Player Features and Ideas Discussion

So blob fleets are the method of choice for power projection and this leads to the click f1 every x minutes in TiDi experience that large fleet combat has become.

I would prefer to see the need for many smaller fleets acting in conjunction rather than one huge fleet and one person deciding who does what for a thousand pilots. Squad leaders, wing leaders etc should actually have to make real decisions based on the capabilities of their pilots and ships rather than just being another assist/logi web node.

Would a mechanism be workable whereby the more people in a fleet the more cluttered fleet comms become and lock times etc start to creep out? This would be an exponential effect so the more fleet members the worse it gets. This could be balanced by having an improvement for small fleets due to increased sharing of target data etc before the comms bandwidth gets saturated. Off grid links could also be worked into this as a modifier since they would increase comms saturation greatly.

Hopefully I put the idea across at least a bit coherently since I'm ill and my brain is frazzled but to summarize small fleets /gangs would have an improvement due to working as a team, but the bigger the fleet gets they start to clutter comms and therefore targeting and such ( imagine trying to target enemies whilst the field is cluttered with 1000 of you own ships + associated drones/missiles/ecm/links/etc)

A bigger group of smaller fleets would have the same effect on a POS but would need co-ordinating which is in my mind how it should be.

All leadership skill effects would have to use internal ship to ship comms to enhance abilities. The leader would be telling fleet members where to fly to pre-emptively (agility bonus), where attacks should be expected from (shield bonus), type of attack (armour bonus)...all takes comms bandwidth

The general idea is to promote working in many smaller fleets. Huge fleets in one relatively small space should be detrimental just through trying not to crash into each other, squelch over each others transmissions/targeting/electronics etc... If people can aspire to being a fleet commander in a group of twenty attempting to co-operate to defeat another such group more people have to get involved more actively and that can only be a good thing

Splitting into smaller groups shouldn't make co-ordination easier, it should make it harder and a real skill. Right now it is largely click F1 on the assigned primary in blob warfare with squad leaders being nominal roles due to having the correct skills trained.

I'm not necessarily trying to solve a problem rather trying to make a suggestion that could improve the nature of fleet combat. Let's relate it loosely to a real fleet battle. Consider the battle of Jutland, Admiral Jellicoe couldn't say to his comms officer 'Have everyone Primary the German flagship' and instantly every gun would fire on and hit one ship in the same instant. He had to rely on the small fleets of frigates, screening destroyers, cruisers and battleships to fulfill the roles assigned to them in the overall plan. He also had to react to changing conditions as and when they were made aware (naturally the same goes for the German commander).

This is what I thought and hoped fleet combat in Eve would be when I joined and was disappointed to find out that it was sitting in a blob clicking F1 when told and repping whoever yells first. I want fleet combat to really on skilled wing commanders and squad leaders to perform their duties and occasionally gain great victories through cunning plans or taking risks, not just sit in one monolithic blob or another seeing who loses through attrition first.

Actually if anything there is the issue for me, I have no incentive to join the blob warfare type of groups and I think many who prefer hisec/losec/WH probably feel the same. It would be worse than running missions to me.

Please feel free to point out if and how I am wrong in my view of these fleet combats as I am open to persuasion to join such fleets *if* I can have an actual active role in them but right now it doesn't appeal as everything I see (this could of course be a problem of perception) points to a relatively static slugfest in hideous TiDi.

My aim in this post was to raise an idea to make mass fleet combat more dynamic and require skilled fleet, wing command and squad leaders along with skilled squad members (player skilled not character skilled). This would give me something to aspire to and work towards rather than just 'Ok you got leadership V/Armoured warfare V etc etc, you are squad leader'.

As I say this may be a perception issue and I am happy to be corrected on these points as this would clarify my (and possibly others) view of nullsec warfare and maybe make it more appealing.

Admittedly the original OP is somewhat confusing...I prefer to think of it as a post-surrealist pice with neo-modernist tendancies...

The nub of the idea is to devolve power away from the single fleet commander assigning all dps to a single target at the click of a button and moving the onus of responsibility down to the squad level who then neead to be actually lead by a wing commander follwing a battle plan from the FC.

If this means that the fleet with more and better leaders/commanders/FC's gains an advantage that is actually how it should be in my opinion, a better fleet and force should outclass a worse one. This also however allows for a ****-up at lower squad leader levels to open up chinks in the overall armour of the fleet. A smaller fleet right now will almost always lose but I would prefer there to be some way to outfox an opponent through skill, a good plan or simply making the most of a moment of plain luck/gargantuan stupidity.

The current state of static blobs really puts me off fleet combat at higher levels and that's a shame as it is something I would like to be part of at some point but only if it is as part of a dynamic force. I currently don't see that as a feasible choice and if that perception is wrong I would like it explained clearly the roles available in such fleets. Consider it a recruitment chance for myself and those like me who would enjoy such combat given the chance.

The naval comparison was only on the fleet mechanics level, I in no way wish for eve to be a naval simulator (no splashy water in space for a start...). My point was that I would prefer a fleet to have to work as a fleet with individual squad elements having to think and act for themselves for maximum gain. My idea wasn't just to split comms to force more co-operation (although my impression was that CCP are all for co-operative play being better) but to provide bonuses to those operating smaller gangs to offset the mass dps effect of giant blobs.

For instance if an archon blob took enough time to lock due to the interference from comms systems managing so much data it would give chance for say a bomber run to jump in, launch a quick strike and get the hell out before a response could come. This would encourage a more mixed fleet structure with benefits for having free thinking squad leaders taking initiatives.

I in no way want the big fleet battles to stop, I would just want them to be more dynamic, more spread out (to mitigate TiDi too) and more fluid. I remember the promo videos with the 'I was there' taglines and just can't imagine the archon fleet commander calling in some atrons to bravely leap through hell and get in position for a warp in. Unfortunately that's the kind of thing that draws people to the big fleet battles aspect and then turns out to be far from reality it seems.