Ships & Modules

double post

I think that you shouldn't be able to activate links inside pos shields. I also think off-grid boosting is fine and is sometimes big part of especially small gang play style. Forcing links to be on-grid makes it very hard for small gang to engage bigger gangs(who will most likely have links aswell. on grid or off grid) just because of the number difference. This just promotes big gang game play because for links to be on grid you basically need eyes and full control on the ship all the time compared to using off-grid booster which you can check periodically for probing attempts.

I really don't see the big fuzz around this subject tho. Most people that pvp have boosting alt already and are at the same level. It's just something you need to take into account when looking for fights.

The worst arguement is the "People complain about linkz because they don't have them"

When in fact most of the really good players that do have them also think they are a terrible mechanic..

But honestly, what is the problem with force the booster ship to be ongrid to make the links work? I mean, sure youll have to keep an constant eye on the ship to accomplish this, but the same goes for every other ship more or less. I dont fly T3 linked ships so there might be some issues with the fittings here but you should be able to fit a couple of guns and a tank on a boosting ship aswell dont you? Or is it impossible to fly a link ship in battle?
Its all about sacrifices, if you want links on your ship youll have to sacrifice certain things, same goes for if you want a cloak, if you want a scram or a web, active or passive tank.

Yeah, having to get your 1-2 boosters setup in safes before you can engage in a fight with parity of tackle range/speed/tank is a great mechanic for promoting fun, fluid fights and roaming.

Oh, wait, it's not. Hopefully the POS issue will be fixed as a side effect of the general reworking of link mechanics.

Not going to go into any long drawn out explanation as I believe it would be wasted.

Command ships Add fun, not Reduce fun. A group backed up with Stronger resists/Small sig/Fast ships are more likely to try to fight an overwhelming enemy than those not fortified by this.

As it is made clear in your post, you dont want to interact with a gang with boosts, I can almost guarantee they want to interact with you.

Not entirely serious here...

Get a prober, faction-fit your ship, get a better ship etc.

I am generally against overblown advantages from alts, but i think it's worth bearing in mind that he is taking another 800m into the fight, beside the alt. You can't look at everything in so black and white, thinking you are fighting "just another frigate". That isn't the way of EVE and it's very naive to belive that the only way to counter a boosting alt is to have one yourself.

You can never control wether an opponent you face have spent extra on fitting, while you yourself can do that to bridge another advantage. While a Boosting alt is indeed strong and a Falcon alt used to be in it's own rightm, should we ban them someone else will just stack something else in the game in their favour with some other alt. An Arazu alt, Rapier alt or Logi alt. It's really a pandoras box that was opened when it was decided to let alts enhance gameplay so much that they do. Trying to constantly patch around it is going to get ridiculous - it's much more long term effective to just seek to limit the value of alts overall by enabling mains and crunching down on the obviously malbalanced things (as per Wildcat's reply in this thread; i strongly agree with that): a POS booster is much more of a problem than a safespot booster, not because there would be some intolerable difference between them as boosters, but because there is an intolerable difference between how POS shields cancel out other actions in the game. Like Wildcat said, there is the problem.

If someone has a Booster alt in a "fair" Frig-fight, get a Logi alt, Webbing alt or Scramming alt and even the odds. Get a prober alt, be smart and narrow it down before the fight and kill it during the fight (he'll lose a 800m booster alt, you lose your duelling Frig). That's the way of EVE, being smart, engineer options and doing the unexpected to win in another way.

Alts are in every regard of the game a massive advantage, and "fair" Frig-fights shouldn't get special attention because of some trumped up ego-bender over KB-stats. If those are your primary concern it's a much better approach to just include boosters on killmails instead of starting to meddle with balance and cause ripples of "unfairness" elsewhere.

The fact that a Capital requires alts to even travel, or Supers entirely swallow a character is by far more unfair than a Frigate getting an advantage over another in some ego duel.

I must admit that this entire prompted redesign of Gang boosters scare the living crap out of me - because everything i have seen so far, both in regards to overall design and specific ideas tied to Gang boosters (giving stronger links to CS etc.) is incredibly stupid and far more detrimental to small-gang gameplay overall than it helps to solve unfairness in duel-oriented small-gang play. Letting specific duels take precedence over general small-scale interaction would be yet another notice slapped in our faces that, that is the prescribed future of small-scale gameplay. That's target design, in complete contradiction to what a sandbox is all about, and that pisses me off to no end.

There is a looming problem in this game when game-designers share the common simplistic view of the game with the majority playerbase. If a designer have never engaged in the higher order interactions with the game (as a player, or otherwise), he will never be mindful of them when he seeks to rebalance the game. If he has never min-maxed a Tech III booster-dependent gang against a numerically superior CS-boosted gang, he can not begin to understand the interactions he is meddling with. It's easy to brush this off as me bitterly pointing fingers here, but there is a very important lesson to be learnt in my lament. Fewer and fewer players are pushing the boundries of what can be done by simply challenging the mechanics - especially in solo and small-gang play. There are so few left who "does the impossible" and challenges the mechanics in the same sense as Wildcat's old corp Burn Eden used to do. I'm not saying they are the EVE-gods who walked these green forums - but they were surely a group who focused their gameplay on challenging the mechanics of EVE. It's disheartening to see changes being done to things because stupid players belive there are no options - they've never sought the options.

When the general populace were too stupid to realize that HAC or nano BS countered BC, CCP stepped in and gave them a nano BS or HAC on steroids in the form of a BC, just to make it retardedly obvious. It's a glaring example of what i'm referring to. The players who were already adapting their ships to perform in that way, their ingenuity was rewarded by a slap on the fingers, and a new line of ships that obscured all their efforts and marginalized them in the game. That's the result of dumbing things down. Who's doing anything smart or interesting with those onedimensional ships now? No one.

When was the last time you saw someone do something unexpected and cool with the Oracle?

I fear gang boosters are headed in that direction, marginalizing anyone who either do something surprising with them, or against them. Streamlining them into a role where best use is sticking the biggest tank on them in the biggest fleet.

Not rewarding those balancing boosting with other roles, using the odd setup and tactic.

I sincerely believe there's a bit too much whining on this. Links aren't really overpowered, the mindlinks and the T3s warfare processors are actually way too good. I'm saying this having flown boosted ships whilst my booster was training, it isn't really that big of an advantage until you actually stick a mindlink in - that's when stuff really becomes ludicrous. Plus the 5% boosting bonus from the T3s.

- nerf T3s subsystems (incoming from CCP);
- Slightly nerf the mindlinks;
- boosting at a POS inside the shields shouldn't be possible. Although you need to take into consideration that boosting at a POS is still p. much risk free if the POS is heavily defended

Also, what are these "fair" fights you people are talking about?

LE: skirmish mindlinks aren't really a problem either, as Lokis can't fit more than 3 links efficiently (although you can fit a cloaky nullified skirmish links Loki). Armoured warfare mindlinks - eh, with sufficient investment yes, you can have a 6 link Legion. Six link Tengu - nerf into the ground really, it's possible only with T2 fittings.

Also I'd like to point out that links are actually essential in up-engaging gangs solo or engaging much larger gangs with small numbers. The Rorqual is also in danger to become a heap of useless if OGB is elliminated.