Player Features and Ideas Discussion

http://community.eveonline.com/council/transcripts/2012/CSM_CCP_Meetings_May_June_2012.pdf

page 133

Currеntly, off-grіd boosting does need fixing, however not in the way that you are probably thinking. More-over it does not need to be removed. I will hopefully try and explain why off-grid boosting is great, how it can be countered, and why it deserves to remain in the game. My hope is that someone from CCP will read this and pass this along, because I feel quite strongly that CCP will be making an enormous mistake if they remove off-grid boosting. I will finish by noting what does need to be changed to completely fix the problem.


Why is it great?

Any gang bonuses are quite simply amazing. They essentially can act as the equivalent to faction modules, or pirate implants without the incredible cost in ISK. Instead, they cost an incredible amount of SP in leadership, an otherwise useless and largely untrained category, and in this way are they balanced. With that in mind, off-grid boosting has, in effect, revolutionized pvp across EVE. It has made it so that the gap between smaller groups of PvPers has been bridged between large scale PvPers. Off-grid boosts allow the aforementioned small gang groups to competitively act in the same manner that large scale PvPers can. It does so by allowing them access to gang links, which were previously reserved for gangs of 20-30+ people.

First we need to discuss how on-grid boosting does not work in small gang PvP. On-grid boosting does not work because as it stands, on-grid boosting commandships* are awful; they have ****-poor dps, they're not particularly fast, they don't really do much in the way of ewar, only 2 of them are actually able to tank for ****, and the only thing that they actually do right is give bonuses. The loss of dps, or any other number of critical elements to a gang with under 10 people (To say nothing of solo PvP) make it so that having an on-grid gang boosting ship, is an incredibly large sacrifice to the point where you are better off in having a dps/logi/recon ship instead. Larger gangs have always been able to afford to have command ships though, because they are able to sacrifice the dps, and chances are they already have the logistical support and force multipliers to ensure that their on-grid boosts do not die immediately. It is also worth pointing out that the difference between 30 ships on grid compared to 31 ships on grid is no more then a blip. Contrast that to the difference between 3 ships on grid to 4 and it makes all the difference in a small engagement in what the opponents bring.

At the most basic level, off-grid boosts have allowed small groups, such as Podla, Genos, Teamliquid, VoC, Burn Eden etc. etc. to engage in pvp on equal terms against blobs without the need to bring a blob of their own, as seems to be so often the case.

* On-grid boosting t3s are even worse. I will not bother discussing this in detail, but needless to say it is impossible to fit out an on-grid boosting t3 with 3 links that doesn't suck horribly. I will also not discuss boosting tech 1 battlecruisers either, because those just suck even more.

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How can it be countered?

I think one of the major problems with this question is that a really big portion of EVE players believe that off-grid boosting in unprobable t3's is unbeatable. This may have been true previous to the probing changes that were made, but as it stands now, these people can be caught by probing them down, where previously the only way to catch them was to slowly bookmarking your way to glory. The new probing mechanics changed everything, because it is now possible to probe out off-grid boosters in under 1 minute. To prove that I am not simply talking smoke, I will include killboard links to off-grid unprobable t3's destroyed by me, because I probed them down under the new probing mechanics.

https://www.pandemic-legion.com/killboard/view_kill.php?id=514039
https://www.pandemic-legion.com/killboard/view_kill.php?id=512908
https://www.pandemic-legion.com/killboard/view_kill.php?id=512472
https://www.pandemic-legion.com/killboard/view_kill.php?id=494739

The trick is to use low-grade virtues in your probing character. I won't say much more then that, but suffice it to say that the age where unprobables were able to operate with complete freedom is long over. The metagame simply has not caught up to this fact, for reasons that I cannot fathom. The only thing protecting off-grid boosters outside of being unprobable and the subsystems that they commonly use, is Tidi, which gives pilots a vastly increased response time then normal to react to an enemy ship warping/decloaking on their grid.

Its clear that offgrid links need to be changed somehow but I caution ccp against flatly removing them as it's just going to further polarize PVP in EVE. That is, that all the big blobs will still use command ships to run links whereas smaller gangs with less pilots will no longer be able to.

Anyone who has ever been in a small gang vs blob fight knows that any gaggle of helmeted tards can shut down single targets within unbonused point range, without extra speed/resists/ especially sensor strength.

rebalance small gang first. start by nerfing ecm

I completely agree with this.

In fact, i am more than insulted that the whole of CSM thinks their opinion on what benefits and what kills smallgang pvp is valid.

If you look at the lineup of CSM members
http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=28529
Then go through each's killboard stats, you will see that except for elise none of them actually do _any_ PvP, not even mentioning small scale. The highest of them, again bar elise, has 200kills in the whole 12 months.

To come back to the point: No, offgrid boosting doesnt harm small scale pvp. Having links, no matter how big your fleet is boosts your strength and the amount of enemies you can effectively engage. If you really want to argue about offgrid links you could say that the smaller your fleet is the stronger they are compared to not having links and that is wrong.
If your argument is that it harms small scale pvp because a small fleet is less likely to have proper links or gets overpowered by a fleet the same size who happens to have links, then you are extremely shortsighted. Because both of these fleets are in fact small, so it harms one fleet but boosts the one who did more effort and brought links.

