Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I have to say that this change seems very unrealistic to me. I dont see why a target lock would rely on line of sight.

I would much rather see a line of sight mechanic introduced that would cause you to simply miss your target if the shot needed to pass through any object that isn't the intended target. I think it would be fun to literally hide in an asteroid field

I think I misunderstood what you were talking about. You're referring to multiple ships shooting ONE structure? What's "painful" about that logistically?

If there are multiple structures in one area, like for example, gate guns and a stargate, then it would be bad for them to block one another. That's the sort of thing I was referring to - associated structures like that could be treated as one (so that the gate wont block the sentry guns, for example), or structures could just be made to not be able to block targeting (of other structures or ships).

But a bunch of dreads shooting at one station? Boo hoo... line them up horizontally, or orbit for a little bit until they're out of each others' way before locking them in siege mode. That would be trivial effort. (even orbiting at a ridiculous 5km all in the exact same circle, you could fit 5 or 6 dreads. Come on)



Because of how sensors work. RADAR, for example, works by sending out a beam of light (radio or microwaves), which then bounces off of stuff and is picked up again, usually by a receiver built into the same dish as the transmitter.

If something is in between you and a target, RADAR will not see it, because the light will bounce off of the thing in front first, and none will be left over to hit the thing in the back. Thus, nothing will reflect off of the thing in back and the sensors wont see it. Simple as that.

If you've ever seen a radar screen on a movie or something, you see that little green line sweeping around. That is essentially where the line of sight is. The dish physically rotates around and projects its beam (or plane) of light, and sees anything it bounces off of along that line of sight. Anything physically blocking it makes this not work. If you're in an airplane on the other side of a mountain, you would not get picked up.

More powerful RADAR of the future could potentially send out light in all directions at once and still have strong signal detection, not just with a sweeping beam, but it would STILL be dependent upon line of sight anyway.

The problem I see is that targeting isn't reliant on line of sight. However if you wanted to use a mechanic like this it would be something like.

targeting speed = (Targeting ship base sig radius)*(10 for frigates, 5 for cruisers, 2.5 for BS, 1.5 for caps)
If targeting speed overlaps with another ships sig radius
targeting ship gets -X% to scan resolution (with stacking penalty starting at 3 overlapping ships)

X could be negotiated so that if the ship next to it is a BS the number would be higher then a frigate or cruiser. Other numbers can also be negotiated to achieve balance between ship types.

The idea is that ships throw off interference so the larger a fleet you have in a blob the longer it takes to lock targets as you have to get through the noise of the rest of the fleets electronics. This means a fleet traveling in a large blob would be giving their victims a few free volleys before the fleet could return fire. This wouldn't make blobs disappear all together but it would force some smart work arounds depending on the situation. It also incidentally buffs bombers which is the biggest problem I see with it.

However this works in a similar manner to sensor damps in that it increases lock time.
That and I honestly have never had to deal with blob warfare so it could entirely be the case that I have no idea what I am talking about.

I know it isn't. The suggestion of this thread is essentially to MAKE it reliant on LOS, just like those actual sensors would be in reality. And with positive gameplay results at the same time.


Why would you want to make frigates and cruisers interfere disproportionately to their size? Almost every complaint about this idea has centered around "zomg, but the frigates and fighters and drones, etc. would just constantly break targeting!"

They would not, in fact, do that with their base signature radius. But if you multiplied them by 10, they might. How does that improve the idea?


Making it affect your scan resolution is not a bad idea. it would be a nerfier version that works as a compromise between the current state of affairs and completely losing the lock.

Still no. Even with 10 drones/fighters orbiting something at 2km, it would only break an average person's lock AT BEST once every few minutes. And then they just reacquire their lock again in a few seconds (since the fighter just zipped by). So all you would do is prevent maybe like... 5% of the incoming or outgoing damage from the orbited object.

So for every 10 drones/fighters, you can either dampen the DPS of a single enemy ship (won't affect the others, unless theyre directly behind it) by 5%, or you can orbit yourself, and get 5% bonus to resistances from everyone, but lose out on all the DPS those drones/fighters could be doling out offensively.

Neither of those is anywhere close to a game changer. Especially since 5% is the absolute best case scenario. that's assuming that every one of those orbiters is moving in an ideally spaced-out fashion and that none of them share very similar orbitals (if they do, they are redundant and less effective). And that's only in the beginning of the fight. As they get killed off, the bonus lessens. AND that assumes it takes an enemy on average 6 whole seconds to target you, which is almost certainly not the case if you're in a carrier or super. If it takes 3 seconds, then cut all of those bonuses by half.

So realistically, we're looking probably at more like per 10 small orbiters: a -2 or 3% effect to enemy DPS, or a +2 or 3% to your own resistances (minus significant offensive power), either of which tapers off to 0% as your drones or fighters run out.


For a POS, nerf all those numbers DRAMATICALLY, since you have to orbit them in much wider orbits than a ship, thus making the things pass near your LOS that much less often. If you have a 20km or whatever shield radius, then each drone is now 10 times less effective at blocking targeting than in my above calculations. So now, per 10 small orbiters, you'd be looking at 0.2-0.3% effects on incoming DPS... With diminishing returns for additional orbiters, since they become more and more likely to overlap the same orbits.

...?

What are you on about? Go read about it yourself, I'm not making this stuff up: Why active sensors require line of sight. It doesn't matter if you happen to believe that it makes sense or not. Its the truth.

If you still don't believe these facts, feel free to call up your local police station's non emergency number, and ask them if their officer's radar guns function with a building in between them and the car they are trying to clock the speed of. the answer will be no.

