Player Features and Ideas Discussion

So what would beat the blob of cluster bombing ships?

ladies and gentlemen, may I present you the BOMB!

No. Blobs don't have to be close together to be effective, (sniper blob, anyone?) and if you make an anti-blob weapon that has a range or radius equal to the maximum width of a blob, it becomes incredibly overpowered.

So, it either:

A. It doesn't stop all blobs.
B. Isn't all that effective, requiring a blob of them to function well.
C. Has a range and strength that make it incredibly overpowered.

Or all of the above!

As has been mentioned, bombs are in-game.



You want to defeat blobs? Simple: Stacking penalty on all modules that exert changes between ship to ship. Think of it as line of sight interference if you need to, but essentially, the more people who attack a single target, the less damage all attackers do.

This penalty would work on all modules, though, so it would affect ewar, remote reps, cap neuts/vamps, etc. Any ship to ship module.

Drones would also receive this penalty, but on a separate check (drone damage/repair, etc), with them and fighters equaling out.



The hindrance to the stacking penalty concept is smaller vs. larger ships. It keeps a bunch of large ships from popping a single large ship, or smaller ships, but it also would make it neigh impossible for a bunch of small ships to hurt a single large ship. The resolution for making this more effective is to set a base penalty for weapon classes equal to ship class and above. Use medium weapons to attack a cruiser or smaller, your stacking penalty is set at a base amount. Use a medium weapon to attack a battleship, and that stacking penalty is reduced by a few percent. Use a medium weapon to attack a capital, and even less of a penalty.

This allows deviation between ships that can fit larger weapon classes, specifically tier 3 bc's and stealth bombers.


Ideally, you would make it so that, if blobs do travel together, more coordination by squads would be necessary to do the maximum amount of damage. Having each squad choose a different primary and manage their own logi would make them more effective fighting units of the whole. Players would still equal power, but not on such a multiplicative scale as now.

That I think is the whole point, and problem. CCP is taking steps to make blob on blob combat smoother and the servers more capable of handling it. They're changing code in small increments, often reducing or nerfing this or that, in order to reduce the tasks required to compute. In essence, making things faster.

But on the other hand, players have no real limits. As you give us more room, we take more room. Give an inch, take a yard. Well, give us a reinforced node in Jita, and we find a way to cap it every weekend.

There has to be a better way to penalize the alpha-strike mentality that makes blob warfare so prevalent. Because CCP set a rule early on that more players = more power, we've got super coalitions and 3000 man battles. No other game on the market can handle that, even close. But if you don't have more numbers, chances are your not going to win, so you sign up with the guys that do, dock up until you do, or ally and build coalitions.

Everything needs a stacking penalty. Sovereignty needs a cap, artificial and otherwise, on what it's usefullness is. Gates, systems, stations. Because we'll push the limit.

Make it so that an individual is more efficient then a squad, a squad is more efficient than wing, a wing over a fleet, and a fleet over a blob ... and you might just give smaller scale combat a bit of free reign.

But if it's pro-blob all the way, which every change CCP has made in the pvp department is showing this, then it's not about small scale at all.

yeah, but we need a name for this class.

it can drop bombs, so it is a bomber, and since it can warp undetected, it mean it's stealth

so i think stealth bombers would fit em well

How many chocolate bunnies must we sacrificed to the gods-shaped-like-domesticated-farmyard-animals in order to acquire this skill?
Or do you have to sell your eternal soul to Hilmar...damn not sure which is worse...

Except nukes really don't do damage in a vacuum, just release a ton of radiation...if you wanna get all sciencey and shiz.

So...what if a blob of ships all launch anti-blob cluster bombs? Well, other than utter coolness, that is.

Considering amount of 'blobs' in EVE, I wonder why we don't have proper AoE weapons in the game
- sure, there are bombs and there are smartbombs, but bombs are ultra-specialized weapon unusable in low-sec tied to single ship type while smart-bombs are perhaps even more specialized weapon with enormous amount of limitations and very low AoE radius

Needless to say, AoE is tricky bit to balance, but I think something rather simple would make EVE fleet combat much more interesting, let me try very simple idea:
- introduce single AoE weapon of each weapon line (let's hypothetically call it Blobbreaker cannon / missile):
- give it long range equivalent to long range variant of its weapon class and dps to roughly 1/4 of regular long range weapon of its class and give it significant AoE (let's say 10? km radius for L weapon), give it fitting requirements somewhat above highest fitting weapon of its class; also important part would be to limit its effect against lower-size ships (for example L blobbreaker should have low effect on cruisers and very minimal to frigs and S module is likely out of place, M might work or might not)
- idea here is simple: it is difficult to fit, forcing you to sacrifice tank or fit less then usual number of these guns and its dps is rather low; however, considering it hits area, group of such ships will break tight blob of regular ships after certain breakpoint in numbers.
- basically effect should be something like:
1-3 blobbreakers < 1-3 regular ships
X blobbreakers > X regular ships blobbed for X > 5? (or 10 or whatever)
X blobbreakers = X blobbreakers if both are blobbed, however if spread around, side with better spread tends to win
X blobbreakers < X regular ships if you manage to minimize aoe, therefore promoting positioning in combat rather then just putting all ships on same place
blobbreakers are good against massed carrier fleets due to ability to pop drones en-masse

Of course, argument here is that we already have bombers, but I don't think bombers fill role of sustained combat aoe damage dealing platform