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Mindlinks/Ganglinks/Ongrid Boosting

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Mole Guy
Bob's Bait and Tackle
#101 - 2013-05-25 13:48:30 UTC  |  Edited by: Mole Guy
i stand corrected.

looks like i misinterpreted your presentation during fan fest.
i thought commands were coming out in this expansion and they are actually in the "future" part.

i just spent a bill buying the rest of them for this expansion..

ugg
Mole Guy
Bob's Bait and Tackle
#102 - 2013-05-25 14:07:25 UTC  |  Edited by: Mole Guy
delete
Shereza
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#103 - 2013-05-25 14:29:11 UTC  |  Edited by: Shereza
CCP Fozzie wrote:
So I do honestly welcome people's cool ideas about what form gang links could take. Don't limit yourself to small changes to the status quo, because it turns out with this system small changes aren't necessarily any faster to implement than off the wall changes.


Well, how about these ideas? Twisted

#1 Warfare Link Disruptor. Cruiser-sized high-slot module that disrupts all gang links within 7.5km of the cruiser it's mounted on. Not so much an idea of what can be done with links as an idea of what to do to them.

#2 Distributed Tracking Network. This would probably require too many calculations to be do'able, but it's a nice idea. For every one of your ships within lock range of a given target the effect of that target's velocity is reduced by a percentage. Stacking penalties, of course, apply.

#3 Missile Defense Grid. Defender missiles fired by any ship affected by this gang link will auto-target incoming missiles on any other ship affected by this link on a nearest to firing ship basis. This would allow defender missiles to be used as part of a fleet, or at least squad, defense strategy. Of course for this to truly shine defender missiles and how they affect gameplay as well as how useful missiles are in PvP would likely have to be... adjusted. Blink

#4 Multiple Volley Processor. Synchronizes the firing rates of all affected ships to match the rate of fire on the slowest guns in the squad/wing/fleet. In effect it would help coordinate alpha'ing down targets. The downsides are that if you start firing mid-cycle you don't actually shoot until the next cycle and that it's based on the slowest firing speed in the affected group. This can lead to predictable patterns in firing as well as partially negating the effect of skill training if you mix people in your "alpha squad" who are highly skilled with others who are barely skilled.

#5 Manifold Warp Core Stabilizer. When activated each ship in the fleet receives a +.5 bonus to warp core strength and a 20% penalty to scan resolution and max target range. Each ship in the fleet adds an additional .25 to that value under the pretext of distributed networking to allow your fleet members' ships to devote spare CPU cycles to aid a scrambled ship's CPU. A 5-man squad, for example, would see a total warp core strength bonus of 1.5 while a full 10-man squad would have a bonus of 2.75. While this could be a hefty advantage in and of itself just consider how quickly that advantage drops as soon as you start popping ships or they start running. As soon as they're off the grid their contribution to the gang bonus goes away, and that's not including the link disruptor I suggested in #1.

#6 Signature Obfuscation Broadcaster. A simple module that offsets your apparent location on a grid by up to 75km with the minimum distance being 25km base and modified by skills for the purposes of introducing uncertainty when an enemy warps to one of the affected ships. One of the issues with long-range combat is that beyond a given distance (150km or so?) straight out warping to a target is possible, and probing/warping is always an option as well. With this module active a degree of uncertainty will be introduced resulting in incoming ships landing as little as 25km off from the target (50km perhaps with maximum skills) on up to 75km away.

#7 Vulnerability Assessment and Targeting Subroutines. The idea of damage "leakage" has been around for quite some time. In fact without Tactical Shield Manipulation you start seeing damage leak through to your armor as soon as you hit 25% shield HP. What this module could do is allow a base amount of 2% of affected ships' damage to bypass shields and hit the armor directly, and once the shields are down do the same to armor/hull. The result is that while, for example, some shield-tanked ships might be able to rep all incoming shield damage eventually their armor, and hull, will get eaten away to the point that they have to retreat or die. Armor-tankers or heavily plated ships in RR spiderweb fleets will face similar issues without hull reppers as well.

#8 Thermal Influx Processing Subroutines. This idea's a relatively "normal" one compared to some of the other ones. Reduce the amount of heat damage affected ships take.

