Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Are you all forgetting a major difference between SC and EVE? That one's an RTS and the other has a very slow SkillPoints mechanic + some isk investment.
Entire races have spent years being subpar, but to have the unbalanced 'best' setups moving about is going to result in a lot of newer players chasing FOTM training or give up trying.
At least up until now you knew you were going for a good/'sub-par' set of ships & fits when you headed down the T2 training routes. It sounds like you'll be randomly nerfing and unbalancing stuff for the sake of it.

Adding new modules has no relation to how fluid your balancing is either, other than you need ever more resources to retest against all the existing combos.

Eye Twitches...


Ill be back!

Wake Field Detonators.

Weapon System
Counter Chase

Special Mine Launcher that can only be activated with mwd and afterbuerners on. These kicked out self-breaking mines are short lived short ranged high speed mines that chase after other MWD and AB signatures that behind the deployers own after burner and mwd signature. Mines are size dependent for thier explosion size for damage. Can be used offesensivly if target being orbited has ab or mwd on.

"Damage over time"
These are nothing new to the standard MMO. There are many ways DOTs are implemented over the genre:

1. Simple DOT: In its simplest form it is a effect put on a target which damages the target for a set amount over time. Any reapplication of said DOT refreshes the timer of the DOT, not increasing the overall damage over time.


2. Stacking DOT: Multiple applications of a simple DOT 'stack up' increasing the tick damage of the DOT and refreshing the overall DOT timer


3. Ramping DOT: The tick damage ramps up over time causing more damage towards the end of the DOT time span. This requires watching your DOT timers more attentively as the refreshing the DOT before it is done will actively lower its damage


4. Hybrid DOT: Multiple effects from one offensive attack such as an Instant effect (damage or capacitor drain) followed by a DOT or a Slow effect over time with a DOT component.

DOTs in EVE
Bringing these concepts into the EVE style game is not simple. In some ways we can look at current turret and missile systems as 'channeled' DOTs. You put them on the target that you want to kill and leave them on until they do the job.

In other games you find yourself trying to output maximum damage. This entails using your instant damage abilities in the correct order whilst maintaining your DOTs on the target.

If you were to implement a new ammo type with a DOT component you wouldn't find much difference. With the exception of slow rate of fire weapons having their damage split up over a period of time. Could this damage therefore be greater then the pure alpha from this low rate of fire gun? Sure, but then what would be the difference between this a faster and higher dps weapon. I can imagine such ammo would be useful where DPS is more important then Alpha (small fleet fight) and the ammo could be swapped out accordingly.

EVE Implementation

In order to get a similar feel to other games you need to have a module which you don't 'turn on and forget' but something with more of a pulse feeling. Similar to the way that most people use their microwarp drive or armor repair. They turn it on when needed but then turn it off because the unnecessary cap drain caused by the module would not benefit them in any way and actually hinder them via cap drain.

You could have different variants of the DOT module (EM, Therm, etc) these would have different damage amount/timers so the capsuleer would have to pulse his DOT module every time it expired for maximum damage.

Stackable DOTs:
Alternatively you could have module which was left on. This would feature a stackable DOT with a short range. This would give some interesting game play. The aggressor would be trying to keep within the module range to increase on and maintain the current stacks on the target whilst the victim should be trying to keep the stacks low by breaking from the modules optimum range to cause a lapse in the stacks.

EVE DOT Image:
To keep within the feeling of EVE this module would have to cause damage to metallic ship over time. There are multiple ways I can think a ship could sustain continuous damage caused by a single attack:

• Module launches a drone that latches itself onto the ship cause damage over a period of time. (My Favorite) Could even have an animation on the victims ship showing the drone attacking his hull. Potentially give drone boat users a high slot module with charges to specialize in. Think Sentinels from "The Matrix"
• An energy pulse which cause the ship to become super heated. The excessive heat causes damage overtime. This concept would work well with a stacking DOT (could a module heat up and lock up or break ships modules? Not sure if OP)
• Fire a round which hits the ships hull (see harpoon) attaching to the ship and burning (Thermal) or electrically pulsing (EMP) damage.

Fitting
These modules could in theory be placed in any slot but I see them best suited in the spare slots of ships where we see neuts are used today.

Sizes
Size matters in EVE. If a big gun is able to easily hit a small ship then we have some issues. Though EWAR/Nuets does not distinguish between size. If you are in a frigate and you get in range of a heavy nuet you are in big trouble but it will kill you. Smart bombs are another system that doesn't distinguish size, but they do have a smaller radius. If damage to small vessels is too great from larger versions these modules could do damage based on their signature (like missiles). These DOTs could be countered by smaller ships in other ways.

