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Blessings to those Devs that listen and hear the people!

So you plan to reduce the effectiveness of bomber fleets by breaking ALL other types of fleets. Great logic you have there. Squad warping you and your friends to a safe bookmark is one of the primary benefits of being in a fleet. This will make life a lot harder for nullsec and lowsec dwellers across the board.

It's often helpful to follow up such snide remarks with the reasoning behind your incredulity. Otherwise, you're just making me scroll more.

First off, I apologize for being late to the party as it were; I was on a field problem where access to electricity made it a good day so replying to the first thread was not an option. That being said, better late than never.

Overall I'm in favor of the changes. The power creep of fleetwarp from all the other changes that impacted it (probing improvements, warp speed changes, etc) meant that it had gotten a bit out of hand. However I'm concerned that the loss of tactical mobility on grid will have an overall negative impact on fleet combat. Since fleets are always moving this matters quite a lot.

Right now a slower fleet only has one way to re-position relative to a faster one, and that is combat probes. Even as things stand a fast cruiser doctrine can move 12+ km from the point that the slower fleet lands, though this is not enough to keep interceptors from sticking to them like hair on a gorilla. With the new changes that distance would about double, if some testing I just did is correct.

On the surface this wouldn't look like a big issue since a 2km/s cruiser fleets is still hosed in a race with a 5km/s interceptor fleet. The problem is the time it takes for the inties to close that distance, and the further 12+ km that the cruisers will move while it happens. So long as the cruisers can track and hit an MWDing interceptor it gives them quite a bit of time to shoot at the tackle while it tries to catch up. With their larger sig radius and slightly lower speed this is a particular problem for interdictors, assuming that their opponents aren't nullified T3s that don't have to care. As well, it gives the cruiser fleet that much more time to warp out after they see combat probes on D-Scan.

After these changes go into effect there will not be a viable way to put tackle on a fast moving cruiser fleet (except a comedy Succubus fleet?). Probing will simply be too slow to catch a fleet that can go much over (roughly) 1.8km/s and load Javelin M or RLMLs. Trying to use interceptors and frigates to close will just result in massive casualties on the part of the tacklers. Sure the pursuer could just bring a TON of frigates and eat the losses but why would they? Instead, given the overall very high SP and wealth of the average nullsec alliance, everyone is going to fly some variant of the 250mm rail/MWD Tengu. You are right that it won't be a Slippery Pete though; there won't be any need for all the ECCM because being probed out will be irrelevant.

All of this goes back to the fact that it is very hard to achieve any sort of tactical surprise in Eve. Hotdrops and combat probing were pretty much the only ways to do it that everyone couldn't see coming far in advance. Now its going to be just hotdrops, and those are really not all that feasible in most situations. With as much reaction time as a FC will be able to count on having after this any ship type not able to hit out to 160km will be a ticket to frustration.

To fix this problem I suggest a second change to go along with the fleetwarp nerf. Make Covops able to run a prop mod while cloaked, but make their decloak radius expand by the same percentage (or even more) as their speed is boosted. This would enable FCs to use scouts to get ahead of fleets that didn't change direction occasionally, make wrecks and debris on the battlefield meaningful, and generally make somebody who really understood how to fly their ship in space worth their weight in gold. Instead of "align to thing ---> call targets ---> see hostiles coming, laugh, punch warp" FCs would have to be constantly asking themselves "is anyone sneaking up on me right now?"

Guys, I don't wanna be pessimistic but it seems you are changing stuff just to change stuff, rather than add anything interesting.

I don't see anything good in the new warp change: especially in small gang fleets, will be just very annoying.
You want to encourage individual player partecipation, but you will obtain opposite effect: new fleet warp will discourage individual player participation. And discurage fleets in general, because it will be quite annoying to Fc and to new pilots.

First the new (bad) icons, now this stupid warp change. From my point of view, you are working very hard to kill Eve.

p.s. And also.. the damage control icon, the old suitcase was just fine. Just please focus on real thing

All on-grid actions which have absolutely nothing to do with fleet warping.

No, it doesn't. Fleet member participation is tactical, on-grid. Fleet commanding is strategic, recon, and off-grid.

Fleet member impact on combat is their participation in combat. Maneuvering the fleet into position isn't combat.

Apples and oranges. Drone assign was on-grid, in-combat action that did remove player involvement and my only wish was that it was reduced further than it was.

