Player Features and Ideas Discussion

CCP Game Devs,

I owe the CCP dev team an apology before I get into the meat of this post. When I first decided everyone in the Eve community was entitled to my opinion about game design I took a quick look at F&I and concluded that the lack of dev feedback to well written threads meant that F&I was pointless.Since I was putting some effort into my suggestions I decided to post them on a 3rd party site to reach the largest possible audience and convince the community to lobby for change. Over the past couple months I made comments about how useless F&I was. Then I ran across this post by Greyscale where he explains what a good F&I post is and says why there are often no replies to well written suggestions. I apologize for assuming the Dev team does not care; enough people give you guys a hard time that I don't want to be adding my little bit of scorn if it's uncalled for.

That being said, I'm still going to keep posting my ideas on 3rd party sites because I'm trying to make a living as a writer and "I have a bunch of published articles" is more likely to help me pay my bills down the line than "I made some rocktastic threads!"

However after posting an article and getting some feedback in the comments I am going to make one of these threads from now on. I will do my best to relay suggestions that came out the comments, and hopefully the people with great ideas who really care about the subject will carry on the discussion here. I think Eve is a great game and I want it to stay fun and dynamic; I hope by clearly framing problems and encouraging discussion I can help keep it that way. Now on to the main post!

Back in May and June I wrote this article where I argued that the current state of remote repairs was preventing many fights from happening. I go into far more detail in the article by my argument boils down to this:

- A logistics cruiser can out-repair the damage of three or more battleships and that repair is extremely easy to apply.
- In large fights it is difficult to counter your opponents reps without being able to simply destroy their ships through alpha strike.
- This keeps many fights from happening since undocking without the ability to counter opposing reps results in pointless suicide, and this is especially relevant to sov warfare.

I wanted my solution to accomplish the following:

- Give smaller/lower SP/lower budget entities a way to inflict meaningful attrition on on more powerful opponents rather than just getting obliterated, and thereby encourage more instability in nullsec.
- Encourage fleet diversity by giving relevance to smaller tackle and anti-tackle type ships rather than the current DPS/Rep/Dictor compositions.
- Still be easy enough to counter that it did not make logistics irrelevant as I think logistics are a great part of the game that add a lot of diversity and fun.
- Not break logistics for uses other than PvP, or completely break logistics in smaller fights.

My proposed solution was to introduce a module that functioned like a stasis webifier except that instead of reducing speed it reduced incoming reps to the target.

A lot of debate happened, not only on solutions but on if there was even a problem with logistics in the first place. The arguments that Logistics in their current form are fine and don't need change came down to three main trains of thought: electronic warfare is already a counter, people should fit short range DPS to do more damage, and harden up. Please note that I would love to continue to debate these in this thread; my responses here are short and if you can provide specific counter-examples I would love that.

- Ewar: The point is in my opinion the most valid. Sensor damps can already make logi less effective and enough ECM ships can shut them down completely. However, although large numbers of damping ships are used in major fights, I would argue that electronic warfare is simply not powerful enough to allow a smaller entity to inflict damage on a larger one at any sort of scale. While Ewar may work in small gang actions it does not allow a smaller entity to contest a tower against a bigger one.

- Short Range Fits: As for fitting short range DPS, the problem is that its hard to apply. The real-world DPS of blasters in almost all PvP situations is going to be less than that of rail guns because its so hard to get close enough to what you are shooting. This is particularly true of Nullsec fights where bubbles allow fleets to prevent warpins at close range. This is also true of neuts which is why they are not used en-masse in big fleet fights.

- HTFU: Some misery is good for the game, but I think that the current game does not generate enough content. People can only HTFU so often before they quit and go play ping-pong or something.

For those that agreed that a fix was in order, they had some critiques of my specific idea as well.

- It would encourage FC headshots. This is totally valid as any change to the game that makes it easier to kill ships will encourage FC headshots; they work great if you have to win the fight!

- Its overpowered because one ship could render 50 logis all but useless. This is why I had it be like a stasis web; short range encourages it to be fit on small, fast, and fragile ships. If it could be applied from 70km it would be godlike and break logi completely, as it is a frigate would die in seconds to anti-support and a bricked out battleship would have a hard time closing range. In addition, right now ten guardians can render 200 Rifters pointless.

The next idea to come up was to simply apply stacking penalties to logistics. The pros of this are:

- Its an effective nerf to logis.
- Its simple and easy to understand.

However I think it has a pretty major drawbacks as well:

- Its an extremely heavy nerf and its not evenly distrbuted; in small fights logistics would still be hugely powerful due to low incoming DPS but in big fights they would not be very useful.
- It adds no incentive for new tactics or diversity to fleets. It just makes logis not nearly as good, and this would make PvP play much more shallow.
- Would be a nerf to any PvE activity that currently uses logi to include wormholes, incursions, and some exploration.

