Player Features and Ideas Discussion

What you seem to be suggesting is that we make it so that webs less affect the inherent speed of the ship and rather are changed into a platform that reduces the effectiveness of prop mods by altering their mass calculations (at least partially). This is an interesting concept but I'm not entirely sure if it's a good idea, and here's why:

1) Having webs focus more on prop mods to allow faster ships to retain the advantage isn't necessarily bad. I think that, if anything, it would bring a more balanced approach to the current combat situation where once you have tackle up the tackling fleet can easily close distance. In a situation where only the prop mod is affected good flying can still affect the outcome of the fight to some extent as you would retain the ability to at least kind of keep your transversal up against slower or larger ships relying on the fast tackle. It still wouldn't be terribly effective against same-gun-size platforms (read: Destroyers) but it would help a frigate versus cruisers or cruisers vs battleships, partially, at least.

2) On the down side, it causes problems for PvE. While yes, most things are balanced around PvP capability we should consider the PvE ramifications, if only for those who run incursions. I think it's fair to say that changing webs to affect prop mods more then the speed of the ship itself would drastically reduce the ability of ships that rely on webs to apply their damage at close range to frigates and other small craft that get under their guns. This could be compensated for by having fleet mates shoot at the NPCs orbiting the ship that cannot hit thanks to the NPCs transversal, but this can already be done to an extent, and therefor does little to change webs capacity as a force multiplier, which is one of the concerns that CCP has with the current state of webs (the 90% webs in particular). It would also further solidify missile boats as the solo PvE ships of choice, and I don't think that is a particularly good thing.

This all said, CCP may very well only be concerned about the way webs multiply force in PvP, not PvE activities such as incursions. If this is the case then changing webs to primarily affect prop mods may be an effective solution. There can be no debate about it though, it would be a nerf to webs. In their current form, webs simply reduce target speed by a percentage (60% on non-bonused webs). This means that large ships can effectively use webs to stop small ships transversal and use their guns to hit them. This kind of mechanic is inherently in the larger ships favor, as the smaller engagement range of small craft requires them to get closer to their target, and inside of their web range frequently. If you combine this with boosts extending web range then suddenly small ships have no chance. And while this is not really game breaking for PvE it definitely reduces the use of small ships against large ships in PvP. If there is a demographic affected by this change, it is without a doubt solo players who take advantage of webs to kill smaller ships (i.e. the solo double web blaster fit talos).

If anything, I would be concerned that this would reduce the ability for ships to tackle ships that have over-fit ABs, as I feel that changing the mass equation would not slow a ship with a over-fit AB nearly as much as a web currently does. It would however be a slight buff to MWDs and would help enforce scrams as the hard counter to them.

Personally I don't think that we should entirely remove a webs effect on ship speed, but rather redistribute the power of the web towards this method a bit if it were to be implemented, lest it be too much of a nerf to webs. All in all though, an interesting idea, and I would love to see a number comparison if anyone feels like figuring it out (I don't really want to).

Edit: I also think it's worth adding that this is merely an analysis of webs in the context of PvE and PvP, not an analysis of the ships that use them. Whether or not ships that currently get web bonuses would need a buff to compensate for the new stats and whether or not that "homogenizes" them is an entirely different debate.

wow, this is too smart.

CCP just reduce range and strength instead.

The idea is that webs would add a multiplier to the mass part of the equation for prop mods, thus reducing their usefulness, not affect the target ships mass.

Are we sure about that? Lets think about how the prop mod actually adds speed. If it was just based off of percentage (i.e. the 135% from ABs) then over-fitting a larger AB on a ship wouldn't actually make a ship move faster then the normal sized AB, that is to say, 100mn AB wouldn't make you go any faster then a 10mn AB, it would just have higher thrust and thus push you to your maximum speed faster (more acceleration). But since we see a oversized prop mod boost your speed higher on a ship then its regular sized one we can safely assume that mass or inertia has to be taken into account with how much faster you actually go, unless we assume that every ship (or class of ships) has a specific modifier that works with or against it's particular size of prop mod. At least, that's how I see it. By all means though, if anyone has the equation and can show it to settle this then post it; the more we understand the mechanics the better we can propose changes.

Also this concept isn't my suggestion, it's the OPs.

I see how the formula works, but I don't see how that invalidates OP's suggestion (that said, I certainly read it as "increase the overall ship's mass", since "increase only the specific mass penalty applied by prop mods, and not the identical mass penalty applied by armor plates and such" is a really odd reading). OP is proposing that webs will affect the mass of their targets, which will affect the propulsion's velocity factor... which will, in fact, degrade the speed factor. Naturally, this will really quite seriously affect the speed factor of ships with oversized prop mods. That said, the OP's numbers were obviously preliminary. Given the way the formula works, it's clearly possible to assess web values which affect the mass of ships in such a way as to meaningfully impact the effect of prop mods, and the only question is what values should actually be used.



Agreed. Rebalancing webs to affect the velocity granted by prop mods more seriously than they do the unmodified velocity would be an interesting change... but modifying them to ONLY affect that velocity would be a serious nerf. I don't know if rats and such even use those calculations normally... so if the web rebalance ultimately winds up being "webs are less effective normally, but more effective only against player ships fit in a certain (albeit ubiquitous) way", the PvE crowd will whine endlessly (admittedly, they do that anyways). It'd probably help if it was more obvious when ships are and aren't using prop mods, and in particular for NPC ships of various types to have prop mods that they use for positioning advantage, against which PvE players could leverage the mass-factor-increasing properties of the new webs.

I would rather see webs reduce percentage thrust output then temper with mass that is added by propulsion modules, due to potential miss use of mass.

Another option would be to leave webs as they are, or at least try and come up with at least a single reason to change anything about them.