Player Features and Ideas Discussion

You could also co-ordinate with other subcap fleets to web anchors down prior to a bomb run.

It would also buff void bombs a little bit, as shutting off prop mods would be very useful for increase bomb damage yield.

Maybe even webbing bombs?

Damage formula needs some work I think, the difference between the rokh and the mega is still a bit big in my opinion (although armor can still have some small advantage)

One thing that would be really nice to keep is the ability for bombers to ruthlessly exploit mistakes. That's something I really like with bombers and cloaky ships in general. Explosion velocity in the damage formula works towards that. If you mess up your insertion to the field (ie. don't use defensive hics or perimeter bubbles) you will be vulnerable while not moving. Also getting dragged unexpectedly or similar would have bigger consequences.

The other thing is, I don't think armor ships should be buffed at all versus today, so adding velocity will be tricky to balance. That's why I suggested dropping the explosion radius down from 400 to 250 or something to level the playing field a bit. This would apply higher damage to sig-tanked armor fleets to compensate for the buff they get from velocity. It shouldn't make much difference for shield fleets.

It generally adds a higher skill requirement for FC's. It's no longer just about successfully hitting your target. You have to hit them at the right time, while they're not moving or moving slowly, preferably coordinated with other subcap fleets. This is a much cleaner mechanic than the clunky cloak changes.

This is a very bad update by CCP Fozzie.

Sorry that CCP can not make the game.

Like falling online? :

http://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility

I would love for alphafleet and battlecruiser fleets to make a comeback, but it's not going to happen without some change to the damage formula.

I didn't even think of attack battlecruisers. It would be great to see them in nullsec again.

The cloak changes also go against the whole 'wait for a mistake' mentality. Today you can keep a bomber fleet on a jump bridge, or even 30km off a fighting fleet, waiting for them to change align, bubble themselves, turn on MWD or stop moving. You won't be able to do that decloaked, multiboxed or not.

From what I've seen of the ISBoxer creator, he's alright. He's familiar with game companies and their policies--apparently he had some court appearances as well, related to a Blizzard lawsuit against a botter. ISBoxer AMA read it, ISBoxer author is good people.

Point is, the most likely way ISBoxer will get "banned" from EVE is if CCP simply asks him nicely.

The main thing to remember about ISBoxer is it can only do what a group of individual pilots can do. Those are two separate issues: what's possible, and who is doing it.

Who is doing it is nobody's business. It's a character or group of characters, operating within the game mechanics.

What is possible in this case is coordinated bombing runs that are too easy to set up and too powerful when executed.

I saw that wormholer's post about decloaking, and I'm assuming they use nulli/covert T3 blobs, which probably gets hit pretty hard by this change. In that case as well as bombers, it's just OP. Those subsystems are balanced by a nerf to DPS but what they've done is decided to use N of them to compensate for the lower DPS, with no loss of the cloaky and nulli subsystem benefits.

This cloaking change is to bring that scalability back into balance. 1 player with 50 characters or 50 characters, doesn't matter.

If you dislike the idea of ISBoxer, you should like this cloak change.

I was admiring your recent work against replicator, it was inspiring.

I think we might have to disagree on this one. I was thinking bombing runs are just as possible after this change, it just means everyone will have to be a big boy and make their own warpout point.

well. I kind of agree with the decloaking radius as a way of throttling the density of cloakies in space. 1 cloaked ship per sphere. It adds an extra step, of the warp-in flying perpendicular to the warp direction, with each cloaky warping in every 5 or 6 seconds (as the warp-in covers each 2km (plus a bit extra). but it still leaves the same warp-out valid, and they shouldn't bother each other in cloaky align for long enough.

Yeah for individual players, I see your point. Comms won't compare to the awareness of a multiboxer. Keeping cloakies separated is also a safeguard against one ship decloaking the whole group, but doing that over comms is nearly impossible compared to the awareness of a multiboxer (who can easily compare each ship's location). I guess that's why I'm ok with this change, especially after already flying cloakies with separation.

So ok, this change really sucks for cloaky gangs of individual players.

it's also possible fozzie simply doesn't want cloakies used en masse, at all. (greyscale, whoever)

The bomber?