EVE General Discussion

As is/was being discussed by the panel on the Alliance Tournament, the game mechanics need to encourage formations for added awesomeness in tactical and strategic gameplay. There one answer I can think of to solve the issue. Its probably a monster as far as programming, but it seems pretty simple as far as reality and logic.

And that answer is line of sight, and weapons fire actually hitting the first thing it encounters.

This will force offensive groups to form up and not blob so they don't shoot their own guys. They'll make walls with heavy tankers, and pop out form them with the heavy DPS guy. They'll leave the logistic out back to be shielded by all the others.

Then fast ships are going to want to zoom through and/or around the main line in a flanking maneuver to eliminate the logistic support. That simple mechanic will offensively and defensively encourage formation play, as well as breaking your massive group into smaller units to take advantage of the enemy's weak points. Flanking would be Massive effective as you get around your enemy's front wall of heavy tankers. This will allow frigates and other small or maneuverable ships to dodge in and out of cover like asteroids and other bigger ships.

If you add in splash effects on all weapons which can destroy other incoming rounds, it will reduce the efficacy of 500 ships alpha shooting a single target, which will add efficacy to the tanker wall ships, and further reduce the efficacy of blobs.

You could also add a script, or some other function, to offensive weapons systems forcing it to hold fire if the line of sight isn't good, or if it will hit friendly targets.

It just doesn't make sense to me when you see a dread being shot up from long range, while he is surrounded by so many drones that you can't even see him. The drones should be getting vaporized as all that fire is coming in. There is an additional tactic that you don't want to drone and gun the same target because you'll inevitably be killing your own drones.

Please please please add in some kind of line of sight function. Shooting from the back of a blob, through the blob, through the enemy blob, to hit a ship on the back of the enemy blob just isn't ok!



tl;dr = Line of sight weapons fire would make EVE way more uber than it already is!

Unfortunately, unless it was a very small fight on a grid with nothing else, the lag generated would be painful.


Think TiDi was bad during the Jita attack. Imagine that from a few people running level 4s.



Just think, every time each gun would fire, the server would have to run a LOS check for every single item on grid.

how about you fc sometime then come back to your post.

A plain LoS shooting would be a grand step to more awesome internet spaceships.




That said, I doubt we will be able to see this before 2017 just because of technical issues. (And if CCP finds a way to implement this without server melting, they should do it asap)

P.S: Of course you would have to tweak a lot of other values after such a fundamental change but it would be worth it

tl;dr = Line of sight weapons fire/ friendly fire would make EVE way more Uber!