Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Dmissi, I realize that there has been a lot of trolling and in general I have tried to ignore those parts of the posts. I have also tried to minimize repeating myself. AMong the trolling, there have been good questions and legitimate concerns, and reasonable misunderstandings, so I have felt happy to address those aspects as concisely as I can. Another good question was asked about the risk of traveling and I have no issue addressing it because it is an interesting concern.


Under my idea, caps will get caught in the following situations:
a) The cap drops out of "hyperdrive" and stays there long enough to get scanned down and pointed by another in-range, jump-capable ship after it has traveled the required distance by its own jump drive or through a bridge to the cap floating in space between systems,
b) The point or bubble was placed before the cap jumped,
c) The cap decided to save 30 min of travel by landing at a gate and jumping to the next system,
d) The cap was moving via a stargate from the staging system to the operational system and was caught at a gate,
e) The cap landed at the destination to engage in an op and was bubbled or pointed.

My hyperdrive idea may be considered the cap equivalent of the warp. Ships cannot be caught while in warp and they can be caught in safe spots. Personally, I would totally support allowing ships to drop out of warp at will.

I have been on many roams where people have complained about how hard it is to get a fight. Opponents would run immediately because the content provided insufficient rewards and reason to continue engaging the content and risk defeat. As I see it, the root of the problem does not lie in being unable to catch people. When players choose to continue to engage content in the face of hostilities, they are catchable and likely anticipating a fight and therefore prepared to deliver a good fight. The problem is that people are not seeing enough motivation to engage the content. We need more reasons to fight for sovereignty and that means that sovereignty must provide more benefits both in terms of security and in terms of direct rewards. There is no reason why those who bash a sov structure shouldn't get "bounty-like" payout for killing the structure or for putting a structure up. The idea of rewards mostly going to pve play-style seems a bit biased to me. There is no reason why sov should not enable extra security options like gate guns, etc. without extra monthly fees which make the benefits less desirable. If the concern is catching ships, then in my opinion, the real concern is both "insufficient motivation for meaningful content" and "insufficient meaningful content". The more there is to do and the motivation there is to do it and the less that must be risked to do it, the more players will engage in that content in the face of increasing hostilities. Expensive ship requirements for content reduces the motivation by increasing the loss and thus reducing the reward/benefit. The more players are engaging both pve and pvp content, the more fighting there will be because players will be in space and therefore able to be engaged.

edited out

1. Same as scanning a ship in a system safe spot. So a similar mechanic is already in practice.
2. That was the idea. Deep Space probes. Except really being used for deep space probing this time.
3. I wasn't thinking about out of system bubbles at all. Seems highly impractical. Mobile bubbles should probably have a fast decay time being in deep space.
4. Any ship can currently fit a cloak in a system safe for the same effect. So a similar mechanic is already in practice.

c, d, and e all describe vulnerabilities to being pointed while traveling even with my hyperspace idea in place. So my points effectively reveal how caps could be tackled even with the hyperspace idea in play. It should be remembered that we can already move safely without a hyperdrive mechanic, and that the "jump fatigue" idea also allows caps the same safety as before, despite severely limiting the number of jump options and increasing the amount of time required per ly. My idea has little effect on cap safety because the caps have always been able to do non-combat movements safely and jump fatigue will not change that.

For those who intend to use their caps for combat, the same risks continue to apply. My idea does not alter the game in either safety or risk. It address BR-, it slows down cap movements and it makes the whole jump process simpler. Too impatient? Then jump a gate and delight the subcap campers with the opportunity for a cap km. That's what they all want out of this jump fatigue change anyway.

Frankly, I don't expect CCP will listen one second to my reason and I ready to move on in that event. But I figure they should at least have the chance to hear that their idea may not be the way to go. What they do with this feedback (if anything) is completely out of my hands. Been meaning to switch to Star citizen anyway.

which was my point exactly

and this is without even mentioning that there's no fatigue, cooldown, or anything else in his version, just longer travel times and overly exploitable mechanics


o/
Celly Smunt

No one ever said that we should make it easy to scan ships down, especially in deep space. And if the ship never enters a system then it is irrelevant to EVE AND no different than a ship being spun in a station or a cloaky camping a system. Some people like spinning their ships in station. A special counter was created for that activity. You mention that there may be others who simply like to watch their ship in hyperspace travel. Fine by me.


Is it really though? Is it really that hard to see subcaps salivating over kms from herds of caps taking stargates because they are supposed to ignore the risk when the wait time for jumping seems too great? It seems pretty obvious to me, but hey, what do I know about watching subcaps travel across regions just to get in on a cap km? Maybe they traveled all that distance at "free burn" across hostile space just to look at the star in that system and then said to themselves, "meh, might as well get in on the cap km while I happen to be in the system." NOT. You say that it is "ludicrous" to think that the subcaps are having an orgy about dreams (which is likely all they will be) of bountiful cap kms, and I call BS on that. Take Siege's comment above as evidence of one of the many subcap orgies already in progress. Most of the support for CCP greyscale's idea is based on subcaps's lust for cap kms and not on "added depth of strategy" or on any desire to improve the game overall.


