Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I still think there should be two varieties of Entosis Links, short and long range, with the short range links having the shorter cycle time. These can then have T2 and faction versions as necessary.

Thank you for posting this. For whatever its worth these changes, plus the changes to deployable infrastructure, fix all the potential issues with the Entosis modules that I had concerns about. The attacker now has to put themselves at risk to mess with the defender's home. If this shipped as written here I think it would work quite well. I do have a couple minor criticisms but they are secondary.

1. Bump the cost in stront up to at least four, or eliminate it entirely. 1 stront, at 3m3, is a silly small number that imposes no real hardship on the user. A single interceptor could carry enough fuel to Entosis (Entosize? Entoserate? Sovlazorpewpew?) for hours on a T1 module without giving up anything meaningful. The only time it would really matter would be if a player wanted to carry a bubble or mobile depot and had a reason to care about cargo space.

Even for single frigates the chances of living long enough to burn through half a cargo bay of stront in defended space are so low as to be irrelevant. Besides a few hilarious fringe cases where somebody would lose the battle by forgetting to bring any fuel at all, loading stront before a fight would just be one more annoying box to check like making sure you clone was up to date used to be.

Personally I favor making the module require more over having it require no fuel, but no fuel would not be a disaster.

I do like the idea of the "T2" module using more fuel. That is a great drawback if they use fuel at all.

2. Change the link names to small and large. The way the modules are statted up here they conform far more closely to small and large guns than T1 an T2 modules. That would keep things consistent and intuitive.

Another +1 here too. It's just like the 1 ozone per cycle the Clone Vat Bay currently has, entirely pointless. Also there's no correlation between cycle time and usage. I feel this would be more appropriate:

T1 Link:
5 minute cycle time, 10 stront per cycle = 30-90 stront per full capture

T2 Link:
2 minute cycle time, 3-4 stront per cycle = 18-84 stront per full capture

This means most frigates will need to resupply after a typical capture events, but larger ships can stay in the field longer.

Beyond that the changes are fantastic. The only other cosmetic change I'd like to see is this:



...as it doesn't fit in with the typical T2 pattern of being 10-20% better, but rather the difference is more like going from a 125mm Railgun to a 425mm Railgun.

This fixes most of my problems with the SovWand.

Its harder to run around with 'trollcepter' which is perfect.

I'm going to mirror a bunch of the earlier comments, when/if I go out to magicsov, I don't think anyone really expects anything (especially a frig) to live long enough to burn through a cargo hold of straunt. The logistical backbone would be "everyone throw 25 units of straunt in your cargo bay" or some form of ammo truck.

I threw this together this lazly mode ammo truck.

http://prntscr.com/6ohgbr

I didn't know where/if Stront is in Pyfa, but that doesn't matter... cap booster 75's are 3m3.

So at the rate of 1 Stront per 5min cycle for the tech 1 SovWand, this particular ammo truck has enough sov gas for 1,010 minutes or 16.833 hours.

With a T2 mod, running at 1 stront per 2 min cycle, this particular ammo truck has enough room to run for 404 min or 6.733 hours.

Regardless of which module, it is absolutely trivial to fuel a sov fleet. A handful of these could bring enough sov gas for ages. or, you could have blops in a cloaky hauler, or a nullified T3 running back and fourth... Or just tell everybody to bring 25 and literally never run out. It just seems like an arbitrary hurdle that doesn't add any interesting gameplay (it takes very little effort to blops in a cloaky hauler). Even if you make the requirements more involved, even the most incompetent entities should be able to move in more then enough. To get it to a point where it would really be a logistical challenge, you would have to push the requirements way farther into the realm of '**** this stupid ****' game play.

All this really effects is two dudes who didn't fit guns mining the same sov.

And really, if two people want to mine the same sov, without shooting each other, why should you stop them? The escalating # of sov beacons should do a decent job of solving the problem of locked fights. If the fight is a back and forth, cut throat, slug fest wouldn't that be what you were trying to achieve with this change? I would call that a success.

Its been said before, Jamming/Damping ships have a ton of power in this new system. I don't know if its a bad thing, but it is a thing.

All being said, if these changes were to ship as described, I wouldn't be salty.

Super good point - the new bottleneck has been identified, which will make logistics working in overdrive.

I'd love to see the activation/usage amounts required match BC/BS cargobays with all the smaller hulls being at at great disadvantage when it comes to very prolonged engagements/ping-pongs.

/hint, /hint.

It helps breaking stalemates. The defenders usually won't run out of fuel because they can just dock and get more, but the attacking fleet eventually will run out if they don't bring in e.g. cloaky haulers.
However 1 stront is pretty insignificant. Even a half filled cruiser cargo hold would give you enough stront for more cycles than anyone would be willing to sit through.

EDIT: on the other hand that would be yet another buff to drone boats for entosis warfare (since drone boats don't need to carry ammo)

Concerning capitals and entosis-links:

A carrier with entosis link will take x5 as long time to capture a sov structure, but what will happen if a defender shows up with a frig and an entosis link - will it be counterd/stopped by one defending frig with an entosis link? Or will the frig have "more power" over the capital? I.e will it take 5 capitals with entosis links to balance one subcap with entosis link?

Other questionmarks:

If an attacker entosises for say 5 out of the necessary 10 minutes, and is then destroyed, does the defender have to "de-entosis" the structure back for the equal time before it is saved fully? And if the attacker sends in another ship to entosis, will it have only 5 minutes left until the command nodes are spawned, or how will this work?

I think the fuel is more a token thing to limit the ability of of troll pinging across wide ranges of space by a single ship. For an active capture attempt it is irrelevant...feels much more aimed at spool up>ping>move on>spool up ping type gameplay.


I'd prefer the mass to only apply when active - else we'll start seeing weird things like bumping ships with an entosis mods for the extra mass (every little helps right) and other odd uses I haven't thought of yet. Feels like you've done this to limit fast aligns, but the whole offlining the mod negates this completely.

Edited reading fail out.

Have the devs said how entosis links will interact with siege modules?
If you can't be remote repped, and are pinned down anyways, might as well go into siege (triage, etc.) mode bonus unless they disallow siege mode while using an entosis link.

Haven't read anywhere any limitations on module limitations, reasonable to assume they would've mentioned it in here, given that it's a pretty big implication.


Others have mentioned the interaction between tactical reconfiguration modules and the entosis link, I can't really comment as I'm not a cap pilot.

(Additionally the second point nullifies stacking entosis links to go bump-omaniac)