Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Instead of just "Delegating control" of fighters, how about the carrier or super pilot takes direct control of the fighters, remotely controlling them, and having the character camera follow the fighters. this will mean force projection throughout a system, but will leave the capital vulnerable because of split attention. Fighters are also expensive, and being flown around without an actual ship makes them targets. using a type of siege module to "assume control" of a squadron of fighters, will add awesome mechanics to the game, making the capital vulnerable to attack.

"scenario" Pilot A is flying a navy harbinger, and jumps through a gate into a hostile system. the gate is bubbled but no hostiles are on it, but from D-scan it is clear that the locals are ratting. Pilot B is assisting a corp member with a drone haven, flying a squadron of fighters along side him in the site, ( while his carrier is sitting outside of a pos) Pilot B warps the fighters to the bubbled gate to buy his corp member time to get to safety. As the fighters land on the gate, Pilot A instantly attacks them, quickly destroying several fighters. with his corp member now safe, pilot B warps his squadron back to his carrier, and de-activates the " squadron control module". when the cycle finishes ( lets say 30 second cycle time) his camera is directed back and he resumes control of his carrier, and burns back into the bubble. Pilot A gets a few fighter killmails, while Pilot B takes some losses, ( if 3 fighters die, that's roughly 60 mil ) but his corp mate gets to safety.

This leads to more tactics, more gameplay, more risk vs reward. more content for attacking players, as killing fighters gives killmails, and direct pvp. Act like each fighter is a module, where you can either group them or split them up on different targets. Clicking the module icon for a group engages them on that target. This may seem too powerful, but 15 fighters costs around 300 million isk as it is, losing an entire squadron will be costly, and fitted correctly, even a Destroyer can be a threat. In addition, the carrier is completely vulnerable to attack until the remote module cycle time as completed. If the module is ended while a squadron is still out, the squadron will attempt to warp back to the carrier, but if any are tackled, they will auto agress like standard drones

we could fit modules on the carrier that give the fighters certain abilities, such as fighter webification support module, giving each fighter a 5% velocity web. or interdiction support module, giving each fighter .1 warp scramble strength, " 10 fighters = 1 point. If this seems too safe, perhaps the remote control module will also set off a beacon in system, allowing anyone to warp to them at any time.

Neat, but talk about extra TIDI? Ouch....annnnd sounds a lot like Valkyrie.

The issues with Skynet is mainly two things :

1. Safety for the carrier/supercarrier assigning

2. Damage bonus to the person they are assigned to.

To further expand on both,
1. is a problem because the carrier can sit right beside a pos and slowboat inside at the first sign of trouble.

2. interceptors on gates getting to punch like a small gang, while retaining the ability to kite with close to no counter.

In one move you can fix both of these problems :

The signals that come from the stargates interfere with the broadcasting link between carrier and its assigner.

The same can be used with a pos/forcefield. The shield harmonics interfere with the broadcast between carrier and fighter.

*edit* "Interfere" meaning fighters will not work/fighters are abandoned if they get within 50 km of a pos/stargate

This also means that they should retain their ability to warp, as any carrier pilot with fighters who makes it safely away from an anomaly while ratting with fighters would find them all abandoned on grid with a pos, letting any potential threats shoot the abandoned fighters.

As another alternative :

Carriers/super carriers when assigning must turn all non essential systems offline, making them unable to move while having fighters assigned. ( this would function like bastion)
The carrier/super is unable to move until the fighters have warped back to the grid the carrier/super is on. This means atleast 20-40 seconds sitting and waiting assuming you instantly stop assigning if someone enters system and even then you are only JUST allowed to start moving or they have "cycles" like a bastion module.

This could even be a new "mode" on carriers with fighters that would function like the tactical destroyers. The 2 modes being "Delegation mode" which lets you delegate but makes the carrier unable to move. The second mode being "Standard operation" which lets the carrier move like it normally does, but gives it no ability to delegate.

Potentially you could do both together ( signal interference from a pos + the carrier being unable to move)

This makes it risky and leaves the reward.


In an unrelated note i believe it is a good time to also mention Fighter scan resolution :
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=5530344#post5530344

Fighters had their scan resolution lowered to stop the "scoop and redeploy" exploit to try and squeeze more dps out of them making them cycle un-naturally faster. Given the information in the post i believe they are unable to do so realistically post or pre nerf and would lobby to have them brought back to original amounts of scan resolution.

i have an idea

Assign fighters and fighters warp should not be removed, it will destroy the feeling to fly a carrier.
but this skynet thing should be hardly punished or should i say: win equal the risk.

how to do that?

- Carriers/Super Carriers could assign their fighters to a mate off-grid only when there is a Triage Mode fitted, and the Triage Mode will be automaticly and continuely actived as long as the fighters are off grid.
- Carriers/Super Carriers should pay more risk/cost so that their Fighters could warp all through the system without lose the connection. To do that, Carriers have to overload their Drone Control Unit to send a stronger signal (i dont have Carrier, so dont know if the name is right) to stablize the connection when the drone off grid. With this Overloading the Drone Control Unit will naturally take heat damage which will destroy the Drone Control Unit say it in 5-10min.
- Due to the stronger Signal broadcasting the Carriers/Supcarriers will be seen as a comic signal in system, which means they could be easily scan down with none-combat probes.

The carebear tears in here are legendary.

10/10, would read this thread again.

Thank you for fixing this garbage, Fighter Assist was ruining roaming completely.

Simply removing theese features one by one is a bad idea imho, simply because it reduces diversity, instead nerv them, make them more tricky to accomplish, add drawbacks, but do not remove features.
Eve is great because of its diversity and complexity, don't remove feature after feature until there is nothing left.

