Player Features and Ideas Discussion

people want to kill Revenants no matter what, but people need a reason to log those Revenants in.

The issue is - fighters relatively recently becoming an effective weapons platform against... anything pretty much. Its been possible to assign fighters for years but no one complained when they struggled to hit anything smaller than a battleship - when they can blast the average roaming ship to nothing with ease that is completely unbalanced and the source of 99% of the complaints about skynet that I'm aware of (obviously no one complaining likes the relative safety of the carrier either).

Entirely taking away the bonuses that allow them to have the tracking and speed to make that possible would be a step backwards IMO. There is a "simple" elegant fix but it seems the technical nature of it is beyond most people to understand the implications of it.

The fact that in a typical "skynet" situation the carrier pilot can with the right techniques (the revenant kill has NO bearing on this) make themselves 99% immune to repercussion isn't ideal from a game balance perspective either (irrespective of fixes to reduce fighter effectiveness).

Wholesale removal of a long standing feature due to some overpowered use in edge cases should never be anything but a last resort if there is no other way to fix a game breaking feature.

Yeah, they're just jumping on the nerf-this-OP-ship bandwagon.

Really, all Drone Assist should be eliminated. Then Fighters and Fighter Bombers can have their sensor/targeting aspects reinstated.

In 2007 you could have your drones work for you when you were inside the shield... Those were the days.

With the proposed changes to Structures (no Super Soap Bubble), it would make sense to bring back fighter assist with the provision the assisting pilot is uniquely flagged and cannot moor or otherwise dock until the timer ticks off.

These tears. My cup, overflowith.

Much as I agree that the current system allows "risk-free fighting" by the carrier captain, I think it's a shame to simply remove the unique flavour of fighter/ carrier combat, and the variety that brings (or could bring) to the game. So, with apologies for a rather lengthy post...

The problem:

1. fighters are effectively used to "stack DPS" onto another ship, above and beyond what its hull size should be able to deploy, and,
2. the carrier itself is redundant on the grid - there is no incentive to deploy into a hotzone, so there is no reward for risk.

This is being abused, it seems, in large fleet fights (shocker). I’d rather not see yet another ability of benefit to all EVE players removed as it is over-powering when used by specific groups of min/maxers in certain situations. And there are so many ways to scale the problem back that I think removing the unique abilities of fighters would be a shame. Instead, this could be an opportunity to expand on that flavour, and feed into the upcoming capital-ship rebalances…

The Lore:
In current-day use, and in most Sci-Fi, carrier-borne fighters are used for power projection and escort/ patrol duties. They dramatically extend the combat range of the platform, and its ability to respond with rapidity and agility. They’re basically a flying weapon system. They *should* be powerful…
However, to achieve this power, modern-day carriers have enormous Command and Control (C2) assets as well as Air-Traffic Control (ATC) to manage their fighters. This power is also tempered by maintenance requirements, a lack of longevity (fighters have a limited range and engagement time due to fuel and ammo limits), and high human and financial cost related to their relative fragility.

We could simulate these strengths and weaknesses to limit or remove the problems.

Solutions:
DPS Stacking:
The easy answer is to note that we don’t allow hulls to over-fit other weapon systems, so neither should a tiny hull command enormous fighter power. It’s hard to argue with that, but a fighter does come with additional overheads - they’re rather more expensive to use than many weapon systems, and they need a platform from which they can be launched. If I really love fighters, and I’m not just min-maxing, I’d be happy to exchange some of my ship’s local firepower (guns or launchers) for the command and control infrastructure necessary to command fighters. Due to the extra overheads of fighters, this may be a favourable rate of exchange, but not utterly out-of-control as appears to be the case currently. Like HMS Dauntless (a destroyer) and her much-reported Sampson Radar’s ATC ability, I’m suggesting a high-slot module (which probably shouldn’t be usable in a utility high-slot) which allows some fighter delegation.

The Off-Grid problem:
There should be some incentive for the Carrier to fight on-grid. So remove the “attack” option from assigned fighters, replace it with a “release/ recall” toggle. This means you have to rely on the drone AI rather than human-called targeting. This, I feel, is a big change, but should allow the fighter’s local controller enough control to prevent Concordokken-style incidents.

Other opportunities:
With the new Sov system, we’ll hopefully see more and smaller fleets. Warfare should swing away from attritionist grind to more agile and tactical manoeuvreist play. This is a great opportunity to revitalise the carrier which has become a gloried ambulance, and reward the enormous training and monetary costs of becoming a carrier captain. I’d argue that it’s *not* the time to remove fighters’ warp ability. Let’s go the other way instead…
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How many times in Sci-Fi (*cough* Valkyrie *cough*) do we see fighters set to escort convoys? Why not allow this behaviour? This would also open up new gameplay Stick that Command and Control suite module in your hauler’s one or two high slots, and we’re adding to, rather than removing, the flavour of fighter combat.

how about fighters as scouts? Give carriers the ability to assign fighters to a gate, with orders to return/ report or engage on contact (like POS guns)?

How about giving them the ability to patrol between a series of waypoints and do the same?

Above, I mentioned the maintenance and fuel/ munitions need of fighter craft. If we’re allowing fighters independent action, these need to be in place – give all fighters a maximum deployment time (like drones) after which they need to return for refuel/re-arm and maintenance. Give them a maintenance timer, which reduces their abilities for every “X” minutes they are in space (or possibly just in a hostile action), following which they need “Y” minutes of maintenance in a carrier (or POS fighter bay) Give carriers rigs or modules to improve maintenance speed, or loiter time of fighters under it's own control. Make that carrier important! Yes, all this makes fighters powerful, but without the carrier to support them they should be limited…

Off the subject of carriers, structures are being revamped, and POS fighter bays have been mentioned… Maybe those logistics pilots that now need to travel through jump-gates since the hyperspace changes can request a fighter escort from their corp’s next-gen-POS as they set out...?

We all agree - fighters need some work, and “the usual suspects” need to be stopped from abusing a broken game mechanic. But this is an opportunity to improve in several ways, and could really start to return the feel of a (super)carrier as the heart of a roving taskforce in our new landscape of manoeuvreist warfare.

CCP should have done this:
Can't assign fighters while near a POS.
Assigned fighters use base stats, skill book, modules and ship bonus do not work when assigned.

The only skill that matters for the person who fighters are assigned to is how many drones (not fighters) they can control.



While it would go a long way to sorting the issue (no one complained when fighters couldn't hit the "broad side of a barn") its a bit of a drastic step backwards - better options would have been some limits on the amount of drone upgrade modules a carrier could fit but that would need a huge overhaul of drone modules to not be a bit arbitrary in implementation or given that fighters ultimately aren't piloted by pod pilots and have a "normal" human in charge of gunnery (rather than a drone's electronics) even with the carrier's backend assisting I don't think it would be too much of a stretch to reflect that with sig/damage based scaling (as with titans but different parameters) so their effectiveness against smaller ships is much reduced (short of having like a fully linked and bonused vindicator + golem hold the target down for fighters to apply damage) - could be some technical issues with that but I can't imagine it is the case.