Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Putting an idea that came out of a different thread into it's own:

Problem:
... Multithreading the Eve solar system code will not really solve the problem. Every time they've increased node capacity, players have piled on load until it breaks again. Eve has gone from 20v20 killing a server to 4,000 man blobs killing a server. If they increase capacity another 10x/node, players will increase load 12x and complain. Rinse and repeat.

Solution:
Unless Eve devs get something that can handle 30,000-60,000 users on one node, they are better off changing the problem and providing gameplay incentives to NOT pile blobs into a system. Something long the lines of "if we control adjacent systems, both fleets gain a better bonus than if they are all in one system." A player generated incursion style mechanic is one way to do this.

Incentive for top brass: So an alliance commander with 2,000 people at his disposal would WANT to split his forces on adjacent systems to give them all a boost. Defenders would WANT to attack each of these adjacent systems to get a similar boost or deny the enemy the boost. Smaller side skirmishes can contribute to an assault . This way you induce invasion waves spread out on a battlefront instead of every man invading Normandy on the same 10 foot wide section of beach. Players can still blob if they want to though.

Incentive for players themselves: The other reason people pile into a system is killmails. Ideally if you get on a direct killmail attacking/defending a side skirmish (i.e. you are somehow contributing to the incursion effect), you share in all the fleet killmails for the assault.

Otherwise everyone will pile on whatever system will get them the capital ship killmail anyway.

By all means devs should continue to tweak server performance, but by adding good player driven reasons to broaden the scope of conflict we can not only help the problem, but also create interesting new strategic gameplay. Alliance commanders would have new options to plan an assault more carefully and use the star map more like a chess board.

Many thanks to Corraidhin Farsaidh for making this idea better.

Actually, distributed local processing would probably solve the problem if they could recode the engine to deal with it. The technology is heading towards increased number of cores rather than increase in individual core speed. The current issue is that the technology isn't increasing with player demand. If they could use multiple cores per node the technology would be improving with the player demands a lot better than it is now.

For example, for anyone who've heard of Cray, currently a Cray supercomputer wouldn't help CCP because like all supercomputers it's massive processing isn't supplied by a single super-powerful processor core but by hundreds (to thousands, I believe) of cores.

There are already systems out there with plenty of processing power. Until CCP recode the engine to be able to utilise multiple cores there really isn't a lot they can do about this. They're unlikely to try to reduce the amount of people who can fight in an individual battle considering that's one of EVE's selling points.

The other potential is to build (or have built more likely) a virtualisation platform that sits between the hardware and the OS which aggregates all the processor cores on the physical piece of hardware and passes that to the OS as a single core. This is probably significantly more difficult that just recoding the EVE engine, however.

And to force players to use this play style Kirluin suggest, CCP could implement following additional game mechanic.

If a system reach a critical mass of ship masses and TIDI goes below 20% (or reach 10%),
a timer for a Black Hole in the system starts.

Players now have the choice:
- stay in the System - and when timer is over and Black Hole is born, all ships will become pulled into and destroyed.
- leave the System immediate to reduce the critical mass and stop the timer

Instead of a Black Hole another solution may be a Wormhole with extreme gravity.
Which pulls the ships inside and they reappear in a random system somewhere in the Galaxy (Null Sec only or another WH).

Thing is this can be done now, but its not.

What I saw way back in IT/NC (no dot) wartime.

NC hired PL to hit delve. this caused IT to split forces and do jc ops to protect resources there. Less people on front so push ops put on hold. Basically its on the crews to either hire or send own peeps to force the jc ops.


Or the HW- fuster cluck. Whether IT spin doctoring or planned while most of all sides cuaght up in the week of node issue crap there was another IT fleet out there crashing sov in other parts of nc space. IIRC sov was removed in a few systems to shut down a decent section of NC's jb network. Granted this did not work out well (IT withdrew eventually) but premise showed some promise.


If crews are happy to slam heads in the same system that really is a leadership issue really, not mechanics.


Also worth noting this bonus idea probably won't go very far. CCP has a long memory. Some WH empires have used wh system bonus to great advantage in the past. I forget the wh crew and what wh effect they used but it made them damn near impossible to remove even if you really wanted too. Both sides in theory have access to the same wh effect. As defenders however they had the upper hand in placement for max effect right off the bat.

I want to say something about uber range or power on sr guns like blasters that made storming that wh entrance suicidal for all intents and purposes. CCP rebalanced this effect in time. Don't think they got busted for exploit but that may be due to the fact imo ccp only pulls the exploit card when they can't fix the issue with code imo (i.e. the recent new version of pos bowling ccp advised on in recent months.....they jsut can't kill pos bowling so exploit it becomes whenever it shows its face again lol).

thank you...memory gets hazy as the years pile up lol

there are far more easier approaches to deblob
why do people blob? because its easy to do so, they have the tools to control large amount of ppl with relatively low effort
take away that comfort und there are more chances that the fight will be more dynamic

e.g.
- reduce fleet size to 50
results in more FCs needed, movement is bit harder, more communication needed, mistakes will be made, chances that fights will be stretched through more systems or at least on several grids in one system

some kind of these approaches will also balance the low vs high skilled players
if fleetzise is only 50, suddenly you need 5 times more FCs
a controled way how you comunicate etc.

a well-practised team will be good, some random team will be bad
and not who controls the most sentrys one clickfest

No - people will just use external tools instead. You cant 'limit what people can do' by capping/removing tools - instead you MUST incentivise people to change behavior.

you have to look at it from another perspective

it does not matter if you call the person FC, alt of something or if he is in FC position or just squadmember
fact is someone has to do it, aka give you warpins, call targets, tell you what todo

its harder to get 1000 individuals coordinated if they have to do it on their own
than that one person is doing it for anyone else

1000 individuals will do mistakes
if only one player controls everything there will be no mistakes, no dynamic

its the same with the drone assign issue
with drones assigned to one player, there are no mistakes of fleetmembers because there skill is not relevant
if everyone has to shoot on his own, there is room for mistakes, delays, km whoring, whatever

and the same counts for the number of fleets
there is a diffrence if you only have to control one fleet or if you have to coordinate 50 fleets
It adds room for dynamic, chaos


ofc it will not totaly change everything but its a small step into the direction that blops dont have to be more efficient than smaller fleets

but the goal should be to add dynamic into the game and not stagnation

Current engagement already have up to 10 fleets on each side. Its ano brainer to double that for any of these organizations.