EVE General Discussion

Because I'm tired and soon to sleep I just listed some bullet points of what I was thinking, but for the above I was specifically thinking of the Void Bomb (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Void_Bomb) which neutralizes capacitor, and for disabling player controlled aerial/ground vehicles and infantry/anti tank defense.

Although an ECM bomb for disrupting ground to space defenses is an excellent idea, and would give the SB an actual role, aka to prevent battleships/dreads being blown out of the sky.

Ok so i think there should be a few things added to orbital bombardment.

1. Dont overlook dreads

--- my opinion of using dreads for bombardment is this.
a. Slow ROF,
b. non discririminatory killing. If you are bombarding people close to one of your structures, your structure will incur damage and you may blow up what you are trying to defend.
c. accuracy of bombardment should be based off of people on the ground "painting the targets" No blind shooting and win. If you want to use a dread to kill, someone has to help you target.

2. Battleships

a. as with dreads - no blind nuking and win.
b. targets need some sort of painting for precision.
c. weapon size affects the level of percision.

3. Skills -

a. orbital bombardment.
b. target precision - each level helps you to target a specific area more accurately. so rather than shooting and miss by 50 km you miss like by 25.
c. remote painters - allows the pilot to hook up with ground personal when ground personal uses a target painter targeting accuracy increase by x% etc.



overall my thing is we can have blind nuking. Nuking it from orbit must be a precise science to minimize your casualties and maximize damage. So i want to see a combination of skills, ammo and guns used for the amount of damage. I also want to see a lot of interaction between ground forces to make precise kills.

Just a few quick suggestion from me here.

1) Orbital bombardment should first have to be called in by Dust troopers. It wont be fun for Dust players if us EVE gods can perform random drive-bys on battles.

2) Orbital bombardments should come in two flavours. Beacons and Fire-Support.
Beacons are exactly what it says on the can; a dust trooper drops a beacon, EVE pilot gets a lock on, fire from heavens.
Fire-Support would be a little more complicated and I don't know if its technically possible but would go something like this. Dust player calls for orbital support, EVE pilot activates planetary siege module. EVE pilot gains aerial view of battlefield similar to AC-130 kill-streak in Call of Duty. While the EVE player has the PSM active they will be able to both see their dust allies and rain fire on enemy troops.
planetary siege module would have a short duration (2 - 5 min) but a long cooldown before it could be called in again by dust troopers (5 - 10 min) This would be locked planet side (team based) so that you don't end up with with the problem of large fleets just chaining the planetary siege module's together.

3) Any ship that has the range should be able to provide orbitals. For reference [shamelessly copy/pasted from wiki] - "An altitude of 120 km (75 mi) is where atmospheric effects become noticeable during atmospheric reentry of spacecraft. The Kármán line, at 100 km (62 mi), also is often regarded as the boundary between atmosphere and outer space."





4) Lastly I wanted to make a suggestion for orbitals in pve content as well.
I was thinking a game mode for the Dust troopers where a small group of them must hold out until they can contact a capsuler willing to provide orbitals for them. Something like waves of rogue drones attacking from a planet side drone hive, dust troopers start their mission and must hold the line while the server find an EVE player who could provide orbitals for them.
EVE side the server would contact the EVE player's within range of the dust troopers and offer them the mission, if they accept then the Dust troopers get an ETA timer for how long it will take the pilot to move into position. The mission ends once the Dust troopers mark the hive for bombardment and the EVE capsuler launches their orbital on the hive. Once completed all parties involved would receive a payout like incursions (something modest, but worth it; 5mil isk sounds nice and round?).

Either way, please keep orbitals in mind for whatever pve content you have in dust as well.

As long as Dreads do more damage to ground forces and buildings than sub caps do, at longer ranges and as long as the Titan is not excluded (Doomsday some mercs from orbit for a truly spectacular show with devastating consequences for whoever remains standing) I will be truly satisfied.

I also think the smaller the ship, the closer to the planet's surface the ship has to be in order to fire off one of these bombardments, in addition to being smaller and doing less damage. These ships should also be within the firing range of PI defenses (if we ever get any) and from Dust merc fire (be it hand held, turret, flying vehicle or ground vehicle based).

Thus, smaller ships will face more danger from the planet, should take less damage to pop (with no speed factors to save them) and be vulnerable to a very large battery of defenses.

Capitals should be able to withstand a massive barrage of gunfire, from a much higher orbit (and thus bigger planetary guns) but ultimately should have logistical support or go boom. Capitals need to be boosted in terms of planetary aggression far beyond their capabilities compared to sub capital aggression to make them worthwhile.

Otherwise you risk a situation where no matter how beautiful the eye candy is, caps will be made even more worthless since a 70 mil isk ship could fire off bombardments from a similar orbit, do the same damage while facing lower risk.



Also, multiple bombardments on the same target. 1 Beacon, 10 dreads. 10 times the devastation.



Environmental damage also. Craters, the charged cloud effects we saw in the first Eve forever video and the ability to see most if not all the ships in orbit from the ground will be pure win.