Counter-DOT
The hard counter to DOTs in any other game is their premature removal. In EVE we have a similar arms race with ECM. If you know a fleet is going to have a lot of ECM you fit ECCM to your ship in an effort to counter it. So with the implementation of said DOTs I would also suggest the addition of modules that would remove DOTs. These can be tweaked endlessly to get the right feeling.

• %chance to remove a DOT
• Number of DOTs removed per cycle
• Cycle Rate

So you could have an internal module which would clear 4 DOTs from your ship but it is on a 1 minute cycle timer. Alternatively you have a remote system with high cycle rate to clear the DOTs off one by one.


TL:DR Ideas on the issues surrounding EVE and damage overtime modules.

Harpoon Missiles.

These massive missiles slam a generator into the surface of the ship embedding a disruptive field of damage. This effect stacks up to X number of times. This effect lasts for x amount of time for each generator. Munitions of this kind are extremly heavy and take up much more room in launchers over standard missiles, expect to reload frequently.

Mole/Burrower/Borer/Ventilator Drones

Consumable Drones
Damage Over Time

These suicidal drones will attach themselves onto a target and begin eating into the hull powering itself the victims shields and repairs with the materials. Causes increasing damage over time until removed or destroyed or target dies.

A large number of defense systems can counter it including the classic smart bomb, cannot be targeted once burrowed.

Shredder Rounds

Tech 2
Heat

This speical technology 2 ammo for gallente blasters that pellets the target with a self shredding shell that evelops the target in a magnetized plasma cloud. This effect is long burning but lower damage but stacking causes the damage to go up and the effect becomes 'refreshed' when reapplied by a fresh round, becuase of the complicated arming and shredding devices these rounds are much bigger and take longer to refire. They redo similar damage to tech 1 counter parts.

Unfiltered Lense.

Tech 2
Heat

This special lense allows the lasing rods to release normally harmful radiation down beam in a focused manner irradiating the target in very harmful em radiation. The damage over time is low and short lived but stacks largely allowing for much more damage. Due to the self shielding required and slumping of extra heat these lenses cannot be stressed as much in rate of fire and requires much more capacitor than normal. Does similar damage to tech 1 ammo.

In terms of logistics DOTs would account for more predictable damage and therefore should be easier to repair. I do agree that logistic pilots should be able to spot who has DOTs on their ship or be able to use an item to that would pulse a DOT clearing effect.

The watchlist could potentially have some sort of colour change or symbol to show the presence of a DOT and/or a broadcast added to allow for pilots to request remote DOT removal.

In the end you could stick to current system where we find that ships are simply repped through the damage as is happening now, and remote DOT removal would be applied because the ship is more then likely the recipient of the DOTs.

DoTs and HoTs are a bad idea, because they can't be explained from fiction point of view. BTW even if you can explain these effects in a particular setting, they're just a gimmick.

So many ideas apologies if some of these are already listed

Defence

Dual resist mods

Armour repair booster, scriptable to provide resistance or armour repair bonus

Repair module that provides resistances or a htipoint bonus when offline

Scriptable resistance mods not as good as hardeners

Dual resist mods - perhaps EM/THERM and KIN/EXP

High slot missile defence system, not turret or missile hardpoint based, perhaps reduces missile velocity or decreases explosion
radius of incoming missiles.

Change Shield/Armour rigs into passive/ active defense rigs, weak omni resist rig in active section, allows active armour better keep pace with passive shield.

New rig that adds calibration could have powergrid drawback but adds 100 to 150 calibration, this may allow better fitting of T2 rigs on three slot rig ships.

Offensive

Energy feedback projector - High slot module that reduces neuting effects from target ship perhaps even has a partial reverse effect i.e. neuting ship loses cap.

Could expand this through to further E-war perhaps a scriptable mod that jams the jammer, paints the painter etc? Or imagine even warpdisrupting someone and finding yourself disrupted.

Mid range T2 Ammo

Ammo that partially penetrates a single defence layer through shields inflicting armour damage and penetrates armour inflicting structure damage.

Heavier weapons in each class, perhaps instead of extra fitting reduce calibration points

Terrain - Bombs/bubbles/ disruption field generator general e-war type area effects: -

Missile velocity reduction

Optimal Range reduction

Reduce Shield/ Armour hitpoints or remove bonuses provided by warfare links or rigs/modules

Increase cap use for modules

Webify ships

Increase sig radius of ships

Perhaps combine some of the above to operate via scripts to provide flexibility or perhaps reverse affects to provide bonuses.