Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Visuals
Drone objects would be replaced a swarm object. New drones being added into the swarm would disappear into it. Drones leaving would reappear and come out. Remember iteration.

Phase I
Small, med, large, and HED-GP size graphic objects for swarms. From a server perspective it's one object in space. From a client aspect same thing. Once the drone mass obtained a certain level(size) the graphic type would change.

Phase II
Same as before but now change the swarm to look like its generally composition. So it they are mostly warrior two you should see warrior twos. On the client have an option to use phase I or II graphic setting.

Phase III - wish
Have every actual drone present in the swarm. The animators and AI folks just keeled over when reading this.

How do you interact with it?
Now that we have our swarm concept down how do other people interact with your swarm?

The swarm is a mass of little components and need to be treat like one instead of a solid object. The swarm object would need to track its position. Not just the center but it's hit box to interact all 3D effects.

Example if you bomb a swarm of drones the server needs to figure out what percentage of the drones could be hit and apply damage appropriately.

Firing on the swarm, again the swarm is an entity so there would only be one object to lock up. However it is made of many parts. Just as in with shoals wounded drones would move to the middle keeping them safer. High Alpha and AOE damage would be more efficient at killing swarms.

How are Drone swarms controlled?
Drone swarms would be controlled by a capsuleer in a ship fitted with a Drone Swarm Controller Module(DSC). This would allow a pilot to take control of drones owned by other players and form them into a swarm. This pilot would then control the swarm.

DSC Module ( x=TBD)

• High-slot fitting (CPU x PG x) Cap Usage
• Interferes with cloaking while active
• Any ship can fit

DSC Variations

• Tech 1 - allows for control of T1 drones
• Tech 2 - allows for control of T2 drones
• Small, Med, Large, XL - drone bandwidth caps

Gangs and fleets will want to use different tactics with drone swarms. A smaller size gang might have 4-10 people in it and only have one person controlling drones. Fitting two DSCs to his ship he could control offensive drones and logi drones in separate swarms.

For large scale fleets they might have one Swarm Controller or multiple depending on their tactics. Give the options to the players and let them decide how to use it.

Side note: An effect on the ship would be present for the enemy to identify the pilot running the DSC. I expect large fleets to have dummy DSC ships to hid the which one is controlling the swarm currently and to have backups.

DSC Riggs

• Tech 1 - less of a bonus
• Tech 2 - more of a bonus
• DSC bandwidth Increase
• DSC Formation Algorithms - time it takes for drones to enter or leave swarm
• DSC Control Range Augmentation - control range

Ship bonuses
Thematically command ships make sense, they are force multipliers. Whether it's a new ship or a role bonus can be determined later.

Drones and fighters/bombers should be different. I want my Eve-VR fighter clones launching out a carrier someday.

Skills
Rigging skills
Drone skills - Formation Algorithms, Control range, Bandwidth limits, DSC core

The new drone skills should be based on requirements of the existing ones. DSC core requires drone v etc. specifics of this can be decided later.

How does one form?
There are three parts to getting a swarm going. Objects to carry the drones to the battlefield, the drones themselves, and something to control them. I use term “objects” specifically because I have some mischievous ideas on some pretty wicked deployables and objects that exist in space. Along with possibilities of bring back the battle badger. Phase III for that stuff.

Example
5 ships jump into a system 4 of them deploy their drones into space. The fifth pilot activates their DSC and now the 4 other pilots can assign drones to him. The drones take moment(defined by formation algorithm skill and base number) to change frequencies or complete authorization request(thematics) before zooming off toward the DSC controller ship. The fifth pilot clicks the create swarm button and the drones form a swirling vortex of doom or logi goodness in front of the controlling ship. The initial formation of the swarm should take time based on the DSC's owners skills. Once the initial shoal is up new drones being added in only are hit delay before they become active in the shoal and disappear inside of it.

The DSC pilot can dissolve the swarm and send all drones back home.

Side Note: The the time sinks above are trades for having a Drone Swarm controller. These numbers can be assigned later.

What happens if....?

• f you die the drones leave the swarm and go inert
• If you leave the fleet drones disengage and come back to you orbit
• If the DSC dies/jumps/warps all drones are returned to owner
• If you jump/warp the drones disengage and become inert
• If you leave fleet the drones become inert[/i][/i]

Side Note: All drones entering and leaving a swarm have a time sync, trade offs to manual control.

DSC Controls Available to the Capsuleer

• Create
• Dissolve
• Pass control
• Attack
• Protect

Drone Swarm Actions
Swarms generally affect their surroundings on mass. The drone swarm would be able to “Attack” Or “Protect” multiple targets. The DSC would allow the swarm to have in essence multiple “Weapons Or Remote Repairs”. The DSC could narrow salvo them or spread them out. The different size class of the DSC module would allow for multiple actions. Small is X, Med is Y(greater then X), etc….

I do have 1 slight modification to your suggestion.

On when you as a player die with your drones in a swarm, they drop out and go inert. Perhaps have them go inert as a scoopable swarm of drones sitting nice and close together.
This way there's only 1 object left on field after you die rather than 5 (or more for carriers and such)

better still is to encourage players to have better options than blob tactics by having goals spread across multiple systems. If someone is to gain sov over a system they not only need to claim whatever they do currently but also control all gates leading into the system for example.

I would also limit drone assist to (drones +advanced drones interfacing - any of their own drones in space) for any one pilot.

However...I do like the idea of drones swarming...although I'm slightly evil in that if a group of drones reach swarm proportion they take on their own control and may attack *anyone* within range....and this should include abandoned drones too...a group starts abandoning lots of sentries around them? They'd better run fast!

CCP would have to build a new drone for every possible combination of current drones, across all races, sizes and meta levels. I'm not sure how many combinations there are, but it sounds like a lot of work.

perhaps not, it would be procedurally generated depending on the number of drones added to the swarm, and similarly it woudl drop the drones as some are killed off and such.


To vesan, that could always be !!FUN!!. But possibly exploitable. Fly a swarmship to a belt, have someone drop drones and control them. Then have them leave (effectively dumping that swarm of drones to go inert), and leave them so when miners come by, rather than regular beltrats being there waiting to attack, theres a swarm of 5 warrior 2s which are significantly more dangerous than a few beltrats. And ofcourse this could be scaled up and traps of drones could be placed on gates and such.

@Linkxsc162534
Making the drones swarm as one scoopable item would change the dynamic of the game a little to much. You remove the time investment to scoop the drones and the ability for multiple players play loot pinta with inert drones.

I do like the the idea of having the drones going inert with the scatter mechanic used in relic sites. They get kicked out of the swarm. Though it might cause problems if it happened on mass, so just appearing statically in space would be fine.

@Anthar & @Enya
Aye, it is a lot of work. Just like ship rebalancing and the rework of crime watch some things take time to do them right. Not only do I want the lag improved, but to enhance the drone the mechanic. People are already using drone assist to make swarms in the game and it has been there for quite a while. Removing functionality of he game without give a replacement would leave a whole in the game.

It's all about iteration. CCP would not need to create new assets for every drone or race. Start out making three generic assets for a drone swarm. Small, medium, and large. When you hover over the swarm or Overview it would tell you the composition.

Latter on they could uses the drones as is and work on creating a dynamic animation using the assets in space.

When you have a ton of drones flying around do you generally zoom in on them and look at each? The overview or seeing the visual indicators(brackets/colors) on the screen tells you what you need to know mostly.

The more technology improves the more swarm like they can make it. Dynamic movement of the swarm as it responds the environment around it would rock. I don't expect it now.