Player Features and Ideas Discussion

CCP has stated that the off grid booster problem is difficult to fix because the coding challenges are many. In light of that, I propose this temporary measure which would be quick and easy to implement, and would have a largely similar effect.

Whenever you activate a gang link, you get a warpable beacon just as though you lit a cyno

Of course this beacon wouldnt lock you in place for 10 minutes like a cyno or prevent you from docking or jumping a gate, but in most other aspects, it would be the same. This means that anyone could instantly find your off grid booster so he may as well be with the fleet so he can receive RR etc.

Thoughts?

+1 for the idea.

But I see it as a problem too : what about people in highsec, mining or juste activating a ganglink while doing missions ?
It'll be the start of "highsec beacon spamming" and the open door to even more grief / gank x)

-1, because this does not solve the issue it seeks to. Creating a beacon, ignoring the annoyances that would cause, and the way it would be used to harass the general playerbase by groups of command ships in jita all flicking their 'beacon' on and off (Yes, it would happen. Yes, I would bring my 4 command ships to the beacon protest), would:

• Be of little benefit if the linker is sat on the edge of a pos bubble or station, where he's not in any danger anyway
• Highlight targets on grid who are linking, allowing gangs to easily see who they should be shooting
• Devalue the benefit in running a ganglink on your battlecruiser, as now it would be obvious that you are, and make you a bigger target
• Create additional clutter

Now, the whole reason I'm posting isn't to be negative, but rather because I don't think this is a good idea, so I'll propose an amendment;

Cause ganglinks, when active, to apply a massive penalty to being probed out, allowing them to be very easy to probe out while boosting, even with loads of ECCM fit. Some sort of idea around the probes being able to lock onto the ganglink communications from the ship.

But imagine the tarps you can set up to bait someone?

So you want to penalise the use of on-grid boosters? Are you really sure that's a good idea?

Sniper fleets could no longer use on grid boosters as every enemy would have a permanent warp in point for the fleet.

This would also apply to every other fleet and so this alone is good enough reason not to introduce this change. In order to provide a "temporary measure" which doesn't really fix the issue you're trying to you're hugely reducing the valid uses of link ships in fleets.

-1, I'm afraid.

EDIT - The reason this would apply to every fleet using on grid boosters is that an enemy fleet can warp to

Nah, we were talking about the off-grid ones that you don't get to see or hear about.

The only way you "know" if someone is using links or not is to keep an eye or two on your target velocities.

Like if you are in a Brutix and you know from flying a Brutix that the maximum speed you would get with a decent fit would range up to 1100m/s (for the sake of the argument) and you are about to engage a Brutix that goes 1400m/s and can turn much faster than you could, even with a nano.

At that point you can be sure that links will have something to do with it.

Or be it a Garmur that goes 8400m/s instead of 6000m/s.

And if unsure, hover your cursor over your mwd icon.


So at this point you either bail or you loose that fight but you know that your target has links up, which you cannot see or do something about.

With a beacon that acts like a neon-sign and tells you, here is link boat - please kill naow.


There is no stopping you from bringing your links with you to the grid you want to start an engagement but at the moment nobody does it because the pricetag on command ships.

I'd somewhat support some version of this idea as I don't think links used in PVP should be immune to consequences (though off grid links aren't completely risk free as things stand) but there are dozens of perfectly valid reasons for the use of off grid links that don't involve the PVP situations alot of the complaints stem from.

Appreciate the intent, but its a band-aid. Continuing to accept the excuse that its "hard" to move boosts on grid is getting quite silly. Why has hard been an acceptable excuse in eve?

Maybe if CCP took their own advice of HTFU, they might lessen the dropping of their subs.

Seconding that initiating magic smoke mode on the hamsters is bad, and that any links with grid range would quickly melt hamster due to being not merely n+1 but likely 6n per link at a bare minimum as far as load goes.

And why don't you use a Virtued Scanner to find the booster or to shut it down with your probes?