EVE General Discussion

In combat, we have instant info on everybody's position, speed, relative speed, etc.

We also have instant info on EWAR and cap warfare effects applied to us and who is applying them.

If you have the time to look and are familiar with the animations, you have instant info on self-buffs and remotely applied buffs/debuffs and who is applying them to whom. Including who is shooting whom.

If you target somebody, you have instant info on his shield/armor/hull hp.

Etc, etc, lots of useful combat info that the quick & savvy PVPer can have fun with.


Only 'hidden' info is enemy (and friendly) capacitor. Yeah, you can cargo scan to take snapshots and it's fairly evident when someone is completely out of cap.

But still, why no real-time readout on targeted ships' capacitor (both friendly and enemy)?

Because its simple enough for your ships computer to take external readings of a ship to tell how damaged it is and its easy for the computer to also keep track of where someone is and what speed they are doing, speed trap cameras do this in real life all the time using radar :)

Anything internal, i.e under the hull, the computer cant see by default hence why you have a module that can take a snapshot of the internal contents of a ship, you answered your own question :P

Thanks. I'm not a game developer so I'll have to take the dev's word on it.

It does sound a bit fishy though, all clients are already getting position and velocity vector info on every object on-grid, and shield/armor/hull info on anything targeted.

Maybe trade info about who is warp scrambling whom (which doesn't seem worthwhile to relay to all people on grid imo) for cap info?


EDIT: actually each client also gets info on all effects and interactions, otherwise it couldn't graphically render them, right? And in any battle, every ship is either shooting, repping or applying ewar (or two, or even all three), unless they're out of range. So yeah, the server load excuse seems quite fishy, actually!

Yes, I'm sure it would make no difference at all to your toon's PVP activity (whoring on CONCORD Burn Jita killmails and shooting structures).

Precisely the same reason why you can't see how much/which type of ammo he has in his guns/launchers, scripts in various modules, etc.
It keeps people guessing, and makes PvP more interesting.
TBH, if it were up to me, they shouldn't show how much hull people have left, just leave it at the two main tanks...

If I remember rightly it was CCP greyscale who told me this...He is a pretty cool dude with a beer..before he nerfs all your things :P

You are wrong. The client does not get informations about all effects and interactions. It gets information only about interactions related to you, some information you specially requested and some interactions which are being broadcasted.

Related interactions: things you have locked, things that are shooting you and things on your watchlist

Requested information: things like fitting. You will not see a fitting of enemy ship unless using "look at" functionality or directly interacting

Broadcasted interactions: are interactions that are being broadcasted once when they are started. then the client keep track of them untill recieving termination broadcast. No data are transmitted in between. Pointing is prime example as it goes even into the log.

The capacitor status would have to go into "related interactions" category which is also the most heavily impacting the server. Adding a single variable could lead to very severe server load. I can only imagine swapping it to some other variable yet I cant imagine any other being less important than the ones currently diplayed.

There are plenty of reasons to supply less info to players in combat, many of which I would support if push came to shove.

However, to request a cap readout on a target THAT YOU ARE CURRENTLY PERFORMING CAP WARFARE ON is not a totally unreasonable request. The same could be said for those that you are currently cap boosting as well.

Thanks for all your kind replies.

Especially Cristopher for further clarifying the source and BeBop for a very convincing analysis. I can see the difference between relaying module 'on/off' info compared to 'constantly changing' info. such as capacitor.

Further expanding on BeBop's analysis, I'm thinking that in a 1,000 man combat situation most of the ships' hp wouldn't constantly change either (if nothing is shooting at them) while almost every ship's capacitor changes continuously (even though it would need to be relayed only to the clients that are targeting the ship). So yeah, I now get the server load issues.


From a gameplay perspective, whether having more intel (for everyone) is good or bad is rarely clear-cut imo.

On one hand, yes it makes things easier for everyone, but on the other, it creates opportunities for dedicated players.

For example, real time info on the primary's hp allows people to switch to the next primary before the ship actually visibly pops. It allows for more efficient use of fleet dps (minimizing wasted weapon cycles), but only a disciplined and well-trained fleet will fully take advantage of this. A sloppy fleet will waste dps anyway.

In the same way, cap info would allow more efficient neuting - less 'waste' and also easier identification of 'cap-vulnerable' ships (in addition to any knowledge or metagame intel on expected ship fittings).

Not sure if good or bad for the game (that's why I made a thread ), but, if for example coupled with a flat nerf to all neuts, could maybe make neuting an even more sophisticated 'art'.

If not - Nariya's 'brute force' approach works too.

Someday a mod will be used to read cap levels on a ship. If you can scan cargo, you can scan cap energy levels.

Just give it time.