors in a central location during your primetime, then dispatching them as blips pop up on the Sov Radar of choice. No actual PvP occurs in this scenario, it's just two interceptors weakly applying the sov laser to the same target in an attempt to bore each other into submission.

Alternatively, I guess you could park a single supercap on every possible defensive target during your primetime. Thanks to fatigue, this is more viable than you'd think.



Unless one of the interceptor brings damps, and wins the sov laser fight
Ned Thomas
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#127 - 2015-03-09 14:34:43 UTC
Acquisition Therapy wrote:
Fozzie,

It would be extremely helpful if you would lend us your current working ideas for specific fitting requirements i.e. cpu/pg and any rig changes the modules might impose, to both squash our trollceptor fears and also allow us to discuss what ships can fit it in your current design, and what else they can fit in addition to the link. Then meaningful and constructive feedback can begin on the link. Without it, its kind of like the wizard of oz telling us not to look behind the curtain.

Thanks for your hard work.


Something tells me the fitting requirements are one of the key things that are in flux until after the community throws out every whacky fit it can dream up.

In the same vein, though, it'd be nice to know what the capacitor requirements are for the thing.

Personally, I'm hoping it's something like 20pg/50cpu for the T1, 30pg/60cpu for T2, and both consume something around 100 cap per cycle.
Eli Apol
Definitely a nullsec alt
#128 - 2015-03-09 14:34:43 UTC
rsantos wrote:
If you can't muster 136 mauluses a night you own to much sov. As if quickly reshiping to a defense fleet would take 4 hours a day!
This beeing said by a 15K man alliance makes me puke! Sry no offense intended.


Goal #5: Provide significant strategic benefits from living in your space.


"Hell no, we just want to inhabit the choke point border systems with our blobs of PvPers and rent out the middle to bears"

but what would I know, I'm just a salvager

Dave Stark
#129 - 2015-03-09 14:35:08 UTC
afkalt wrote:
So how is camping a gate at chokes for 4 hours different from defending structures for 4 hours? How is that not the same overhead on the players?


because choke points require significantly less man hours, for a start.
Kale Freeman
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#130 - 2015-03-09 14:35:40 UTC
Arkon Olacar wrote:
John McCreedy wrote:
Kale Freeman wrote:
What about ditching the whole Entosis link entirely. Make a Entosis deployable. It takes 10 minutes to come online. It needs to be deployed within 25/250km of the objective. Once it is online and there are no more enemy entosis deployables on grid the owner can right click it and instruct it to attack/hack the objective.




It would be an SBU by another name. Every sov holding alliance would anchor them on their structures, much as they do now with SBUs on every gate. We need a system that's balanced for both attacker and defender, not one or the other.


If this had mobile deployable EHP, rather than SBU EHP, this would be less of an issue for the attackers. A few minutes for a gang to grind it down (rather than hours) would be fine.



Also make it non-pickup-able. So a troll interceptor would not be able to pick it up and move it to the next system as soon as defense appears.
Vincent Athena
Photosynth
#131 - 2015-03-09 14:35:44 UTC
CCP Fozzie wrote:
...
At its core, the Entosis Link mechanic is a way for the server to tell who won (or is winning) a fight in a specific location. This is a surprisingly tough thing for the server to determine. The best way to win a structure or command node with the Entosis Link should be to gain effective control of the grid.

This may actually be the issue, right here. As a defender, I can maintain control of the grid by keeping a fleet there. But that is not practical. Players come to eve to play, not sit on a node.
Thus, most all structures will have no one on grid, until an attacker shows up. At that point, a single attacker in a frig is "controlling the grid", and requires a response to take that control back. Result: Attackers in a few evasion ships, or just cheap ships can troll the defenders endlessly. Maybe they use interceptors so they can burn off until they can warp, maybe they use cheap ships and just cycle through them as they get exploded.
Recommendation: The attacker should have to make at least a "small roaming gang" level of commitment.

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Capqu
Half Empty
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#132 - 2015-03-09 14:37:57 UTC
The Mittani wrote:
Though it may come as a surprise to some, I'm a big fan of the new system, with some tweaks around the edges - tweak the links a little and I'm happy with them.

