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Player Features and Ideas Discussion

 
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Blowing Bubbles

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Kiloreas
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#1 - 2013-06-26 09:18:36 UTC
It's a small change, but one that could be extremely useful and just plain cool to think about.

Two Drakes, both warping to point B from point A. They align the same, they charge the same, then they're off. Now, 40 Drakes, same scenario, but they're no faster and the 2, even though the fictional science tells me that on the same plain, in the same proximity, each Drake should be taking a load off the total bearing (for capacitor usage and time to warp.) The larger number of ships, the quicker the ruptures for warp are created and the less cap is required to open the tunnel. Put in the same style math of diminishing returns that the modules use and it evens out over time.

Especially for capitals....
Chitsa Jason
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#2 - 2013-06-26 09:20:45 UTC
so you are basically suggesting that the bigger the blob the more advantage it has compared to small number of players?

Burn the land and boil the sea You can't take the sky from me
Kiloreas
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#3 - 2013-06-26 09:22:06 UTC
Exactly. Take ship size into account and you've got yourself a real grab for some strategic mobility.
Jint Hikaru
OffWorld Exploration Inc
#4 - 2013-06-26 09:27:43 UTC
Kiloreas wrote:
Exactly. Take ship size into account and you've got yourself a real grab for some strategic mobility.



I think Chitsa was hoping that you would pick up on the fact that all your suggestion does is encourage more Blob tactics, which most people see as being detrimental to the game.

Jint Hikaru - Miner / Salvager / Explorer / SpaceBum In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
Alvatore DiMarco
Capricious Endeavours Ltd
#5 - 2013-06-26 09:32:56 UTC  |  Edited by: Alvatore DiMarco
Alvatore DiMarco here again to educate you (like so many others this week) about how warp drives actually work.

Contrary to the way warp/FTL travel works in other sci-fi, in EVE no "rupture" is created, no "tunnel" is used and the fabric of space is not warped, bent, folded or perforated. The warp tunnel gives an impression to the contrary, but things are often not what they appear.

Interstellar Traveling wrote:
So what is the elusive answer to FTL travel? It was found through advanced research in the field of quantum electrodynamics. By creating depleted vacuum, that is, vacuum as found in space but completely stripped of all energy, and then expanding this depleted vacuum to envelop a ship, the ship is capable of moving faster than light through this bubble of depleted vacuum. A depleted vacuum bubble is more than frictionless – it is so anti-friction that things (including light) actually move faster in it than they would in complete vacuum.

All space ships are equipped with a warp drive device. The warp drive creates depleted vacuum by repeatedly ‘compressing’ vacuum between two polar discs, draining all energy neutrons and quarks out of it. A laser-locked field is then created to hold the ever-increasing depleted vacuum bubble until it has enveloped the whole ship. When that happens the ship is able to enter FTL speed.

That is an excerpt from Interstellar Traveling.

Sections 4 and 5 are the relevant ones. It's worth taking note that "jump drive" is used pretty interchangeably throughout the whole article, so the logical thing to do is substitute "warp drive" for parts that talk about travel within the same solar system (which just happens to be sections 4 and 5).
Kiloreas
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#6 - 2013-06-26 09:33:45 UTC
Blobs are a fact of life. And if you think about the positive of making it quicker, a sudden loss in the midst of charging the jump in a blob would hamper the blobs ability to warp. Depending on the ship size that's lost gives the value of the hit the blob takes as a whole, rendering a small gang of experienced pilots more able to bully the larger fleet.

It's a two way street.
Alvatore DiMarco
Capricious Endeavours Ltd
#7 - 2013-06-26 09:38:52 UTC  |  Edited by: Alvatore DiMarco
Blobs may be a fact of life in your opinion, but that does not mean the correct response is to give them even more power than they already have. Something like this will basically mean that anyone who isn't in a blob will be at a bigger disadvantage than they already are.
Kiloreas
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#8 - 2013-06-26 09:39:52 UTC
Alvatore DiMarco wrote:
Alvatore DiMarco here again to educate you (like so many others this week) about how warp drives actually work.

Contrary to the way warp/FTL travel works in other sci-fi, in EVE no "rupture" is created, no "tunnel" is used and the fabric of space is not warped, bent, folded or perforated. The warp tunnel gives an impression to the contrary, but things are often not what they appear.

