EVE General Discussion

I really don't understand why everybody is wracking their brains trying to figure out a balanced way to nerf force projection. I personally think it needs to be buffed. We all know there are a lot of annoying things about Eve. For me, the prospect of the 30-system trek is one of those things that are annoying about Eve. Well, Eve is a place where the bigger richer alliances and coalitions have ways around this annoyance with Titan bridging, cyno beacons, etc. Most of the complaints seem to center around the state of things that bigger and richer null sec alliances can pretty much get wherever they want, and the littler guys can't do that, and this allows the bigger guys to hold vast amounts of territory without actually living in it. The response has been a bunch of cries to nerf force projection. However, Eve is a game where people are supposed to fight, and the result of these nerfs will either make it so the people who can get together to fight won't be able to do so, or they will end up keeping things just as they are but make the game more inconvenient and annoying.

In a game where moving around the map is a fairly annoying and inconvenient part of the game, I think the answer is to make it easier for a larger number of groups to move around, rather than preventing the few groups that can move around from doing it.

Now some of the nerfs to force projection do make sense in terms of general concept and balance. I personally like the idea of making BLOPS battleships and Titans go through their bridges with the fleets that they are bridging. Titans and BLOPS BS I think were intended to be lords of their respective types of battles, and one facet of this lordship is their ability to bring the troops with them. However, in 99% of cloak fleets the BLOPS BS is pretty much just a ferry, and 99% of Titans never leave the POS. I think forcing an alliance to pay 70 billion for a ship simply for the ability to get subcap fleets to fights is one of the things that has people miffed. Especially since most alliances don't have the ability to keep such ships safe, and this forces people to buy or spend years training nameless alts to be the pilots of the most glorious ships in the game. Better to leave Titans to the guys who are going to be fighting in the next BR. There's gotta be a better way to bridge. Preferably a way that smaller and SOV-less alliances can make use of. Want to prevent the big alliances from holding a bunch of SOV they never even visit? Give the little guys a way to hit them in the back door.

I propose a couple of things to make force projection easier and more widespread. First, I think Clone Vat Bays should be reworked so that a clone can be stored in it, not just created, and that carriers and super carriers should be allowed to fit them. Basically, you'd fly up to a carrier as if it were a Rorq or a Titan and click store clone, and a window would pop up giving you the option of creating a new clone or jumping to one of your other clones. You could select one of your other clones, jump to it, and the clone you jump from would be stored in the Clone Vat Bay of the carrier. This would make the ship maintenance bays of carriers actually useful in combat, rather than just being useful for moving ships to deployment areas. Naturally this kind of force projection would be far inferior to the briding of today, but it would offer another option to smaller groups to do more.

Also, I think there should be another ship introduced to the game, a fleet fueler, perhaps designed like a 'little' capital ship like an Orca. It would have the ability to use gates and cynos like a JF. The ship itself would have a gargantuan fuel bay. A tiny fleet hangar, probably no ship maintenance bay. Minimal offense. Good tank though. However, it can bridge sub caps. Make it cost 2-3 billion. Perhaps make it the only type of bridger that doesn't have to go through the bridge that it creates.

ideas like these that make force projection easier, not harder, are what is needed to create balance between the huge alliances and the smaller ones. They would also enable more fights and make the nasty business of getting around the eve map less annoying.

The slippery slope started with WTZ.

OK, so no comments about my general point of more force projection being better than less. And no comments about my specific examples of the fuel truck/bridger ship or using carriers to deploy fleets in space. Just a couple of inane joke posts and one post zeroing in on an offhand comment I made about smaller alliances using projection to damage the larger ones.

Yay Eve players! I love you! You're the reason why I play solo!

Because buffing force projection only HELPS the big guys. It does nothing for the little guys since the big guys can now STILL move their much superior force faster, just now its WAY faster. the little guy who has less access to those advanced transportation options are now INCREDIBLY ******.

Hit my back door bby

Personally I think more ships should have jump drives but not capital class vessels. Theres something inherently wrong with the equation when ships with millions of EHP that can RR each other with no stacking penalties can cross the universe in minutes.

Small gangs should do that but not the capital blob

thers a way more interesting idea knocking bout in f&i, coincidentally its the exact opposite of this one.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=356024&find=unread

Wall of Text...
And
I disagree.
On the plus side this thread was not about plex prices.

Catherine Janeway would totally agree with you!

Crossing a Galaxy should be easy and quick.

Force projection is an issue, but it is simply a symptom of a greater issue and that is sov mechanics being pretty ****. Its not so much being able to move across the galaxy in 20 minutes, its the fact you have dozens of hours to make that 20 minute trek. Timers are probably the worst part of the whole thing. Moreover Sov conflict needs to be more accessible to smaller groups, so the need of having a dozen blues isn't as paramount. If sov was more use it or lose it focused then not only would you allow for smaller groups to have more effective capacity, you would also force larger groups to instead of balling up into one massive fleet to fight one timer, to form up into a dozen smaller fleets in order to defend a whole region. As it stands now sov wars come down to one or two major all in fights and that is it so of course everyone from all corners of EVE is going to dogpile into that system.

In order to fix the whole ball you need to revamp sov mechanics. Anything short of that is just kicking the can down the road.