Assembly Hall

Ships require fuel to warp, industrial and T1 frigs require very little fuel, battleships require lots of fuel.




A. The goal is to:

• encourage solo and small numbers, equivalently, discourage blobs
• encourage use of small and T1 ships, equivalently, discourage large and T2 ships

The main idea for achieving this is limiting ship travel distance, for combat
ships. A single solar system can support the daily activities of a limited number of
pilots (exception: mission running hubs), so people tend to spread out, however the easy
travel allows the blob to form quickly and go anywhere. I expect making travel hard (for
combat ships) to act as a force, which tends to keep the people spread out - for any given
group, it would be easier to attack them with small numbers and it would be easier for
them to attack with small numbers - because the blob would be slow and costly to form and
move.

The concrete mechanism to achieving these goals is introducing ship fuel.

In order to be able to warp:

• a ship needs a certain amount of fuel per AU, stored in a fuel bay, in addition to the capacitor;
• In the absence of fuel, a ship can still warp, but at a greatly reduced warp speed, something in the ballpark
of twenty times slower, so nobody is left stuck in space;

Shuttles and rookie ships do not require fuel. The fuel bay is separate from the cargo hold.

Game balance is affected by modifying two variables.

• one variable is the volume of the fuel bay, which determines the maximum distance a
ship can travel without refueling. The guiding principle behind fuel bay volume is
that harmless ships travel long distances, dangerous ships travel short distances.


• second variable is the fuel consumption per AU, for each ship class and for each ship
within a class, again, harmless ships are cheap to deploy, dangerous ships are costly
to deploy.

(without picking too much on what is harmless and what is dangerous)

Taking into account the fuel consumption and fuel bay volume, here are some tentative
distances for different classes of ships, with base distance traveled without refueling
being 1000AU:

1. T1/T2 industrial ships, (jump) freighters, mining barges, Orca, Rorqual - 100%, 1000 AU
2. Covops (not bombers), T1 non-faction frigs and destroyers - 70%, 700 AU
3. T1 non-faction cruisers and battlecruisers - 50%, 500 AU
4. T2 frigs, faction frigs, T2 destroyers - 33%, 330AU
5. Force recons and bombers - 25%, 250 AU
6. Combat recons, HACs, Fleet command ships, faction cruisers, heavy interdictors, logistics,
strategic cruisers - 15%, 150 AU

7. Field command ships, Battleships - 10%, 100 AU

Numbers are tentative and while the concrete values may decrease, the proportion should
stay very similar. The goal is for T1 frigs to be able to travel across a region and back,
while battleships to be limited to 4-5 average systems without refueling (may need
tweaking some systems' radii), harmless ships travel much, dangerous ships travel little.

B. Nature of the fuel

It would be preferable to have an wholly different kind of fuel,
rather then reusing ice products, because increasing their demand will
affect negatively other venues. Comedy option - NPC good, sold only
for AUR. Seriously, probably a new planet commodity would be a good
idea.

C. Fuel tanker class ship

A new class of ships is created under Advanced Industrial Ships - "Tankers". Their role
is to accompany fleets and refuel combat ships. They have a large fuel bay and it is
possible for other ships to refuel from tankers in space. It is not possible to refuel
ships by any means other than from tanker fuel bays and personal or corporate station
hangars, specifically it is not possible to refuel a ship from any ship cargo hold or
non-tanker fuel bay.

Two new ships are created for each races - Blockade Runner Tanker and Deep Space Tanker,
based on the existing transport ship hulls, with the cargo hold bonus changed to fuel bay
bonus.

The base fuel bay volume is subject to game balance, with the goal for a single Blockade
Runner Tanker to be able to increase the effective range of a 3-4 cruiser hulls to the
next class and a single Deep Space Tanker to be able to increase the effective range of
3-4 battleship hulls to the next class (BS class range to HAC class range, T1 cruiser
range to T1 frig range).

D. Related skills

The fuel consimption is affected by the skill Warp Drive operation, which is modified by
adding to its description:

"Each skill level reduces the fuel needed for initiating warp by 5%."

That's all for now.


PS. Naturally, there are also jump bridges and cyno jump mechanics, which also will be scaled down drastically. This will be amended in a following version of the proposal.

You can't just go take some HACs or BCs out on short notice with this proposal, like a lot of people do now. if you're lucky, you can take some rifters out and die to the first smartbombing BS you see. That's it. No cynabal gangs, no nanohac gangs, no muninn fleets, welpfleets, bomber fleets, no dics or hics, no logistics, just rifters. .

So...you actually DO want to stop roams then?

not to mention restricting deep nullsec logistics to people who own jump freighters and pretty much no-one else?

The concept of 'living in 0.0' would need to be revised, eh?

The fact that I don't want to deal with dumb logistics crap for a simple PvP roam that might take me anywhere.

Revised in such a way that it encourages people to stay in one general area

and create more logistical headaches if anyone wants to actually do something?

Yes. Encourages multiple smaller entities distributed all across EvE, every one of them fighting with their neighbors, as opposed to a few megablobs that easily wage war at the other end of the galaxy.

And, of course, encourages, but does not confine them.

No. Create more logistical headaches for anyone who want to blob and for anyone who has blued everyone and his sister 50 jumps in any direction.

And that's Good (tm).

I like that you see the same implications from my proposal as I do.

Because you can't shoot them.

PS. Apropos, thank you for voicing your concerns.

1. It discourages going solo. Especially over long distances.

you may be trapped between hostile gates in said expensive ship.

2. It discourages going in groups smaller than a certain critical mass.

Suppose an average deep space tanker can support 25 T1 BCs for the duration of a roam.

3. Malcanis' Law. Anything that tries to reduce the penalties on small gangs would benefit larger gangs much more, thus defeating the purpose of introducing "warp fuel" in the first place.

Numbers are just numbers in this stage. I simply used it to make the analysis more quantitative.
(Your numbers are severely limiting as others have stated before, but that's not important either.)

Still, small gangs of less than 10 have to pay an arm to bring a tanker because each member counts,
while larger groups can keep their combat effectiveness by delegating fuel hauling duties to
non-combatants / less experienced pilots.

Can you explain how this trend encourages small gang activities?

Would you care to elaborate? Because in this form it's a crappy opinion.

What is "insane distance" and what ships do you use to travel?