EVE General Discussion

My $.02 ... No need to re-invent the wheel anywhere it is not absolutely necessary.


Orbit side

Battleship, Dread or NON-DD Titan direct-fire weapons only. This means the new Tier 3 BCs could participate, if they like to die. DD is too damn much. DUST players would quit in droves

Fighter strikes may be neat in the future, but seems a bit much to ask for right away

ONE ship ONLY for each side engaged in a land battle zone may be called for a strike at any given time. There should be a balance in time between strikes called, so it is a not a constant rain of death. If there are multiple battles going on in other districts, then ONE for each battle above said district. Once any Orbital Strike Module is activated for a side's forces, no other may be until de-activation of said Module

Siege-type Module and special skill for targeting/firing on planets. NOT the siege module we know, a new one for just this purpose. Battleship and Cap sizes available. Negative side effects such as immobility, etc. while in use. 3 Minutes for BS. 5 minutes for Dread. 7 minutes for Titan. Skill training may bring these times down. Strike is called, module activated to confirm strike

Orbital Strikes may ONLY be called by a participating Commander-level player (EVE FC or DUST HQ/whatever) in a battle. NO random death monkeys flying in to grief everyone

All EVE space effects are in force. RR, jammers, etc

Planetary Attributes should affect the DPS generated at the surface. Higher Gravity will mean Mim Arty slams harder. Thick atmosphere/sea-level elevation means Amarr Lazors will suck wind by the time they punch through

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Ground Side

SkyFire batteries a MUST! Battleship and Dread-sized weapons in the standard EVE sizes and configurations. Example- A BS-class SkyFire mounts 8 Large weapons. Three BS, two Dread or one DD weapon per facility. EACH(if more than one) SkyFire can target ANY Battlecruiser-class-or larger ship belonging to attacker's fleet that is on-grid of the orbital strike area. A hacked BS-class SkyFire could be shooting the defender's fleet while two others are shooting at an attacker target. DUST skill needed for better use

ADVANTAGE Defender - Titan DD-class SkyFire available with proper isk expenditure/skills/etc. It can be hacked so... everyone wins. The PG of any facility worth attacking should be able to handle this kind of weapon anyway. PLUS, we already saw one in a trailer, and it was too damn cool to leave out now

Shields Generators a MUST! Come on ... it's still the EVE universe. They can be destroyed or hacked/shut down. Primary Generator for the larger areas. Secondary Generators for important structures. Reppers and all if can be afforded/skilled/etc. DUST skill needed for better use

Large Armor Domes/Hangers/etc and smaller Bunkers a MUST! Amarr, Gallente and the Mim armor monkeys get their day in the sun. Cannot be hacked obviously, but can be destroyed by ether ground or Orbit. Can be repaired between battles. DUST skill needed for better repair

ECM Batteries optional. Would be cool to degrade targeting to the point of "friendly-fire" though. DUST skill needed for better use

Planetary Attributes - see above on Orbit side. Many ways to affect things if one thinks about it. Certain worlds(high winds-Coriolis) may require that more of a facility is underground, and therefore "hardened" against Orbital Strikes(think of a Damage Control II

Targeting Array. Increases accuracy/dps/tracking/ROF/etc. Once hacked/destroyed, all remaining SkyFire suffer targeting and ROF penalty. DUST Skill needed for better use

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If the Defender wants to burn the isk/PG/CPU/wtfever they are going to call the limiters.... then he/they can Turtle-up all they want and make an impregnable fortress.... against Orbital Strikes. This may/should leave him/them at the mercy of ground forces though. No turrets, no tank hangers, less troop barracks, etc

It has to be EVE-like in its balance of risk/reward against both ground and orbital

It should not make a new toy to replace a toy we already frickin' have

Make sure the eye-candy is awesome enough, and CCP could call it an ice cream cone turret and no one would give a r*t's butt. :) I mean come on. DUST players will want something that looks cooler and more spectacular than anything that Failo or Call of Doody can show their Redbull stained eyes

Anything more than that is for us EVE players to mess with on balance issues.

