Assembly Hall

I wish to discuss a possible course of action to be taken by CCP in order to revitalize and reinvigorate this game we love called EVE.

For those of you who have not realized it yet, EVE is on the verge of a crisis due to its decreasing player base. This is evident both in a study of historical players in the world. (Down roughly 15-20% at peak time from this time last year) and you can see that CCP themselves have recognized this by the ever growing time frame of free trial period which went from 14 days a year ago to now 2 months at the time of this posting.

Now I personally do not want to see this game wither away from under us but it is clear that something needs to be done to reenergize the game.

I wish to discuss the concept of Manual/Tactical Ship control and combat as a viable solution.

What I mean by this is not just simply allowing players to use things like standard A,S,W,D controls to maneuver their ships. Instead I mean things like limited firing arcs for weapons, weapon collision with non-target objects. This means that players would need to maneuver their ships not only to optimal range but also optimal position to bring as many guns as possible to bear on their target. Fleets would utilize tactics such as formations to obscure critical ships such as Logistics ships from direct attack.

Frigate pilots would be forced to engage in pitched dog fights with one another and so on up the line as ships would have to jockey and out maneuver one another.

There are several Pro’s and one really Big Con to this idea

Pro:
1) This New aspect of combat would make the battles much more in your face adrenaline pumping experiences and add a massive new depth in terms in in battle tactics and strategies.
2) Because of this the game becomes more accessible to new players because manual flight control means player skill is just as important as character skill in combat. This gives newer players a fighting chance against older players.

Con:
1)This is a rather big CON associated with this idea on CCP’s side of the equation, which is that it would be a lot of work for them to do to make it happen.
Because this aspect of manual control of flight with things like having to worry about hitting intervening objects would fundamentally change the very nature of all combat in the game. This means every ship capable of mounting weapons, and all pirate, mission, and other AI’s would need to be rebuilt or redesigned to take this change into account and maintain balance.

So it would not be something that could be done quickly and would likely require a lot of work after the fact to work out any kinks in the system

2) Redesigning Ships and weapons and such would lead to possible issues with existing players ships especially those who logged off in space before such an update. This could lead to all kinds of complaints about lost module ship etc after such a patch.

I know this is a tall order in what we could ask of CCP for improvement and I would like to see everyone get behind this, because really EVE can ill afford major hit to the player base like we had with Incarna.

Your first mistake is treating eve like a First Person Shooter...this is not a game that can be played with ASWD controls.

This is a 3D Space smiulation...not 2d.

While your prespective may be 3D...your talking about controls that are overlooking things such as Yaw/Pitch/Rotation and other various things.


While it would be cool to have such controls...those controls would only be valid for ships smaller than a Cruiser.

Even then in the RP Since..a Frigate is not a fighter...its a good sized ship to be sure...



Secondly...as you poitned out...the complexity in such a design would be daunting...problem is thats a gross understatement.

Try years of development.

Dare I say...rewrite of code at that point.


CCP wouldn't touch this with a 10 foot pole...I myself would love that concept...but as I approach the threshold of capital life...aint gonna happen...and would be very boring at best.

CCP needs to get back to grass roots and start putting some spit and polish into features already in the game...not make new ones.

We have plenty of new stuff...lets fix the old stuff first.

Not Supporting.

1942 is 2D
Starcraft is 2D
Command and Conquer is 2D

Most modern combat sims are 3D

X3 is 3D

Dust 514 is 3D

What part of the concept of dimensionalism do you people not understand?

Whatever the case, it's a moot point as I think the Dev's realize that allowing flight control in EVE would cause a whole bunch of chaos.

I'm fully aware of it, so why wouldn't they be? But let's just say, if you are going to argue, try to at least make your argument valid, and supply some legitimate reason why it wouldn't work.

Something like this:

First Person Piloting would give too much advantage to the people who were adept at that sort of thing. For example: It would be much easier for them to use the game mechanics to reduce damage from incoming fire and increase their chances of hitting the target for high dps due to much greater control afforded them. For this reason, it would offer them an unfair advantage in PvP scenarios, when up against spreadsheet pilots who can't function well in that environment.

The server "ticks" at 1hz... meaning that it only accepts [any new series of] new commands once per second. This is what allows large fleets to be on the same grid, at the same time.

Introducing WASD/FPS type controls the way you envision them requires a MUCH faster "tick" rate... which forces the server to make more calculations per ship... which slows things down significantly.

Besides... the smallest ships in the game that you can pilot are not "fighters"... they are Boeing 747 sized ships with weapons that fire man sized shells. Said weapons also auto-track... which makes precision manual flight a bit moot.

Ok first things First

The idea is any form of manual ship control that has a Tactical Impact.

Now the WASD thing was an example that was put there as something that most people would be able to comprehend.
so lets try a different approach since people seem to have trouble seperating the inherent implication of first person twitch play versus what I am actually talking about which is Tactical movement control

So lets go with a better example of what I am talking about though some people may not have played the game that I am drawing the example from.

There was a series of games under the title of "Homeworld"

This game featured a movement command system that worked well for the existing conditions such as the server tick someone mentioned and would allow quick tactical commands that fell in line even with things like Time Dialation.

But the game and the ships executed such commands at their own speed.

Eve Already contains a tactical overlay system, so it is not such a be stretch to have them enhance it with a system for issuing manual movement commands.

This could even be implemented in a staggered manner.

First offering the control element as a modification to the existing tactical overlay system
Then later they could look at working out if it would be possible for objects and other ships intercept fire if it is blocking line of fire/effect between the target and attacker.

and if they felt it would be beneficial they could later consider things like limited fire Arc and such. But that for me is more a whimsical thing.

So, please get off the "First Person Flight Sim" wagon since that is not what I am talking about.

And as far as such a system favoring one type of player over another or giving some kind of unfair advantage.

I would like to hear your arguements on possible ways a system as I have just described could be abused or how it might grant said unfair advantage.

I normally dismiss these threads, in fact I can’t believe it has come back already I thought we just got rid of one.

That said people talking about Homeworld and strategy games like C&C got me thinking.

We have engine trails that in effect represent where we have just been, would it be possible to extend a line from the front of the ship representing its flight path, the line could be in proportion to the speed of the ship and if you had say three way points on the flight path that could be manipulated in 3D in a similar manner to the probe interface perhaps that may give a more tactical element.

Again though, it could soak up a lot of dev time and change eve perhaps in a direction I am not so keen on I certainly do not support twitch gameplay.

Wow, I've seen plenty of arguments against this idea in my time in Eve, but that one takes the stupid cake by a fair margin.

Sorry but i think a thousand players posted Threads like this one... and the answer to every thread was No.
No because a capsuleer is controlling the whole ship - not only the engine...
and No because this would change the entire gameplay, what would you tell ppl who have 2 or 3 or maybe up to 6 accounts?
How should they handle this? and i say a third time No, because i personally don't like the idea of manually flying.

Hell no!

a homeworld 2 move system wouldn't be bad, but a wasd based system with eve's current collision envelopes being the size of small moons, erm, no. even some sort of improvement to the existing double click move would be good, especially for those of us who get stuck on space things