With CCP Greyscale in charge, this is one point that I must agree. It is what it is.

You make a great point here. More subcap lusting afer cap kms. Even though the jump drive is a powerful and unique capital ship ability, sub cap cap km whoring demands that we nerf it so that it is weak and provides very little uniquesness to capital ship travel in order to satisfy subcap kb padding lusts. Such entitlement. But since jump range would have no meaning in a universe where a capital ship can just drop out of hyperdrive at anytime, this skill and ability should be changed to jump speed.

I think that caps align too slow and travel normally far too poorly to engage subcaps in normal games of cat and mouse, and therefor should not be expected to be very effective at avoiding interception. The ability to jump allows them to travel in their own unique way but at the cost of time.

I am not confusing anyone. You are. The question is not about whether subcaps want the kms to be the basis for jump fatigue, but instead whether the drooling over cap kms is a strong point driving their support of jump fatigue. This appears to clearly be the case. Given the subcap to cap ratio, the popularity of the support for an idea which benefits the masses at the expense of a minority is expected, even if it hurts the game by driving the minority away. A group can always be divided, exploited and destroyed if we follow the practice of following popularity of targeting minorities for the benefit of the rest. Hitler found great success with targeting the rich minority of Jews. Just as he was wrong, so is appeasing the masses with cap km lust, etc.

Yes, my idea is flawed with dashing your dreams of cap kms while CCP Greyscales idea seems to promise you cap kms aplenty and therefore can have no flaw in it. You won't get all the cap kms that you imagine, but the important thing is that it motivated you to support it and in that it has done it's job well enough.

2 quick notes: The best way to catch caps is to provide great reasons for caps to be used in war. Removing the need for caps in sov moves in the opposite direction. CCP needs to do a LOT more thinking in that direction. But after this change goes through, caps will need travel buffs of some kind in order for any of their new ideas for caps to be realistically implementable in anything less than a blue blob.

Second, just because you can sit in a cap ship with a couple more months of training does not mean that you are a cap pilot. Maxing the important skills requires many more years of training!

Sure, everyone wants to kill capital and super capital ships. That's a given. There is no vast sub capital conspiracy behind this change.

What this does is make it somewhat harder for PL or BL or Goons or whoever has fifty supers handy to come rain on your five dreads shooting a small POS somewhere.

Frankly, as someone who likes to use capital ships a lot, I am a lot less concerned that some sub capital ships are going to burn from the other side of my region than I am that a bunch of super capital ships will drop in from two regions over with an overwhelming hammer blow. The former creates a great opportunity for a running fight, the latter does not, unless I also happen to have an apex force.

In short, Andy Landen, you don't seem to have a grasp of the great opportunity that Phoebe potentially presents to mid-sized alliances living on the periphery of one of the larger groups - or out in the middle of nowhere (which suddenly has some meaning again). This state of affairs will last until the meta evolves and the large super capital fleets are even larger and spread out to cover more terrain.

(To those who posted ad hominem trolling, I neither reply nor return any ad hominem attacks, regardless of the degree of the inaccuracies. I prefer only discussing issues.)

Just because a group offers wealth redistribution from the rich to the masses does not imply conspiracy. Politics has always been about gathering support by offering handouts. Do I think that some good will come of the jump fatigue? Sure.

Jump fatigue will certainly reduce the "all Eve" threat to every battle and therefore greatly reduce the projection power of a small group of capital pilots. I also agree with CCP about the importance of reducing the threat down to regions (and even smaller).

Is jump fatigue a good a idea merely because CCP dances visions in subcaps heads of little Bobby jumping his carrier the last 50 stargates solo? Not at all. That is pure politics. Gathering support by promising cap kills to every subcap gate camper to read CCP's example. Will little Bobby jump the last 50 stargates solo in his carrier? Highly unlikely. Are there other ways to isolate regions or constellations, besides jump fatigue and even besides my ideas? Absolutely.

Has CCP entertained any other idea or even considered any potential issues with their plan for even a moment? Not as far as I can see.

Has anyone here bothered to promote any other solution to the "all Eve" battle issue? Again, I am not seeing any effort in offering alternative approaches.

So you have to ask yourself: Are you the kind of person who blindly follows without asking questions or offering better ideas? Not I.
Do you question politicians when they offer you the wealth of other people? I do.
Do you ask what BLOPS stand to gain or caps stand to lose, beyond the immediately obvious?
Finally, did anyone stop to ask about the consequences of overpowering BLOPS with triple the jump distance and virtual jump fatigue immunity? Can anyone remember what happens when ships were made overpowered in the past?

Ask the questions or close your eyes and follow blindly into Alts Online.