You know what really harms small scale pvp? Large fleets. Yes guess what, if someone brings 50 people against your 10 people that is imbalanced.

You know what harms small scale pvp? Titanbridges, lets remove them, meta will adapt i swear.

Edit: Please note that the effect of offgrid links on smallscale pvp and the amount of risk which offgrid link ship are at are two completely seperate topics and should be discussed seperately. I wouldnt mind making linkboats probably without needing virtues, because that is in fact too rare in nullsec. I also wouldnt mind removing the ability to link from inside a forcefield.

I see you speak from experience...not.
Have you read my post? Your statement is extremely narrowminded.

In fact, your statement has no argument at all. You just dropped your worthless opinion with nothing to back it up, no reasoning, just some good old fashioned polemic. I'm an addict then i guess.

Since you did not include any argument as to why OGB harms small gang pvp and is "becoming a necessity for competitive small gang pvp" i can only guess what your problem with that is.

My guess is, that when you face a fleet equal your size and they have OGB while you don't, they will have the upperhand? Is that your argument? If that is your argument then think about this:

• You are roaming with 5 frigates and you find a gang of 4 frigates. You engage them and a falcon decloaks and jams all of you. Would you now state that falcons are becoming a necessity for compettive small gang pvp?
• You are roaming with 5 frigates and find a gang of 5 battlecruisers. You decide that you cant engage them.
Would you now state that battlecruisers are becoming a necessity for competitive small gang pvp?

• You are roaming with 5 frigates and find a gang of 5 frigates. You engage them and one opens a cyno, 50 other frigates jump in.
Would you now state that LE BLOB is becoming a necessity for competitive small gang pvp?

And what in the world is concerning about it for the long term health of the game anyway?

But nice try, ill give it a 5/10 anyway.

I also believe that they should add another destroyer, able to keep up with frigates, tank really hard for a destroyer, and run gang links with a 1% bonus to effectiveness and a role bonus to reduce the PG cost.

I would go as far as to have them mirror the large command ships with one that can run three and one that is more combat oriented that only runs one.

This way even frigate groups could get their bonus on as removing off grid boosters would most hurt gangs that run faster than command ships.

Also, I would submit that off grid boosting benefits large fleets more than small fleets, because large fleets can afford to have one or more dedicated prober(s) chasing the booster around. Small gangs cant do this for the same reasons the OP stated small gangs cant have on grid boosters.

Good points.

Also, yeah - current CSM is not even close to a competency level allowing to talk on small-scale PvP.

a CSM member: a triage carrier is fun in small-scale combat
a small-scale PvP player: lolwhat? How's having something counterable by 15+ man can be considered as small-scale?
another CSM member: that's small-scale for me. We are small-scale compared to 0.0 dudes.

Fking hillarious

OGB is essentially a buffbot, or a shaman bot for those of you who played darkage of camelot., sitting in a pos invulnerable while buffing his fleet.

All boosting should be done on grid, maybe someone will actually fly a command ship for a change, or let a BC fill its much unused role as a squad booster. only exception i see is for mining boosters in null/lowsec/wh unless they make an inexpensive t2 mining foreman ship with orca equivalent boosts (sub capital and fast.)

Why would I need to go into details? OGB is obviously wrong for the exact same reasons as off grid ECM and off grid logistics and I'm sure you have no problems understanding why these are wrong.

Are you going to ask me for proof or details showing that the sky is blue next?

I would like to point out that your example of off grid t3 that have been killed were the legion, which of all the t3s is the easiest to scan, and can be done quite quickly. Also a virtue set costs a lot, and according to you is very nitched for this. Tests done on singularity show that it can take several minutes of micro positioning probes for a 100% on top like booster t3 with every thing scan wise to max. Its also worth mentioning that a majority of these booster are alts.


The real issue is that the ships are not being used the way ccp wanted them to be used, and they are very hard and costly to counter. As someone who receives these boosts often enough I'll be sad to see them change form the way they are. But I feel that this will only benefit the game more.
The way the grid works needs to be revised before this is changed tho, because the grid it can be broken.

I am a fan of the idea that capitals can still do system wide boosts. This way carriers with links, and the orca and roqual can still do offsite boosting.

1. Guess what, small gangs dont care too hard about other people having ogb and we dont try to probe them down.
The necessary skills isk and effort to probe down an OGB are a different topic and has nothing to do with wether ogb are good or bad for small gang pvp.

2. And you base that on what experience? Your kb stats speak words here. I can honestly tell you that its very rare that someone has OGB in their own territory.
Basically none of the people who are against OGB have any actual experience in smallscale pvp or are too afraid to post with their mains (because their mains probably have no small scale pvp stats either)
And on the other side we have people who actually fly smallscale and use OGB and are agreeing that they are ok except for the fact that they shouldnt be able to link from inside a pos.