Player Features and Ideas Discussion

running around in formations in eve right now is no different then in real life. you do it yourself and requires practice.

There are plenty of fleet formations which happen.

Long line of sniping fleets spreading out
Ball of death ie:ahacs
firewalls, long range DPS, and logistics surrounded by a cloud of interceptors

these are all formations.
And they are all formations that people WANT to fly in because it gives them a tactical advantage over someone else
How does flying in a diamond-check pattern increase your dps or some other untold attribute?

This has been brought up before. If you wish to do it 'for the lulz' you should get better at manual flying, and do it.
If you want freebee bonuses, and someone to fly your ship for you...


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Moores law tbh has not been applicable to production level for quite sometime. Prototypes that meet the law usually make great secondary appliances like.....hot plates and convection ovens lol.


CPU manufaturers cheat to go bigger and better. And moores law only applies to theoretical realms, business realm a different beast enitrely. If you study networking you will learn about the 7 layers of the OSI model. This is a lie....there are 8 layers. 8th layer is politcal.

Which encompaases getting the proposal signed off to buy new gear. really hard to do when then gear you bought 1-2 years ago has not met ROI...and won't for another 2-3 years. Even harder when your bleeding edge has bean counters zeroing on that big fat number in a sea of other numbers...bleeding edge never has a cheap price tag.


And the formation flying....should and hopefully always will be a manual process. Lots of eve pvp already breaks down basic things. Turn tank on, target ship, press f1. If a fleets works at it to get all 100 people acros all racial ships hand flown to thier optimals for max effect they are rewarded usually. If a fleet has 100 mavericks going wtf is fc on about and go OFP (own f'ing program).....they are well on their way to a loss. The way it should be. Game dumbs down enough stuff as is, lets have pvp require some kind of skill to work well.

Tesselation + LoF mechanics.
At the point you start having to hold shots (presumably automatic) because a friendly is briefly in the way, you are loosing DPS.
Tesselation allows you to accuratly determine if they are in the way.
At this point, formations are used to ensure every ship has a clear firing zone for them to use. The exact scope of the firing zone determined by the formation. A sniping fleet can stack several ships wide with very narrow arcs of fire, since their targets are a long way away. A brawling fleet will want wider arcs of fire, so might do a stepped wall, intending to always stay 'underneath' the enemy formation.
Once this occurs, you can do meaningful manouvering of formations, attempting to use their basic formation pattern against them.


A quick look at how this might work.

1. Individual pilots in a fleet get another 'Autopilot' function. Label it 'Navigation Slaving' or something like that.


• Minimal effort on the part of an individual pilot, but they are putting their trust in their commander at this point, to not screw the formation up. The Pilot can unselect Navigation Slaving at any time and take control of his own ship. With whatever consequences the other players in his fleet decide from there. Keeping with CCP's Actions have Consequences.


2. Squad commanders get a basic pattern tool. This allows them to select things like a line, a square, a V, or an L. And to select if it is horizontal, vertical, or on an angle. And a basic spacing of the ships tool. The individual pilots in their squad then fill into the slots in the formation in the selected order if they have navigation slaved. (Random if Squad commander doesn't care, or allocated front/middle/rear positions)


• Not a huge amount of work, he only has 10 pilots to place in a very simple formation. The Formation then moves according to his navigation. This is just extending the current 'Squad/Wing/Fleet Align/Warp functions a little further basically.


3. Wing commanders then get a similar tool, but instead of placing pilots, they are now organising the squads under their command. And much like the Individual Pilot, at any time, a Squad Commander could turn off 'Navigation Slaving' and take his entire squad out of the formation.


• Again this isn't a huge amount of work for the wing commander, since they only have a few squads, and they don't have to worry about individual pilots. A quick example might be taking three squads, of heavy armour ships in one, then missile ships behind them for long range, then logistics right at the back. A basic formation which if you hold the superior position keeps them from clean shots at your vulnerable vessels, yet if they get the drop on you from the wrong side, your logistics are exposed. Allows for strategy ahead of time.


4. This then goes right up to the Fleet Commander, who can now position entire wings. Again it works the same way, placing a small number of pieces, but it is more complicated as you have to be aware of exactly how each layer underneath you has organised their squads & wings formations, and make sure you aren't cancelling anything out.

Additionally with this kind of effect going on, missiles gain some headway back onto the PvP field (in contrast to what some on the forums have been saying that missiles are dead in PvP), since a missile can go around a ship in the way, though it will cut into flight time a little obviously, so missile ships will suffer less from an obstructed firing line.

Of course, as I said right in the first line, Eve as it's engine is now simply doesn't have the tech to do this in a meaningful way, since the same 'hit boxes' that are currently used to bump ships, would be the ones being used to determine if a ship is blocking another ship. And given how massive they are, a cruiser could block most of a Titans firing angle, which would just be silly. So really the future of formations entering into the game in a meaningful way really depends on Tesselation, or some similar engine tech entering the game that allows for much more accurate collision modeling, and vector projections.

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Footnote to those saying 'But every pilot should have to pilot it manually or there is no skill involved'. An Autopilot to keep in a simple formation isn't removing skill, it's removing a tedious interface issue, since eve's flight control system is not particularly controllable. It's very hard to pick a precise vector with a random double click in space, and if two ships 'align' to an object and then move there, they eventually converge, they aren't actually flying side by side, but both aiming for exactly the same co-ordinates.
This sort of system would really make FC'ing a massivly important role, since you have taken over flying the direction for other ships in your formation. A good FC will get an awesome & well deserved reputation, and people will stick under their command even when things start to go badly.
A bad FC on the other hand, when the fleet starts to take losses would have pilots taking back their own manual control and going every which way they think is best for their own survival.
Isn't that EXACTLY the sort of scenario that you would love to have happen in Eve?

A problem such as Fleet booster ships and the leadership skill set as a whole and how it applies or is applied to fleets?
How ships land after jumping from one location to the next?

sadly eve doesn't involve as much flying as it could. Its mostly about warping, camping, approaching, orbiting and running.

sure, there are a lot of cool ideas out there like combining formations with fleet boosts.. V would reduce signature, wall improve defense. A blob could give senor strength penalties etc. Warpin formations which put the interceptors in front of the fleet, logistics behind etc

but since you don't fly that much in eve (not counting the basics mentioned above) i am not sure if its worth the effort. (unless FIS mechanics change).

Well, if you look at micro jump drives it'd seem there is some degree of willingness to change up some of the antics on grid of what & how people fly their ships.

Combine this with the challenge of what to do about ongrid-offgrid fleet boosting and the notion of looking to formations comes to mind. Not with the intent that they'd give automagical boosts, as much as actual player flight skill / tactics being rewarded alongside the leadership skillset.

There's next to no evidence tied to this character to support any claims I have been.

Further, i'm looking at the leadership skill set and fleet boosting in conjunction with positioning ongrid.

Currently fleet boosting requires a ship in system to directly improve the performance of its fleet members.

In those terms, i'm pointing out that some effort to even receive any boosts would be entertaining as contrasted by current magic boosts which exist in system, whether you take particular advantage of them via positioning, or not.

This where i'm looking with mention of fleet formations.



This too, is great and quite sensible. My only following question would be how do you feel about the leadership skillset as a whole? The existence of fleet boosting ships & their modules who grant magic abilities - that require no player skill.

Do you think leadership boosting skills should exist at all? (re: remove the leadership skillset boosting abilities entirely / change them radically)

Or be changed to only be active when certain player skill dependent tactical fleet arrangements are taken?

I'm personally not strictly advocating either direction, merely looking at the idea of formations as well as the leadership skill-set.