Let's have a quick look at this number. 50 gates, you say, as if that's something which caps would regularly do post-phoebe.

Do you realize that going from 319-3D in Delve, to YA0-XJ in deklein, is exactly 50 jumps? Do you also realize that under today's mechanics, that is a 60LY trip, with a total cost of 30k topes and 5 jumps in a carrier? We're talking about 10-15 minutes to travel all that way, and that's if you're inefficient. As a subcap we're talking about a lot longer than that.

If you were to optimize the trip down by waiting out the fatigue so it no longer matters much (i.e. wait until fatigue's below 10 minutes), then you're talking about probably no more than 8-9 hours' worth of travel if you do it all by cynos. It's a pain, but it's doable for a goon-style "all hands into delve, we're moving in" move. It's not, however, something you do regularly, and that's the point.

If, however, you're part of a standing fleet which is tasked with jumping into a system 5LY away, bash something's face in and jump back, then this is something you can do in 6 minutes flat. After you've done this, however, you have a fatigue of 5.5 hours, and if you have to jump a third time immediately after, then you're looking at 1d7h of fatigue. If, however, you were to stick around in that system for 44 minutes so your fatigue's at 10 minutes, you can do another 2 jumps in 6 minutes before your fatigue's at 5.5 hours, etc etc etc.

And this is before we start to look at the bonused ships, who are even less affected by this for short travels like this.

CCP's idea greatly facilitates local travel and defense via caps, your idea makes everything part cockstab and part overpowered (cockstab beceause waiting for anything from 1 minute pr LY to 10 minutes pr LY to see if your target's still there or if he's left, overpowered because they can travel from one side of the universe to the other without ever touching a single system).

If, however, you have to shuttle something between 2 systems which are 5LY apart, you can spend an entirety of 6 minutes waiting, which is probably going to be spent loading/unloading/fiddling with other stuff anyways, which means you won't notice. After you've done this, however, you have to wait 5.5 hours for your fatigue to go back down, at which point you can do 2 more jumps of the same nature. This encourages local use of caps, and requires that hostile caps are moved within striking distance to actually be usable, and nerfing travelling from f.ex YA0 to 319 for a single timer, all in one fell swoop. Unlike your idea.


The only one mewling about CCP promising cap kills to every subcap gate camper, is you. The rest of us have figured out that if you don't have proper subcap support yourself (or are roaming around in an archon ball etc, I suppose), then you just don't go through that gate if you know it's camped, and you look for alternatives. Either you wait it out (in which case the campers have won a victory by denying you movement), or you take a detour and/or come in through another gate which they haven't camped. Or you just skip the system entirely because the only strategic importance that system has, is as a chokepoint, but you have an alternative.

And again, 50 gates is all the way from the middle of Delve, to the middle of Deklein. It's not something you undertake daily, weekly or hopefully not even monthly, and certainly not alone or without scouts and other proper support. So you're entirely correct, little Bobby Tables would not be dumb enough to try to undertake that trip, he'd join up with other people to make the trip safer, or he'd just do what he's done today, only over a longer period of time. Maybe even a few days.

As for other ideas, I'd love to see you come up with alternate ideas which greatly enhances the likelyhood of caps being used in local defense, while at the same time nerfs the concept of doing what NCdot etc did during the fountain war, i.e. jump a large portion of their cap/supercap fleet over to their recently dropped sov space, grind through and rehub everything, and move back to continue the war, all within 36 hours I believe it was. That was them grinding down what, 1 region? 2= 3? I forget.


I've seen Greyscale acknowledge a lot of the workarounds the community has thought up, and either come up with an answer which proves the workaround unfeasible, or make minor tweaks to bolster/hinder the situation being mentioned. So yes, CCP has, and I'd postulate that the main reason you "can't see" is because either you don't want to see, or you just didn't see it because you didn't read the thread thoroughly.

As to alternatives, I don't think that's necessary, CCP's changes seem to work well.

How does that old line go?

Just because they aren't out to get you doesn't mean you shouldn't be paranoid... because at least then I have something to laugh about.

Honestly I'm just screwing with you at this point because you've proven yourself to be beyond reason. I'm not even sure you understand the game mechanics you are arguing about. But the kicker was when you pulled the Star Citizen card.

If you really think there is some other game out there that can replace EVE, one that is even 1/10th as deep, one that is as player controlled as this one, one where teamwork can accomplish anywhere near as much as in this one.... then go off and look for it. You won't find it, it doesn't exist. Only a person who completely fails to see the brilliance of what EVE allows us to do would say idiotic things like "I'll just play some other game."

EVE needs all the players it can get, and I don't want to chase any away, but you need to seriously consider why you even play this game. You don't seem to care about anything else but safely moving caps really far across the map. Try something risky, get your heart pounding. If your ship blows up, bury the rage, say good fight, and move on to getting a replacement. EVE gets boring when things have been safe for too long. I still have to remind myself of that from time to time.