A third was to apply ship resists to incoming reps; currently incoming damage is reduced by resists but incoming repairs land for 100% of their amount no matter what. Pros:

- Adds an element of complexity to the game that matters to both sides; when fitting for a fight does the FC call on his ships to leave a "resist hole" for reps to come though and risk the enemy exploiting that or fit overall high resists and accept reduced reps?

Drawbacks:

- Would be a nerf to any PvE activity that currently uses logi to include wormholes, incursions, and some exploration.

The above gives rise to another idea, a hybrid with the Remote Logistics Disruptor, the Remote Resist Dampener. This would be a module that could (either by type or a base module that is scripted) lower a given resist on the target ship. I would assume that it should be short range like the RLD; otherwise it would be extremely powerful. Pros:

- Encourages diversity in fleets by giving small, fast ships a bigger role.
- Only works if coordinated, rewards teamwork and planning.
- Would be viable from an individual ship all the way up to full fleets.
- Would provide a counterpart to reps in the way other Ewar currently has counterparts, for example Energy Neutralizers and remote cap transfers.
- No impact on PvE use of logistics

Drawbacks:

- Could be used in some types of PvE to increase earnings if it worked on on NPCs
- Could break aspects of the game involving structures if it worked on them.
- FC headshot bit as above.

Having falloff apply to reps, reducing their range, or splitting logistics into low rep long range and high rep short range versions was also also proposed. Pros:

- Would force logistics to come closer to the DPS ships getting reps, thereby making them more vulnerable (or less effective).

Cons:

- Would not make logistics less powerful if one side didn't have enough DPS to break their reps.

There are probably other ideas out there which I may have missed and good points to be made. I don't claim that all my proposed solutions are perfect or would fix all of Eve so please comment, argue, and discuss below.

I actually really like this idea. As long as the Logistics disruptor was a short ranged module (say 10-15 km) it would provide interesting counter play options without a massive heavy handed nerf to logistics...

The only issue I can see is that it would effect armor logistics more than shield logistics unless you made it not apply to reps currently in cycle when the module becomes active which would be very difficult to do.

Contradictions. And what's the point if it doesn't change anything anyways?

This is why I prefer the stacking penalty nerf to logi. In small gangs there is no difference but as you say, it is far far easier to get ECM to work in small gangs than in the big fleet fights but in the big fights it means a smaller force could actually kill things as opposed to todays "shoot me again I ain't dead yet" one sided fights vs a blob.

If you had actually read his post, you would realize that he was making various suggestions and pointing out the pros and cons of each... Please train reading comprehension 1

Additionally, note how he says that he is trying to minimize the PvE effect of the ideas he's coming up with... you do realize that there is this tiny little thing in the game called PvP which also falls under the category of "anything"

That is not a coherent sentence...

Where do these idiots come from?

Why is logi so overpowered in your eyes, I only know the logi vom subfleet and that never feeled overpowerd.

You can damp them out. When they are at range you can damp with one Celestis up to 4 Logis out.
You can jam them. You take them out of the "game" for 20 sec and force them to rechain if needed.
You can neutralize their cap. No cap no rep.

When your proposal will be implemented most subfleet won´t even consider to take logi with them because it will be useless and you will try to alpha the ships faster than the enemy.

But thats only what i get to know. Pls correct me if i´m wrong

That still isnt a coherent sentence... what happens "if small groups live long enough to even dent a ship under the reps, even if they are reduced"

your sentence is like saying "If I win the lottery, even if my friend helped me..." thats not a full sentence! something needs to come after that; you have a conditional statement that needs to be followed by something...

Have fun coordinating damps on 200+ carriers who, btw can refit off of each other and all carry sensor boosters.

Ooh maybe jamming them will be easier, they only have a combined 17,280 sensor strength, and thats before they refit for ECCMs

Ok, maybe we can neut them... an archon has 81,094 cap, so 200 of them have 16,218,800 cap. A bhaalgorn with full neuts drains cap at a rate of 306.25 cap per second, so thats about 14 hours 45 minutes for one bhaalgorn. Ill just get 30 bhaalgorns and do it in half an hour. Wait, they regen cap too, and they all run cap transfers to keep their cap up...

Maybe this wasnt such a good idea...

That is true. Logis dont need a nerf, they are fine.
If you try to win a fight outnumbered, you're doing it wrong. Only creativity, inventiveness and in some kind metagaming should give you an advantage over an overwhelming enemy. Please dont try to break the game mechanics just because some group of players think that it should be possible to do so.

If PL&CFC are too powerfull to destroy them by force, you can't destroy them. Cut their income, make them break apart and they will disband like BoB once did (from the inside).
Or try to gather enough forces to beat them. Its just as simple as that.