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On the mining boost changes, I think the biggest issue is that a rorqual or orca in a belt is generally a good way to lose it. I don't see how these new mods and boosts will change that.

Perhaps it's a good idea to now revert to the old system where upgrade and wormhole belts had to be scanned down? They would still be vulnerable but it lessens the high risk of going into siege mode with a rorqual in a belt (assuming they work the same), which is basically a free ship kill for any sizable fleet. Seriously, no one is going to use them in a belt unless you have some major changes coming up.

Ok, so I have seen quite a few badly formulated posts about why this is or isn't a good change. Time to make a well formulated post with both the pros and cons.
First of all, instead of an endless debate why not have a poll? Maybe a month after the release have people vote on whther they like it or not. If they don't like it, instead of moving back to the old system, Why not make a special forum section where people can post their ideas. Then for any ideas that gain traction you could then move similar ideas into a folder for that one idea. Eventually ideas would either be assimilated or die out, and you would end up with a few good ideas that people like. Ok, rant time.
Personally I do not like the change, however the old system was not balanced either.
Now, I am not a pvper so I will not have as much knowledge about that side of things, but I am an industrialist.
Pros of new system:
Stops off grid alts from boosting and being difficult to catch
Cons:
Replaces an old broken system with a new broken system
Makes mining more difficult (Industry rant below)
Small gang pvp and solo pvp are now even harder
No skill refund
Forces people to buy skill extractors or just have a useless skill on an alt that was only around simply for the boosting

I may have missed some pros, if I did please point them out.

Ok, now industry rant.
First off, some of you may not know this but the economy is almost 100% player based. Like 99%
So what happens when you made the lucrative null sec mining more difficult, as difficult as it already is with simply having to haul the minerals to jita and risk losing it all and a jump freighter.
The result of this update will be fewer orcas. Null sec mining becomes harder. Orcas can no longer afk boost in hisec, even though they aren't in danger of being ganked. So now what happens is mining becomes slower, and the number of ships being blown up increases. So prices go up. Yay, right? No. Increased mineral prices may mean that mining wil stay the same, but pure industrialists will have a harder time making a profit. Not only that, but needing to make a profit then causes prices to rise. Now isk is even more inflated, even though there is not more isk in the game. So now everything is more expensive. Things blown up are harder to replace. This makes null mining even LESS profitable. So fewer again do it. Prices rise, titans and supercaps will be more reluctant to be used in fights, so less content. Now prices have stopped rising because industrialists start quitting. So more think "Hey, I can do that". Prices rise. Unless you make mining boosts not use ammo and be effective from 14.2 au away, all I just said WILL happen, and it will be the final nail in Eve's coffin. Make it so boosting isnt so easy and op, but not so difficult that it wrecks the delicate economic balance.

Overall, it's a good plan to get ships providing boosts into the fight.

I do hope you reconsider how you are handling Wing Command and Fleet Command skills.

Fleet Command is a 12x skill and required months of training. For a slight range increase of bursts, it's not an equitable trade-off for the sunk skill points.

For those of us that have Wing Command and Fleet Command on our mains, not low SP link alts, I hope you consider an alternative plan on how to handle these skills in the transition.

Thanks!

yo man +1

Overall I like the changes, there are some things that I would tweak.

So the scan res bonus for non-boosted fleets just goes, not sure that’s a bad thing but this means there are three skills for range boost? This seems high and skill point intensive now these are not really needed for supporting fleet numbers. The norm for skills is a single secondary specialisation, these bonus seem implemented because you weren’t sure what to do with the three skills. Leadership skill could remain the same or you could just scrap one skill.

Also the scan res bonus for fleeting is small but is at least something that encourages fleeting up, I would be unsure of the consequences for such a social game to remove that bonus. Same could be said for other passive bonuses in the various skills.

Others have done the maths the range seems a little short, it seems balanced around command ships and yet the blog talks about lower entry level and with the passive bonuses removed encouraging entry level boosters in fleets may be beneficial. I would like to see that range boosted up so command destroyers and combat battlecruisers don’t need to be right on top of the enemy, going from off grid to on grid is one thing but being right in the mix is a big step, I expect boosting ships to skirt the engagement, this forces an enemy to choose to go after them. 25-30km base at least is reasonable where most individuals can be expected not to have maxed the three skills for range.

Might be nice to increase potential choices to have strategic cruiser have more range than a command ship as it has lower bonuses.

There are perhaps some justified gripes about how these impact mining, not sure anyone ever really complained about off grid mining boosts. This could be mitigated a little by putting the base duration way up for mining boosts like 5 minutes plus at least. That would enable mining ships to move to and fro from an orca or rorqual. Again it creates a bit of usage choice play it safe lose a bit of time. For mining ships I feel the duration may trump area of affect in usage this may be the reverse of combat situations.

A comment was made about faction warfare plexes. There is perhaps a design choice here for these situations including PVE, some activities can be over very quickly, missions, incursion sites, small ship PVP, without acceleration gates cancelling these boosts off grid boosting lives and is in fact stronger as the target no longer has any basic fleet boosts, and it would appear that a ship could receive all combat boost types from very few boosting ships then warp to its target. Even if the boosts do not last the duration of a fight the effect could give an overpowered advantage.

Don’t want to come across as to negative, there are some great basic changes here and the capital mod change seems very interesting.

Hi,

Just curious if your planing on changing the skill requirements to make it easier to get into the fleet boosting role (command battle cruiser and boosting skills) - which to some extent I can understand as it does take an extremely long time to train currently for both armor and shield command ships as well as the leadership skills - will there be some sort of reimbursement of skill points or anything for those of us who spent the time under the current system to train for it?? Or is the plan to just roll the skills over and that be it?

"Tech 2 Command Bursts will require Leadership level 5 and their group specialist skill such as Armored Command Specialist (formerly known as Armored Warfare Specialist) level 1"

If you want it to be in line with other skills trees in game, this should be LVL IV, not LVL V.

*

Nice, I like the "ORE Mining Director Mindlink", what would be the price range?

warfare links will rust upon the scrapheap of history

counterrevolutionaries will be reprocessed

If I may suggest a simple and elegant solution:
You're comparing command bursts with smartbombs?

Then make exactly as smartbombs! Fittable to any ship! and leave a single one skill that affects them - burst range.
This is so radical that it's not even comparable to current mechanics. But more I think about it, better it seems.
Command ships? Leadership skills? passive bonuses? lots of CPU time to process it... This all is so redundant really

P.S. please, I realize that it's a total heresy, don't rage me
P.P.S. I have a feeling that by creating all these complications DEVs just want to show us an illusion of work

Just.... Thank you!!!