Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The problem here has absolutely nothing to do with how coordinates are stored, it's that finding everything near a given target is, roughly, at least a O(Log(n)) operation relative to the number of entities on field. Even with an oct-tree (which is what I'm basing that off of) it's still a seriously non-trivial calculation for a large set of entities. Like say, for example, a 500 man fleet fight, let alone a 4000 man one.

This is especially true when you compare it to Eve's current method of "I shoot that guy" which is an O(1) operation.

Oh and that's without even getting into the balancing nightmare that turning all weapons into AoE weapons would create. AoE in Eve is already a pain to balance because it scales exponentially in effectiveness relative to the number of targets on field, and the game doesn't allow for the degree of control required for positional countering of frequent AoE effects.

Also, general tip, never expect the Devs to comment on anything on here. Also never expect them to implement anything that involves a massive rewrite of Eve's core mechanics, like how shooting works.

I guess this would be alright if you liked losing ships to Concord when you were in high sec. I mean aim at the guy you are dueling, or at that war target, miss, hit the neutral next to them and Concord ends your party really quickly.

Considering how jumbled up positions are in the low sec battles we have (we do not form neat lines and shoot at each other) I am not so sure my fleet mates would want my misses hitting them and I know for sure that I do not want their misses hitting me.

Necro is Love; Necro is Life

What are everyone's thoughts on a special T2/T3 null-sec-only ammo type that fulfills this function? or perhaps a T3 weapon system that can switch firing modes into Zone Defense?


Fluff because it's a slow day.
Autocannon: Flechette ammo packs clusters of darts into a smart shell that unwraps the munitions at optimal range to shower the local area in a cloud of micro-munitions, typically catching one target with enough darts to make the enemy capsuleer notice, used as a close-in defence method by Minmatar picket ships to ward off drones and corvettes as well as a supplementary armament on larger classes of ship against destroyers and frigates where the massive bore of capital autocannons allow tremendous numbers of flechettes to be deployed in a single burst, somewhat mitigating their poor tracking speed.

Artillery Cannon: Voidburst ammo loads a warhead with a smart proximity fuse that detonates when it reaches a zenith sufficiently close to a target to offer a reasonable chance of the shrapnel connecting, often used in massed volleys against small fast wolfpacks that would otherwise remain out of reach by artillery whether because of low tracking speeds or a close-range engagement- here, close is good enough. Advanced ammo like Proton or Phased Plasma are actually launched single-shot directed energy weapons instead of an explosive shell and both Nuclear and Fusion ammo explode into a cloud of atomic bomblets and are almost functionally similar to Flechette shells of the same type.

Railgun: Canister ammo disperses a small cluster of warheads from a cheap sabot, creating a small expanding cloud of kinetic debris much in the same way as Minmatar Flechettes

Lasers: Dispersion crystals reduce the impact of the beam by spreading the coverage of its focal point, increasing the chance of hitting something in the area and causing a small amount of luminous shock to the target surface.

Blasters: Destabilised ammo wraps plasma in a sub-optimal field increasing the energetic yield but vastly reducing accuracy and range as the packet tends to degrade faster than normal and suffer from deviation by ambient magnetospheres, primarilly used in zone-defence duties where the deviation effect is mitigated when fired on tight groups of enemy vessels where it tends to lock the packet onto any available target rather than a specific ship.


Missiles can have fun too.
Torpedo: Missile Buses are more a small unsophisticated drone than a missile, these torpedo-class munitions deploy a swarm of auto-targeting missiles once they reach their target and may be loaded with a variety of ammo sizes and types to tailor their use as well as the size of the swarm to a specific enemy force, though reconfiguring the tubes on each missile bus incurs a significant time-cost and is not recommended in the middle of battle.

Damn.