Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I know why you're here. You clicked on this thread to tell me "we have too many damn frigates already!".

But, here is my proposal:

A new class of frigate which can dynamically merge together with one or two other ships of this new class to temporarily form a larger multi-pilot ship.

When merged, each pilot takes on one or more roles (pilot, weapons, defense, etc.) and is given control over all modules on all of the component ships related to that role. One person drives the ship, one person shoots the weapons, etc.

A single ship would be perhaps somewhat weaker than a typical frigate today, but when joined up with a second one the merged ship would be more powerful than the two ships alone, and again for three merged ships. Two might acquire the handling characteristics of a Destroyer, and three a Cruiser perhaps (adding another interesting tradeoff for deciding whether to merge or split)

The other twist is that when merged, all the ships get the skill effects from all the pilots. That is, the pilots skills are combined so that a rookie flying with a veteran behaves like two veteran pilots while merged. A pilot with skill specialization A merged with a pilot with specialization B acts like two pilots with both specializations, etc. You logically OR all the pilots skills together.

That's the gist of it. What do you think (come at me bro).

Assorted thoughts, justifications, challenges:

The new class of frigates should be available to new players (and Alphas specifically) with perhaps a modest investment of training (or even none) to encourage new players to go do things together, and to encourage the vets to engage more with newer players. Skill merging provides a powerful incentive to bring someone along (hopefully more meaningfully than picking up a homeless guy so you can drive in the carpool lane).

We could let a merged ship dock as a unit and accept missions and let all pilots turn in missions with a single set of mission deliverables. Thus providing small group content, especially important to new players doing things like the Sister's arc, etc. As long as the ships never split, you can complete the missions together and share the rewards.

Merging and splitting can happen at any time, so if you get pulled into something you don't like you can run away. You get new emergent tactics as the value of being one big target vs. three little targets changes over the course of a fleet battle. Different combinations of ships allow dynamic transition between balanced and focused ship specializations.

Hard to balance? I don't know that it's actually that bad. It definitely provides new power, but at the same time it requires multiple pilots willing to coordinate and adds complexity that will somewhat balance the greater power that a three-player merged ship would have. Even skill-merging probably isn't overpowered. It means you have a broader pool of pilots to choose from, and people with specialized skills have an opportunity to contribute and take part in different activities.

People often ask "are there multi pilot ships in Eve". Some people would enjoy letting someone else be responsible for the parts of flying they're less fond of. Let someone else worry about navigating, or picking the right targets, etc. Or simply take turns.

"But people will merge up and AFK / powerlevel each other" You still have to be at the keyboard enough to accept and turn in missions etc., so I'm not sure this is actually a problem. I'm interested in further discussion though.

"OMG! What if a blue and a red merge up? What do I see on Overview? War targets?" This is an interesting problem but it probably has solutions. Like showing three icons and three background stripes under a single merged ship on Overview (Overview filtering could be based on the combination of the pilots, which might work with today's overview options).You could alternatively show a merged ship as more than one row in Overview with their relationship indicated somehow (no line between each pilot, etc.)

What if a merged ship wants to dock at a private station? Probably we only let the ship in if all three pilots can get in, but other options could be interesting.

You could extend the idea to four or more merged ships but I think 1 to 3 merged covers most of the interesting behavior. It's a capability restricted to a new class of ships in order to isolate the effects and allow balancing etc.

We already have a form of dynamic shape-shifting ships with Tech 3 Cruisers, so this is a somewhat logical progression. Lore justification is easy, you just steal some Jovian (or whomever) tech after a disasterous first-contact fleet encounter with similar ships. The cinematic practically writes itself :)

I have a couple more pages of notes, but I'll stop there in case this is a completely stupid idea lol.

I think right now, EVE doesn't need anymore Tech 3. There is so much to try and balance out right now.

No just get rid of tech 3. Tech 3 is a mistake balance wise.

Tech 3 should have just been visually customizable ships. Not ships that can shapeshift like destroyers or have broken bonuses like cruisers.

No!

No thanks.

Definitely no more tech 3.

.....after T3 battleships i'l think about it....

First of wrong, i want to tell you why do we need another t3 which is very strong and hard to counter.

Second thanks for stoping right here.

-1

The main problem with T3 ships is that we still don't know how they should work. The introduction of the destroyers basically killed a whole group of frigates, and the cruisers are being used instead of battleships. Even if I like both the transforming and the modular mechanics of these ships, sadly I have to agree with the others: no more T3 anything until we fix the current 8 - or 4100, depending on how you count them.
A frigate that I could imagine is a command type ship. We could put it in the T2 logistics group maybe, as they both are fleet-support ships.