#9 Multiple Drone Link Augment Coordinator. Allow affected ships to "piggyback" their drone commands through fleet members' DLAs providing they have unused drone slots. The up side is that with enough ships fitted with DLAs in between you and a target you could, provided you have the range to lock the targets, use the full (post-Odyssey) optimal range on your dominix's T2 wardens to peg stuff at 180km without having to fit nothing but DLAs in your high slots. The down side is that if any of the ships providing the "links" between you and the target move out of mutual support range or are blown up the chain is broken and you can no longer "share" bandwidth past the point where the link is broken. While this might be most seen on drone ships which have an obvious use for DLAs it could promote the usage of DLAs on ships that otherwise have no drone capacity just to extend the "bubble" for extended drone control.

#10 Warfare Link Reflector. I figure that only one anti-link module isn't enough so here's a second idea. The module sets up an electronic "hall of mirrors" effect of sorts that "backscatters" the target ships' link bonuses back to your squad with a 50% penalty.

Just a few ideas off the top of my head.
MeBiatch
GRR GOONS
#104 - 2013-05-25 15:11:38 UTC
James Amril-Kesh wrote:
No, because your suggestion has no relation to how fleet boosting is actually used.



sorry you have squads wings and fleet.

what i am suggesting is that you can either select squad boosting which is on grid and limited range but gives a 1.5x boost to gang links

or you can choose wing boosting but that only does 1.0 x and has a range of one grid

or you can choose fleet boosting has the range of the whole system but has a 0.5x multiplyer.

There are no stupid Questions... just stupid people... CCP Goliath wrote:

Ugh ti-di pooping makes me sad.
Rroff
Antagonistic Tendencies
#105 - 2013-05-25 15:13:23 UTC  |  Edited by: Rroff
Chi'Nane T'Kal wrote:
James Amril-Kesh wrote:
Removing OGB is still a bad idea.


Yeah, what will all the terrible PvPers do that have to rely on the advantage OGB gives them to have a remote chance at winning against anyone but newbs?


Problem is your flawed assumption as to their use - while no doubt there are people who use them to get an advantage in that way - but then when has eve ever been about playing fair? - the majority of people who use them are the people who go to the effort of planning a fleet composition, getting organised and finding interesting fights not just quick and easy ganks.

The other side to it is that a good proportion of boosting use is for non PVP uses where its common to boost from POS and/or to support characters that are split over different grids. i.e. when I do end up doing PVE in highsec (which isn't often these days) I will usually use the links to decrease the need to fit tank modules to max gank and to not only boost one char running a mission but also another char thats semi-afk mining or running a different mission in the same system.


One thing I do think should change is that a ship thats running ganglinks can also be extremely hard to scan down - with the sheer amount of telemetry data being streamed back and forth to make such functions feasible that ship would be lit up like a christmas tree.
Kirimeena D'Zbrkesbris
Republic Military Tax Avoiders
#106 - 2013-05-25 15:57:26 UTC
Rroff wrote:
Problem is your flawed assumption as to their use - while no doubt there are people who use them to get an advantage in that way - but then when has eve ever been about playing fair? - the majority of people who use them are the people who go to the effort of planning a fleet composition, getting organised and finding interesting fights not just quick and easy ganks.

You are so wrong here. Everyone and their mom use at least loki as booster nowdays for almost any PvP activity. I even saw "solo" PvPer in blarpy boosted with everything he could find and 3 falcons that decloaked once he start to lose fight.

Opinions are like assholes. Everybody got one and everyone thinks everyone else's stinks.
Rroff
Antagonistic Tendencies
#107 - 2013-05-25 16:05:57 UTC  |  Edited by: Rroff
Kirimeena D'Zbrkesbris wrote:

You are so wrong here. Everyone and their mom use at least loki as booster nowdays for almost any PvP activity. I even saw "solo" PvPer in blarpy boosted with everything he could find and 3 falcons that decloaked once he start to lose fight.


That goes into a more deeply flawed aspect of eve PVP than links themselves. Besides if everyone and their mom used loki links it would all balance out and everyone would be a on an even playing field.