And the amarr ships clearly state that they use RADAR sensors. LADAR would suffer even more acutely from a need for line of sight (since lasers are more directed). And magnetometric and gravitometric.... who knows? There is no such thing as active sensors of those types. Presumably they would work similarly to the two that exist, since all the empires have about equally effective sensors.


No, that wouldn't work, because as long as the object is in between you and your intended target, a lock would be impossible. So it needs to stay off until the LOS is available again, not just relock, even if the barrier is still there. If a bus pulls up in front of the officer trying to measure a car's speed, it will not only ruin his measurement of the car, but it will CONTINUE to do so until the bus pulls away or the officer moves around it.

However, for the sake of convenience, it would be nice if the game remembered what ship you were trying to lock, and automatically attempted to re-acquire it, as soon as the obstruction was gone or you moved around it (at least having that as an optional toggle preference would be good). that's not a bad addition.


Ah but this is not true. If side A is flying in a big disorganized blob, and side B is flying in an organized way that makes their ships not get in each others' way, then side B in fact has a massive advantage.

Please refer to the following, highly stylized image for a quick example:
blob versus formation
Notice that the red (right) side is in a rough formation (doesn't have to be perfect, just something good enough to not be in each others' way reliably), and they are able to focus all of their weapons on a single ship in the front of the blob.

The blue side, however, is only able to focus a minority of their weapons on a single ship. All the ones in the back are blocked from targeting the same target. And in addition, even some of the ones that can get a lock now are just doing so BARELY (the ones squeezing in from the back) and may lose that lock at any moment.

The formation side will pop their ship much much more quickly, and move on to another one in the front of the blob, giving them an advantage. A one sided advantage, which very much does accomplish something.

And even if neither side did end up being organized, it would STILL accomplish something: it would stop 100 ships from being able to target just one at a time, on either side. Which would mean ships wouldn't just insta-pop anymore, and there would be much mroe meaningfulness to fittings and small scale strategy, because the whole fight would be forced to take on smaller, localized scale where ships of the line can actually last long enough to make use of other modules.

1) Just because the one example I posted happened to be a sniper-appropriate example doesn't mean that that's the ONLY possible formation that makes any sense... There could be equally effective formations for close range fighting (perhaps a few heavily tanked itty Vs with MWD and warp stabs to increase the sig radius go in first, with 5 people painting the one in front = 6km sig radius. Use them as targeting shields until your brawlers can get in up close and neutralize the benefit of the sniper formation? Or you may even be able to use more than one such ship and "flicker" them back and forth with painters to jam targeting and let them survive longer or something. Who knows?)

2) Both long range and short range tactics get their own, separate types of buffs from this change. Long range ships, IF they can maintain formations and range, would get the benefit of concentrated fire against an unorganized mob. Short range ships, on the other hand, IF they could get close enough to get amongst the formations, would nullify the usefulness of those formations, and force small group vs. small group skirmishes. At which point short range ships would have a huge advantage since short range weapons always have much higher DPS.

So I see no particularly good reason to believe that what you said would be true. Either type of ranged ship would basically be able to kick ass if they could successfully dictate the range of the fight. Which is as it should be.



Also, regarding mixed fleets:
These would work perfectly well. Basically, you would have lines of snipers on the flanks and then gangs of brawlers flying around in the midst of the enemy (either the midst of their blob or the midst of their sniper ranks) engaging in small group fights. these two forces would not get in each others' way. Why? because the snipers would not attempt to shoot at stuff in the MIDDLE of the blob. They would shoot at stuff on the OUTSIDE SKIN of the blob. Look at the image I posted: the guys in formation are shooting a ship on the outside edge, so that others in the blob wont shield it. the same would be true in a mixed fight. Snipers would snipe off ships that stray toward the edges, away from the target breaking protection of the swarm. While the brawlers would target ships

How, might you ask, would snipers maintain a line? or move to a new position quickly while still being in a line? there are many ways. One way might be to designate a squad leader, with 10 guys assigned to him. Leader flies a covops ship or something, and constantly seeks out empty areas of the grid where snipers would be in good position off to the side. When he gets there, he begins flying in a straight line and gives the GO signal. Each of the ten guys then waits for his own personal amount of time (one might always wait 1 second, another 3, another 5), and warps to zero on top of the squad leader and then kills their engines = instant line at the new position.

logistics ships could work perfectly well, too. Logi ships for the snipers could jump to a bounce point somewhere off behind where the new sniper line is forming (you only need 2 or 3 for the logi ships to use the entire battle), and then once the snipers are in place, warp to 10km from there to one of the snipers, thus ending up behind them automatically, with unobstructed logi lines of sight (and not getting in the way of the snipers + protection from enemy targeting). Logi ships for the brawlers could also work, as long as they stayed close to their specific squad/gang.

So now we have to be programmers to play Eve competently? That'll do wonders for this game's shrinking population. Seriously, you are getting carried away. Introducing skills, modules or just different sliders on the overview that allow us to better manage our ship's flying would be better than programmable scripts. Keep the meta-game to a minimum.

If you can't send a piece of lead at a target, then it would also be physically impossible for any active sensors to detect the ship.

Passive sensors? Maybe. Sunlight bounces off of them, their exhaust emits radiation, they put out "Gravity waves" or whatever, etc.

But it is pretty clear from the info pages and modules available, etc. that ships in Eve use active sensors, like RADAR: send out something and watch for it to bounce back. And if a chunk of lead can't hit something in a straight line, then your sensor light can't hit it in a straight line, either.




Gameplay-wise, though, it wouldn't make much of a difference doing it either way *shrug*

That was one hell of a thread necro.