Did you even read what he wrong? How does having the fleet warp to a broadcasted bookmark reduce participation? How is this worse than warping fleet to a silly FC-alt?


Just because you come up with this on-grid/off-grid tactical/strategic mumbo jumbo doesn't mean it makes sense. Each player doing stuff = engagement. You can argue if it's the right kind of engagement, but it's a bit of a non-starter if you argue it's not.

Any dev comment as to the wisdom of releasing an expansion right in the middle of the Alliance Tournament?

Crossposting from reddit.

This whole blog screams "Let's miss the mark as hard as possible while remaining in the ballpark."



We already know that this is untrue. Fleet Commanders routinely dualbox a scout alt for a laundry list of reasons. What has happened is now an FC will need to probe on the alt, warp the alt to the result at 10, and then fleetwarp to the alt at 10. Will it be slower? Yes. Will it increase "individual fleet member participation"? **** no. It raises the bar on FCs, making content creators' jobs harder.



Probing Petes is not the issue. A single Virtue prober with a squad of interceptors effectively neuters them using squad warp. The reason Petes are the only workable sniper doctine is their bubble immunity. They are "slippery" because catching them is exceedingly hard. Any other sniper fleet is caught as soon as you land a dictor on them.



On-grid probing is only one reason. Is it too strong? **** yes it is. but fleet warp was never the issue.

The main reason sniper fleets have disappeared is remote reps/Logistics ships. At longer ranges, turrets simply do less damage. Since Logistics ships can easily repair the damage of 3-8 hostile DPS (it varies widely due to resistances) ships at close range, moving to farther ranges just makes it worse. Take two fleets of oldschool battleship snipers and use modern Logi support and the fight would be as boring as ****. Nothing would die at sniper ranges one bit.

Tech 3 cruisers are another major culprit here, since they can easily sig-tank and resist-tank long-range turret fire, and the new meta of TD-covered Armor T3s has rendered all turret doctrines totally obsolete (though the mainstream capsuleer hasn't recognized this yet).

Sentry drones are the other major culprit since they deal a fixed damage amount (often equivalent to turret DPS at close ranges) but with a significantly greater optimal range, with better tracking, and are effectively immune to tracking disruptors.



Bombers are a major factor in the dismal performance of BS doctrines but only one of many, and since the bomb travel time changes, isn't actually the main reason anymore.

Bombers are not the main reason battlecruisers aren't used either. Ishtars are. The matchup is so one-sided it's comedy. Combat BCs have neither the range nor speed to catch Ishtars, and Attack BCs lose the tank/dps game since they have less of both. Sure the cost is different, but BCs are billed as "cruiser-killers" while being utterly ineffective at killing any kind of T2 cruiser that isn't explicitly fit for close-range.



Of battleships. A small group still won't do **** to a modern Tech 3 doctrine, further discouraging BS use and encouraging T3 doctrines.

Look, the whole deal of encouraging sniper doctrines is something I'm very much behind. Variety is the spice of the game. I've lead hundreds of fleets in dozens of large (200+) battles and seen and fought almost everything. With the uttermost confidence I can assert, this fleetwarp change won't do jack ****. The Ishtar "nerf" as it is won't do jack ****.

If the goal really is to bring back the fleet variety that we saw back in the brief period just after the Odyssey and Retribution expansions then we sure as hell need bigger changes. If the goal is to bring snipers back, then remote-reps need a huge dicking. If the goal is to dethrone the Ishtar, then it needs to lose its ability to effectively use sentry drones. If the goal is to make combat battlecruisers useful, then they need a way to project damage farther. If the goal is to make bombers capable of changing the game with small numbers, then they need a fundamental design change to be more effective vs modern Tech 3 doctrines, and less effective vs battleships.

Finally, if the goal is to make fleet members "more responsible" for their ships, then make staying alive much harder to do. Dicking fleetwarp doesn't do this. Dicking keep-at-range or orbit would do it, but at the expense of all playability. Dicking remote reps would do this. Dicking remote reps would make snipers far more valuable. Dicking remote reps means staying alive is more than just flying the right ship and broadcasting for reps, but I don't think Eve is willing to swallow that pill.

We have different definitions of "engagement" then. To me, "engagement" means something that is fun, draws my interest, engages me. Your definition seems to be something that makes players do something, even if it's as mundane, uninteresting, and tedious as "wait for FC to tell me to click button" which coincidentally sounds a LOT like what null blob F1 warfare is.