Player Features and Ideas Discussion

A little background: I had just purchased and fit a Tornado and was flying it into low when I ran into a Ishtar waiting on the gate for me. Realizing instantly that an Ishtar, especially at zero, would make short work of my Tornado, I did the MWD/cloak trick and warped off. He followed me through several systems, and then finally gave up when I entered highsec again. He called me a coward in local, and I responded that I was just being prudent. While I don't blame either of us for flying our ships the way we did, both of us were perfectly logical, I was disappointed in that encounter.

From my standpoint, if I had tried to engage him, regardless of what I did, it's almost certain that he would have pointed me and I would have lost my ship. Once pointed, unless you have a specialized ship with ECM or maybe nuets, you either win the fight or you die. A point is just too powerful of an offensive tool. Realistically, this means you just don't fight what you don't know you can win. On his part, he tried his best, but no matter what he did, he couldn't force an engagement. An MWD/cloak is too powerful of a defense. The MWD/cloak setup (in low) allows you to avoid every situation where you may have to fight a superior ship.

As a result, the majority of fights in low aren't really fights, they're ambushes. An obscenely overpowered ship or gang trounces another ship or gang by tricking them or catching someone being lazy. All tactics are thrown out the window, and the almightly blob wins by simply cycling their guns once or twice. There is a lot of interesting posturing that happens before people start shooting but the fight itself is just a formal conclusion to the real battle of jumping around. I think we could do better.

I'm not asking to turn EVE into a bunch of jousting matches, where everything is fair and even, but maybe both offense and defense need to be weakened some, so there is more grey area for fights to occur. Maybe that Ishtar should be able to force an engagement on my Tornado, and maybe that shouldn't be an automatic death sentence for me.

Here are some practical ways in which that could be done:

- Break the MWD/cloak trick. This will make it impossible for people to avoid every fight they don't like, and encourage people to travel in ships better suited to fighting rather than taking up a high with a cloak and a mid with a often sub-optimal propulsion mod. Hopefully this will mean that when a juicy target appears, they won't avoid it because they're travel-fit.

- Weaken warp scrams and warp disruptors. Have them slow warp speed, rather than prevent it, and make them cap-hungry (think nuets), so locking people down comes at a significant price, and it's not perfect.

- Slow, or even disable warp for ships that are running defensive or offensive equipment. As it stands, PVE ships suck at PVP because they don't have a way to pin people down and finish fights. Make this less vital, and that guy returning from a level 3 in his battlecruiser is suddenly a PVP pilot ready to take a fight and not just a PVE carebear trying to avoid everything.

A: You doubled up on the bad choices by jump in in unscouted into lowsec, and doing it in a long range ship with little close range support. You did redeem yourself a bit by successfully doing the MWD trick and getting out, but two wrongs and a right still mean you made two bad decisions.

B: We are not re-balancing the entire game, system for warp scrambling, mod attributes, ship capabilities, and downsides of mods because you think that it will magically turn EVE into a land where an Arty Nado has a chance against an aggression Ishtar at close range.

Your welcome to your opinion. Most people would even agree with it.

But your proposal is like fixing peeling paint on your home by burning the house to the ground.



And yes, Arty nado vs close range PVP Ishtar should be a one sided rout. If you made no preparation to avoid such an event (say wcs or fitted ecm) and got caught before you can get back to gate or warp away, I see no reason to give you a chance to get away free.

In your spool up/delayed warp drive proposal were you somehow imagining that a 600+ DPS ship would somehow fail to kill a paper tanked Nado in the time it took to get into warp while scammed?


Get a scouting alt. Get friends to scout you, watch the killboards for yourtravel systems, pay someone to move your ship, buy a new ship at your destination.

Facetanking a travel route then expecting the game to give you a chance for survival when you facecheck a gatecamp in a non cloaky, non agile paper tanked ship is expecting absolutely silly things.


Still -1.

I agree that the Ishtar should beat me in this situation, but the problem is, it doesn't. It doesn't even have a chance. I can MWD/cloak forever, and he will never catch me. That mechanic is overpowered.

I'm not super familiar with Ishtars (I just knew enough to know that's a fight I couldn't win) but if what you're saying is correct about 600+ DPS, I agree 100%. It should rip through a paper-tank Tornado before it can warp off. However, there are other ways to fit a Tornado, and if I put a fat buffer tank, or some resists and an ASB on it (which it can certainly support), I think I should have the potential to get away. Right now, I might as well do a paper thin tank, because thin or fat, I'll either not take a single shot, or I'm dead, there is no middle ground.

I disagree that other modules like warp core stabs (or MWDs/cloaks for that matter) should be necessary to move combat ships around in most cases, because it encourages a distinction between travel-fitting and combat-fitting, which, in my opinion, is lame and discourages PVP.

Without warp disruptors/scramblers to force a fight everyone would just warp away as soon as they decide they won't win. So altering "points" to be "weaker" is an automatic no-go.

Getting rid of the MWD-cloak trick... it only works with some ships. Not all.
And, to be quite frank, if your non-covert-ops ship is fitted with a cloak you are not really looking for a serious engagement in the first place (because the penalties a non-covert cloak puts on a ship render it "sub-optimal" for fighting).


Welcome to warfare 101 (both in-game and in RL).
Unless you are using a certain tactic that specifically avoids commitment (see: "kiting/skirmishing"... which requires certain ships in specific setups) you are either all in, or not at all.

Plus... this highlights a certain aspect of the current system. Namely; you must prepare and have an answer for every engagement.

And yes... running is a viable answer.

I talked about making them weaker, not getting rid of them altogether. A battleship that got tackled by an interceptor would still take a good deal of time to get into warp, and as more ships target it and put scrams on it, that time would get longer and longer. However, it wouldn't be helpless for all eternity because a single frigate got under its guns. In addition, I mentioned possibly slowing or preventing warp if someone was using offensive or defensive mods, so sure they could "just warp away", but they would have to endure a period of time without shooting, repping or even hardening their shields and armor, which would be a hefty price to pay.

I'm fairly certain the MWD-cloak trick works for all sup-cap ships. Moving caps around is beyond my skill level at this point, so I can't comment on that. You are correct in saying that it is sub-optimal to fight in, which is why you put a mobile depot, an extra gun and an AB in your cargo hold and swap out in a safe or a station. It adds time and complexity to doing things in lowsec without making the game any more enjoyable.

Finally, I don't care how "realistic" it is, I care about how interesting it is. If I can get past every lowsec gate camp (like I can now), that's boring. If I can't get past any, that's also boring. I'm interested in having to think: Can I get past this gate camp?

Getting rid of the gate guns would go a long way towards making low sec less safe using the MWD/cloak tactic. I'm not saying that we should do that, but it is a way better suggestion than your proposal.

As mentioned, most fights in a sandbox are all or nothing fights. Especially when you are using all-or-nothing ships like tornados. Fly something more versatile next time?

Other enjoyable parts of the game are the preparations leading upto a fight. Selecting your ship, selecting its fit, building fleet numbers and picking a strategy for a fight. These tasks are much less all or nothing competitions but are where many fights are won or lost.

What about basic ships of varying classes (say up to BC) and modules of basic strengths that anyone can fly (so long as you can fly the class of ship) and fit which are seeded by the game server. Perhaps this would encourage people to fight because ultimately they're throwaway ships that don't impact on their finances and can be done jumped into anywhere in any NPC corp in space

I disagree, it is THE greatest thing about this lovely game. Eve without meaningful loss is not Eve.