I'd like to point out a physical fact.

An orbital bombardment would need to A) have an extremely low angle through the atmosphere meaning the trajectory seen by the soldier should be almost flat not vertical when in earth like planet AKA terrestrial.

B) have a specialized shell to reach it's target and not become incinerated en route.

C) Be sufficiently large chunk of mass to not splinter into nothing while en route to target.

All of the above happen because of resistance from the planets atmosphere.

If you shoot the projectile in the way its shown, the ships would either have to be in the upper atmosphere of the planet and risk of getting clobbered by satellites orbiting the planet... or have a special shell that takes the heat during flight and use as low angle on the trajectory as possible.

Lasers wouldn't work as the atmosphere would scatter the ray and reduce it's power considerably.

Missiles... Now would a missile do it. You bet your ass it would, in fact the only reasonable tech would be either self guided " smart-bullet" or a similar "smart-cruise missile".

I think much of this has been mentioned before, but I want to contribute my two thousand isk

Planetary Defense

It was mentioned in the fan fest presentation that sovereignty will eventually be effected by planetary districts. Long term control of a planet should offer opportunites for greater and greater fortification. I think this would add variety to orbital warfare, as long held worlds would require a lot of planning and cooperation between both games to succesfully capture. (imagine a blitz on orbital defense forces, than a huge landing of troops, followed by pitched battles both in orbit and on the ground

Planetary Shields

Some kind of shield structure that can block OB would be a fun idea. Something that can either be neutralised by Dusties, or overwhelmed by mass OB

The Grid Problem
I think your long term goal here should be to overhaul Planetary systems with moving planets and moons, etc.; with "Warp to Orbit" eventually replacing "Warp to 0". By long term I mean within the next few years or so, I'm sure it's a huge job.

Fighters and Drones
Getting drones, fighters, and bombers into the mix groundside would be wicked cool, especially if Dust players could take direct control of fighters. I've always hoped you would one day find a way to get real players into fighter cockpit

Titan Doomsday
What about enabling the Titan weapon as a possible scorched earth tactic?Something you could use to glass entire districts. It might even be fun to have the Sansha appear with an augmented Doomsday and try to shatter a few planets as part of a Developer-run event(If they were successful, imaginge the marketing, "see that, it used to be a planet, but then some players showed up and blew it up, despite the efforts of players in both Eve and Dust"

I think the only thing that should limit who and how many people are involved in putting down strikes on the planet is decided by the fleet battles above the battlefield.
If one group has superiority above then it should help them a bit on the battlefield. Of course allowing for cooldown timers and stuff so that the strikes can not just go nuts.

It will make for interesting fleet battles over the battles on the planet. It will make for interesting fleet battles when you have a reason to hold your ground and nopt warp off or bounce around. It will make for interesting fights around planets instead of around gates.

Bump

This may already have been covered, but the original Future Vision trailer had a planned airstrike to support the infantry, before it was aborted and the bombardment commenced instead.

Where is our airstrike option?

Assigning Drones and Fighters to the surface of a planet to assist ground forces sounds cool, but I'm not sure about the size implications.

I was under the impression that Fighters are Cruiser-sized. Rifters are the size of jumbo jets, so fighters must be massive...

e: Vid I found for perspective http://universityeveonline.com/439/truly-full-size-eve-online-ships/

Fighters are about the size of fighter aircraft and frigates are about the size of a large transport plane/commercial airliner. You can easily see this from the in game fighter models, especially the Gallente/Amarr ones were you can see the pilot.

I think it would be interesting if there were ground-to-space cannons for DUST players to us in matches if they're being fired upon by a ship they don't necessarily want watching over the fight. And since EVE players won't be able to see the DUST players' screens, perhaps a small screen could pop up on the EVE Client showing the destruction the Orbital strike has caused.

That orbital strike in that video is way too small.

It should be much larger effect.