Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Bubble Bobble balance and other B-words.

Q: What is wrong with bubbles the way they are? Why a balance?
There are three things wrong as I see it. First they are a passive defence/offence structure that never goes away unless shot at, thus involving no active participation on the part of the players after the actual anchoring. Secondly bubbles are a completely non-granular gameplay. there is a clearly "worst" version -tech 1 small- and a clearly "best" version -tech 2 large. Thirdly they are completely digital in nature, an on-off system, either they give infinite "points" or they are offline.

Thus my suggestion with varied anchoring times, lifespan and number of "points" for different sizes and tech levels. The numbers below might need tweaking for full customer satisfaction but you get the general idea. (Note that I find the "ship-launched" bubbles perfectly fine and thus they are not included.)

Small I - 5km Radius - 1 min anchoring - 5 "points" - 30 min lifespan - Size 20m3
Small II - 7.5km Radius - 2 min anchoring - 6 "points" - 60 min lifespan - Size 50m3

Medium I - 10km Radius - 2 min anchoring - 3 "points" - 90 min lifespan - Size 100m3
Medium II - 15km Radius - 4 min anchoring - 4 "points" - 180 min lifespan- Size 125m3

Large I - 20km Radius - 4 min anchoring - 1 "points" - 240 min lifespan - Size 475m3
Large II - 25km Radius - 8 min anchoring - 2 "points" - 480 min lifespan - Size 525m3

I'm not a die-hard fan of anchored bubbles, but the current implementation is better and more interesting than your suggestion.

In the interest of civil discourse could you please explain how an 11 year old system with a digital on-off gameplay and no player interaction is "more interesting than a granular system with varied lifespans, "points" and so on?



You will have rats spawn on wormholes, outposts, poses, safespots, warp-ins on moons and so on?

What part of on gates was unclear?

Gates are the only non optional bottleneck, everything else should be left alone. It'd take a special kind of stupid to try this to a WH.

Nullbear: "I wanna farm my 100misk/h anoms!"
Nullbear 2: "We have a wormhole leading to C5 full of evil gankers"
Nullbear: "Anchor a bubble on the wormhole. then the shining goddess of local chat can preserve us from risk vs reward again"

Despite the tone I find it perfectly valid gameplay. Someone was proactive and found the hole with probes. Then took the precaution to anchor a bubble on it. With a lifespan of 8 hours a Large II should last the lifespan of the hole.


No the drag/stop would be dependant on the warp strength. The whole purpose of the balancing would be to encourage players to use the right tools for the right job. If you want to have a short camp in a 2-gate "freeway" use a small and catch all but the most stabbed-out haulers. If you want to hellbubble your enemies citadel while you entosis it, use a large.

Fair enough. But the reason for me dreaming this up and posting it was not (only) to address Hellbubbles. Rather I wanted to drag bubbles, kicking and screaming no doubt, into modern EVE. "Granular", player interactive and "analog". Rather than what it is now, something that you anchor and then it does it's job (which is infinite or nothing) for "eternity" without further player interaction.

What you are really asking for is a way to "nullify" any ship against static bubbles. That's one reason not to support it.

Another reason is that player interaction is currently required to remove the bubbles. Making another player take the time and risk to shoot a bubble is just fine by me.

On the other hand, if Circadian Seekers or Sleepers want to start shooting bubbles, that's fine by me too. While they are at it, maybe they can shoot off-line towers, abandoned drones, and other assorted space wreckage.

If we get cubic. or tetraedic bubbles then, sure, make it so that they can't intersect.

But they wouldn't be bubbles anymore.

Technically you'll be able to cover a POS with several layers of bubbles then, I suppose... That'd be a ton of hassle.

I can understand the OP's desire to mix things up a bit. Right now, there is no gameplay reason not to use T2 large bubbles if they are available. His proposal would make smaller bubbles more useful and open up more varied gameplay ideas.

Having said that, I can't support this idea. The whole point of bubbles (no pun intended) is to provide warp interdiction against ships up to, and including, supercaps. Since only infinite-point systems can interdict supercaps, anchorable bubbles would need to retain their infinite-point status. Plus, if you go to a finite-point system on bubbles, the interdiction immunity role bonus becomes far less useful and those hulls would likely have to be re-balanced to compensate.

I support tweaking anchored bubbles to make smaller bubbles more viable, just not this particular tweak. Maybe change up their relative HP stats such that larger bubbles are more fragile but cover more area and smaller bubbles are more durable but cover less area?