These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Player Features and Ideas Discussion

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
12Next page
 

Reimagining Cynos (a nerf)
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Batelle
Federal Navy Academy
#1 - 2014-03-05 16:23:38 UTC  |  Edited by: Batelle
FULL DISCLOSURE: I currently live in nullsec and this proposed change would probably benefit me personally in some small way.

EDIT: post updated to reflect feedback on specific length of timers

TL;DR: A cyno must be lit for 40s before anyone can jump/bridge to it. This can be reduced to 30s with Cynosural Field Theory level 5 (-5% per level). (30s/22.5s for covert cynos).

Fuel cost would remain on the skill or everyone would just use level-5 amounts of ozone for activation. The point is hotdropping and cynos would still be just as powerful, they'd just be slightly harder to do, and would be more interesting. Other stuff would remain similar, the timer would be communicated in some clear way.

Why 30 seconds?: I think this is the perfect amount of time. Its both sufficiently short and sufficiently long to make gameplay more interesting. Right now for most situations once the cyno is up, anything that needs to use it has already used it. 30 seconds is enough time for a very fast responder to get to the cyno and shut it down. Or to undock something that can kill it. Or to madly primary the cyno ship and kill it before the hotdrop comes. In that sense, 30is a long time. But its also a very short period of time. There's a lot of stuff that won't die in 30s. You can't form an organized response fleet in 30s. 30s is a pretty brief window to decide weather to DD that archon or not. I think this change will make for some frantic 30s periods and that's good. The point is cynos should not be instantly jumpable or bridgeable.

IMPLICATIONS:

Hot dropping and fight escalation - This is a nerf to hotdropping, plain and simple, but its not nearly such a big nerf as one might think. The main result here is that 1 alt in a ceptor/covops can no longer reliably deliver a fleet to an active battlefield with pinpoint precision. If you want to use that kind of force projection, then you need to be willing to come in off-grid or you need to bring beefier (or more) ships. If an enemy force is strong enough that you can't keep a cyno on grid, then you have to escalate the old fashioned way of bringing in subcaps first.

Cloaky Camping - Its a very slight nerf to cloaky camping that does not touch cloaking at all. In other words, cloaky camping is still possible and still effective. It only means that if you want to cloaky camp, you have to rely less on hotdrops as your deterrent. Cloaky camping will be like it was before blops were so ubiquitous. You'll have to rely on your own ship more, or on a friendly gang a few jumps out (hello ceptors). If you want to hotdrop people, its still fully possible, you'll just have to use a non-paper ship to do it. No more of this cloaky t1 frig or cloaky ceptor BS being able to provide a full deterrent. Is that such a terrible thing? requiring the camper actually use a moderately skilled pilot in an actually dangerous ship in order to be an effective deterrent?

Force projection, moving capitals, logistics - Let me start by saying that this will in no way make logistics impossible. At worst you'll have to choose your midpoints better, or occasionally change them. Having a cyno live the full duration is not some once-in-a-blue-moon event, having it live 30 seconds will not break anyone's back. But it will make cyno chains more vulnerable to disruption, which is a good thing. And its way better than stupid stuff like "1hr cooldown on jumprives" or "max 10 ly per day" and ideas like that that have been cropping up.

inb4 blops people claim the world is ending because they're too cheap to tackle a ratter with a proteus.

"**CCP is changing policy, and has asked that we discontinue the bonus credit program after November 7th. So until then, enjoy a super-bonus of 1B Blink Credit for each 60-day GTC you buy!"**

Never forget.
Juan Thang
Optimistic Wasteland Inc.
Fraternity.
#2 - 2014-03-05 16:39:11 UTC
I think this is an awesome idea, and deals with a lot of aspects that can be really annoying/unfair to players.

Maybe not that long as a cyno ship no matter what size it is can be killed pretty quick as its sat still while the cyno is lit.
I think 20 seconds down to 10 on level 5, so each level taking 2.5seconds off the "charge" time.

+1
Liam Inkuras
Furnace
Thermodynamics
#3 - 2014-03-05 17:02:18 UTC
+1

I wear my goggles at night.

Any spelling/grammatical errors come complimentary with my typing on a phone
Batelle
Federal Navy Academy
#4 - 2014-03-05 17:13:31 UTC
Forgot to include, psychological games with lighting a cyno before you need it. Cyno's already can work as a bluff right now, but not so much given that anything that can come through will come through.

10s does seem a bit too short. You can barely lock a ship in that time, much less kill it. Its too short in the context of someone trying to hotdrop a 10 man gatecamp, for instance. Also regardless of what the final time should be at level 5, I think -5% per level is good.