Interstellar Traveling wrote:
So what is the elusive answer to FTL travel? It was found through advanced research in the field of quantum electrodynamics. By creating depleted vacuum, that is, vacuum as found in space but completely stripped of all energy, and then expanding this depleted vacuum to envelop a ship, the ship is capable of moving faster than light through this bubble of depleted vacuum. A depleted vacuum bubble is more than frictionless – it is so anti-friction that things (including light) actually move faster in it than they would in complete vacuum.

All space ships are equipped with a warp drive device. The warp drive creates depleted vacuum by repeatedly ‘compressing’ vacuum between two polar discs, draining all energy neutrons and quarks out of it. A laser-locked field is then created to hold the ever-increasing depleted vacuum bubble until it has enveloped the whole ship. When that happens the ship is able to enter FTL speed.

That is an excerpt from Interstellar Traveling.

Sections 4 and 5 are the relevant ones. It's worth taking note that "jump drive" is used pretty interchangeably throughout the whole article, so the logical thing to do is substitute "warp drive" for parts that talk about travel within the same solar system (which just happens to be sections 4 and 5).


And creating this vacuum solo is different plural how exactly? The more ships, the less amount of cap has to be spent on making the polar discs, and the easier it would seem for the gravity wells to hold the vacuum.
Swiftstrike1
Swiftstrike Incorporated
#9 - 2013-06-26 09:42:24 UTC
I think the mechanic is an interesting idea, but should work in the opposite way. For example:

The size of the "fleet warp tunnel" increases linearly with the number of ships entering fleet warp at the same time. It could perhaps be related to the weighted average of the signature radii of all the ships in fleet warp.

The energy cost of opening a "fleet warp tunnel" should then increase non-linearly with the size of the bubble.

Insert speculative mathematics here.

The additional cost of opening a warp tunnel for a blob would be evenly distributed across said blob such that each ship would have to contribute an additional XX% of their capacitor (based on number and size of ships in the blob).

Casual Incursion runner & Faction Warfare grunt, ex-Wormholer, ex-Nullbear.
Kiloreas
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#10 - 2013-06-26 09:44:56 UTC
Swiftstrike1 wrote:
I think the mechanic is an interesting idea, but should work in the opposite way. For example:

The size of the "fleet warp tunnel" increases linearly with the number of ships entering fleet warp at the same time. It could perhaps be related to the weighted average of the signature radii of all the ships in fleet warp.

The energy cost of opening a "fleet warp tunnel" should then increase non-linearly with the size of the bubble.

Insert speculative mathematics here.

The additional cost of opening a warp tunnel for a blob would be evenly distributed across said blob such that each ship would have to contribute an additional XX% of their capacitor (based on number and size of ships in the blob).



Makes sense to me. I just wanted to spark the conversation. I never understood why the ships never got linked SOMEhow.
Swiftstrike1
Swiftstrike Incorporated
#11 - 2013-06-26 09:56:43 UTC
Alvatore DiMarco wrote:
Alvatore DiMarco here again to educate you (like so many others this week) about how warp drives actually work.

Paraphrasing: "blah blah blah... depleted vacuum... ships in warp are non-interacting... blah blah blah..."

The great thing about a fictional universe is that the Devs can change the lore whenever they like :)

Casual Incursion runner & Faction Warfare grunt, ex-Wormholer, ex-Nullbear.
Tchulen
Trumpets and Bookmarks
#12 - 2013-06-26 09:58:30 UTC
Alvatore DiMarco wrote:
Blobs may be a fact of life in your opinion, but that does not mean the correct response is to give them even more power than they already have. Something like this will basically mean that anyone who isn't in a blob will be at a bigger disadvantage than they already are.

Unless you exclusively fly in a blob fleet and are trying to get yourself an unfair advantage, of course ;)

But yeah, you're quite right. The proposed change would unnecessarily adversely affect solos or small gangs.

Swiftstrike1 wrote:
I think the mechanic is an interesting idea, but should work in the opposite way.


The problem with the opposite way is you're giving solos an advantage in getting away from groups of people.

Now to answer the OP with a practical reason why this couldn't work. The time to warp isn't based on charging a capacitor. It's based on the align time and acceleration (to 75% max speed?) of each individual ship. So practically, you're suggesting that the more ships you have in the fleet the faster they should be able to align and accelerate. That would simply break the game and as Alvatore said, it would promote blobs in a rather ludicrous way.

For a start, you'd have Battleships behaving like frigates if you had enough of them.