Player Features and Ideas Discussion

That's because off grid boosts currently disproportionately favor "small gang" groups, meaning kiters.

Pretty sure the effect you're describing is intentional. Now, you have to make the choice between kiting and actually fighting. And that's a good thing.

Besides, if you are going to get a tangible, measurable effect from it, it damn sure better be on grid for people to attack. You can't ewar from off grid, you can't logi from off grid, and you should not be able to boost from off grid, simple as that.

Grid links are equally available to small gangs and large in their current state. Stating that kiting is not actually fighting is arguing semantics. If this change is to make that play style more difficult the change should be made to the ships themselves not as a broad and asymmetric a change as removing off-grid links is.

The only level of compromise that I could see happen in relation to Off grid vs On grid links while still appeasing both sides would be to make it where the off grid links have say 50% of the current boosting strength while the on grid links would retain their current power level. Then that small gang could have their links while the blob can have their more powerful ones.

Implying that "appeasing both sides" is actually a goal or desirable outcome? It does not work that way.

The issue is not with the magnitude of the boost, though that certainly exacerbates it. The issue is with the entire concept of a ship providing a significant statistical advantage toward the outcome of a fight without, itself, ever actually being involved in the fight. The concept is inconsistent with the nature of the game. It is a qualitative problem, not a quantitative one. You want the benefits, the booster has to have skin in the game. The end.

I mean, let's try your compromise with other stupid mechanics. Remote doomsday, perhaps. Full damage if you're on grid, and half damage when firing at a cyno. What say you, bring back remote doomsday?

What about software-assisted multiboxing? Should "both sides" have been appeased on that? Maybe they allow it, but only up to so many replicated commands? Yeah?


It's not actually a negotiation, is the thing. OGB has been on borrowed time for, literally, years. They've never been coy about their desire to bring links on grid. There were technical hurdles related to the expense of having to frequently recalculate stats. That has (hopefully) been remedied by BIAB.

Being deliberately obtuse is no more impressive than the whole "Words have whatever arbitrary definition I want them to have" shtick. You have to be ludicrously incompetent to be caught out as an OGB. You can probe it down and kill it... if they have literally fallen asleep at the keyboard.



Well that's a conveniently arbitrary distinction to draw, no? What's so ******* special about a system? They may be 5 LY away but they're still IN GAME right? You could totally scout that titan out!



Right, so what you're saying is that you're incapable of discerning between the things you personally like and dislike and things that are actually good or bad for the game. Multiboxing didn't personally bother you, so you were fine with it, consequences to the overall game be damned.



You can voice your opinion, it's just that your opinion doesn't actually matter. OGB was given a death sentence aaaaaages ago, because it fundamentally runs counter to the core principles of the game. It just had a stay of execution for technical reasons.

However your new idea is not a new idea.
It's just a 'give me the same risk free OGB'
That is utterly abusable in an entire sector of space, and utterly silly in the others still.

Total removal is the only sensible approach, though implementation of on grid boosters does cause a lot of issues including the alpha issue (which I believe is best solved by DPS stacking) & how it interacts with crimewatch etc are huge questions.

The belief that they are going to just take the existing links and bring them "on grid" is naive. it's likely going to be a significant, total rework. Quantitatively speaking, it will probably be a nerf in many ways.

You can infer a lot about the intentions for the future of links just by looking at command destroyers. Obviously not a ship meant to sit in a safe, or even at range on-grid.

And I will argue that with the changes to deep safes, probing, and not boosting inside a POS shield, that it is not risk free. All those changes were good. Isn't there a saying that your consent to PVP is when you undock? It isn't you being on the same grid as me is consent to PVP.



So since we are specifically talking about incursions here (and beginning to get wildly off topic), there is a maximum number of sites in each system, and a set number of incursions can be up at a given time. Therefore there is a maximum isk that can be generated from each incursion. A person that decided to box 10 characters isn't able to cause more sites to spawn anymore then 10 characters piloted by 10 people could.



First off, you can go **** up a rope for calling my points bullshit, we can have a civil debate about this. So what you are suggesting then is to not only restrict the boosts to be on the same grid, but to also give them a certain range as well? Because everything I've heard about boosting is to make the restriction to only be on grid. From there, are grids not getting buffed to a much larger size? Which would mean that the On Grid Booster (Providing the check is to actually be on grid) Could be well out of the fight anyway, and they would have safes put up all round and just warp around, and you still wouldn't be able to do anything about it without probes.



Everyone that says it's risk free is saying that the boosts can't be countered. If the effort:benefit ratio is out of whack, then nerf the boosts and buff the ships and modules. It's alot easier to do that then it is to change the old code.

No, because battlecruisers are supposed to have some use.

Face it. You don't get a one size fits all solution anymore, you are going to have to make tradeoffs.

I wouldn't be surprised to see some stratification of booster ranges and effects by ship class, with, e.g., Comm. Destroyers being purpose built as squad boosters, Supercaps as fleet boosters, and command ships/BCs/Boosting T3s falling somewhere in the middle.


Localized effects opens up a lot of room for interesting and dynamic support gameplay, especially compared to, "Go sit in a safespot no where near the fight because you're the most important person in the fleet by literal orders of magnitude." At the same time, it also reduces the importance of swatting boosting ships off the field as the very first order of business when any given booster is affecting only a subset of the fleet within a localized area.

But, gosh, let's compromise so Little Tommy Nofriends can keep "solo" PvPing.