Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Since CCP is supposed to release very soon a Link Revamp this summer, i came up with some ideas discussing with my corp mates.

First, it would need a complete Skill and Ship bonus redo.
I went on a deep research about it, but it seemed horribly disturbing when i tried to put it on a picture to share to you, so i'll think more again about it.
One thing for certain : all the concerned SPs (Command Ship skill & Leadership skills) would be erased to 0 and transfered in an unallocated SkillPoint pool ready to be re-allocated somewhere else, or extracted, or re-allocated in the new skills.

Second, all the actual BCs and their race/role bonuses would not be edited at all.
The hulls would become a brand new "class" called "Assault Battlecruiser", with a new Skill in Spaceship Command named "(Heavy ?) Assault Battlecruiser" just like Assault Frigs and HACs. With no leadership skills required to fly them anymore.

The actual "Command Ship" BC class would then have all the following proposed ideas, and hopefully a brand new hull design.

Same goes for the Dessies, a new hull specialised in links would be created, and the actual Command Dessy would become a new class called Assault Destroyer, with the oh-so-funny-boosh-module.

T3C would not be able to be a command ship anymore.

BC & D means available for Battlecruiser version and Dessy version.

Ideas :
- Command Ships would have NO weapon bonuses at all, but huge tank bonuses :BC & D
Zero weapon slots available to avoid the combat exequror/scythe idea. :p
No drone bay, impossible to fit cyno or covert cyno field generator.

- AoE Links and GTAoE DeLinks. (GT = "Ground" Targeted) :BC & D
Why GT ? Because it would penalize "kity fleets" to make DeLink/DeBuff AoEs.

- Only One single Link would be activable per fleet :BC & D
active gameplay, pilot would have to chose which link to activate depending on his fleet situation.
If multiple but different type links are activated -> the first one in time is affected fleet.
If multiple same type of links are activated at the same time -> the highest skilled is taken in count.

This 'feature' is there to avoid excessive advantages in situations like [small gang / skirmish / solo] VS [organised fleet]

- Able to fit a "Sub-Capital Emergency Hull Energizer" :BC only
same mecanics as the Capital version / perfect FC ship.

- Able to fit Mini Burst Projectors :BC only
Same as current Super Burst Projectors but with less range/radius/effectiveness ?

- Can fit the "Oh-****" module :BC only
giving to a targeted fleet ship a immune timer of X second, it would have a huge cycling time (the effect would last less than this cycle time though) to avoid spaming it.

- Only ship capable of doing specific fleet warps :BC & D
. @ different ranges over than 100km to a known point.
. could launch a fleet warp les than 150km to a known point.
. could launch a fleet warp to a certain grid point selected by the new "Q-tool" (just like fighter command). limitations have to exist though.

Quick abuse of this ship.
Pipe Bombing. Hull Energizer means you hull tank it and it ignores the smart bombs of it's fellows for the entire time needed to pipe bomb a fleet.

Also you obviously didn't read the entire point behind all command ships getting weapons. Every ship should be an active playstyle, this ship even though it's on grid is still basically relegated to an alt.

No worries, I fixed that for you.

So would this be a new class of ships entirely, or would you want every pvp command ship pilot in the game to hate you?

Congrats, you've managed to write a thorough and detailed post which I oppose and dislike every single piece.

Lets see, brief highlights. The skills and ship classes rework/changes are completely unnecessary and overly disruptive. There's literally no reason to do this. At all. Unless your goal is just to **** of players.

Special callout to how unrealistic it is to expect completely new hull models on T2 ships. The art pipeline is overloaded right now with Citadels, reworks for existing hulls, and other already in progress projects. Also no other T2 ship gets a completely unique hull.

There's no reason to make T3 Cruisers unable to boost, the changes there are probably the only part of T3Cs that's actually balanced right now.

Taking guns off of Command Ships is exactly as pointless as the hulls rework and if you remove the latter the former is now unnecessary.

Juggling links is equally pointless and boring gameplay. With only one link bonus at a time then it'll end up like the T3D role switching, where one link just goes on auto repeat the vast majority of the time. Also this completely doesn't work with existing links, which are designed with the assumption that all three will be present at the same time.



This is uniquely terrible, because numbers is already advantage enough. If you didn't bring a Command Ship and you get whelped because a smaller force did then you deserve the kicking you got. If you meant it the other way around then... wat, just no, that is not how any of this works, you're hurting the small group more than the large one.

The rest is completely negated if Command Ships can do things other than links, like use guns.

Mini-burst-projectors in particular are completely useless in High Sec, because AOE, and take away from Capitals in a big way anywhere else.

Because some people have to have centralized control over their fleet and/or don't trust anyone else to do the job and/or don't want to "ruin" the fleet comp by having to make sacrifices.

There are people out there who see decentralization as a bad thing and are loathe to accept that it may be better in some situations.

And I wonder sometimes why people always demand fundamental changes to the game without actually thinking about the consequences of them. They get really salty when no-one else actually agrees with them.

So you're not an ultra tanky bait cyno nonsense ship, just an ultra tanky nonsense bait ship.

At the cost of completely changing the character of fleet combat, the removal of multiple popular pvp hulls, spawning another fifty threadnaughts like the last time CCP tried to remove fleet warps, but this time adding in the pissed off PVP CS pilots as well as literally everyone who's ever FCed, just because you don't like it when people shoot your links?

You did, stripping links off it even if it still exists causes a significant change, especially to a small gang who integrate the DPS from the CS into their combat tactics.
Also you might want to you know, actually read up on what CCP are intending to change the mechanics to rather than spamming a bad idea, that was bad the first time someone posted it ages ago, and is still bad now.

Where did I say anything about a fleet doctrine? I specifically spoke about small gangs. And why would they 'waste' a slot or two..... That's simple and shows how non existent your gameplay in this area is. Roaming. Roaming gangs are not going to have all the bounces needed to keep an OffGrid link safe from a prober, and with the new CS they can fit 2-3 links and still contribute a reasonable portion of DPS to their gang. Sure not everyone does it, but some do. So yes your change would change the current meta. & no there will not be posted doctrines of the fits because they are individual to the gangs.

Also off grid links are going, CCP have announced their plans for how new links will work (though they are still working on the code base to make it actually happen without melting the servers hence no formal announcement because the code base may end up not supporting it)

And yes, this forum is made for presenting ideas, but you are expected to have done a modicum of research. Your idea is one that comes up every 2-3 months, and if you had bothered searching you could have read all the for & against arguments and actually shown an understanding of link use outside the 250 man blob preplanned battles that you are basing all your claims off.