PS I'm relatively confident that the only reason cynos work instantly now is because when CCP introduced caps they didn't know how to associate two timers with a module.

"**CCP is changing policy, and has asked that we discontinue the bonus credit program after November 7th. So until then, enjoy a super-bonus of 1B Blink Credit for each 60-day GTC you buy!"**

Never forget.
Alvatore DiMarco
Capricious Endeavours Ltd
#5 - 2014-03-05 17:14:51 UTC
The only thing about this would be the impact it would have on JF travel, but that falls under the "necessary collateral damage" and "HTFU, JFs aren't solo ships anyway" categories.

+10 for this idea. It might even put an end to 5% of the "nerf cloaking camping nao!!!11!!1!oneone" threads.
Flyinghotpocket
Small Focused Memes
Ragequit Cancel Sub
#6 - 2014-03-05 17:19:33 UTC
+1

Amarr Militia Representative - A jar of nitro
Bertrand Butler
Cras es Noster
#7 - 2014-03-05 17:25:01 UTC  |  Edited by: Bertrand Butler
Concept sounds good, I'd really put the numbers a little lower though. The main problem is instant power projection/multiplication on field, not the ability of someone to get away from a point as the immobilized hunter waits for the drop.

Before you factor in the CFT skill, I think 40s base for regular and 30s base for covert would be more balanced.
Batelle
Federal Navy Academy
#8 - 2014-03-05 17:30:08 UTC  |  Edited by: Batelle
Bertrand Butler wrote:
Concept sounds good, I'd really put the numbers a little lower though. The main problem is instant power projection/multiplication on field, not the ability of someone to get away from a point as the immobilized hunter waits for the drop.


Indeed. The intention of the timer is not to allow you to creep out of tackle range.

Quote:
Before you factor in the CFT skill, I think 40s base for regular and 30s base for covert would be more balanced.


Sounds good. OP updated to reflect this.

"**CCP is changing policy, and has asked that we discontinue the bonus credit program after November 7th. So until then, enjoy a super-bonus of 1B Blink Credit for each 60-day GTC you buy!"**

Never forget.
Swiftstrike1
Swiftstrike Incorporated
#9 - 2014-03-05 18:33:55 UTC
I counter with this proposal: Jump drives and bridges should take 40s to "spool up" before they activate. The effect will be the same at the cyno end of things. The cyno will go up and then there will be a delay before anything happens.

There would be a slight difference on the other end though. Capitals would have to be vulnerable to getting pointed during the spool up time - they could not come out of siege/triage and instantly jump away. Similarly, capital ships could not undock and instantly jump away without ever being vulnerable to being pointed.

Casual Incursion runner & Faction Warfare grunt, ex-Wormholer, ex-Nullbear.
Anhenka
The New Federation
Sigma Grindset
#10 - 2014-03-05 18:48:45 UTC  |  Edited by: Anhenka
-1, Anything that prevents fight escalation is something I am greatly against. 30 seconds, even 15 seconds, is more than enough time for a fleet to blap just about any non carrier cyno. It prevents many uses of tactical escalation in fleet combat to bring in triage or dreadnaughts at the correct distances, nerfs to people willing to deploy high value ships to gain an advantage.

From a massive fleet standpoint, unless you are using a carrier cyno to cyno in more ships, it forces you to cyno in caps off grid to prevent instant blappage of the cyno, at which case a single dictor can run over and cockblock hem from entering the fight. This prevents cynoing in Blap or sniper dreads at the correct ranges. Any stationary unsupported subcap, even a double plated deadspace tanked Proteus is going to die in less than 30 seconds when the full fleet is order to blap the cyno.

As such, a long delay timer on the cyno is a massive buff to those defending a particular system, even when not cynojammed. It's another benefit handed to the side that already has an overwhelming timer based home field advantage.

It also largely removes the ability to covops drop, forcing that only ship suitable for using as a forward Blops scout to be a heavily tanked ECCM'd cap booster fit combat t3 that wont die to 30-40 seconds of a very high dps ratter or carrier pounding on it, or a ratting carrier from nueting it out and leaving, or a 13ish drone carrier from siccing 32.5 points of EC-900's on it, jamming it, and leaving.

It also means that any carrier that just deploys a depot when he starts ratting can ignore any blops tackler that decloaks by simply fitting a half dozen stabs and leaving, or a half dozen nuets and nueting his point out and leaving, or both, since a single ship cannot both cyno and continue bumping for the much less than 30 seconds it requires the carrier to refit stabs and leave.

