Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Additionally, people keep quoting the number of members the large coalitions/alliances currently have and how they would use those numbers in any other system that is put into place. But if a system is made that allowed for more entities to be involved, how many groups would leave the larger coalitions to form smaller ones?

So the argument "durdurdur CFC/PL/N3 has 10,000 people and will still stomp anyone", is little more than chest thumping and irrelevant. If you think that all those members will still stand beneath you given the opportunity to do more, what do you think will happen?

Without going into too much detail into the problem of power projection itself, I'd like to introduce you to my simple concept to control it. This is simply a concept that I would be interested in hearing feedback on. I don't know whether it would be good or bad for the game but it wouldn't be as drastic as a change as some of the other ideas mentioned here.

Idea: all jump drive capable ships have a calibration amount that recharges kind of like capacitor does. The points of calibration are based upon how many light years the ship can jump. The exact numbers for capacity and recharge rate could be debated but an example would be that a ship could jump 50 light years and their calibration recharges at 10 light years per hour. (I don't know if those are even close to reasonable numbers, I just picked random ones.) Maybe even have skills that can increase the capacity and recharge rate as well. It would basically put a hard limit on to how far ships could jump within a certain time frame but also leave choices available. For instance, you may decide to jump into a fight but not have the calibration to jump out to even the nearest star system for at least 15 minutes. Moving across the galaxy would have to actually be a thing that takes a little bit of time and planning.

Well, I was actually thinking based upon a character, not a ship. It would be a neurological limit. Your brain can't handle all the jumping, much like how you can't jump clone but every so often.

Sov Mechanics idea:
The SOV mechanics system needs a way for small groups to be able to hurt and effectively take systems that are undefended without having to invest huge ships or unnecessary amounts of time. However, it also needs a way for large groups to completely smash small groups when they bring their full might against them. There should be no way a small group can stand up to a much larger one (in a head-on fight). However, because the large group concentrated all of their might into one system, they should be defenseless at their other border systems which may be lost.


In my opinion, null sec needs to relate more to Faction Warfare, just scaled up.

In FW, the earliest newbie in a frigate can make an impact to the warzone, and he can be solo.
In null-sec, make that a slightly experienced player in a cruiser can make an impact and he can be in a small gang, ~5 people. Say 1500dps needed, easily achievable with 4-5 Cruisers, 7 Destroyers, or 15ish Frigates.

Have many many small, medium, and large targets throughout the system. The small targets can be killed by small groups in cruisers in a short time, the mediums by BC/BS in a medium group, and larges in a large group. When I say short time, I mean in 15 minutes or less. This would allow small gangs to be able to make an impact on the sov without needing huge numbers or ship sizes. These targets are in no way limited to small ships however, so if a major organization wanted to quickly flip a system, they could bring in caps and BS's and kill the small and medium targets very quickly.

The idea for small, medium, and large targets allows small groups to have an impact and still be able to do some damage. Large targets will have more hp, but still doable in short periods of time if bringing a larger fleet, and will contribute more towards flipping a system.

The small rewards and small groups will lead to small gangs roaming around looking for similar sized gangs doing these sites, which will increase PvP in the area, which will in turn lead to pirate/non-affiliated groups looking to kill both sides.

Welcome to the fight Manny great to see you still kicking. Ideas are sound and the game was more fun back in the day. Hope to see some of these come about. There are many vets wanting this to happen and have written many articles maybe this time it will work.

Ask your self this would you quit playing eve if you couldn't jump or be bridge to a cyno?

My answer is NO.

We lost our chess game board of old eve and replaced it with the game of checkers with only 8 squares.

You are talking about an arbitrary mechanic that doesn't create interesting choices. Would things take longer ? Yes, but is it because the players made a choice or are sacrificing something? No. By having it effected by skill all you are doing is adding something like "Jump Time Calibration V" as a required skill for capital fleets.

As it is now if you are in a carrier you can't run more than one rep and stay cap stable without sacrificing some tank. Okay, so what if you penalized carriers drone damage and Drone Damage mods suddenly used Cap? Well now you can't apply damage without losing the ability to jump out.

What if dreads could no longer fit Capacitor boosters as we know them now, but instead could use a Capital Capacitor Booster that burned Liquid Ozone or stront or heavy water. Well now you can either take up part of your fuel bay with capacitor booster fuel or refit to other cap mods and sacrifice tank/DPS.

What if certain capital modules increased the capacitor % needed to jump? There's been more than a few cap pilots who can't remember what jump cap is now that it's a static number, so if it was suddenly something that changed they'd have even more of a problem.

If you can't light a cyno on a station and you eliminate the ability of capital fleets to just regen cap by docking and undocking, things would get interesting. Add on top of that more ways to penalize the capacitor on capitals and you can further restrict their movement or make those restrictions based on a players choices.