EDIT: There is a certain amount of perspective to take into account as well tho - I'm guessing your from a more every day lowsec/fringe nullsec PVP background where I can imagine its more of a widespread issue. Throwing wider nullsec, w-space, other lowsec engagements etc. into the equation also changes the story a bit.
Durzel
Questionable Ethics.
Ministry of Inappropriate Footwork
#108 - 2013-05-25 19:32:30 UTC
Honestly I think half of the problem is that the current system relies upon ships whose only real purpose is boosting. It's obvious what a Damnation is doing when it's on grid. Because of that you have a dichotomy where you have to make link ships (on grid ones anyway, I'm dismissing OGB as "broken" for the purposes of this post) extremely tanky because otherwise they'd just be primaried and die early, but at the same time you can't make them too potent offensively because otherwise they have the potential to be overpowered in their own right. So you're left with ships that are uninspiring to fly on grid because they're glorified buff bots.

Short of refactoring boosts into the fleet management structure itself - e.g. effectively repurpose Command Ships as Heavy Assault Battlecruisers or something, delete Command Links and Link modules from the game and then have the FC designate specifically who in the fleet is the booster (and have the existng skills used as the basis for how strong the bonus that person provides - so the training isn't wasted), and have it not matter what ship they are in as long as they are alive and on-grid, I'm not sure how you can fix OGB....
Veshta Yoshida
PIE Inc.
Khimi Harar
#109 - 2013-05-25 21:03:21 UTC
Durzel wrote:
Honestly I ...

So you have a similar beef with the one-trick pony Logistics, the ECM hulls, the CovOps, the Interdictors et al.?

Their purposes are also easily identified and as a result often have a prominent place in the heart of target-callers everywhere .. consider the reasons why link ships might be even higher valued targets, and thus what will need to be looked at as part of the on-grid move.

I'll give you a head start: It has to do with their impact on the battlefield and not their tank (or lack of) nor their ability to bite.
Gorgoth24
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#110 - 2013-05-25 21:36:52 UTC
I'd just like to say that off-grid boosting is bad for PvP as a whole and should be removed.
My two cents
Rroff
Antagonistic Tendencies
#111 - 2013-05-25 21:37:42 UTC  |  Edited by: Rroff
As a completely off the wall idea maybe they should add a NOS like high slot module that allows you to tap into a targetted ship's active bonuses (for your own use) for a short period of time. (Cycle the module you inherit any active bonuses they are recieving for say 30 seconds). Even maybe make a function of NOS modules.
Shereza
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#112 - 2013-05-25 21:45:01 UTC
Rroff wrote:
As a completely off the wall idea maybe they should add a NOS like high slot module that allows you to tap into a targetted ship's active bonuses (for your own use) for a short period of time. (Cycle the module you inherit any active bonuses they are recieving for say 30 seconds). Even maybe make a function of NOS modules.


See my Warfare Link Reflector idea. It's pretty close to what you're suggesting.
Rroff
Antagonistic Tendencies
#113 - 2013-05-25 21:50:04 UTC
Shereza wrote:
Rroff wrote:
As a completely off the wall idea maybe they should add a NOS like high slot module that allows you to tap into a targetted ship's active bonuses (for your own use) for a short period of time. (Cycle the module you inherit any active bonuses they are recieving for say 30 seconds). Even maybe make a function of NOS modules.


See my Warfare Link Reflector idea. It's pretty close to what you're suggesting.


Ah didn't see that but I prefer my take on it as it has the potential for an on the ball pilot to level the playing field for solo and smaller self contained engagements without significantly changing the dynamics of bigger fights.
Shereza
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#114 - 2013-05-25 22:01:43 UTC
Rroff wrote:
Shereza wrote:
Rroff wrote:
As a completely off the wall idea maybe they should add a NOS like high slot module that allows you to tap into a targetted ship's active bonuses (for your own use) for a short period of time. (Cycle the module you inherit any active bonuses they are recieving for say 30 seconds). Even maybe make a function of NOS modules.


See my Warfare Link Reflector idea. It's pretty close to what you're suggesting.


