EVE General Discussion

A couple years ago, myself and others tossed around this idea. The main issue we thought was with the squad system where a squad, wing, fleet leader would set a formation, other ships would do a join formation, if you joined formation, your movements would be mirrored to your lead ship similar to the approach or keep at range of a moving ship. Some bonus would be applied to the squad if you are in formation range (so a slow abaddon in a squadron of crusaders wouldnt be in formation range).

A good visual of this would be the apoc/abaddon formation seen in the empyrean age trailer when jamyl's super weapon warps in and the apocs position themselves along side. Could have defensive and offensive formations, better use of or smaller command ships, etc. A heirarchy system would mean that if a squad leader is taken out, the next squad member takes over, but would mean that the overall fleet bonuses would no longer be included.

Edit: Can you say winsauce bomber runs since cloaked ships no longer decloak other cloakers?

Well, actually i can see an advantage with formation - expecially with fleetwarp. You, as a fleet commander could choose in which formation you want to warp in.

In example if you are warping onto smartbombing ships, you want to have a loose formation when you land. Another could be a setup where you want your logistics @60km and snipers @100km and blasters @0km.

You could make the warpin setup when you form your fleet, by just ordering ppl around and then save the formation when you want: After few jumps, scouts have spotted something and you want to use that formation on fleetwarp - the formation is formed by the fleetcommander.