TLDR: Just because you want to be much safer from someone blopsing you while ratting is not a suitable reason to beat large swaths of fleet and gang combat with a stick. Nullsec ratting is already amazingly safe for the people paying attention.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I have lived, and ratted, and blopsed, and used capitals in nullsec, both for PvE and PvP. The OP's previous proposal would both buff and harm varying playstyles of mine.
Batelle
Federal Navy Academy
#11 - 2014-03-05 18:53:01 UTC
Swiftstrike1 wrote:
I counter with this proposal: Jump drives and bridges should take 40s to "spool up" before they activate. The effect will be the same at the cyno end of things. The cyno will go up and then there will be a delay before anything happens.

There would be a slight difference on the other end though. Capitals would have to be vulnerable to getting pointed during the spool up time - they could not come out of siege/triage and instantly jump away. Similarly, capital ships could not undock and instantly jump away without ever being vulnerable to being pointed.


Devil's in the details. Not sure which "solution" i'd prefer, but here's some of the differences:

The spool up would need to affect all jumping, not just caps, and all bridging. My proposal wouldn't affect cyno beacons. Furthermore if a cyno is destroyed, the cap would have to spool up again, not so in my proposal. Mine wouldn't involve caps getting trapped in stations either.

Plus, we asked for spool up years ago and it had support but never happened, maybe ccp would be willing to do this instead.

"**CCP is changing policy, and has asked that we discontinue the bonus credit program after November 7th. So until then, enjoy a super-bonus of 1B Blink Credit for each 60-day GTC you buy!"**

Never forget.
Eve Amada
Lightspeed Enterprises
Goonswarm Federation
#12 - 2014-03-05 19:07:29 UTC
-1

This is totally a one sided option. You are nerfing one group of players over heavily buffing another group of players.

Nothing in your explanation leads to this being a fair nerf for both sides of gameplay.
Gizznitt Malikite
Agony Unleashed
Agony Empire
#13 - 2014-03-05 19:33:28 UTC

First off, this idea has been proposed many times before. The common name is Cyno Spoolup Timers.

To be frank, you should go read those threads to gain an understanding of the pro's and con's of cyno spoolup timers.

Now, in general I support the cyno spoolup timer, but I would add some caveats:

1.) I think the spool-up should be on the "bridge" side.
♦ Ships with their own J-Drives (capitals and BO's) should be able to immediately jump to the cyno beacon.
♦ Ships being bridged should take time to traverse the "jump tunnel" proportional to their mass. Frigates and inties should land on field very fast (10s), while cruiser hulls should take longer (20-30s) and BS hulls should take even longer to arrive (40-50s).

2.) Covert Bridging should happen much faster than Titan Bridging.


You might ask why I suggest what I do:

1.) I think triage carriers should not be hindered from entering the battlefield. Making them wait 30 seconds is a bit too much in my opinion, and see no reason to hinder their arrival.

2.) Having ships arrive in waves is interesting and creates lots of engagement options, especially since the "fragile" ships will generally arrive on field first. The more competent bridge groups may stagger their jump activation to try and arrive together.
Batelle
Federal Navy Academy
#14 - 2014-03-05 21:12:07 UTC  |  Edited by: Batelle
Eve Amada wrote:

This is totally a one sided option. You are nerfing one group of players over heavily buffing another group of players.
Nothing in your explanation leads to this being a fair nerf for both sides of gameplay.

Which "sides" are you referring to? Everyone uses cynos, and a lot of people that hotdrop/blops also rat and fly in big fleets.

Anhenka wrote:
-1, Anything that prevents fight escalation is something I am greatly against. 30 seconds, even 15 seconds, is more than enough time for a fleet to blap just about any non carrier cyno. It prevents many uses of tactical escalation in fleet combat to bring in triage or dreadnaughts at the correct distances, nerfs to people willing to deploy high value ships to gain an advantage.


The flipside is that instant cynos make grid control irrelevant, as 1 man anywhere becomes a fleet (from anywhere). More ships exploding is good, but no one blows up if people aren't willing to deploy caps in the first place because of the massive deterrent of a superior force within jump range. A force that will show up with pinpoint accuracy, delivered by an npc alt, with no ability for counter or interdiction.

Quote:
From a massive fleet standpoint, unless you are using a carrier cyno to cyno in more ships, it forces you to cyno in caps off grid to prevent instant blappage of the cyno, at which case a single dictor can run over and cockblock hem from entering the fight. This prevents cynoing in Blap or sniper dreads at the correct ranges. Any stationary unsupported subcap, even a double plated deadspace tanked Proteus is going to die in less than 30 seconds when the full fleet is order to blap the cyno.