Ah didn't see that but I prefer my take on it as it has the potential for an on the ball pilot to level the playing field for solo and smaller self contained engagements without significantly changing the dynamics of bigger fights.


Could just design it to be scripted then. Run a focused script for 4x benefit to self and it only cuts the enemy's fleet bonus from the ship in half instead of killing it altogether.
Durzel
Questionable Ethics.
Ministry of Inappropriate Footwork
#115 - 2013-05-25 23:34:00 UTC
Veshta Yoshida wrote:
Durzel wrote:
Honestly I ...

So you have a similar beef with the one-trick pony Logistics, the ECM hulls, the CovOps, the Interdictors et al.?

Their purposes are also easily identified and as a result often have a prominent place in the heart of target-callers everywhere .. consider the reasons why link ships might be even higher valued targets, and thus what will need to be looked at as part of the on-grid move.

I'll give you a head start: It has to do with their impact on the battlefield and not their tank (or lack of) nor their ability to bite.

All of the other specialised ships you mentioned are also fulfilling to fly in their own right. There's no fulfillment in flying a ship that is just a flying brick providing bonuses to others whilst doing anemic DPS. CCP have already said that they view fleet command ships as unrewarding to fly.

Logistics, hostile ECM, etc can be jammed or damped as well, rendering them impotent - whereas a ship providing links does so anywhere so long as it isn't cloaked, so the comparison isn't strictly valid.

My point was that a ship that is clearly identifiable as the one that is providing links will be primary unless their tank is vastly superior to the other things on field, and you can't have a ridiculously tanked ship be as potent as normal combat ships lest they become overpowered for solo/small gang work.
Mara Rinn
Cosmic Goo Convertor
#116 - 2013-05-26 02:35:42 UTC
Rroff wrote:
That goes into a more deeply flawed aspect of eve PVP than links themselves. Besides if everyone and their mom used loki links it would all balance out and everyone would be a on an even playing field.


That's the nanoship argument all over again: "you don't need to nerf nano, just use nano yourself and you'll be competitive!" Warfare links are overpowered. Warfare links working off-grid is overpowered. Warfare links working from inside POS shields is overpowered.

Day 0 Advice for New Players
Veshta Yoshida
PIE Inc.
Khimi Harar
#117 - 2013-05-26 08:46:28 UTC
Durzel wrote:
...My point was that a ship that is clearly identifiable as the one that is providing links will be primary unless their tank is vastly superior to the other things on field, and you can't have a ridiculously tanked ship be as potent as normal combat ships lest they become overpowered for solo/small gang work.

*Whoosh* Went right over your head, that one did.

Your point has been made, remade ad nauseum since the idea of on-grid links was first aired all those years ago:

"The game will break in X, Y, Z direction if they come on-grid!!!11"

And it will, no doubt about it. But it hinges on the move off-to-on bringing absolutely no other changes with it, which due to its extreme unlikelihood is something we advocates of change have tried getting through the sometimes thick skulls of status-quo hangerson.

To business:
The link ship is targeted right off the bat because it has by far the biggest impact on the battlefield. By investing the dps to remove 150k EHP (or however much the fat-asses have these days) you instantly remove 5M+ EHP and Goddess knows what other boosts from the field .. the problem, and the point I tried to make, is that the boosts are uniform and omni-directional across an entire fleet.

Read the thread again, assuming you did so in the first place, and you'll see that the schemes being concocted to facilitate the move on-grid goes way beyond merely buffing tank and more often than not include some way to 'normalize' the power of links.
If for instance links could only be applied to 10 ships rather than up to 250, the value of the ships carrying them would be reduced to same level as every other high value asset on the field making them far less of a target due to their higher EHP numbers.
Furthermore, if the effect of links was based on locking, the tools to limit their effectiveness expand to include all the items that are employed against other assets so that brute force dps could be replaced by heavy dampening, neuting or ECM.

Bottomline: Since the underlying mechanics do not allow for links to be moved as is, the solution is more readily and easily sought in a complete rethink of the command concept.
Mara Rinn
Cosmic Goo Convertor
#118 - 2013-05-26 10:33:15 UTC  |  Edited by: Mara Rinn
Veshta Yoshida wrote:
Your point has been made, remade ad nauseum since the idea of on-grid links was first aired all those years ago:

"The game will break in X, Y, Z direction if they come on-grid!!!11".


