Ships & Modules

Hi All,

So I stumbled across this Dev Blog in another thread - http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/73530 and after reading it I was left with some questions and concerns.

Firstly, I have 5 characters, one can use Skirmish, Siege and Armour mindlinks, he has command ship 5 and can fly all but Gallente command ships. He also has maxed skills for the Loki and Legion plus Fleet Command 4 (a pretty well spec’d boosting character). He is also fully capable of standard fighting. My other chars either have command ships 4 or 5, two can fly all races and two can fly only two races. Non of these other characters have anything besides Leadership 5.

So when I looked at the Dev Blog and read that there would be no longer “Fleet” and “Field” Command ships variants and that all would be able to give bonuses and also fit multiple gang links my first question was, “how does this affect the combat ability of the Field command ships”. From experience CCP don’t usually give you something without taking something from you at the same time. With 4 Command ship capable pilots non of which can use gang links the thought of a nerf to the Absolution or Sleipnir’s combat credentials to allow for them to fit mods that they can’t fit is not something I would relish. There is nothing in the blog to say that there would be a nerf but :CCP:

I was also curious about the implications to fitting three links to a Command ship. Currently three of the Field Command ships can fit three links and a more than acceptable tank (never tried to fit an Eos). Again there is nothing to say this would change but :CCP:

Another thing that I thought was strange was that according to the proposal, all command ships gave bonuses to two different types of gang links. I realise as there wasn’t a whole lot of info given in the Dev Blog I may be jumping to conclusions on this. But as you can only fit one mind link why would you want to fit two types of links to one ship and only get the maximum bonus from one type when it would be more beneficial to use two dedicated ships each with the correct mind link so the bonuses are at maximum? This also makes it much easier for an armour gang to bring Skirmish links on grid not in the shape of either a weak armour tanked Claymore or the easily blapped standard shield fit Claymore, not saying this is good or bad, just interesting.

My final concern relates to Off Grid Boosting. While I agree that 100% safe boosting from a POS definitely needs removing has anyone considered what happens if fighting occurs in two separate areas of the same system? Take a common situation like you are fighting at a POCO or a POS etc and have your bonuses on grid with you. Then your scout reports that enemy re-enforcements are arriving from a particular gate. If you want to send some of your fleet over to slow down the re-enforcements arrival you then have to decide which part of the fleets get the bonuses? To me this doesn’t sound like an improvement.

In my opinion Links should not be useable within a force field but should still pass on bonuses remotely to gang members in the same system. They could be given a timer similar to a weapon timer (without sentry agro) so you can’t jump a gate or dock up as soon as hostiles engage the booster. You then have the option of using a command ship on grid with sufficient defenses or lesser bonuses from a T3 in a safe spot that could be probed.

I had hoped the Command Ships would get the 5% bonuses that T3s had but meh!

If you got this far thanks for your patience!

Sodo

Yes it was learning of impending "balancing" that prompted me to make the post

Go on read it! its not that long

I was referring to Command Ships only when talking about number of types of links. I have already resigned myself to the fact that at some point Commands will have the the greater bonus and boosting T3s will be for the most part obsolete.

But like you say, a proper fleet will have multiple bonus ships so why give each command ship two types? All this will do is let people fly Damnations with skirmish links in armour fleets and Claymores with siege links in shield/nano fleets.

...how is that not an improvement over, "Everyone magically gets a bonus for being in the same system, because."

Generally speaking, "Players have to decide," is superior to, "Players don't have to make any decisions."

If you anticipate having to split up maybe... I dunno... bring more than one booster?

I don't understand the angst behind off-grid-boosting in the slightest.

Ban boosters from POS, and make people rely on probing to catch/kill T3s.

If CCP feels the need to nerf the probe-ability of T3s, I completely understand.




The reality is that people bring 1 ship to a fight, and expect to beat 2.
Sure, it's off-grid. But why don't you bring a second pilot in a scanning ship?

Gallente FW pilots have nabbed my boosting ship a few times, no reason others cannot also.

The probing a T3 will be a moot point soon as once commands regain the edge in boosting why would you use an inferior ship?

The only reason people use T3s for boosting currently is that they give better bonuses. And the only reason they have to be off grid is that you cant fit a tank to them once they are configured for boosting.

You are conflating "bad for the interceptor" and "bad for the game". They are two completely different things.

If the ceptor pilot lands 50K away and can't close the gap in time because they don't have boosts anymore, that's the very definition of a personal problem.

It's not a problem for THE GAME if some anonymous interceptor pilot fails to make a tackle.

Again, so what?

You have done nothing to explain why that would be bad for the game. There is no detrimental gameplay consequence to this, at all.

Furthermore, why does boosting deserve some special position?

Do we have off-grid shooting?
What about off-grid remote repping?
Off-grid tackle? Off-grid e-war?

Remote DD was dumb, and was removed, for similar reasons.

The only other thing that even comes remotely close to OGB, thematically, is fighter assignment - and at least in that case, there's still some hardware on grid with whatever is being supported.

As soon as your hypothetical 'ceptor pilot warps off grid, he's going to lose all of the other support he had while on-grid with the rest of the fleet, too. Why should boosting be any different?

They've made it pretty clear that OGB persists for technical reasons alone. It's patently obvious that, as a gameplay mechanic, it's to the detriment of the game.

It is frequently the case that it does not become apparent that something is brokenly powerful until it is used en masse. What of it?

It wasn't a problem before because people weren't doing it before.

Somewhere along the way someone realized that, holy ****, this boosting business is AMAZING, and I don't even have to put my boosting ship in any danger to enjoy the full benefits of it.

Now, people are doing it, and it's a problem.



Can we stop pretending like POS are the only problem? The most significant line of that dev blog was, "As a side note, as we announced a while ago, we are not pleased by having Warfare Links work outside the battlefield zone, and will be investigating options to move them on grid."

Invincible POS-boosting is not THE problem - it's the high-proof distillation of the problem.



If I'm not on grid with you, I can't shoot you.
If I'm not on grid with you, I can't remote rep you.
If I'm not on grid with you, I can't ECM you.
If I'm not on grid with you, I can't bomb you.
If I'm not on grid with you, I can't tackle you.

If I'm not on grid with you, I can boost you.

This is the "special position" of boosting. It is inconsistent with all other game mechanics (with the possible, but somewhat tangential, exception of fighter assignment).

Bingo.



...What?



The rest of the post was not interesting (to me, anyway).