Player Features and Ideas Discussion

With the topic of force multipliers in the forefront of our thoughts with the November expansion looming, the lack of restrictions on Cynosural Field deployment brings an issue equal if not greater to the forefront of mine. While off-grid boosting is a force multiplier that's being addressed, the rapidity and flexibility with which jump beacon placement is allowed highlights what I see as a balance issue.

While a booster can bring to the field some multiplication of already present pilots, a cynosural field allows an existing engagement to receive force multiplication far greater than a 1.0 multiplier on already present pilots without pilots being immediately present in the system or nearby/adjacent systems. The system itself isn't intrinsically broken, but the ease and flexibility with which it is leveraged brings a level of uncertainty to engagements far in excess of anything else in the game. (This brings a certain level of combat-aversiveness to anyone in space where a cynosural field can be lit.)

The issue that is most prevalent to me is a lack of counterplay to cynosural fields as a mechanic while keeping in mind that there is an awesome level of Fun involved in the Hotdrop O'Clock behavior and how it can turn the tide of existing engagements. Currently, one pilot can, with the application of a few units of Liquid Oxygen, effectively be a 200-man gank squad. Primarily, the issue arises from the instantaneity of Cynosural Field gameplay. A single ship can play both tackle and DPS far in excess of the power of one pilot in local and zero pilots in adjacent systems while expecting no reasonable counter to their behavior. In the span of five or six seconds, a single ship can approach, tackle and cyno, bridging an overwhelming force from light-years away. The only counter itself is a system-wide cynosural field jammer, which only applies to nullsec and doesn't apply to covert cynos.

The issue is most visible regarding covert ops ships, making one hostile in local statistically more dangerous than two or three. A ship capable of fitting a covert cyno can pop up next to a battleship, tackle and bridge in multiple ships far greater in strength than the target at a minimum of risk. The only vulnerability they experience is the ship lighting the cyno, which has to wait a minute or so, and the other ships involved that need only wait for their target to be destroyed before cloaking and becoming invulnerable. One player is effectively allowed the strength of however many friends they have, mainly because there is no time for the attacked pilot to react. In my mind, that's like having a frigate with a 200,000 damage alpha, just as long as there's a few people slaved to that ship somewhere else in New Eden. Hotdropping small targets is so prevalent because it's easy to do and carries a minimum of risk for all attacking parties.

Counterplay Proposal: Give cynosural field generators some amount of wind-up and prevent module activation during it, as if the ship had cloaked or entered a starbase forcefield. Giving cynosural fields so much as a ten or thirty second wind-up would prevent a one-man gank squad and apply a modicum of risk to bringing so much force into a system without the use of stargates.

Personal opinion: The counter to Cynos are baiting and preparation, not spoolup timers and restrictions.

I think your post here is pretty much describing the point of a Cyno...

If you're a miner you're getting a significantly buffed Rorqual that will eat small bomber gangs, and a PANIC button that gives you up to seven and a half minutes for help to arrive. If you're not then oh well, the person with more stuff wins. Have you considered bringing your own Cynos?

Miners are definitely getting both the short and long end of the stick in the upcoming changes. Cyno and counter-cyno is a legitimate strategy and an invulnerability period definitely gives time to leverage a counter-fleet before a black ops fleet can chew through a target and cloak back up. The forgotten party is those in null and low working the ISK faucets that keep the game running in tandem with hisec ratters (missioners are just glorified ratters; we don't talk about mining missions). They don't get the benefit of an invulnerability period while each individually risking more than the individual miner in a fleet under a Rorqual while pushed by game mechanics to operate solo else risk losing something in the average realm of 33% of their profits working with a copy of themselves. (Though ratting mechanics and their hostility to teamplay are an entirely other forum post on their own.) Even if they weren't pushed to work solo, two battleship or equivalent ship-cost pilots wouldn't be able to do much against a fleet that materializes out of nowhere, instantly, even with a hot-and-ready response team ready to deal with whatever minor threat would normally carry a cyno. The behavior of the mechanic is entirely reactionary and someone gets lost in the mix. There's no time in any other situation than a Rorq op to muster an appropriately powerful fleet to bring counterplay into the equation.

Bringing one's own cyno is also a misguided belief of counterplay, since someone going into enemy space with the intent of cynoing a fleet atop a tackled target needs their backup to only wait a matter of minutes. An appropriate counter-response would require the same number of people to wait without playing the game for hours on the off-chance someone fits a fleet in one of their highslot modules.

These suggestions massively reduce the profitability and thus reward of taking the risk of using ships for PVE in nullsec. Using your avoidance strategies all the time balances the risk/reward of doing PVE in hisec towards a much greater modifier than that in nullsec which pushes the risk far above the reward despite taking less risk. Regardless of how squishy cyno ships are. The entire cyno drop to alternate ship lock and tackle is in the realm of about four seconds. Ships that can undertake PVE sites in nullsec or low generally can't lock in that time period. Forcing players into using a specific ship to favorably operate in null or low goes against the sandbox nature of the game.