As such, a long delay timer on the cyno is a massive buff to those defending a particular system, even when not cynojammed. It's another benefit handed to the side that already has an overwhelming timer based home field advantage.
Good points, especially regarding dreads, but it just means you need to get your subcaps in first, and/or use multiple cynos, neither of which are new tactics. Plus we already got that mobile cynojammer thingy. Also keeps subcaps relevant, which is good. These are tactical challenges, and they are surmountable.

Quote:
It also largely removes the ability to covops drop, forcing that only ship suitable for using as a forward Blops scout to be a heavily tanked ECCM'd cap booster fit combat t3 that wont die to 30-40 seconds of a very high dps ratter or carrier pounding on it, or a ratting carrier from nueting it out and leaving, or a 13ish drone carrier from siccing 32.5 points of EC-900's on it, jamming it, and leaving.

It also means that any carrier that just deploys a depot when he starts ratting can ignore any blops tackler that decloaks by simply fitting a half dozen stabs and leaving, or a half dozen nuets and nueting his point out and leaving, or both, since a single ship cannot both cyno and continue bumping for the much less than 30 seconds it requires the carrier to refit stabs and leave.

There's a lot of ships that can tank a ratter for 30 seconds. Tanking a t3/recon for 22.5s isn't a big deal, it just means you can't use frigs. Swapping out 12 slots for neuts and wcs takes more than just a few clicks. And you can tackle any fully-stabbed carrier with 3 slots. But yes, you've pointed out quite well that foolproof blops dropping is still 100% achievable with the right ship choice and target choice. I'm not trying to get rid of it, nor am I proposing that getting away should be foolproof. But right now your ship doesn't need to have teeth, your character doesn't need to have much sp, and you still provide a complete deterrent because you are a 100% effective cyno ship. PS, people thinking they have a chance to get away will lead to more targets.

Plus if tackling someone is so hard, you can just afk-camp with TWO characters... (oh no the plex prices)

Quote:
TLDR: Just because you want to be much safer from someone blopsing you while ratting is not a suitable reason to beat large swaths of fleet and gang combat with a stick. Nullsec ratting is already amazingly safe for the people paying attention.

This is reasonable to say if you judge all the side effects to be negative. I specifically considered how this would affect pvp (small gang and larger scale) and judged it to be positive. I'm certainly not so naive as to bring a self-serving idea to F&I without thinking specifically of the implications to other areas of gameplay.

Nullsec ratting is very safe for people paying attention, but currently no amount of paying attention will make a difference if you decide to rat with a cloaker in system. Cloaking doesn't need adjusting, but at the very least we should have a system where paying attention counts for something.

"**CCP is changing policy, and has asked that we discontinue the bonus credit program after November 7th. So until then, enjoy a super-bonus of 1B Blink Credit for each 60-day GTC you buy!"**

Never forget.
Danika Princip
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#15 - 2014-03-05 23:18:03 UTC
Doesn't a nerf to hotdropping actively hurt smaller guys who are picking on bigger groups?

Why is that good? Why do stupid supers and even dumb regular caps need the help this brings? Why should pipebombing be removed as a tactic? Hell, you even realise it's a nerf to logistics, but you don't explain why that's a good thing...
Arya Regnar
Darwins Right Hand
#16 - 2014-03-06 00:07:44 UTC
Danika Princip wrote:
Doesn't a nerf to hotdropping actively hurt smaller guys who are picking on bigger groups?

Why is that good? Why do stupid supers and even dumb regular caps need the help this brings? Why should pipebombing be removed as a tactic? Hell, you even realise it's a nerf to logistics, but you don't explain why that's a good thing...

What I see is a massive buff to anyone that hated cloaky afk covert cynos.
It's just making nullsec safer for basically everyone.
I don't really go there much but if this goes through I wont have a reason to visit at all.

Carebears gon grind.

EvE-Mail me if you need anything.
Nariya Kentaya
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#17 - 2014-03-06 01:13:23 UTC
Batelle wrote:
FULL DISCLOSURE: I currently live in nullsec and this proposed change would probably benefit me personally in some small way.

EDIT: post updated to reflect feedback on specific length of timers

TL;DR: A cyno must be lit for 40s before anyone can jump/bridge to it. This can be reduced to 30s with Cynosural Field Theory level 5 (-5% per level). (30s/22.5s for covert cynos).

Fuel cost would remain on the skill or everyone would just use level-5 amounts of ozone for activation. The point is hotdropping and cynos would still be just as powerful, they'd just be slightly harder to do, and would be more interesting. Other stuff would remain similar, the timer would be communicated in some clear way.