Please do explain how sitting at the edge of a force field feels like flying a carrier

Carriers are, first and foremost, a logistics platform. Hence the triage module and boni to remote reps and cap transfers, SMA, fitting services. These features by themselves are well worth the price tags attached to them.

Fighter assign is very much like offgrid boosting (to be removed at some time in the future as CCP stated multiple times already) and the cyno-doomsdays of the old days which got removed too ...

I for one am happy to see that CCP is trying to establish some kind of consistency in their game design.

Frankly this whole issue was a non issue until you CCP introduced the drone damage modules -> easy solution -> no modules or rigs will effect fighters -> fighter dmg drops back to max. 1200 -> problem solved because no one bothers to assign fighters any more.

Or you could had made fighter warp drives behave like other warp drives but that would had been a too elegant solution wouldn't it ?

Why not set a maximum number of fighters that can be dispatched to assist to 5? SkyNet carriers with 15 aboard would become fairly useless naturally. You could also restrict assigning support fighters only to other Capital-ships (ie: an on-grid Dreadnought). Another option would be that if fighters are assigned, the receiving ship has to have bandwidth to handle the fighters, so Capital ships like Dreadnoughts could be given bandwidth while still having no drone bays. Similarly some Battleship and Battlecruiser hulls could have large bandwidths while retaining Drone bays too small to actually quarter fighters aboard.

This would allow larger fleets to have fighters assigned, but would prevent a frigate roam from receiving carrier-fighter support unless the carrier itself came to the scene.

You could then couple any of the above with a requirement that carriers cannot assign fighters within "X" distance of a station or POS Shield, then the carrier is more at risk than it currently is, but still can be used as a strategic, rather than tactical asset, similar to RL carriers on which EVE carriers are based. It would also encourage fleets to assign more emergency cyno ships, and more close-in support of carriers if they were more exposed.

Finally, the most intensive option, CCP could insert a ship module, something like a "remote fighter control link", its CPU/PG intensive (and possibly class limited), but allows the ship to receive remote assistance from a carrier. If the ship carrying the module is destroyed, or the link severed (fuel maybe? or cloak) then all fighters disengage and return to the carrier automatically. This would spare the carrier, but make destroying fighter support easier by killing the control ship.

Ending fighter assist and fighter warp is not the answer. A balance needs to be achieved, but scratching these things off is just going to kick the can down the road a little ways and cause problems with carriers later.

Hi there,

Like a lot of people here, I also think that the planned solution is a cop out. Fighter assist in combination with warp is one of the most creative and unique mechanic in EVE, and outright deletion of this feature is a shame. Is it overpowered as it is now? Probably yes. So here are my thoughts on fixes:

Fighter warp ability should not be tuched in any shape or form.

Fighter assist nerfs/tweaks/modifications I came up with after a long day of work:

1. As already mentioned several time: no assist in a certain distance of a forcefield/POS.
2. A carrier can only assist a maximum of 5 fighters and/or to a maximum of one other player.
3. Different shipclasses can have different number of fighters assisted:
Frigates: 1 fighter
Destroyers: 2 fighters
Cruisers: 3 fighters
Battlecruisers: 4 fighters
Battleships: 5 fighters
4. A highslot module that grats the ability to assist fighters. 5 minutes activation time, 10 minutes recharge (of course numbers are just examples and in no way a thought through calculation). So after activation, for 5 minutes you can assign fighters, but after that they come back to you, and you have to wait 10 minutes to be able to assist the again. And of course 1 module per ship can be fitted.
5. Remote Fighter Communication Array (or some other fancy name :)). A module that allows the carrier pilot to assist one fighter. One additional module per skill level can be fitted to a maximum of five of course. Make it a highslot module to reduce maximum number of fighters (taking the slot from drone control units, reducing maximum fighter firepower by 33%), make it a medium slot module to negate omnidir stacking, make it a low slot module to negate drone damage modules.
6. Some offensive module (targeted or area) that breaks the control of assisted fighters on affected ships for a certain amount of time. Maybe a drone control breaker version for a counter to drone ships.
7. Carriers that are assisting fighters either normally or by the above mentioned modules are unable to move, maybe even after a certain amount of time after they called back their fighters.

Or just eny variation of these and/or any other mechanic suggested by others.

Ive read some other great ideas: triage mode needed, direct control+different fighter ability modules
There are a lot of ways to treat this issue, but this outright removal of the feature is not even a decent one. After force projection nerf (which is a great thing BTW), a carriers logistic capability practicly zero (I mean logistic in the regular real life version, carrying stuff around, not "healing" other ships). Right now they are nailed to a system, so no wonder they are used the way they are (the other reason is orcourse drone mods aplying to fighters). Making through with this change will leave carriers neutered and rarely used beside awesome structure repairing and in capital sligfest serving as cannonfodder for titan DD-s.

Right now the proposed change feels like this:

You have a burning tooth-ache, so you decide to go to a dentist. The dentist is well known for trying everything he can to save your tooth and pulling it out is only the last option. So you walk into the room and examines your tooth and says:
"Well, I can give you some medication, maybe it will help. Than if it wont, I can precicely drill it and aply a dental filling. If the problem is in the roots, it can still be treated with medicine and filling. If necessary I can build up the tooth from scratch. If there is absolutely no chance to save it, and I have to pull it out, we still have options to preserve you perfect smile, even if it wont be cheap."
So you sit back in the dentist chair, calm like a well fed baby, and when you open your mouth, the nice doctor says in a troubleing tone:
"But you know what? F**k it" - he drops down the precision drill and pick up a sladgehammer.
And when you walk out of the room, with half the teeth than you entered in your bleeding ruin of your mouth, before the door hits your back, you hear the ddentist and his assistant shouting at you in a condescending voice:
"Adapt or die!"