Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Always, new plays would find some weird rules that veterans have adapted to, and this is what bring the topic up.

When I talked to a newbie about fleet fight:
“When you get to the field, you will anchor up on the FC....“,
“What do you mean by 'anchor up'?“
“Just orbit at 5000m“
“Why don't you turn your head to the enemy to reduce the target size?“
What? Target size? No, there is no target size in EVE, only signature radius.

Ships in EVE are recognized as “balls“ with (signature) radius, which make the game easier, and less server loads.
However, the fleet fights now have too few interaction to base fleet members, and what worse is this brings up the funny “anchor up“ tactic, which makes the fleet looks like “a lot of little moths floating around in a tub“. It's a rather ugly and strange scene that no reasonable Sci-Fi would describe for a fleet fight.

This figure below shows what caused this problem:
Signature radius
Yes, that's the signature radius. More exactly, the problem is using signature radius as the only reference of target size, and treat every ship as a “ball“.

Regardless how would people interpret the “signature radius“, it is quite unreasonable to say “A static ship has an equal chance to get hit from either front or side“ (unless the chance is 100% of course):
The actual area
As the figure above, the real area of hit.

I would not say “every spaceship in EVE should have its own area of hit“. It could be costly and cause many problems,one regards to ship balance. But it should be very beneficial to make players feel that they are flying spaceships (or “space-cuboids“ at least) than “space-balls“.

A plan that bring ship position into the play while cause least server load.

Assuming every spaceship in EVE has its direction vector(or whatever) that indicates the ship's 3D direction and alignment. This would be one factor that judges the target ship's position.
Also, assuming every spaceship in EVE has a 3D-coordinate of its location, then we can find the trajectory vector by using: “Trajectory vector“=“Target's coordinate“-“Shooter's coordinate“.
When we get two vectors, we can figure out the angle between the alignment of the target ship and the direction of the shooter. The figure below shows how it will work:
Calculate the angle

Once the angle is found, we can then decide how to modify the chance of hit:
Chance of hit modifier

Above is an example. When the angle is between +15 and +345 (or between +165 and +195 on the other side), a 50% chance of hit modifier will be applied. When the angle is between +45 and +135 , the ship is being shoot from the side then we will use the 100% chance of hit modifier.
It is possible to use an equation to generate more flexible modifiers, but in this case I just use 50%, 75% and 100% to make it easier to understand.

Where to apply the modifier
To make things easy we can just stick it in the current chanceToHit function, this is the original CTH:
Original equation
Add the modifier
After modifier
So simple:) This is just an example as CCP would have a better idea than me about the place to apply the modifier.

Bonus: Shoot the engine
Yes as you may have noticed, it will also make the engine hit feature become possible. The shield in EVE is not the egg-shell like stuff in many Sci-Fi. In EVE the shield works like a membrane right above the armor, so it is reasonable for the engine part of the spaceship to have weaker resistance. I didn't mention armor tank because you know how difficult it is to mount much armor on the engine jet :P
Engine hit
As the figure above, when the angle calculated locates between +165 to +195, the turrets will cause 10%(for example) extra damage.

Pros and Cons

More interactions and involvements
By introducing the position/damage modifier, the fleet fights will then require more attention from every individual.
One thing currently disappointing people in EVE is that you have few things to do in large fleet fights as an ordinary fleet member, such as a DPS. Anchor up-> Look broadcast → Lock → F1, and there is no reason/benefit for you to do anything more interactive.
But if we introduce this feature that position/alignment of the spaceship can affect the damage received, many people will pay more attention to the spread of the fleets and adjust the alignment. More interactions will be brought, and people will find that they can do something useful besides just shooting.

More server loads
This feature would add more loads to the server and may make the large fleet fights lager. However personally (as one who is not a technician) I believe it would not be more complicated than the transversal and capacitor calculations that currently working on the server.

I just want to point out that it would be really silly to have ships moving towards the enemy fleet, going to a certain threshold, and then turning back, to minimize profile. It would just make it more tedious. If you want realism, then make it so that a full complement of weaponry can't fire in every direction; in that case you would have some naval tactics to read up on.

if the profile of a ship gets factored into its chance to hit then many ship designs will become obsolete just for their model. look at the Domi compared to the apoc, or a cane compared to a harby.

ur diagram also assumes all ships are oblong shaped with a bow roughly half the area of its port or starboard. u've somehow failed to notice that this is very untrue for many ships. just a handful ontop of the ones mentioned above are the scorpion, moa, raven, incursus, tristan, prophecy, catalyst etc etc and all their faction and T2 variants

it opens a whole world of balancing issues beyond the cons u've already stated and CCP will be tweaking ship models for years trying to balance them against all the other stats.

terrible idea is terrible

any ship that doesnt use the rule would be obsolete, as those that do use the rule will be exploited. this creates an imbalance.

Your in goonswarm, how can you possibly come up with this and call it a good idea?

i swear, usually the goons i see are at least able to criticaly think long enough to know when an idea is so inconceivably broken that it would make only a handful of ships viable.

I don't understand your logic, if you are running away you are not kiting, you are just running away. And running away actually made you less likely to get hit but more damage if you do get hit, due to the engine hits.

For kiting, ccp can still keep the transversal be the dominator part of CTH equation, it's the problem about where to place the modifier.


Game balance is a bigger issue but one bigger issue does not mean others are not issues anymore :)

And I worry you didn't read it :)

Turning back to the opponent can decrease the chance you get hit, and if the deduction is about 50%, and the extra damage receive from engine shots is only 10%, then you actually get the overall damage reduced. Of course it is not the case in large fleet, as 10% damage from many people are not 10% anymore, but you saying kiting, then it is.

Moreover, kiting ships have rather small signature radius that have rather lower chance the receive engine hit, when the modifier is being applied.

So the actual problem is the kiting ships are getting more difficult to hit when they are approaching and escaping.

As said in the op, it will not consider the different ship models. All ships will use the same rule to calculate the modifier.

For catalyst, if you look down from the top ,you will see it still get larger side profile..

This idea sounds good and should be able to stand by its own.

However, this may require the server to calculate five 3d locations of the mod spheres.
That's why I try to simplify my idea that consider every ship as a column, and convert all 3d calculations into a single 2d angle calculation.