Here are some options I'd be in favor of w/r/t Entosis Links .

AttentionNone of these ideas are mineAttention - they come from Xttz, Progodlegend, or are otherwise ubiquitous across the community.


  • Interdiction Nullifiers could interfere with the activation of an Entosis Link - T3s would need to refit a different subsystem once at a target via a moble depot, and the mods would not work at all with interceptors.
  • Once activated, the Entosis Link could disable any fitted propulsion mod, like siege/triage currently.
  • Progodlegend's idea - we could limit the link module to cruiser class hulls and above via cpu/pg.


I'd be happy with any/all of the above three tweaks.

Cheers!


disagree with the propulsion part, if you can't prop mod then you cant reasonably expect small gang fights to be enabled by a running link. it would be too easy to kill/counter the linking ship and i think the intention behind it is that the link itself does not impact the fight, more enables it. say you wanted to brawl some nerds in a drake, you just fit an entosis in the high and local now comes and fights you - perfect. if the drake cant prop mod though it's severely gimped in said fight

however like pretty much everyone is saying interceptors being able to pick where and when they want to run the links regardless of camping is the main problem and the first point would negate that

i'm more in favour of interceptor nerfs in general in the form of complete removal of the immunity to non targeted interdiction, but if thats not something ccp want to consider then i hope they restrict them from being able to use the link in some other way
Groperson
State War Academy
Caldari State
#133 - 2015-03-09 14:38:10 UTC
I like the distributed fights aspect and unlinking of the capturing sov objectives to EHP, which lowers the barrier to contesting sov.
However, there are broken aspects to the current iteration of fozziesov.



I'll give you a hint on how sov warfare is conducted. It is won not through battles or by winning the game system, but by griefing the opposing side into not wanting to play the game anymore. The fozziesov mechanic is perfect for that.

If you just want to grief the defender into quitting the game then taking their sov when their willpower is gone and the body has stopped twitching.

1.You send your forces to just reinforce their stuff for 3 weeks in a row. (a 150 man inteceptor roam every 48 hours)
2. Don't bother contesting the 48 hour reinforce capture nodes.
3. The defender has to do 10x as much work as you do attacking, just to keep their space. then when they are burnt out and suicidal. You take it all/ get them to pay rent to you/ leave



Fozzie sov has all the advantages for the attacker and is inherently disadvantaged for the defender since they are forced to do 10 the amount of work as the attacker just to keep parity. i.e. not lose their home.

The attacker does not have to fight the defender at all to grief them out of their space. A 150 man interceptor fleet can emerge out of a wormhole, and be reinforcing the region as soon as they leave.

Now, if entosis links can be fit on interceptors it's even more in favor of the attacker, since they have to risk nothing at all.
Interceptors have no risk in combat, they are the most disengagable doctrine you can bring, where they can run every single time and you cannot catch them.



The gameplay provided by roaming interceptor gangs is terrible, terrible content for the defender. An insta align interceptor cannot be caught in preplanned traps with bubbles and instalockers (the hard counter). If they warp from gate to gate they literally cannot be caught. Right now, the extent of their power is ganking ratters with impunity.
You are proposing that a no risk interceptor gang can now attack sov.

You are allowing the attacker to risk nothing, a completely disposable interceptor that will very likely never be caught. Whilst the defender risks their entire home and are forced to come out and fight and do 10x the amount of work if they aren't quick enough.

That is pushing it far too much in the favor of the attacker.



I ask you to make it so that the attackers must risk something if they want to attack sov, be it a cruiser or battlecruiser or above. At least they can be caught.
I understand your worry of 'artifically shifting the meta towards larger ships', but if you if you allow interceptors or frigate sized ships to capture sov then you will artifically shifted the meta towards frigate killing/max mobility, since they will be the most optimal choice to attack.


