Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I am going to speak from someone who has a maxed out command ship, and someone who has read the new changes, and concluded that they will help generate a lot of content, and as another FC, I also can state and see both the advantages and disadvantages of what I'm going to suggest.

As it stands the isk/skill requirements for command ships compared to strategic cruisers for boosting is almost a one sided fight. I believe that characters who train Command Ships V as well as maxing their leaderships skills should be compensated for it with importance in fleets.

I propose Command Ships get an extra bonus skill
When assigned Fleet Booster, increases the warp speed of the shared warp bubble by 5% Per Command Ship skill level.
What does this mean? When you take a fleet warp with the command ship, if the slowest ship in the warp bubble does .8 AU travel speed, a max skilled command ship will increase fleet warp speed from .8 AU to 1.0 AU per second. Although not a major buff, still increases their practicality in fleets considerably when given recent Capital changes.

What does this mean?
Hopefully this will reduce the usage of off grid boosting, and increase on grid boosting improving fight mechanics. This will also mean when a fleet is out, either Sub Caps have to endure capital warp speeds, reducing the likelihood of bringing capitals, or to better coordinate within fleets.

What this also means is during an engagement, or potential one, if a you decide to warp your sub capital fleet first, and leave your command ship with your capitals to help get them to travel to the fight faster either in system or across systems, the sub capital fleet loses the strategic value of boosts for the time given.

Another hypothetical is if you bring your fleet booster with the sub capitals, you still have to take in affect the increased travel time versus the ability to easily get ahead of your capital fleet.

I believe this will also increase the likelihood of traveling fleets being able to instead of using force projection through titan bridging fleets which either completely outnumber the opponent or outclass the opponents, fleets will gain more structure, more fleet concepts, and increase distances they are willing to travel, and with the increased fleet compositions, the potential for better "good fights" arises.
Some might argue that fleets will move too fast, however this will require fleets to pre-align, and those not pre-aligned best warp faster than the average warp speed of the fleet or risk getting left behind and vulnerable or become a detriment to the fleet because they aren't there with the fleet at the time of engagement. If you are worried about the fleets traveling too fast, take into effect this will most likely only effect battle cruisers-capitals as the warp speed of a command ships will be the fastest a fleet will travel. Take an Astarte with 2.8 AUps warp speed, given the 25% increased boost, allows for a max travel speed of only 3.5 AUps.

While an Avatar would make the fleet travel at 1.65 AU/ps. This ties in with waiting for one to pre-align, and holding back the fleet if you want the power of one to be fielded.

Even if you want your fleets to travel faster by increasing the warp speed of the Astarte, you would either need to plug in expensive implants, or reduce it's tank. I believe the strategy with boosting a command ships viability would help create content.

Also Tl:Dr- Command Ships and skill levels reflect on fleet potential, IE making "Commanders"

Its a nice concept, but I think rather than being inherent, it should be a skill, which requires warfare link spec 5 and only applies to people who are in fleet/wing/squad assignments under you, and anyone out of place acts like an anchor anyways. Means FCs will need to actually use the heirarchy and fleet comp windows for the fast warp thing.

Also the effect as proposed is rather extreme. maybe 3%/lvl, meaning that taking command ships on grid does not slow a t1 cruiser fleet substantially, but doesn't give pop battleships to most of the way on par with BC warp speed. without some fitting compromise on the ships themselves.

I was going to suggest the 3% at first myself, but for some odd reason I suggested 5.

Don't let anything I am about to say seem like I'm insulting you're thought process but yes a command ship can improve a ship with all of those bonuses however so can't a Strat. Cruiser which also can cloak and be immune to bubble and can almost be turned into an unprobable booster as well.
Also for this bonus it'd mean you would already be in warp...with the fleet, so why not stay with the fleet? If you land on grid, and if theres a bubble or fast tackle and I am not sure if you have ever tried to fit 5 links to a command ship and use them as off grid but you basically kill their tank...so if you land on grid can't cloak and can get tackled you most likely will die. Not too mention if you land and warp off you are losing the links time it takes for the command ship to warp and land and then initiate the links, which could easily swing the fight.
I also see the idea that you can get a command ship to warp that fast however that is like saying I can make a 10kms cruiser or a 100mn mwd tier 3 BC...you basically lose their practicality, and if you understand warp bubble mechanics you know the speed is determined by the slowest ship so if you are in fact traveling with blockade runners and interceptors then I don't see the drawback, unless if command ships and pvp blockade runners are the new meta, or you travel with completely altered ships to acquire fast warp times which I would be eager to engage with a typical sub par fleet.

interesting, ill be back, must discuss this with people.

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