Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This is a fantastic idea... Its just too bad nothing like that exists...

I have a challenge for you... come up with a mechanic. A positive non-punishing mechanic that you think would make people split into smaller groups.

Game designers use AOE for a good reason; without it blobs are unreasonably strong.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, there are only 3 things that counter blobbing in games

1. Terrain - Bottlenecks like ramps that only a certain number of units can fit onto at a time; unfortunately this is not in Eve.
2. Line of Sight - If your units/ships/soldiers must all be able to see the target to shoot at it, then the size of a blob is effectively limited because there is obviously a finite amount of space around a given target. Unfortunately this is also not in Eve because it would make the servers hotter than the sun.
3. AOE - Since Eve has neither 1 or 2, this is the only option we have left.

Which would you rather have: Blobs or a mechanic to punish blobs? because youre going to have one or the other. If you dont have mechanics to punish blobs, then people are gonna blob up because it's the easiest most effective thing to do.

This proposal alone is not meant to in any way break up big alliances as like you said they are successful for many other reasons and likely regardless of any mechanic changes they always will be. EvE coalitions have followed IRL very closely and now matches where we are in the world today. Enitities have gotten so big and wars so costly that actually it's in everyone's best interest to carry on peacefully.

What this proposal does do is add a level of on-grid depth to the game. You are right that we already have e-war but does that mean we don't need anything else? AoE weapons fill a different role than e-war and therefore I think there is room for both. Currently fights are a simple dps vs repair race because 99% of ship weapons and 100% of repair effects are single target.

As to your counters, none of those are / were valid comparisons.

Bottlenecks/ Terrain: in other games these limit unit movement IN battles, the closest equivalent in eve would be warp disrupt bubbles (only affects ability to leave / force enemies to land at point of your choosing) however there is little other on-grid area denying effects.

Line of sight: simply doesn't exist in eve at all. Your example shows a max range limit and nothing to do with line of sight.

AoE: Bombers already exist as an AoE counter to large ships, they have done this considerably well to the point that nobody uses battleships anymore. Targeted (much MUCH weaker than bomb dmg) AoE would allow AoE to be used against cruiser and frigate fleets, possibly reducing the attractiveness of cruisers.

For the record I would also be in favour of more area denying effects to create terrain and for line of sight to be implemented as these would lead to a more interesting game but got to start somewhere.

It's not like we have a mainfleet doctrine consisting of armor battleships highly resilient against bombs...

If the goal is to nerf Logi by increasing the complexity of the role wouldn't damage over time weapons/ammo have the same effect while being less taxing on the servers?

We kind of already have damage over time weapons in the form of drones anyway, the DoT tick can even be removed with the right weapons.

Yeah... never mind, more I think about it more I think drones are basically dots and that clearly hasn't countered blobs in anyway.

Nah... it would get VETOd because it kills sub cap pvp.

Oh wait...

The point in concept is that in a large fleet fight, one side shouldn't completely dominate the other based on logistics. I suppose I have a concept in mind that ships should evaporate on both sides, provided they are both positioned properly. Having to resort to alpha doctrines isn't interesting gameplay.

When I first started playing this game, I joined a corporation that flew T1 cruisers fully ensured and were nearly free to fly. We would take gangs of 12-15 out and slam them into the nearest vastly superior gang and often all die taking down one "shiny." The destruction of that one hac/recon/etc was worth more than the entire fleet combined. To a degree, I believe that an FC looking at a superior fleet should have the option to ship down and repeatedly throw inferior gangs at the opposing fleet to whittle it down.

At the moment, I simply believe that isn't possible when fleets are bringing 10+ logistics with them.

The fix I would propose is simple. Stacking penalties on logistics. Say after 8 remote repair modules, it becomes noticeable. By 12, it's half. By 16, it's practically non-existent.

Feel free to tell me why remote reps should be stacking penalized while weapon are not. No one ever answer that anyway...

Different ammo types could have different explosion radii with the tightest explosion having the most focused (highest) damage. Stacking penalising logi is not a good solution as now it becomes literally impossible to defend against a large enough fleet.

It seems everyone's main problem is server load, are there any programmers among us able to figure out a good easy-on-the-server way to do AoE?

step in the right direction