I say this, as the CFC, we will be fine, we by and large live in and use our space. I understand you are trying to break up the mega coalitons like the CFCand N3.
Unfortunately, that means anyone who isn't an well organised or resourced at the mega coalitions is gonna suffer far worse than them. And with this sov system in it's current form, they are going to live purely at the mercy of the larger blocs. It will be even worse than now.
Alexander McKeon
Perkone
Caldari State
#134 - 2015-03-09 14:38:29 UTC
Arkon Olacar wrote:
There's another issue people tend to forget when churning out "if you want to keep your sov you should be able to kill an interceptor" posts. When fighting for an ihub timer, large numbers of the defending alliance will be concentrated into a single constellation, to win the timer. If they don't show up, they risk losing ihubs and sov, and so the defender has to commit as many as possible to that timer.

Meanwhile there is nothing to stop a 3rd party from gathering a few dozen interceptors/frigates and RFing the rest of the region nearly unopposed. Sure there might be a few guys left who can form up to chase off roaming gangs, but can this small section of the online playerbase of the defenders be in several dozen places at once? Of course not. The next 'primetime' window would see dozens and dozens of timers in a 4 hour window, meaning the defenders would need to capture literally hundreds of command nodes, each taking at least 10 minutes.

At the minute there is only one thing stopping a 3rd party from RFing most of a region while the defending alliance is tied up at another timer - HP based warfare requires them to commit assets to do so. This element of risk from the aggressor must remain. There should be nothing to stop a 3rd party splitting up and trying to RF half the region at once, but if the defender turns up then that should result in explosions. If the aggressor can simply run away and the defender is left chasing shadows, unable to keep up with the sheer number of structures under attack simultaneously, then the defender would simply stop bothering. Living in nullsec would simply not be worth the effort.

This is me talking from the Brave perspective - if we would struggle to both contest a single major timer and keep Catch (one of the most densely populated nullsec regions in the game) free from a large number of small gangs, then how on earth are 'normal' alliances supposted to have a chance?

This guy gets it. What the entosis link module as currently envisaged does is create a massive asymmetry in effort and expense betwixt the aggressor and defender; creating a dozen combat timers is far easier than defending the sixty systems which those timers could represent. There is also greatly differentiated risk in terms of assets required to defend versus to force a defense. If Brave can't muster the warm bodies, who in Eve could?
davet517
Raata Invicti
#135 - 2015-03-09 14:39:31 UTC
Mikka Raikkonen wrote:


No, we'll commit 10 interceptors to 50 hubs.


You might kill a few of us if you can catch them, but far more likely you'll spend your time chasing your tail, and we'll come back. Again. and again. And again until you go mad and stop showing up. Hell we probably wouldn't even bother to contest the subsequent command node fights. Nope, just make you recapture them constantly.


If you think that that sounds boring as hell for you as a defender and even more so for us as an attacker to the point where we wouldn't do that, consider the following:
.


And you think that N3, and 18,000 strong Brave, can't do that to you, and your renters too? Who exactly do you think you're going to be griefing like this who can't do it back? We're not talking about suiciding miners and haulers in high-sec here where the hapless have no recourse. I think you're imagining griefing a small sov holder who does not exist, and won't exist, unless and until the power blocs break up.

The unaligned aren't going to sit still for you to grief them. They're going to hit you from NPC space and laugh until you get tired of being hit.
EvilweaselFinance
GoonCorp
Goonswarm Federation
#136 - 2015-03-09 14:39:37 UTC
John McCreedy wrote:

Same could be achieved under Dominion sov just by reducing the HP on all structures. The entire point of this is to remove the necessity of shooting structures.

I'm not arguing in favor of this idea yet (I haven't really figured out how I feel about it). But this argument just doesn't hold water: what made Dominion horrid is the structures have massive EHP, and the system simply does not work without the massive EHP (you'd just have people alphaing the ihub even while it was defended). This "deployable" idea would be that you have to deploy it and then hold the grid, but it's trivial to kill it without support. If the module costs 20-80m and has the EHP of a cruiser or even a battleship people will go around popping them left and right just for fun if someone tries to deploy them defensively.

If someone tries to deploy them as a troll without intending to fight to defend them, the defenders will get free killmails - or they aren't paying attention and will lose their sov.

It still is adding structures, but it is a pretty elegant solution that completely takes shiptypes out of the equation, which means you can far more easily balance it - it's basic balancing features are cost/ehp and that's about it. No worrying about what happens if you put it on ship X or ship Y and if that breaks things, and it has no effect on the meta at all - you have to win the gridfight.

