Player Features and Ideas Discussion

TLDR: This is a QOL improvement for the supply logisics people and enables freedom of movement for the individual. By enabling the carriage of fitted ships within regular cargo holds. Without opening up the force projection can of worms. I also believe it would be programatically easy for CCP to implement and tweak as experience dictates.

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New cargo container specifically for carrying fitted ships within Freighters/JFs - Ship carrier

This is a container that has an internal space of 500K, but only occupies a footprint of 100K in a ships hold (5k if packaged). However, they can only hold fitted ships with the same restrictions that Ship hangers on Carriers have. ie Guns unloaded, only charges stored in their cargo holds.

If people need a explanation how this can be. It is that 4/5ths of the container would poke out into space and only 1/5th of the container would take up a footprint in the ships hold. Hence why only space worthy fitted ships could be carried, because the container is unshielded and non pressurised.

Why?

1. Lets take the extreme of a JF maxed for Cargo space. Around 327K m3 of cargo. It can carry 6 packaged Battleships with all their fittings. But once you assemble those ships, you can't fit any of them in. Thus redeploying to a new base is a two stage step, one stage with a JF to carry the mods and packaged ships and one stage with a suitcase carrier to carry the fitted ships. This rapidly becomes a deterrant to redeploying and is a content remover.

However, with this proposal you could fit 3 x 500K m3 ship containers in that JF, each capable of carrying a fitted Battleship. You would get back the ability to carry half the original number of Battleships, a fair nerf, for the advantage of not having to repackage them. Now before people argue that this would bring back force projection, I'd point out that people can do this already, if they are prepared to crush the rigs (which of course would allow them to carry twice the number). The people who most abused force projection are the very same people that can afford to crush the rigs. Thus the so called 'elite' are already doing this and there doesn't appear to be a force projection problem. Therefore the true beneficiacies of this proposal are the smaller entities and the individual who just wants to move to a new base or people who want a more nomidic lifestyle. It would be a QOL improvement for supply logistics and individual freedom, not enable hot dropping on a whim.

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2. A Freighter pilot wants to carry a fitted frigate or cloaky T2 hauler around with him. Currently he either has to crush the rigs or give it to an Alt who then wraps it up in a private courier contract and assigns it back. This is plain frustrating for anyone who has ever done it. Why can't you just bung the thing into the cargohold? It would fit easily and you have already been penalised with the size bloat of unpackaging it.

This solution allow the freighter pilot to assemble one ship carrier and bung his fitted ship into it without having to go through a 3rd party every time he broke the courier packaging open. Sure he could carry more than one fitted frigate, but always less fitted ships than he could carry packaged within the same cargo space.

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My suggestion is for a 100K/500K container aimed at being carried by Freighters and JFs. My personal motivation for this suggestion is relocating bases for short term deployments (couple of weeks) without the faff of using a suitcase carrier especially with the Jump Fatigue issues with carriers. Coupled with the simplicity of supply logisitics when you're helping a new corp member to move his stuff in.

In another thread concerning the new capital changes I suggested that a Ship Hanger would be better suited on a JF rather than a Dreadnought. I appreciate that suggestion has major ramifications and will be considered controversial by many. Even if eventually considered feasible it is likely to be years away from implementation. This proposal on the otherhand is considerably simpler to understand and implement programatically. Furthermore, it is ring fenced within a module which can be tweaked or removed if abuses are found without unbalancing any ships.

Optional:
1. Add a 50K/250K container capable of holding 2 cruisers or 1 BC, that can be carried by DSTs (eg Bustard).
2. Add a 25K/125K container capable of holding 4-6 frigates or 1 cruiser, that can be carried by T1 haulers.
3. Add a 12K/60K container capable of holding 2-3 frigates or a dessie, which can be carried by a Blockade Runner (eg Crane).

Bowhead? Who the hell uses a Bowhead in Low?

If you're in lowsec, use a carrier.

And yes, contrary to your assertion, being able to put a minimum 2,500,000m3 worth of fitted ships into a single freighter, and 1,500,000m3 into a jump freighter with twice the range and 90% of the fatigue of a carrier, does impact force projection.

Use a Bowhead if you must, otherwise use a JF.

Just absolutely no to easymode low and null.

If it was 1:1, I could see it working.

This though, no.

Yes, but it's awkward and needs alts, doesn't it?

Frankly, ships should just fit in cargoholds without the need for workarounds.

I get that force projection is a dirty word(s) in Eve. But the way people are simply throwing these words around as the opposition to this suggestion with no explanation, makes me think they don't actually understand what force projection really means, or more precisely what the problem was with force projection. In short there is more than one form or force projection and not all of them are evil. In my opinion CCP's heavy handed solution to all forms of force projection caused almost as much damage to this game as the problem it was meant to fix. Because it basically tied a repressive ball and chain to every player. So please, and I mean this respectfully, explain what you mean when you say my solution circumvents force projection. Because you are right, this idea is meant to to do that, but only the type of force projection which should have never been nerfed in the first place. Let me explain with two examples.

