Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Updated with feedback from comments below

The current implementation of boosts is a mess, and CCP knows it. They have cited the reason for not being able to bring boosts "on grid" as a computational limitation -- the number of "is it on grid?" checks needing to be made, in addition to skill bonus calculations, would bring the node to its knees. Barring "Brain in a Box" being completed and stable, or CCP inventing the world greatest 3D calculation system, no change to links can happen. Except... if the link mechanic itself changes so it requires less power.

Proposal (tl;dr): Warfare Links now apply their bonuses as a time-limited status effect in some area around themselves (limited to fleet members).

Potential numbers:

• T1 -- radius: 15 km, duration/cycle time: 1 minute
• T2 -- radius: 20 km, duration/cycle time: 1.5 minutes
• +30% bloom to sig radius per active link module, and active link modules prevent cloaking, docking, and jumping
• Command ships get a +100% role bonus to link radius, in addition to current bonuses.
• T3 Cruisers with the link subsystem get a +50% role bonus to link radius, in addition to current bonuses.
• Supercarriers get a +300% link radius bonus (60 km T1, 80 km T2)
• Titans get a +500% link radius bonus (90 km T1, 120 km T2)

---

Nitty gritty example: Petrus is a solo / small gang PvPer who multi-boxes his primary ship (a super blinged-out Rifter), a Falcon, a Scimitar, and a boosting Loki. The boosting Loki has T2 links, so its bonuses last 1.5 minutes. That means that if Petrus wants boosts, he will need to do one of the following things:

1. Keep the Loki (probably cloaked) near his Rifter. When a fight starts, Loki decloaks, pops boosts, and warps away. Petrus's Rifter has 1.5 minutes of boosted performance, which is enough for a small fight, but not for a prolonged one involving kiting, gangs, etc.
2. Keep the Loki in a safe spot (or just outside a POS or whatever). The Rifter has to bounce by there to "pick up" 1.5 minute chunks of boost. Along with the limited boost time, this also runs the risk of targets escaping (thus adding a performance cost to having your booster be super-safe).
3. Keep the Loki on grid, within 30 km of the fight. The Rifter gets indefinite boosting, but the Loki is in real danger. This option would work best for gangs.

Once the Loki has activated its 4 boosts, it takes certain penalties until they are off-cycle, no matter where it goes. During this time, it has a 4*30% = 120% penalty to its sig radius, taking it from its regular 150 sig to 330 sig, the sig of a Typhoon! Since it can so easily be scanned down and cannot tank damage, Petrus must actively work to keep it safe until the cycle time wears off and it can dock or cloak or whatever. More multiboxing fun for Petrus! He must now work a bit harder to keep the advantages he gets from controlling a mini-fleet of ships by himself.

---

Pros:

• Resolves performance problems associated with boosts by making them act like giant super-slow smartbombs. (seriously, this is big)
• Decouples stuff from the really janky fleet hierarchy system.
• Makes positioning, timing, and piloting matter to boost ships, making flying them more engaging and active for people who are not alts.
• Attempts to add much-needed purpose to capital ships. Not quite enough, but a step in the right direction, maybe.
• Nerfs alt-boosting "pro" PvP; yes, I have an axe to grind.
• About as weird as the idea of entosis links, therefore likely to get implemented.

Cons:

• How to handle boosting ship hiding in POS shields? Low duration makes this an ineffective tactic.
• If it ignores fleet hierarchy, what is the point of having more than one boosting ship?
• How are ridiculously many boosts (I have 12 boosts!) or overlapping boosts processed?
• Insufficient nerf to Caldari.

Your thoughts? It's a rough idea which I'm sure has a lot of holes in it, but hey, who doesn't love telling someone how dumb their idea is?

No. The point of the "duration" existing is that you get that status effect for however long the duration is, no matter what you or the boosting ship does.

Or to trigger the links only as necessary before/during a fight. There's no reason to have increased tackle range if you're not tackling anything, no? Ed: it also means that when you activate your boosts you are making a commitment to stick around and fight if you're to take advantage of them (or to make the amount of time your booster is stuck there worth it). Binding commitment to a fight/location is something that is sorely lacking in the current Eve meta, in my opinion.

Correct. As much as I would like to force them on-grid, I do not see a mechanically sound and reasonable implementation. Instead, triggering your boosts off grid means your booster is stuck and bloated for a while, and you might not even get a fight. The motivation for using the booster on-grid is to provide the boosts immediately when they're needed (eg. when a fight is starting). You could even do stuff like hot-swap the right boosters at a depot before warping to the fleet, to give a use case to situational things like Info links.

Ed: for forcing the links to be on-grid more, the numbers for the boost duration and cycle duration can just be turned down enough to the point where it is impractical to warp back and forth to pick up a boost from a safe-spot, or to warp your booster ship back and forth. Something like 3 minute duration, 2 minute cycle time?

The intention is to make the process of acquiring your links either be inconvenient/time-consuming (thereby making you possibly lose out on catching someone, or miss a fight), or convenient but risky for your link ship. Would lower cycle times and effect durations bring the idea closer to that?

One big problem with the idea is "what happens to the links if the link ship undergoes a session change?" Answer: I don't know. This is not (yet) a complete idea with all the angles worked out.

Why not 1000km? Also, I think they should cycle more rapidly, like once every 30 seconds. T1 and T2 need no difference in range or cycle time.

10 minute links allow fleet to periodically warp to POS for links and spend most of the time away in combat, getting cheap links from safe booster. 30 seconds makes it so the links almost always wear off before you leave warp, so you can't carry them away from the boosting ship. That won't significantly increase total computational power, lots of things happen much more rapidly.

Because of fits like this, and because of grid-stretching games. It encouraged weird extreme fits and exploiting obscure game mechanics, and neither of those makes for very interesting play.

The short range is there to reward good positioning, and dedicated boosting ships get a significant increase to help with that.


Point taken. I have seen this suggestion brought up repeatedly, and I agree that lowering the cycle time would be effective.


I was following the lead of entosis links with T2 vs T1! It might be good to tone that down, though, since the T2 bonuses are still higher than the T1 ones (I don't think any changes to the boost values are needed for the purpose of this post).

I think I'm going to settle on the cycle/duration of 1 minute for T1, and 1.5 minutes for T2. It lets risk-averse people "pick up" boosts then warp into a fight, so they have the option of being late to the fight but having their boosts for a little bit. It also almost completely stops shuttling back and forth to have boosts.


The intention is good, I am not sure of how to limit it to 3 link effects without creating a whole new sort of trolling your allies, almost as bad as bumping a titan. "Oops I accidentally overrode all the skirmish/armor links of the fleet with info links! Tee hee!"

And yeah, giving T1 destroyers a role bonus for links would be a very neat thing.

Was just about to comment that "smart bomb mechanics" means that the effect hits everyone in range. If this was the case, then you really could have some fun fights and a few "oops" moments when your Booster Loki accidentally buffs their svipul gang!

Seriously though, the "buff" role in this game needs to get looked at, hopefully soon. Not to mention, if CCP can make a useable "buff" role like this, then I can see "de-buff" role coming right along behind it. Wouldn't it be more fun to try and organize keeping your gang in formation around your buffer, while your de-buffer is trying to get in range of their gang, and vice-versa.

+1 for good start of this idea

I disagree with your range thoughts. It would be better to have different boosters in different places. In other words, we're trying to get away from the "hierarchy" version of boosts, and make it so more people are on the field giving more boosts. In your example, the logi wing would have their own booster in their blob, and the dps/tackle wing would have their own booster.