The only people I've seen complaining about how the game will break if command ships come on-grid are the ones who currently use OGB, and especially those who hide their OGB in a friendly POS. The incursion folks I've been talking to are keen to see the proposed command ship rebalancing because they can finally come on-grid with their command ship without breaking the incursion fleet. Until the fleets on either side of an engagement are big enough to alpha a command ship off the field, the EHP of the command ship only needs to be big enough to allow the logistics pilots time to react. In a casual Vanguard fleet, you need more than 30k EHP. In a casual Assault fleet, you'll need a bit more, and in a HQ fleet you need about 40k for cruisers, 100k+ for battleships, etc, and the presence of mind to broadcast for reps when yellowboxed.

Why would anyone in a non-alpha-capable fleet primary a command ship when there are still logistics and EWAR ships in the enemy fleet? In a six-per-side engagement you're not going to alpha anything off the field. Maybe you get lucky and manage to disable all their logistics for 20 seconds, and they miss all their jams, allowing your DPS time to grind the command ship down.

My philosophy to changing things in the game is to look at little tweaks, and do one thing at a time. Drastic changes end up with something new being FOTM: in the case of mining ships, Hulks used to be the go-to ship for ore mining, with Mackinaws the go-to ship for ice harvesting. Now Mackinaws are the go-to ship for all mining, some folks use Skiffs and only the morbidly foolish or terribly brave use Hulks. The attention required to keep a hulk alive on field is just not worth the rewards. Even if Hulks were producing twice as much yield as any other mining ship, you're still not producing as much for the at-keyboard time as you would speculatively hauling PLEX, which for me is 10M for 10 minutes work, per PLEX. The Mackinaw is currently overpowered because its huge ore bay means it makes up for the loss of yield by avoiding trips back to station, and its tank is so much larger than a hulk that one or two suicide ganking catalysts are no longer a threat. Sure, "make mining require more attention" cry the combat pilots who haven't mined longer than half an hour in their entire EVE career. Such a change would break mining for the people who enjoy doing it, and leave only combat pilots to do mining at which point the hue and cry would go out, "mining is so boring: I have to pay so much attention and I get no killmails or fancy explosions! We need to remove mining from the game!"

So here we are, in an environment where command ships are used but they are not present on grid. This is because of various reasons including the fact that warfare links (and titan hull bonuses) are significantly overpowered, command ships are not particularly useful as combat ships, and noone flying a ship in combat likes seeing their piddling 200 DPS when their friends in thoroughbred combat ships are getting thousands of DPS. Of course noone mentions logistics and EWAR pilots in all this, because none of the people flying command ship alts have bothered with logistics because they don't get on killmails. At least leaving the command ship alt off grid means you can pretty much ignore it for the duration of a fight, so the burden of running a command ship is not as great as the burden of flying logistics.

Ultimately, my argument is that command ships would be best balanced by implementing the proposed command ship balance and requiring warfare links to be on the same grid as the ships receiving the bonuses. No further change required. Then we can see what happens to the use of command ships. Does usage drop off because people don't like getting shot at? Does command ship usage go up because people love being able to fly a command ship that does more DPS than a gnat and takes more beating than a wet paper bag?

If we end up seeing entire Incursion fleets filled with command ships, then we know that command ships are overpowered. If we see killboards exclusively populated by command ships, then we know command ships are overpowered.

Logistics are already overpowered, since they allow the entire fleet to effectively carry quintuple-rep cap stable local tanks. I don't see that command ships and warfare links need to be nerfed any further than absolutely necessary. Sure, warfare links are very potent, even overpowered. But the ability to use warfare links and titan hull bonuses off-grid or behind the shields of a POS is even more overpowered. So start with the most overpowered facet of the features of warfare links and command ships, then review the case in a few months.

In my mind, the rebalancing of command ships should proceed as follows:

  1. Reduce effectiveness of warfare links and titan hull bonuses to on-grid only.
  2. Implement the proposed command ship rebalancing.
  3. Observe.
  4. If necessary (because e.g.: only fleets with command ships ever engage in PvP, solo PVP dies), rebalance command bonuses or explore alternate warfare link mechanics.


