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A suggestion for fleet/faction combat
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Astrid Stjerna
Sebiestor Tribe
#1 - 2011-12-11 23:06:08 UTC
I checked the 'Common Ideas' thread, and this didn't seem to be in there, so I'm going to see if I can get some feedback here.

After examining the EVE meta-game a bit (in regards to fleet composition), I've noticed a couple of things:

1) Small frigate fleets are usually 'outclassed' by heavy ships, and have very little chance of presenting a real threat.

and

2) 'Blobbing', while certainly a viable tactic, usually consists of composing a fleet entirely of the largest ships with the strongest guns.

When you combine those two points, you usually end up with a big, huge blob of powerful ships that even a skilled pilot, flying a well-fitted ship, only lasts a few seconds against in direct combat.

So -- my suggested solution:

I've recently started playing tabletop wargames (Battletech, Warmachine, and the like). One of the mechanics that keeps the game balanced for everyone playing is the use of 'points' to regulate army composition.

When composing an army, the players each have a pool of 'combat points' to use in fielding units; smaller units require fewer points to field, and larger, more powerful units require a larger amount of points. Spending 1500 points to use your most powerful units may be tempting, but the trade-off is that your army is going to be less mobile and quite a bit smaller overall than your opponent's more point-efficient setup.

By using a similar system in EVE (for example, giving fleets a 'point pool' to draw from), players would have to consider fleet composition in much more detail: do they take up their points on a fleet of battlecruisers (and leave them open to potential frigate swarms), or do they use a more 'balanced' approach and bring out one big ship and some smaller frigates and support ships (sacrificing some 'pewpew' but giving the big ship a bit of cover fire)?

Anyway....that's just my .02. Do with it what you will. :)

I can't get rid of my darn signature!  Oh, wait....
LeHarfang
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#2 - 2011-12-11 23:43:44 UTC  |  Edited by: LeHarfang
The point system you're saying would work in a turn based solo strategy game and we arent in one of those. It's a real time strategy team game. The fleet is'nt an army of mindless robots the fleet commander can move around as he pleases like in games like Starcraft 2.

Also, people will just bypass the fleet system with that kind of thing by not using it at all and create blobs anyway.

Edit: What could be done for frigates is make every big BS size weapon useless against (always miss and RARELY, and i mean it, get any shot). Even with drones like the Ogre I and II (hammerhead would hit more and hobgoblin almost always) That way, we should see more destroyers with the sole purpose of attacking frigates. And since hobgoblins are'nt that strong, battleships will have to rely on ally frigates or destroyers to kill frigates effectivly. A boost to frigate weaponry would help as well.

I also saw, in another thread the idea of making t2 destroyers to help defend against covert ops frigates. That could be implemented with this as well.
Danika Princip
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#3 - 2011-12-11 23:47:54 UTC
Erm...what?

Or, do you fill one fleet with BCs, one with BS, one with frigs, another ECM etc etc etc and just bring them all in at once? If you have a lot of pilots, an arbitrary limit like this won't stop you bringing them all in at once.
Astrid Stjerna
Sebiestor Tribe
#4 - 2011-12-12 05:58:22 UTC
Danika Princip wrote:
Erm...what?

Or, do you fill one fleet with BCs, one with BS, one with frigs, another ECM etc etc etc and just bring them all in at once? If you have a lot of pilots, an arbitrary limit like this won't stop you bringing them all in at once.


No, you don't fill multiple fleets with different things. Let me give an example:

For the purposes of this example, let's give each fleet a 2000-point limit. Fleet A has a 1500-point battlecruiser they want to put into action. Fleet B has a few assault frigates (let's give them 1200 points worth, for 240 per ship) and maybe a couple of carriers for the remaining 800 points.

Now, fleet B could take one of the carriers out of the fleet and use the points for more assault frigates. Likewise, fleet A could forget about using the 1500-point battlecruiser, and downgrade it to a couple of smaller ships that might be a bit more sturdy/agile/whatever.

What they couldn't do (and what no fleet would be able to do with the point system) is compose a fleet entirely of 1500-point battlecruisers. Yes, you could work with hundreds of people and dozens of fleets, but each one is limited by the point pool to one -- maybe two -- 'big' ships (and who wants the task of coordinating a dozen two-ship fleets, really?)

The advantage: it's still possible to build a powerful fleet. The disadvantage: getting that huge facestomping battleship fleet means losing out on the smaller defensive frigates, and flying into combat with comparatively less-effective ships.

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Zi'Boo
Zi'Corp
#5 - 2011-12-12 06:59:52 UTC
Couple things:
- the typical fleets are not coordinated through ingame interface, but rather through out of game voice comms (TS, Ventrillo, etc)
- there's hardly ever a predefined fight where both sides arrange to bring a certain number of pilots and have a go at each other, so there is no inbuilt fleet balancing mechanism (and there shouldn't be)
- the main problem with coordinating multiple fleets are warp- ins as you need to be in fleet to warp to another person.

So the only way your point system could work is if bigger ships would require additional pilots, and then each pilot would be a "point" to distribute, as pilots are the most important resource in fleet fight.

So you'd need:
1 person to pilot a frigate or destroyer,
2 for a cruiser,
3 for BC
4 for BS
etc,

This would in effect make it unnecessary complicated and would enforce the need for alts, as already there isn't that much happening that you need to control while fighting (frigate dog fights excepted).