1. September 2014 I was running a dead stick POS bash in low sec Huola. We had about 20 ABCs bashing the tower and I had an alt sat on the Huola gate in Kourmonen watching for local spikes. A neutral hauler arrives on the gate, but doesn't jump. In short order three T1 cruisers come alone, something like a Rupture, Vexor and Caracal. They attack the hauler, cyno goes up and 30 members of PL jump in. They are in all the bling, Machariels, Nightmares, Navy Battleships, Marauders, Black Op BS, with a few specials like Rapiers and Lachesis. All that for three T1 cruisers. Then after they had killed them, they jumped a Titan in and bridged them back. In the hour that I watched they did this three times on the Huola gate, once for a single T1 cruiser. I'm sure they thought their actions were hilarious, but it could hardly have been that satisfying for them, while for the rest of us, PvPers at least, it made it near impossible to play the game. The saddest thing is if they had actually bothered to put some eyes through the gate and done a scan they would have seen our POS bash fleet and could have made some decent kills - but - effort! I can't begin to explain my hatred for this style of selfish, short sighted, lazy, game damaging play and yes this sort of force projection needed to be nerfed to the ground.

2. Around the same time I posted on the Warfare and Tactics forum my intention to run a limited 48 hour Burn Auga operation against the Amarr militia. The night before the PvP operation my corp ran a logistics (Force Projection) operation involving several carriers and JFs moving ships and modules into a neighboring system. The next day the PvP operation kicked off, but by stating that the operation would end after 48 hours gave the Amarr a chance to hold the system and sure enough they brought the fight and ultimately held the system. Great fights were had, including against neutral fleets that turned up having read the forum post. I made something like 200+ kills during those two nights and lost 10 or 15 ships of my own. But none of it would have been possible without the Force Projection operation to get our ships into position the day before. My argument is that such types of force projection are good for this game because they provide meaningful content, but were thrown out with the bath water by CCP when they tried to eliminate the force projection described in point 1.

The suggestion in this thread, is a genuine attempt to make force projection of the type described in point 2 more feasible again without opening the door to the likes of PL dropping 30 pirate BS onto 3 T1 Cruisers for lols every five minutes just because they can. If you think FP (force projection) type 2 is bad for the game, explain why. If you think I've missed a trick and FP type 1 can exploit the use of these containers explain why. I confess I'm orientated to low sec FW, maybe in Null it's different and this would be exploited. But I don't see how. It takes time to land a JF at a station, dock up, unload, redistribute, undock and warp into the fight, far longer than the 1 minute aggro timer that those T1 cruiser had when the cyno first went up. And that's without considering the issue of getting the pilots for those ships into the system.

If this type of force projection is a problem, then it would already be a problem. But it isn't and not because the likes of PL cannot afford to crush the rigs on their ships and repackage them. It isn't a problem because this type of Force Projection doesn't make the game unplayable for others, you can see it coming and react. The problem isn't the ability to feed ships into a battle or start a new campaign, people want battles and campaigns. The problem is the ability for large rich entities to bait a smaller entity into a battle and then escalate into a gank, without creating any meaningful content and then doing nothing but that meaningless action over and over again until everyone is sick of it and quits game.

Continued...

So what people are saying about force projection is the ability to move a bunch of fitted ship with a JF and its ability to make long and many jumps. Assuming you could put multiple ships into one container such as 4 t2 cruisers this would give the JF the ability to transport 12 fully fitted t2 cruisers.

This however is NOT force projection. This is because you still have to move all the pilots. They have to move manually or jump clone nearby( if they have one set up nearby which would have to be pre arranged for such a large group). So its really kind of pointless to use this idea in this way.

Force projection is the ability to jump a large force of caps and sub caps into an area quickly from not so nearby. To transport subcaps effectively as fighting force you would need to titan bridge the sub caps or make them do manual jumps to a certain location and then bridge. Regardless to include sub caps in force projection, you need to be able to move them quickly and effectively. This idea would not do either of those. At best it could be used to bring a bunch of replacement ships for a campaign, quickly.


That said, i do not feel like this is really needed. Rigs are cheap and if you are pvping with t2 rigs then you have enough isk to destroy a few to move locations. And that is the only reason you would move a ship completely fitted is so you dont destroy rigs.

Exactly.


I agree, but so many of the earlier responders to this thread were arguing that this WAS force projection, which is why I stated that I didn't think people understood what force projection meant. But instead of denying it, I simply tried to explain this wasn't the type of force projection that was a problem.


Yes I totally agree.


Now here is the nuts of the problem I am trying to solve with this suggestion. Thank you for taking the time and effort to understand. But here is where we disagree, whether it is prohibitively expensive to crush rigs, depends on the individuals finances, the amount of ships needing moving and the frequency of such moves. In my main base I have several T2 rigged battleships, plus a load of T2 rigged BCs, Command ships, T2 and T3 cruisers. To move them all via repackaging would cost over a Billion isk, once maybe, but multiple times is beyond what I and many others are willing to pay. But that means our current base has become a cage for us, We can wander short distances but there is a real barrier to any sort of major or regular relocation. A barrier that didn't exist 18 months ago before suitcase carriers got hit by the same heavy handed nerf bat to prevent force projection.

While i feel people, might actually use this IF it was already in game. I dont think you are going to garner enough support for it to become a serious consideration. CCP is in the middle of trying to fix sov warfare. The last thing they are going to want to do right now is inject some new feature that allows the transport of fully operational ships en masse.

One billion isk isnt that much in today's eve. Having to move multiple times could get expensive. If you are nomadic, and it seems you are, you should be traveling light as a opposed to heavy. You don't see nomads disassembling a full size house and sticking it on the back of horse to transport 100 plus miles only to do it again in a few months. They keep it light and mobile.

So anyway, while i feel this would be used if it was already an option, i just don't see it being something that gets enough support on it. And i doubt CCP will want to mess with it until after they are done with sov stuff. they might very well have plans for some sort of jumpable ship hauler or even something like this in the future. I just dont see it happening in the next couple of years.