Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I don't think it is enough to address the larger issue with power projection.

Hello Community,

in the german forums of EVE (Eveger.de) there is a discussion about how to change the projection of power too. mainly in a way small alliances will suffer far less than big alliances.

Status quo

1. Big alliances can be anywhere in EVE (almost) instantly.
2. Small alliances get outnumbered easily althogh they might have a good lineup.
3. Due to TiDi battles can be reeinforced hours after the initial contact. In conjunction with 1. it makes it worse.

I just want to second this Idea and provide some input in that matter from my point of view.

Additional to Marlona's idea, which I think does provide a good base and is justifyable storywise, I had some things I'd like to bring up.

1. Spoolup-timer for Cynos.
- The timer kicks in as soon a bridge or jumpdrive has locked into a cyno and increases with range. An idea would be 2min/ljh for Jumpbridges and 3min/lj for Titanbridges. For that time the Cyno must be alive otherwise the fuel for the spool is lost ( lets say Spooltime 2minutes. after 1minute contact to cyno is lost, 50% of the fuel is lost)

2. Masslimit like WH's on Bridges. Might be interesting in cionjunction with the spoolup. Pretty self-explaining.
3. Supercaps get a even longer spoolup (5min/LJ) and cooldown (x hours/LJ).

Why all that you might ask?
Cynos totally kill the risk vs reward scheme usually used in Eve. They provide little risk (misclicks not counted :P ) with great reward (reeinforcing a losing battle almost instantly, beeing able to move whole fleets from front A to B within seconds)
A overexpansion like the roman empire suffered from does not really exist. Weak fronts can be reeinforced fast and without risk. Medium sized attacks are futile due to it. "Weak flanks" are not really there and if they can be reeinforced instantly.

I would like to see bridges in a strategical, but not tactical element in the first place anyways.

So what would change with my proposal?

1. Fleets have to splitted up a bit. The more space you hold the more they have to.
2. Fleets might be even devided into a western, eastern, northern (names just to show) theatre.
3. Reeinforcment from "everywhere" is not possible due to the PPP limitation.
4. FC's have to think about using the instant travel but sacrificing mobility afterwards or use gates to keep up the mobility but take the risk gates provide and the slowness of ships.
5. Intel on fleetmovement is now more vital.
6. Weakflanks provide an excellent opportunity to small/medium alliances or coalitions to hit the enemy hard.
7. More pewpew.
8. New tactics viable.

You are partly right and party wrong about this. An alliance setup well in terms if defensive and offensive can still fight that hard. With the PPP the ships are then bound at this location or close to that due to the jump. They still can use gates to slowboat to somewhere else. Regarding BR5, the battle lasted for 21h. Enough for any subcap and cap to actually slowboat there from almost everswhere. In 21h you also gain 10,5 PPP, letting you still jump a bit (or keeping it for extraction).

If an alliance or caolition doesnt have a fleet at their borders then they will pay the price.
They will just need enough power to hold up the enemy untill reeinforcements arrive - either way gatetravel or jumping.
Now you have to decide is it important because you wont hold any longer? Jump.
Can the fleet hold up long enough? Slowboat.
Adds a new layer of tactical and strategical decisionmaking to the game.

Just delete all caps or delete jump drives and let them take gates :D

The problem is, when you make stuff "harder" on resources you actually make it worse for small groups not for big entitiies.
Goons etc. wont have any issue with bigger "costs" because they can afford it.



No, the PPP's are not linked to ships, but to characters. As I said you have the choice of jumping with your ship/clone or slowboating. When your PPP pool is depleted you have to pod yourself or slowboat.




Thats where tactics and strategics come into play. Manage your fleet smart and actually do not claim more teritorry than you can actually defend with your fleet(s).
At the moment a lot of sov is held but deserted. Held just for prestige. If you cant defend it with the changes other groups will take the chance and kick your butt to get a piece of the cake themself.




Then you simply drop the cyno 2 jumps out. Congratz. You've won nothing. People can still jump instantly where they want to -1, -2 jumps and slowboat 1 or 2 gates.


