Player Features and Ideas Discussion

that is not even counting how easy it is to bubble and murder a horde of t1 industrials following a known route compared to how impossible it is to catch a taxiceptor which can only be lost to an internet hiccup

"the hauler, which must travel a known path and is dead the instant it lands in a bubble, cannot be intercepted as easily as a 2s align interceptor, which is bubble immune and can warp before you lock"

"these things i believe, the above and the importance of eating paint chips for lunch"

this is an even dumber plan than your initial one

like seriously people, look at this

Don't let the word smart in smart bombs scare you.

The sad part of this thread is 90% of it is related to non-JF industrials. most people seem OK with holding off on JF's until they get more into their development changes. The big, silly debate seems relegated to subcap industrials and whether they will be used as taxis by those who own jump bridge superhighways.

Before I start with specifics:

The general intent here is to be as sure as possible that we achieve our goals over the long run, while placing as few limitations as possible. There are various ideas being thrown around, of varying degrees of plausibility, for circumventing these changes. Some may actually end up being practical, most probably won't. Rather than nerfing everything into the ground up front, we'd rather catch the really obvious stuff first and then see how the game plays out. You *can* HG-Ascendency a super to move it around, sure, but by the same token you *can* get an officer neut to fit on a Curse. We like it when people occasionally do weird, unexpected things with the tools we give them, but we step in when such cases become both common and counter to goals.

If any of these things become commonplace, we will very likely nerf them. Here's a list of things that have been up, some reasons as to why we're skeptical of their utility, and a sample of the sort of nerf we'd be likely to do to counter them:

- Setting up caches of ships and jump cloning to them
-- Difficulty and cost of setting up and maintaining caches of sufficient size and density
-- Limit jump clone usage furtehr
- Ascendancy capitals
-- Risks involved, rarity of key items
-- Reduce bonuses hyperspatial whatsamajigs give to supers
- Battle rorqual
-- Lots of cross-training for questionable value and the certainty that we'll nerf it anyway
-- Reduced/removed drone bonus
- T1 hauler redeployment
-- Risk of moving your whole fleet in T1 haulers, bridging or no
-- Nerf hauler fatigue bonus
- Using JFs to move your fleet
-- Requires everyone to train for and own a JF, requires you to fly round in an unescorted fleet of JFs
-- We're going to nerf JFs evenutally, if we have to tackle this in the meantime we'll think of something
- Blockade-runner/black ops fleet movement
-- Need to have BO stationed everywhere to pull it off
-- Nerf BR bonuses
- Roaming fast-warp carrier gangs
-- It's a gimmick, there's probably a good counter
-- Delete carriers from game (kidding, unfortunately, but we'll think of something)





Passing this on.



Good point. Will look into that.



Oooh, ooh, pick me!

Combat black ops drops (e.g. Falcon tackles Rattlesnake in a Sanctum, lights covert cyno, two Panthers and a Sin jump in and kill Rattlesnake) are great fun. They add value to Eve because ratting with neuts or reds in local should be risky. They're not perfect; the target might be pre-aligned to a safe, loaded with warp core stabilizers, handy with an AB and MJD, or bait for a counter-drop. Blops drops depend upon stealth, patience, and mobility. The primary weapon is surprise - and jumping to the hunter cyno is essential for the surprise to work.

Here's how things work currently:
The hunter roams through a region, dodging gate camps and looking wistfully at shiny ships in POSes. At last! He spots a target in an anomaly. Things happen quickly - decloak, tackle, cyno, blops bses jump in, target dies, cyno down, scoop the loot, leave the scene. The black ops battleships wait for jump cap and then return to the staging system via jump. The hunter moves on in search of the next target.

Here's how things would work with a 5ly jump with these revised changes:
Hunter cyno goes up, Blops ships jump in, kill the target, and wait for 1+2.5 minutes before the jump cool-down expires. If they jump 5ly to the exit cyno after 3.5 minutes with 3.15 fatigue they get 3.15 x 3.5 = 11.025 fatigue and are done for the day. If they choose to wait in the system for at least 25 minutes, their fatigue drops below 1 and the next jump isn't quite so painful.

Assuming they're adaptive folks - they have abandoned the practice of always returning to the staging system and instead wait to jump directly to the next target. Either way - there is no point in continuing to hunt for 20+ minutes until the combat blops pilots' fatigue is reduced. This is not fun. Although I suppose the hunter could go around and do "catch and release" fishing for a bit. How about taking gates? Combat blops ships are certainly better than most ships at navigating bubble camps (better speed while cloaked, can fit MJDs), but they're also pricey and fragile. Plus, they warp at 2.2au/s, so warping from in-gate to target is not feasible.

[b]I think a -50% fatigue factor is...

Compared to how catchable interceptors are?

Hint: interceptors enjoy a role bonus that prevents them from being caught by bubbles.
Hint two: Jump bridges are confined to one per system. This means you have to take gates in between. Jump bridges provide static routes through space, which can be discerned beforehand and camped. Interceptors can vary their route to avoid the infinitesimal dangers they do face while traveling.

Why aren't you all focusing your efforts on the interceptor instead? It just boggles the mind that so much effort is going into trying (poorly, I might add) to prove one edge case where a T1 industrial might have an edge, when you could be attacking the root of the problem instead.

I suspect the motives here are disingenuous and have more to do with maintaining the supremacy of interceptors than they do with the surface goal, but that could just be paranoia talking. I don't know for sure.

What if we did this a little different.

The jump fatigue and range changes to capitals excluding the Jump Freighter, are absolutely fine. However, what if jump freighters had a fatigue-reduction bonus of 125% rather than 90%? Not only could you haul some things, but you could actually earn back fatigue credit. Now, before you say I'm crazy or just trolling, just remember that I am not advocating giving this Fatigue Eater bonus to other industrials. That would be lunacy.

the ironing is delicious

"god its so easy, just pre-position tons of industrials, swap out after every single jb jump to an interceptor, take one gate, dock, swap back to an industrial, undock, use the jb, dock, swap back to an interceptor, undock, take one gate, dock, swap back to another prepositioned haulerm, undock, take the jb (whoops you used it before your 5m timer was up fatigue has started accumulating hard) dock, swap back to the prepositioned interceptor, undock..."

oh wait, the session changes

"god its so easy, just pre-position tons of industrials, swap out after every single jb jump to an interceptor, take one gate, dock *session change timer* swap back to an industrial,*session change timer* undock *session change timer* use the jb dock up *session change timer* swap back to an interceptor *session change timer* undock *session change timer* take one gate dock up *session change timer* swap back to another prepositioned hauler *session change timer* undock *session change timer*take the jb (whoops you used it before your 5m timer was up fatigue has started accumulating hard) dock up swap back to the prepositioned interceptor undock..."


god that's so easy compared to every system taking like five seconds in an interceptor man everyone is going to do it