Upcoming Feature and Change Feedback Center

Tar-Palantir has two comments he'll share. Both are trying to be "big picture" - hopefully they are useful to readers.

1. It is important to understand what this change is. This is not just a couple of scenarios that allow X, Y, or Z and would be cool for A, B, C reasons. This is a very fundamental change to Eve movement mechanics. This will have as far reaching impacts - likely further than the introduction of MWD's way back in the mists of time. This will allow players to teleport objects that up until this point could not be moved after being deployed, or had very specific movement mechanics. This change will alter the very basic ways people fly ships, fight NPC's, fight each other, move objects around a grid, etc. This is about thousands of possible scenarios, not just 5 or 30.
Hopefully CCP realizes this and have considered the wide reaching impacts such a basic change to movement mechanics will have. From talking with other players and reading this forum, it seems clear that lots of players haven’t grasped this yet. Many seem focused on a couple of scenarios that are important to them in one way or another. Tar-Palantir encourages people to go beyond a couple of scenarios and just imagine what you can do if you can teleport most objects in the game 100 km to Y*100 (with daisy chaining) instantly.

2. Similarly big picture, Tar-Palantir is very concerned about the impact this change will have on the role of and importance of positioning in how the game is played. Yes, Tar-Palantir understands where you position your MJFG ships matters and requires skill and all that. Not arguing against that. What Tar-Palantir is concerned about is that the importance of positioning of objects - ships in a fleet, ships around asteroids, bubbles around a gate, bombs in a bombing run, etc, etc is all diminished when you have the ability to teleport those objects nearly instantly long distances.
The last fundamental change to the role of positioning in fighting in Eve - especially fleet fighting above 20ish ships - was instant probing. You no longer needed ships flying thru space trying to get proper positions for the FC to to warp to. Where you were on grid became less important because wherever that was, your foe could warp in at some distance. Instant probing would wipe out pretty much all fighting happening above 120-130 km, a pattern that still holds now 5 years later. Anything more than that became nearly irrelevant because instant probing allowed your foe to get to the distance they wanted rapidly and with very limited ability to prevent it.
Tar-Palantir believes this will be as fundamental of a change. With its far ranging impacts on how objects move, this will greatly change how positioning is done. Tar-Palantir won't be surprised at all after all the impacts sort themselves out that most fights happen at less than 80-90 km. This doesn’t require probing an object/fleet out or choosing the right ships/object in the fleet to warp to. This you align, wait 5-9 seconds, and you land 100 km closer than you were. Or, if you prefer, 100 km further away, or above so outside of the plane of warps from celestials. With proper daisy chaining you can travel much further instantly. Moving across distances becomes even less of a barrier than it is now as you travel instantly and without being shot or blocked by warp bubbles.

People may like both #1 and #2 and believe that is good for the game. Tar-Palantir is rather uneasy about it to the point of being opposed, but he is going to avoid getting into that discussion and focus on his point that it is a massive change that will have very far ranging impacts. It isn’t a couple of scenarios that will change, or a “niche" that gets “nerfed” (whether that be heavily tanked ship station games or Incursion fleets) - this will change how Eve is played at a very basic level. That is what people should be thinking of when discussing these changes, not whether it helps/hurts their favorite activity.

Tar-Palantir will now return the forums to their regularly scheduled shouting, bragging, trolling, insulting, insights, and self-interest campaigning.

Deep space transports are going to be all but useless now to anyone who doesnt want to ......ahhhhhhhh SIT AT THE GAME AND ACTUALLY FLY THEIR SHIP. Align time makes the C-Dessie able to rip it off gate with almost zero counter except to scram the Dessie. But then whats the point of having the capability to run if you cant jump when you hit the next gate or dock when you hit the station. MMJD away...? Ohhh good times ahead.

You are complaining about less than 10 days of skill training to fly a T2 ship? One of which is Leadership V - a very useful skill...

In a bid to make them a bit less...niche and to open more interesting gameplay options....I would like to suggest that any higgs equipped ship doesnt get pulled.

Useful in it's way, so is mining and Pi, lots of skills are useful if you wish to follow that path/career.

but apart from naming them late in the day command destroyers, is irrelevant, less effective with links than a T1 battlecruiser that does not enforce link skills to fly it, and totally incomparable to how effective a true command ship is, where the prerequisites make some kind of sense. Should we make this a requirement for T3's and battlecruisers before we can fly them?
The idea of them being a T2 ship was absolutely fine, adding this linky command afterthought,for basic linking, and restricting it to force those skills is not.

So as I say, disappointing, and a good idea weakened through not keeping the concept of a new idea uncomplicated with feature creep. And causing many who would use it not to be interested due to the least important feature of the ship, dominating who can fly it.

I would contend that just trying to create skill training sinks without considering the main role of the ship, is not a good idea if you wish players to feel engaged.

But of course those with the skills already, are highly unlikely to use their link alts in active, engaged, play, not involving being sat semi afk at a safe, where others instead will usually lose their ship, with a "hero" save for the fleet.
So no doubt all is good?

They will still play with their main in the heart of the fleet, relegating the link alt, to minor attention, far from the action, and therefore not fly them after the first couple of days.


It is only those who will actually use them that will be forced to train , for them, useless skills,

this has a bonus to links. t1 battlecruisers do not if they did i would expect that leaderships would be required to fly them.

"fit" and "bonus to effectiveness" are not the same thing.

I can FIT autocannons to a thorax, but it is not BONUSED for them.

Hence no one (hardly ever) flies battlecruisers as link ships.
Same will apply to this, as it is so limited in the link role, shame the primary role is restricted to those users by requirements for running it that way.

And I agree the fact you can fit autocannons should not be a prerequisite for flying a thorax either. Or for that matter medium hybrids?

You should not be able to fit a warfare link without the skills, not need the skills to fly the ship
If you cannot fit the link due to skills, you cannot gain the bonus.
So, with that in mind, why are the skills to fit a warfare link a prerequisite to fly the ship?

Anyway as stated on the O7 show CCP rise is going on holiday until just before release, so expect these to Flop hard! After the pilots with link alts try them out and then forget them forever after the first week, because one would have to be a really special snowflake to train link skills on one's main when they are so up in the air, regarding eliminating OGB, until that is resolved.

What a wasted opportunity.

All my primary characters have those skills, because that was the way to shortcut to command ships before the change.

LD V should be a stock skill for everyone though. Absolutely without exception, so it's not really that bad.

I see what you are getting at but you also have to look at some other "details".

Last night on SiSi I saw the first iteration of the "new grid" which is far larger than our 250km grid "bubble" without grid-fu. The new grid on SiSi exeeds 1000km.

Now imagine when the combat carriers with their Battlestar Galactica squadrons are messing with ships from 500km range you really want to have a tool to get there and deal with them.

Another thing could be the monster range on XL-citadels that hurt you from 700km away - scary things are happening.


I say nay to allowing mjds in highsec!

I also say nay to removing NPC stations before someone gets funny ideas.