Big battles are cool and stuff but we reached a limit in hardware and serverload. Unless you enjoy 21hr of slow pewpew. I for my part dont. The current system actually supports and promotes the building of powerblocks because mass and number counts. You can be as smart as possible. The current solution to any thread ist "blobb". blobb from everywhere if neccissary. The only possibility to "counter" it is - "blob m0ar"

Thats an exceptional idea. +1

not harder on resources, on time the PPP is making a resource constraint by forcing micromanagement of fuel gauges, structures are simply carried in the hold and deployed - the cyno has a charge up and is not an instant trigger.



and characters fly ships - thus the richer/larger alliances that have more toons in more ships have more fuel to spend between them - thus can use the bridging mechanic more often.



brilliant rule for single player RTS not good for MMO - peeps need time and space to play thier own game - if you hold them constantly on stand by your pilots burn out, quit the alliance or at worst the game - when considering mechanics for games that rely on large scale cooperative elements these things take equal measure with functionality constraints - something the PPP concept is not factoring.

current null sec mechanics mean often 1 person is capable of consuming all the PVE one system can provide and 15-20 mining ships the industry - the quantity of space and the amount of people it can support are vastly disproportionate.



EXACTLY - the fleet gets close enough but not onto the targets, still caught on gates by defenders - carriers SC's titans cannot field through gates need to be landed in the system directly via cyno...which takes time to establish, defenders get early warning, attackers have to fight to get heavy assets into play - managers still get stress free strategic troop movement - exactly the aim.



except if you can't attack cuz the exertion isn't worth the effort you won't and your power block will just sit still and stagnate - see Northern coalition - read the above statements - see what the CFC and PL both did during BR - they kept local to 3k pilots co op to prevent server death, they split forces to the surrounds and fought there too - we are learning to operate within our constraints - the whole point of an alliance is to be a powerblock - that's the purpose of them.

blob warfare happens on all levels - if the other side has nastier stuff than you you have to get nastier stuff - it's a product of education and risk assessment - you don't fight when you're outmatched so you get more power to compensate and thus the snowball rolls - funnily enough people try to win while avoiding loss, something about self preservation.

again, you're focusing on extremes when you do not need to - there is no need or call for it, a simpler much more effective solution has presented itself - pause for a while, and give it some proper consideration - use cases help immensely.

Assuming the reasoning behind this thread is to prevent and or dissolve the impending Blue Donut by reducing the ability to project power. I have couple more of points i would like to add to this.

First of all. I want to make the point that the reason power projection is so strong is not because of the ability to move assests. But it is instead because of the extreme Ease of moving assets. That is to say, there are no stipulations in jumping to a cyno. All it requires is that the cyno is in your fleet.

Another way we could put diminishing returns on power projection is to require your cyno to be a part of your alliance or, even more extreme, corp.

Instead of one person being able to control all logistics you would have to dole out that responsibility to more people and things would get quite a bit harder and less coherent. This would reduce the synergistic nature of Blocks. It would also reduce the safety of move ops because you'd have to advertise who you were in a system you were jumping to before you jump. Currently neutral alts are used extensively for safety in anonymity.

Of course, again, the local debate will come up with forcing people to advertise themselves before jumping. Also you can get past this if you just pile everyone into one alliance, then you'd still have the blue donut.

Another way to reduce sov holding ability would be to, of course, remove automation. Currently it takes minimal effort to hold space. As long as you keep your wallet funded the bills will pay themselves. If people have to actively maintain sov in each system there will be a limit to how much one person can do. It will require more people to maintain it and they'll require an amount of trust to keep that sov maintained. This would prevent alliances from taking up more space than they can actively maintain.

And yes i know it that this is one of those "EvE Online my 2nd job" type of mechanics, but that's part of it. There should be limits to how much of the sandbox you can claim based on the effort you're willing and able to invest constantly.

Both of these things you can directly compare to the Drone Assist Nerf. What one person used to be able to do must now be doled out to multiple people to attain similar but never as much effectiveness as there was before.

The reason Drone Assist is OP is because it compresses the effort of 1000 people into the effort of 1 person. The same goes with Capital Jumping Logistics and with Sov upkeep. What keeps up with the systems for 1000 people or provides the effort for 1000 people to move is compressed into 1 person. And by the transitive property it means they are also OP.

You are deployed to the far side of the game. A friendly titan is tackled back home or it is invaded. Everyone changes their medical clone back home and suicide pods there. All without burning any PPP making the deployment so far away less strategic.

With the death clone tied in, they can still pod back, but everyone hopping into capitals and or immediately bridge on the enemy. It bring some balance into the equation. That make sense?

Setting up a cyno chain prior to a strategic objective is common practice. All one needs to do is log them in and get in fleet when the time comes. Done.

It's not like the cyno network is vulnerable from the time it is setup till the time you need it. You just log them off keeping the network 100% safe until you need it.