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Proposal - Off Grid Booster Strength Decay
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Suliux
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#1 - 2013-08-11 17:31:20 UTC  |  Edited by: Suliux
For better or worse, we all suspect why CCP is reluctant to totally remove the Off Grid Booster from the game. I do not doubt that there are programming challenges to this, but as most of us suspect there are also financial implications.

Here are some very rough numbers, but If only .5% of 300,000 paying accounts are OGB alts (1500) , and assuming $15/month, they'd be looking at a loss of $270,000 / year. Maybe not much for them, I don't really know, but it is at least two, three, or more of full time salaries.

On the flip side, I'm a single account guy and hate the idea of paying to stack a fight. I will never pay for an OGB alt myself - pay to win seems somehow dishonorable. Usually, if I suspect an OBG'd enemy around trying to instigate a 1v1, I avoid them of call in a wing-(wo)man.

CCP has at least done a little more in this respect by pushing to have the OGB's at least pay attention, which is nice, but I have a proposal to take that a little further.

Why not make the boost strength proportion to the distance (in AUs) from the booster? Using a simple exponential decay function, here are some figures:

On-grid: 100% of boosts
1 AU: 97%
2 AU: 94%
5 AU: 86%
10 AU: 73%
20 AU: 54%
30 AU: 40%
... and so on.

The function is very simple, it has been quite a few years since university for me, so I assume some others here w/ more math than I could tweak it to be more balanced, but basically it is as follows:

f(d) = 100 * (1 - r)^d
Where
f(d): Boost effectiveness percentage
d: Distance in AUs
r: Rate of decay constant

The following link is a graph depicting this with r at a vault of 0.03. Also in the graph is a linear decay for comparison purposes.

http://i.imgur.com/VSvYk7F.png

While not perfect, it would allow some semblance of satisfying both parties in this debate. I think it would also introduce new levels of meta by forcing the boosters to be more strategically managed as well as their home POSes.

What do ya'll think?

- Suli
Rroff
Antagonistic Tendencies
#2 - 2013-08-11 17:51:25 UTC  |  Edited by: Rroff
Eve isn't about fair fights :P

People will just bounce their boosters between closer safes or just not fight when at range from their booster so IMO thats a complicated change for not really accomplishing much, some edge cases aside.

One of the things I would like to see is a module that can "leach" ganglinks from a target, i.e. something like a dual functionality for the NOS modules (with more range than the energy leach) - however it would need to be a bit more predictable in use to for instance while the module is cycling if the target your NOSing is receiving armor/shield links you'd get a flat 10% increase in biggest HP buffer and say 15% increase to resistances, if they are receiving rapid deployment you'd get a 15% increase in base speed and so on.

I like this because it doesn't dramatically change how links are working in fleet fights, etc. where they were intended to be used while giving a switched on pilot the tools to somewhat level the playing field in smaller encounters where ganglinks can massively shift the balance of the fight while at the same time not being a crutch for lesser skilled and/or not so switched on pilots by nerfing a powerful tool.
Suliux
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#3 - 2013-08-11 18:01:52 UTC
Rroff wrote:
Eve isn't about fair fights :P


I think I understand what you imply by this statement, but if that is true, I wouldn't have 116,000 hits for the term balance in forums.eveonline.com: https://www.google.com/#bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&fp=6fccf2902ae42ae&q=balance+site:forums.eveonline.com


Nevertheless, I disagree - I think it would lend some additional game play and force the OGB's to be more alert forcing them to pay more attention to both alts for fear of OGB hunters.

If the OGB'd pilot is unwilling to fight outside of booster range, their loss. Even outside of d-scan range, they can get significant boosts.
monkfish1234
State War Academy
Caldari State
#4 - 2013-08-11 21:23:45 UTC
even if this solution were 'good' the technical issues it presents are the same as with just not having OGB in game. it causes a huge amount of server load based needing to know where each person is in relation to the boost giver at all times.

adding further complication with granulation of the effect would make the issue even worse.

so really before this could even be considered for quality it is a no on the technical front.