Cynos are not a force multiplier. They're a teleportation device to get more actual forces.

This is not at all similar to off grid boosts, where one pilot disproportionately enhances others in a generally risk free manner.

All a cyno does is puts more people on grid, but their force strength is not disproportionate to their risk.

Your complain seems to be that local and scans are made less reliable as a free intel source because of cynos. To which I reply this is a healthy part of the game. If local was 100% accurate it would be virtually impossible to force anyone to commit to a fight because the warpout mechanics in EVE are extremely generous when it comes to mitigating risk.

I agree that a certain level of uncertainty is healthy. You never know how an opposing ship is fitted. The level of uncertainty that instantaneous travel brings effectively makes it a force multiplier. As I've said, that one frigate can be any number of ships. Uncertainty sits between it being a single ship to it being any combination of ships that can fit into a fleet minus the bridging ship and the endpoint. That's 253 ships of uncertainty. Behind a single ship. This implies that your threshold of uncertainty within a battle against a single ship is is acceptable far beyond fittings or even a maxed out booster ship off-grid. Sufficient force at such easy demand becomes indistinguishable from raw power fitted to a ship within the realm of a single engagement.

As it is, it's difficult to get someone to commit to a fight because of that extreme disparity in force that a single ship is allowed to hold. The attacker holds a distinct advantage because they're the only ones who can feasibly leverage that force. It is insanity to imply that everyone in an alliance is in a fleet with a cyno fitted sitting next to a bridging ship aside from the person being attacked, simply waiting for that person to be attacked. People have their own agendas. There needs to be income for PVP to happen and people play EVE to have fun, not wait for something to happen, whether it be in station for a hostile to leave system or somewhere combat is assured not to happen waiting for something to happen elsewhere which has an equal chance not to happen.

Even if a fight lies within that acceptable "maybe I can kill this" range, being supported not just by someone off-grid risking nothing but being supported by any number of people within five light-years that a pilot being attacked has no feasible method to predict. If one is being engaged by a Moa, they can safely assume it's going to be using a turret weapon of some kind, with an obvious bias towards blasters or rails, depending on which engagement range it is choosing. Seeing it on D-Scan on either side gives the other an opportunity to determine whether this is an engagement to avoid or to risk. EVE is moving towards an objective-focused method of PVP because it gives someone something more to fight over than simple bragging rights or a killboard score. Anyone saying that fighting as a small or large group is less fun than trading ganks might entertainment to be cheaper and easier to come by in another kind of game entirely. Perhaps one with a difficulty slider.

It is, however, unfeasible. What's going to keep those friends on tap to drop on someone while you're producing ISK? A cut of the profits? It would be a pittance and far greater in the long-term for each of those people to pursue other avenues of ISK making. It would, again, favor high-security space for making ISK. There is a fairness in game balance, and all game mechanics have a counterplay. ECM, ECCM, sensor dampening, sensor boosting. Damage, tank. Warp, warp disruption.

There is no other mechanic in EVE that affords so much advantage for such a minimal extra amount of effort.

And yet when I put forwards a plan to make the barges able to defend themselves miners used the argument of bringing combat ships the baby sit them.

Its almost as if miners don't want to have any options for defense.

Barges are fantastic in their implementation so far, but even then mining ships are some of the cyno problem on their own. The Prospect gets covops cloak while having a signature as small as an interceptor as well as the ability to light covert cynos. There's literally no specialization to cynosural field deployment beyond a hislot module and a cargohold larger than a noobship.

PVE in its current implementation is part of the problem, but even beyond the near-sedentary nature that ISK-making and production shoehorns itself into the cynosural field has no counterplay beyond preventing it entirely, which is detrimental to the space-holders and only works on half the situations it'd be needed in. I'm trying to address the distressing disparage between the amount of effort and resource spent to move ships across space that would normally take half an hour in literally two or three server ticks. For any other use than dropping atop people 'by surprise' who can't get away from the solo pilot bringing far more than its weight class, even if that weight class is a battleship a short five or ten second module-breaking delay before the lighting of a cyno (which is synonymous with the appearance, arrival and travel of said ships) wouldn't disrupt the use of it as an engagement tool other than taking it from a solo PVP tool into a small fleet tool. There's a reason a ship can't fit sixteen different midslot modules or a reason why even interceptors can't land on-grid instantaneously and the application of cynosural fields and its direct analogue to gate usage sans cloak on exit is what I'm saying is broken in its current iteration. Hell, even ships decloaking have a penalty to lock time. It is obvious that CCP intends to have some level of warning to a ship appearing on-grid in order to give a defending pilot some amount of time to react and has avoided touching the mechanical topic of cynosural fields since the implementation of black ops battleships.