Given the requirement of having the booster on-grid, this will drastically change the face of "solo" PvP. No longer will you be fighting a Myrmidon which magically manages to repair itself from 20% to 100% every ten seconds, with webifiers and scram that reach out to 20km. No longer will the home field advantage of a 24 hour reinforcement timer be protecting your booster alt from harm. If you want the protection of a POS, you'll need to fight at the POS.

Of course given CCPs predisposition to sledgehammer rebalancing, we will no doubt see that list implemented in exactly the reverse order Twisted

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El Geo
Warcrows
THE OLD SCHOOL
#119 - 2013-05-26 10:49:33 UTC  |  Edited by: El Geo
Off grid boosting for small roaming gangs is a valid guerilla tactic, I personally feel that the TE nerf will affect the small gang roamers as well, as they tend to lean more towards fast, kiting ships. We all hate things and different playstyles in the game, but most of you dullbears wont bat an eyelid at using your own offgrid, pos'd up boosts and ganging up on players, I bet most of you fail a lot which is why you scream for all this nerfing.

In short, taking off grid boosts out of the game removes an entire play style from the game, if CCP starts down this path I doubt it will be long before all types of guerilla style play will be removed or heavily nerfed, leaving only the blob.

I may support the idea that some ships can offgrid boost (tech 3's), some able to at a pos (orca/rorqual), some only able to ongrid (combat command ships/titans) becuase ships like the damnation are really built for on grid boosting, the tech 3's are often cloaky and used for small gangs, rorq mining links only, orca reduced boosts for combat orientated links and all you large fleet players should have more reasons to shoot each others titans.

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Veshta Yoshida
PIE Inc.
Khimi Harar
#120 - 2013-05-26 13:11:33 UTC  |  Edited by: Veshta Yoshida
Mara Rinn wrote:
...Logistics are already overpowered, since they allow the entire fleet to effectively carry quintuple-rep cap stable local tanks. I don't see that command ships and warfare links need to be nerfed any further than absolutely necessary. Sure, warfare links are very potent, even overpowered. But the ability to use warfare links and titan hull bonuses off-grid or behind the shields of a POS is even more overpowered. So start with the most overpowered facet of the features of warfare links and command ships, then review the case in a few months....

Logistics are strong, but with the full range of counters and limitations they operate with I wouldn't call them overpowered, that said I am looking forward to tiericiding them to tone them down a bit .. especially now that T1 logistics has reared it ugly head thus lowering the entry bar significantly.
Otherwise I can only agree with most of that wall, except for the proposed solution as it will probably never work .. the big hurdle is Veritas' ability to twist the code so that links can join the fun and I don't think it can be done, hence we should be looking at alternatives to the fundamental workings (ex. locking or spherical effect or ...) for when the towel appears at his workstation.

I am curious though. You say "Reduce effectiveness of warfare links and titan hull bonuses to on-grid only.", does that mean "reduc link effectiveness...and make them on-grid only" or merely "move on-grid"?
Because the sheer power of links is one of the primary reasons for them being broken as hell, much more so than their ability to operate while being safe from harm. You say that logistics can quintuple local tanking making them OP, but how does a targetable effect even compare to the fleet wide blanket boost of 30%+ to practically all facets .. if logistics are to be declared OP, then we need a new word to describe what links are Smile

But yes, baby steps has giant leaps beat hands down. Incremental changes until no further are required are much better fr the stability of the meta-game than leaps-and-bounds that have to be partially rolled back down the road ... going to absorb a lot of post-its to organize that kind of development scheme though, hope they have enough Big smile

As for general worry about mining links throughout (ie. not you Ms. Rinn): What are doing mining without protection in the first place?
Instead of clinging to the teat of a soon to be obsolete mechanic, cook up solutions to the problem .. suggest additions to the Orca/Rorqual that will make their presence desired beyond the ability to carry links, or suggest that CC's all get a bonus to mining links or come up with changes to the mining profession in its entirety that could sidestep the issue