Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I searched forums and read commonly proposed ideas, I didn't see anything like this mentioned...

I had this idea for combat, that you could switch to a "free-fire mode" and then use the mouse to aim and fire at targets... The cursor could change to a crosshair with a cooldown bar going around it, and you could fire at ships using the left mouse button, while still being able to pan the camera with left mouse button... then maybe middle mouse button could be used to lock onto targets.

I think something like this would make combat much more engaging. Plus you could always go back to normal mode.

or worse... Aimbots...

It could be made to work.

Despite the naysaying in this thread about math:


... Trigonometry says otherwise. A frigate with a 35m signature radius at a distance of 2km would have a 1 degree margin of error to hit in either direction.

If we assume a 1080 pixel wide monitor and about a 100 degrees of visual angle in EVE (how wide is your view?), then you would have an approximately 20 pixel diameter target to hit, or the width of about 3 letters in the font you are reading right now. not terribly difficult, actually. Especially if you ambush target them instead of trying to track them (line up with where they pass every couple seconds and wait for them to arrive) Certainly not EASY, but it shouldn't be. After all, your auto targeting would have a very difficult time hitting something that ridiculous fast as well.

A battleship with a 350m signature radius at 200km would present a 2 pixel size target. Which sounds extremely small, until you consider that at 200km, his apparent motion is going to be virtually nothing, so you can sit there and fiddle with your mouse and easily hit that 2 pixel target, since it will appear to be staying still. This would actually be much easier to hit than the interceptor. Assuming your guns are accurate enough (short range guns would have random wobble added to them to approximate the same penalties of optimal range and falloff that the auto targeting system has)

The issue of tracking is also easy. Every server tick, the game looks at where your screen is pointed, and begins moving the turrets to align with that vector for the next second. When you hit "fire" they simply fire wherever they happen to be pointed at the moment. If they haven't caught up with your view vector yet, then you will miss, even if your cursor is right on the target.

There could be a pair of target icons on the screen in free-fire mode. One being your view reticule, and the other being the average current vector of your weapons modules. So that you have a visual indication of whether they have caught up to you or not. (that would be calculated clientside and not contribute to lag)

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So yes, it is very technically possible, and wouldn't even be all that difficult to hit stuff. I'm not really sure if it would add to the game or not, though. Kinda torn on the issue. It would certainly be super fun, and would allow new strategies like being able to ambush fast flying things with heavy, slow guns (if you maintained the same orbit in your frigate, a real battleship in real life would obviously stop attempting to track you, and would instead line up with a point on your orbit, wait for you to pass it, and blow you out of the sky. This would allow that sort of choice).

However, it could obviously have balancing issues. Not necessarily very severe balancing issues (you still couldn't hit something at 200km with an autocannon, for example, because the game would add random small deviations to the aim, like in an FPS)

Far easier to code yes =P

But as for the player's point of view, and strategy wise? I already explained one major situation where it might be advantageous to switch to free-fire mode. Here it is again:

Imagine you are in a battleship, and only have large turrets. You are being speed tanked by a fast frigate flying at 5km/s orbiting at 2km, tackling you or shooting you or whatever. If you rely on your precious auto-targeting system, your turrets will try to track the ship constantly and will never be able to, and they will ALWAYS MISS.

If you switch to free fire mode, then you can ambush the frigate. Assuming it maintains the same orbit every time it passes (which it will unless the person is manually clicking space and then orbiting again, blah blah), then you can line up your slow-ass guns so that they are pointing at a location along the orbit path that you spotted the frigate at previously. Then wait for them to track there. Then wait for the frigate to make its next pass, and blammo!

Granted, you will probably still miss, since your guns can only fire in one second intervals. But with practice you could pretty easily estimate how far off the timing was and realign and hit the guy on the very next pass (about 5.5 seconds later, and he won't know anything is wrong because you just missed again). And since it's probably an instant alpha kill, you only have to hit that once.

So in fact in that situation, it would be precisely the opposite of what you said. The auto-system will lose every single time. It CANT "do it for you." Whereas the free fire system will reliably hit in the first or second shot after a few seconds of observation, if you know what you're doing and have practiced.



Another situation where this would be strategic would be if a cluster of ships have arranged in such a way that from your perspective, they are all rather near each other (almost collinear to you). If so, then you could hit a bunch of targets one after another without having to wait for targeting (or without having to have quite as accurate of guns for the distance, since stray shots might hit one of the other guys).

Theres still the issue that the server only ticks once per second, meaning you will still never hit, also, how do you factor in ammo types? and beyond everything, this would trick newbies into thinking this is a FPS of some kind when it isnt.

Eve is a game of strategy, not twitchy shooty, it's all about predicting what you will face, adn fitting accordingly, think youll be up close and personal? fit tracking enhancers, think theyll be too close for those to work? dont bring a battleship to a cruiser/frig fight.

Honestly, if by some horrible lapse in judgement from CCP they decide to implement something like this, all that will happen is that everyone will switch to battleships with aimbots, because now everyone can do battleship DPS but have the tracking of a frigate theoretically. And if properly balanced to rpevent this, then it will be UNIVERSALLY disadvantageous to use as compared to just FITTING A SHIP FOR HIGH TRACKING.

"Did you just say what I was trying to say... but smarter?"

Yeah, why couldn't you hit a moving target by timing your aim and shot? And yes, I suggested it as a mode you could switch to, not something that would be permanently something you would be forced to use all the time.

I've suggested this several times. Usually the thread ends up locked and archived, but this time, someone finally expanded on it. Thanks. :)

You could just unload your ammo and eject it.

There is another issue that no one seems to have pointed out...

There are no turrets or launchers. They are simply graphical representations of a hard-coded mathematical formula that requires a "yes/no" answer (see: activation) before compiling in all the variables and making "yes/no" probabilities (see: hit, no hit) and damage amounts.

Also... there is no "line of sight" fire in EVE... which is what this idea kind of requires.

Also...

You can already do something like this with the current mechanics.
Simply turn off your weapons... overload your prop mod and weapons... turn on your prop mod... and when the frigate/cruiser auto-adjusts he/her orbit and straightens out a bit (making transversal low), turn on your weapons.