Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I love PvP in this game and I really like the way the game is progressing but one area I have always felt it lacked was "terrain" that added some friction, fog, and complexity to the game. Terrain in space? What? !!!

So you all remember Captain Kirk and Khan going at it right? Remember the big cloud where scanners didn't work and they could dive their ships into it, hide and hunt? That is the stuff I'm talking about.

So right now there are some cases where you can use space terrain: Some examples, not all inclusive:

1) your in a belt and get caught by that pesky scout interceptor and you can try to "shed" him by diving through the belts. He loses transversal as he hits a rock and you can blap him, pull him into range for a neut, or just pull away.
2) get bounced off a gate, station, etc (often to "FU@% I'm stuck") but that's friction and thus good to a game.
3) gates, stations, Faction warfare beacons are terrain types that might allow you to do something to someone else beyond simple interaction (ie jump through, dock, catch them coming in at zero etc)
4) bubbles to a degree.

All these places draw fights due to the terrain of EVE (ie choke points). But right now much of EVE combat is only at these "choke points."

I think CCP should perhaps explore adding to this with some complexity such as:

1) randomly spawing and drifting clouds at places like belts, gates, exploration sites...anywhere. And when in a cloud, and depending on the size you can maybe hide some ships.(Grid Fu?) They don't show on D-scan (yep, your still in local, but not in WH space) Perhaps ewar is effected, maybe depends on type of cloud. A big fleet can't hide in there but maybe that small Assault Ship gang can. Or a single BS ready to pounce? You really want to get that relic site don't you? There is a cloud.

You think: "Wonder if there is a Brutix sitting in it? OH I'm going for it." but once you get within 10km's, the hidden ship pop's up on your overview and game on.(after you soil yourself, because ambushes are like that)

2) Random solar flares that screw with regular stuff, like ewar, bonuses, shield recharge rate, what ever (kind of like certain wormholes, but this is a momentary storm in a system, not permanent. "OH MY GOD this sucks" but guess what? That's what the Germans said when it started snowing in Russia at the end of Barbarossa. Its terrain, it is the fly in the ointment, and its awesome to fight through. And those that can handle the sudden friction will prevail over those that panic.

There are lots of other possibilities...

So CCP add some stuff to spice it up. Its an Odyssey right? Well, Odysseus had to deal with wind and weather as much as human opponents (and non-human).

Let me dive my inty through a rock belt and watch chasing missiles blow up on those rocks, let me hide an AF gang in a cloud on a belt, let a solar storm suddenly race across a system and effect a big fight and see EWAR from Falcon's shut down (or get stronger), the options are endless...and don't need to be overly explained. Just do it and let us figure it out.

Lets make this game hard again and add ways that those who use "space terrain" best can gain an advantage over those that can't.

That would be an awesome addition to the game and might finally render the particle clouds less annoying (or even more annoying, depending on which end of the deal you end up being). From purely scientific point of view tho, nebulae have almost the same density as empty dead space and have a noticeable signature only on a large scale - you can't really hide in them. if they are denser, they would start coalescing into stars and planets.

On the other hand, asteroid belts are a major navigational hazard and would create a ton of interference for sensors depending on mineral composition. This might be tied with the types of ores and total amount of them in the belt somehow, with each type of ore having a different effect. As an example, maybe mercoxit deposits cause random explosion like smartbombs centered on the asteroids when a fight occurs in the field (after all, they can make your ship spontaneously combust when mining) or the particular molecular composition and density of bistot can shield your ship from being scanned down with probes (altho everyone can just warp to the belt and see if you're hiding there).
And as you mine the ore away, the interference gradually decreases (of course, ORE ships are immune to such effects - the should have shielded sensor arrays - they were built to operate into such conditions after all).

And please don't tell me that's buff to miners - i'm just trying to iterate on the idea of the original poster. Maybe this could be implemented with non-mineable asteroid fields at celestial beacons or maybe fixed spots with no beacon, that you have to scan down with probes (some home turf advantage for people that have already explored the area).

I've never liked the idea that you can shoot through things and hit.

The biggest dynamic for change in PVP they could have is collision of rounds, missiles and line of sight.

But i suspect this would be a MASSIVE project which would impact performance due to the additional checks and calculations required.

Would love to see things like this, but I don't think they're capable of it within the next 10 years :)

I wonder if line of shoot would really cause so much of performance problems as it is suggested it would. Basically you don't have to make that check for everybody in system but only for those who are on same grid AND are shooting something (so no need to check for RR or spectators). And since you can shoot just one target at any given moment it would always be a check for vector from me to target and with some clever grid slicing checking if there is anything on the way. And they could even exclude ships from that shooting collision checking to avoid accidental victims (but imagine possibility of using bigger ships as a "living" shields for your frig!).

Yeah, CCP do it naoow!

Well, I would risk saying that hardware / software 10 years ago and now are not exactly the same so maybe, just maybe somebody could make actual prototype and measure it instead of repeating 10 years old mantra about performance hit created by mathematical oneliner.

So long as such things are implemented in a way that does not make even the mightiest of nasa supercomputers bow to the power of the EvE gas cloud, I'm all in.

Line of sight on weapons would solve so many problems concerning blobs, small fleet skirmishing, etc... that it would be totally worth it IMO.

It would also allow for a way for less experienced players to join with their buddies on missions and such since the bigger ship could help shield the smaller ship from aggression.