So, this is where we begin to populate the eve universe. OB looks really cool. I envision a situation where two opposing forces (perhaps a nullsec conflict with CFC vs. Team Tech and their associated DUST corps) are battling over a system, and for whatever reason this particular battle depends on the ground fight. The dusties need fire support, both Eve fleets get to the planet., and a space battle begins. It could truly be epic. A few notes and ideas:

- DUST players should be able to see large Eve ships while in their game
- They should also be able to see significant events, like a fleet cynoing in at their planet.
- There should be some mechanic in place to allow for entire fleets to participate in OB, not just 1 ship
- If we're killing DUST players, we better get killmails!

Thanks for everything you're doing. Personally, I couldn't be more excited for DUST 514, as this truly could be the beginning of a new chapter for the Eve universe.

do console nooblets get killmails for sinking dreadnaughts?

Personal opinions on orbital strikes:

1. accurate strikes difficult, might need some sort of siege mode, cannot make it too easy to bombard

2. Bombardment weapons: Why? Cause current gear is only accurate out to a couple hundred km, we sit further from planets I believe, need special guns to not difuse on contact with atmosphere and hit ground accurate.

3. S/M/L/XL We are having new order to ships, might as well make use of it. Bring siege module to the other classes. Siege battleship, destroyer, battlecruiser. Fit regular weapons on them, work em just like the dreadnoughts. Bigger ships, higher damage, lower rate of fire. Dessies can bring on the rain, but the ships are of course easy to die, and cannot kill as much.

4. Cooldown (see 3) heat, dust, etc would stir up fog of war essentially for bombardment to get a clear view. So bigger the gun, more damage, slower recharge on being able to call.

I heard about heat maps, not sure how that works, but what if the bombardment had area of influence instead, so it would slowly reduce with time. Epicenter of attack takes a while to clear, but smaller impact zone means less time to clear (matches gun size?)

This means that even if a drop is called down, it is still possible to call somewhere else. So a squad of bombard dessie could bring spread small fire, say counter infantry surround.

ECM, we want ewar, here is a must to counter bombardment. Mobile ecm, deployed ecm, and no way to get a bombardment lock. This would prevent bombards being dropped right away onto somebody's deployment. I have played games where early artillery spam has ruined gameplay. If there is no way to early protect a base (deploy ecm on start) then it would really become busted.

I gave it some thought and here's how I liked to see the mechanic work.

This might repeat some information but oh well

1. Dust corp forms squad to assault or defend a district; There should always be x extra slot(s) for an eve player(s).. ( Yes integration, scary ) They then invite eve members before deploying; Or add "Squad finder" similar to fleet finde ; CCP determines number of Eve squad slots; reasonable to enable a defense fleet/ offense fleet.

2.Dust players engage and begin combat; At this point ( When they land, w.e ) a journal entry is logged for any eve players in the two opposing squads ( Like CC launch in PI already ); Players can warp to this point at this time( Placed randomly around a planets sphere, make one for each squad in the engagement but fairly close together, 10-20km apart?

3.Eve players land and activate ( Siege mode like behavior); Locking their ships but enabling target paint co-ordinates from their squad;
-- I have no idea how the UI should be -- I'd imagine a UI that turned on similar to the Ore scanning device; but updates whenever a new target is painted; this can be clicked on and then click on a "attack/Nuke" button which will utilize any viable weapons they have.

4. Dust players when the opportunity arises begin painting a target; Upon target acquisition, capsuleer squad members who are in ships with active ?siege? modules get the co-ordinates in their UI;
-- Note: If no squad members/capsuleers have active siege modules the target painter should fail on the dust players side -
-- At this point; since the ?Siege? module is active the benefit of having an immobile ship is an instant lock requiring only the eve player to press the "NUKE" button or activate the required turrets/cannons/Nuke however you want to do it.


I think this is a decent plan as it if you limit the number of eve players in a dust squad you enforce additional logistics to getting overwhelming numbers onto the field. I.E scanning; I'd personally enforce the squad members to stay in squad until the end of the session to encourage small gang PVP. Doing so would prevent them from leaving squad after landing on grid and having a whole fleet warp onto them complety unbalancing any PVP this may encourage.

-- I'd personally reduce all sig radius on grid by a percentage to make it even harder to scan them down to discourage lop-sided engagements --


isk for your thoughts?


Please excuse spelling and grammar, It's 3:30 A.M. here.

BAN HEEM!!!!!

Oh wait, no... GET REALLY DRUNK!!!!!

Skill/Module Wise

Probably require a Orbital Bombardment Module. Fits in a low slot like a siege module. Could have different size ones if you want battleships etc to do it. Obviously once you go into bombardment mode you can't move. (better hope your buddies are guarding the gates).

I wouldn't make the requirements much harder than what the siege module takes. Maybe just 1 new skill Orbital Bombarbment with similar stats to Tactical Weapon.

As far as Defenses:

Planetary Shields (Shield capable of deflecting any bombardment.....unless of course you land troops and they take out the shield generator----The Empire Strikes Back)

Surface to Space Weapons (Someone mentioned the Ion Cannon also from Empire Strikes Back, the cannon was massive though and would be difficult to move from colony to colony, some sort of smaller weapons might be in order (Hoth was the Rebel HQ at the time is why it had the Ion Cannon)).

Satellite Weapons Take a variety of forms be independent of POSs, in essence kinda like a customs office, you load it with ammo, possibly fuel blocks and it engages targets that attempt to enter orbit around the planet which through standings you've told it to attack. It would be anchored of course in space around the planet and easily seen by any EVE pilot that uses a scanner before warping (or a cloaky scout).