Now that I reason it all out perhaps I am in favor of the idea :v:
John McCreedy
Eve Defence Force
#137 - 2015-03-09 14:40:22 UTC  |  Edited by: John McCreedy
Kale Freeman wrote:
Arkon Olacar wrote:
John McCreedy wrote:
Kale Freeman wrote:
What about ditching the whole Entosis link entirely. Make a Entosis deployable. It takes 10 minutes to come online. It needs to be deployed within 25/250km of the objective. Once it is online and there are no more enemy entosis deployables on grid the owner can right click it and instruct it to attack/hack the objective.




It would be an SBU by another name. Every sov holding alliance would anchor them on their structures, much as they do now with SBUs on every gate. We need a system that's balanced for both attacker and defender, not one or the other.


If this had mobile deployable EHP, rather than SBU EHP, this would be less of an issue for the attackers. A few minutes for a gang to grind it down (rather than hours) would be fine.



Also make it non-pickup-able. So a troll interceptor would not be able to pick it up and move it to the next system as soon as defense appears.


It would require a small fleet to disrupt sov which in itself would be seen as a threat and therefore require a response which would lead to more content. But what's to stop the defender from undocking 150 angry dudes? Doesn't this just lead to escalation which is what the proposed change is meant to remove? That said, is there anything wrong with escalation initially? It would make sov disruption multi-layered. Brute force for stage one, mobility for stage two? It might be more interesting this way.

13 years and counting. Eve Defence Force is recruiting.

EvilweaselFinance
GoonCorp
Goonswarm Federation
#138 - 2015-03-09 14:42:38 UTC
John McCreedy wrote:

It would require a small fleet to disrupt sov which in itself would be seen as a threat and therefore require a response which would lead to more content. But what's to stop the defender from undocking 150 angry dudes? Doesn't this just lead to escalation which is what the proposed change is meant to remove?

escalation is good because it means fights: a small fleet getting a response from the defender and fighting is great

if you attack someone and get immediately outnumbered by a local defense fleet, you picked a fight above your weight class and should work on some less densely populated space
Eli Apol
Definitely a nullsec alt
#139 - 2015-03-09 14:42:48 UTC
Groperson wrote:
1.You send your forces to just reinforce their stuff for 3 weeks in a row. (a 150 man inteceptor roam every 48 hours)
2. Don't bother contesting the 48 hour reinforce capture nodes.
3. The defender has to do 10x as much work as you do attacking, just to keep their space. then when they are burnt out and suicidal. You take it all/ get them to pay rent to you/ leave

Remind me how this isn't worse for an alliance that holds even more systems and might have THOUSANDS of timers per day to deal with if they don't defend the initial RF effectively? Not to mention the organisational effort in making sure they're all dealt with in a timely manner.

Sounds like a cause for faster burnout to me but what would I know, I'm just a salvager

but what would I know, I'm just a salvager

Maximus Andendare
Stimulus
Rote Kapelle
#140 - 2015-03-09 14:43:08 UTC
Arkon Olacar wrote:
Hero owns 98 systems in Catch, and 38 stations. We now need 136 mauluses to spend 4 hours a night sitting on an ihub/station. Except of course if these trollceptors have any kind of weapons, it can kill the maulus, so we partner them with a RLML caracal to prevent that from happening. There, we've kept one of the most densely populated regions in the game save from trollceptors, and it only costs us 1088 man hours per night!

I think you're missing the point. (Not just you, but you stated your (major Sov holder's) point eloquently enough.) If it's a bother to defend your sovereignty, then 1) maybe you should question the amount you possess and 2) if you're not willing to put forth the effort to defend it, then perhaps it should be lost. I'm not speaking specifically to the trollceptor "ruckus" per se; it's more addressing the complaints that defending sovereignty will be too difficult. Sovereignty shouldn't so easy to defend that you can do it with a corp full of dis-interested recruits. If you want to keep sov, then it should be something that you and your corp want to defend. As it is, CCP is giving Sov holders the ability to lock out people from reinforcing their structures until a time set by the owner. If the owner can't find it in them to defend their home in a nice four hour block of their choosing, then it sounds more like the sov holder should reassess their priorities.

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