And before someone brings up Supers and says "oh they don't have that restriction and they can move across the galaxy in 7 minutes", sorry, no the CFC at least, has never been able to move a super fleet across the galaxy quickly or easily. It is always a big thing that takes days to plan.

I've only skimmed half this thread, so this idea may have already been discussed and found to be terrible, but here's a little food for thought if nothing else:

What if capitals could only cyno within a constellation, but could use constellation and region sized gates? Supers, a step up, could cyno between constellations (though perhaps with a nerfed range or only allowed to jump 1-2 constellations away at a time?) but must use region-sized gates to go between regions.

A small group could own a constellation and be easily able to move their capital assets around to fend off attackers. If they want to take more space, they'd have to expend some more effort and risk a little more to move their capitals out (and back in). However, it would also be easier to defend against an invasion involving caps, since there's only a set number of places they could enter from - the defenders could entrench themselves on their constellation gates in hopes of killing caps that the attackers bring through. Could make for interesting small capital/support skirmishes on gates.

Supers might be a bigger problem... enough dreads could take down one or two, but if someone really wanted to they could jump a bigger gang of supers in anywhere. Of course, those supers would have to come in without support and wait for the smaller ships to arrive with them, which could provide some interesting strategic problems?

Other interesting ideas could come of it too, though I'm at work and don't really have time to list many. The downside is large fleets of caps and supers can still move fairly well together, they'd just be slower. Juggernauts could still steamroll through your space if they wanted to, but they'd be spread thinner and potentially left vulnerable in other areas while they're attacking.

Edit - I didn't mention bridges and freighters/JFs because I haven't quite figured out how they'd fit into this model. But it's something to start from at least.

Discuss?

I would just do this.

Change Jump Drives Completely by taking these steps.

1) All Jump Drive Capable ships are limited to jumping within the Constellation they are in (exceptions and expansions below).
2) Jumping a ship no longer requires a cyno alt (no more lightbulb sub 900,000 noob ship toon)
3) Jump Drive Capable ships can target a system within the constellation they are in, and jump directly into it. There drop off point will be somewhere random in the system (somewhere between 1,000,000 km to 2 au from the sun).
4) Inter constellation jumping is no longer possible (can't jump drive from one constellation to another).
5) to change constellations, you have to jump the constellation gate (so yes Capitals can now jump through inter-constellation gates). For example. If I wanted to go from HED-GP to QSM-LM. I would first have to Jump to 36N, then warp to the gate, and jump THROUGH it.
6) Jump Drive Calibration no longer affects Carriers, Dreadnoughts, Supercarriers, Titans (no longer needed).
7) Jump Drive Calibration only affects the following ships. (Jump Freighters, Rorqual).
8) Ships with Jump Drive Calibration can inter regional jump.


Jump Bridge (pos mod).
1) Jump Bridge range is to next door constellation only (to clarify, anchor a jump bridge, its destination can only be to the next door constellation).


Black Ops.
1) Inter Constellation Jump Portal possible, Inter region jumps impossible. Black Ops Range is determined by the Skill Jump Portal Generation. Skill is modified as follows. Distance increased by 4 jumps per level. To clarify. You cannot jump to a new region using this skill. You can jump to nearby constellations and systems, but you can't traverse to a new region.

Titan Jump Bridge.

1) Same applies to the black ops jump bridge. It is constellation bound, and cannot jump to new regions. Range is the same as the black ops ship (based on skill, up to 20 jumps within the region.


To summarize.

1) Capitals, Super Capitals, Titans can now use Regional and Constellation gates. Gates within constellations are not usable (traveling inside of a constellation requires use of your jump drive, between two regions or between two constellations, you must use gates).

2) Inter-regional travel restricted to Jump Freighters and Rorquals (they can jump from 1 region to another without using region gates), all other ships must jump a region gate.

3) Cyno's no longer required. Jump Drives can now target systems directly (scouts highly advisable).

4) Hot Drops Limited to inter constellation battles (or you can slowboat your ship through gates to engage/escalate).

5) Regional Gate camp returns, escorts matter, scouting matters, projection is now constellation based instead of region based. Logistics made more difficult, but not impossible (in some cases easier as the distance traversed would be more significant).

This is a huge change. I'd do something like that or at least open up the discussion on reducing range, making regions matter, making constellations matter, making roaming matter. Its partially broken, the jump range of the rorqual and the jump freighters need to be looked at, but I would look at this as a path.

There is broken stuff here, but the coverage of a system should be more constellation based and not region based.

If null sec is so large that the majority of it is empty and that people just can't play without being able to skip most of the travel, then maybe null sec needs to shrink to a more manageable size for the amount of players it holds. Then if it starts to become too crowded, slowly expand it over time. There should be no need for jump drives.

I started a thread about creating a larger version of the stealth bomber aimed at targeting capitals here.