Why 30 seconds?: I think this is the perfect amount of time. Its both sufficiently short and sufficiently long to make gameplay more interesting. Right now for most situations once the cyno is up, anything that needs to use it has already used it. 30 seconds is enough time for a very fast responder to get to the cyno and shut it down. Or to undock something that can kill it. Or to madly primary the cyno ship and kill it before the hotdrop comes. In that sense, 30is a long time. But its also a very short period of time. There's a lot of stuff that won't die in 30s. You can't form an organized response fleet in 30s. 30s is a pretty brief window to decide weather to DD that archon or not. I think this change will make for some frantic 30s periods and that's good. The point is cynos should not be instantly jumpable or bridgeable.

IMPLICATIONS:

Hot dropping and fight escalation - This is a nerf to hotdropping, plain and simple, but its not nearly such a big nerf as one might think. The main result here is that 1 alt in a ceptor/covops can no longer reliably deliver a fleet to an active battlefield with pinpoint precision. If you want to use that kind of force projection, then you need to be willing to come in off-grid or you need to bring beefier (or more) ships. If an enemy force is strong enough that you can't keep a cyno on grid, then you have to escalate the old fashioned way of bringing in subcaps first.

Cloaky Camping - Its a very slight nerf to cloaky camping that does not touch cloaking at all. In other words, cloaky camping is still possible and still effective. It only means that if you want to cloaky camp, you have to rely less on hotdrops as your deterrent. Cloaky camping will be like it was before blops were so ubiquitous. You'll have to rely on your own ship more, or on a friendly gang a few jumps out (hello ceptors). If you want to hotdrop people, its still fully possible, you'll just have to use a non-paper ship to do it. No more of this cloaky t1 frig or cloaky ceptor BS being able to provide a full deterrent. Is that such a terrible thing? requiring the camper actually use a moderately skilled pilot in an actually dangerous ship in order to be an effective deterrent?

Force projection, moving capitals, logistics - Let me start by saying that this will in no way make logistics impossible. At worst you'll have to choose your midpoints better, or occasionally change them. Having a cyno live the full duration is not some once-in-a-blue-moon event, having it live 30 seconds will not break anyone's back. But it will make cyno chains more vulnerable to disruption, which is a good thing. And its way better than stupid stuff like "1hr cooldown on jumprives" or "max 10 ly per day" and ideas like that that have been cropping up.

inb4 blops people claim the world is ending because they're too cheap to tackle a ratter with a proteus.

nerfing force prohection even a little, goes a long way to making null more livable for smaller entities, even if only to make hit and run/nomad more viable than it is now
Anhenka
The New Federation
Sigma Grindset
#18 - 2014-03-06 01:25:02 UTC
Nariya Kentaya wrote:

nerfing force prohection even a little, goes a long way to making null more livable for smaller entities, even if only to make hit and run/nomad more viable than it is now



How exactly does nerfing Blopsing and offensive hotdrops while not inhibiting the ability of a large group to move a massive offensive, defensive, or logstical force across the universe benefit smaller entities? Except in regards that it makes ratting much safer for everyone everywhere.

Especially since Blops, AFK cloaking, and hit and run titan bridging strike fleets are the mainstay techniques of smaller entities harassing larger ones?
M1k3y Koontz
House of Musashi
Stay Feral
#19 - 2014-03-06 01:32:57 UTC
This seems like a heavy nerf to covert cynos. 15 seconds is the max delay (at level 5 Cyno) for BLOPs to still be useful.

How much herp could a herp derp derp if a herp derp could herp derp.
M1k3y Koontz
House of Musashi
Stay Feral
#20 - 2014-03-06 01:38:34 UTC
Anhenka wrote:
Nariya Kentaya wrote:

nerfing force prohection even a little, goes a long way to making null more livable for smaller entities, even if only to make hit and run/nomad more viable than it is now



How exactly does nerfing Blopsing and offensive hotdrops while not inhibiting the ability of a large group to move a massive offensive, defensive, or logstical force across the universe benefit smaller entities? Except in regards that it makes ratting much safer for everyone everywhere.

Especially since Blops, AFK cloaking, and hit and run titan bridging strike fleets are the mainstay techniques of smaller entities harassing larger ones?


"Smaller entities" and "titan briding" in the same sentence... heh.

BLOPs filling a rather specialized role now, (since they can only bridge ships that fit cov ops cloaks) and I dislike the idea of nerfing their role unnecessarily. Titan bridges are far more adaptable, making a nerf sensible there.

How much herp could a herp derp derp if a herp derp could herp derp.
12Next page