These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Player Features and Ideas Discussion

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

Fleet/Battle Infiltration
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Therese Ishihara
Council of Exiles
Brave Collective
#1 - 2012-02-24 18:29:21 UTC  |  Edited by: Therese Ishihara
After reading a couple of threads in GD about people complaining that nullsec alliances could move too easily or project force too easily I got to thinking about some fun ways that you might be able to mix things up a bit to make large fleets a little more vulnerable than they are.

I don't think it would be game breaking, but what I thought might work would be some way to infiltrate fleets. Maybe a rare/hard to get ship module that you salvage off of a blown up alliance member ship that acts as a rogue transponder of sorts.

So when this module is equipped on your ship and activated, you would appear in the overview as a friendly ship until you take some kind of aggressive action against a target or the fleet otherwise reveals you through some other means (maybe by viewing pilot info?). It would be neat if the reveal would only happen specifically to targets you take aggressive action against, but I think that would be game breaking.

I also think that at the point of being revealed as an infiltrator the module should no longer work either by being fully damaged or destroyed - since the transponder ID or whatever would be uploaded to the fleet as a hostile entity.

This would give a smaller fleet some kind of means for surprise guerrilla warfare against a larger fleet by giving them an opportunity to take out targets of interest strategically and without revealing themselves before they can take advantage of the opportunity.

This would also possibly make large blobs move a little slower, requiring them to make sure they don't have any extra numbers or something? Thoughts?
mxzf
Shovel Bros
#2 - 2012-02-24 18:31:28 UTC
There are already ways to infiltrate a fleet, it's called having a spy.
Therese Ishihara
Council of Exiles
Brave Collective
#3 - 2012-02-24 18:36:14 UTC
mxzf wrote:
There are already ways to infiltrate a fleet, it's called having a spy.


Yes, but that requires you to join the alliance or corporation with a character. This allows for some kind of insurgency 'in the heat of the moment' without having to actually join the corporation or alliance.
Grumpy Owly
Imperial Shipment
Amarr Empire
#4 - 2012-02-24 18:44:34 UTC
Novel idea.

Consequntly you also at the same time make it easier for larger organisation to infiltrate smaller ones, so you might want to review your justification.

Not sure the ramifications of an entire fleet making use of them and getting a quick suprise move, might be a bit too overpowering as a result with such suprise tactics cushoned by a game mechanic.

Bounty Hunting - Soon (™): Retribution (Winter 2012)

It's just criminal - Smuggling
Therese Ishihara
Council of Exiles
Brave Collective
#5 - 2012-02-24 18:53:27 UTC  |  Edited by: Therese Ishihara
Grumpy Owly wrote:
Novel idea.

Consequntly you also at the same time make it easier for larger organisation to infiltrate smaller ones, so you might want to review your justification.

Not sure the ramifications of an entire fleet making use of them and getting a quick suprise move, might be a bit too overpowering as a result with such suprise tactics cushoned by a game mechanic.


Yes, but a smaller fleet or organization will be able to quickly tell that they 'have' more people with them than they should. A larger fleet, due to it's command structure and sheer numbers should be easier to confuse - which is the objective of this module. IE: A fleet of only 10 people should be able to quickly see that there are now 11 or 12 of them, where as a fleet of 1000 will have a hard time noticing one or two people.

If an entire fleet used these, whoever they were fighting would be dumb not to notice they've significantly increased in size and would probably deserve to die. Also, the difficulty or price of getting this item should make it prohibitive for them to be prolific through the universe.

I see this as a sort of black market item - like boosters, but maybe a little more useful and harder to come by.

EDIT: Perhaps to counteract the 'entire fleet' situation, there should be a chance of the transponder failing at each cycle.
Simi Kusoni
HelloKittyFanclub
#6 - 2012-02-24 22:54:15 UTC  |  Edited by: Simi Kusoni
The problem is that in a properly set up overview fleet members won't even show up, this means in fleet fights your enemy essentially becomes invisible.

This is a pretty major issue when that enemy might be a load of ceptors giving a warp in, by the time you've spotted them on grid they'll almost certainly have reached you.

Not to mention the obvious issues mentioned above with entire fleets using this.

Its a nice enough idea, but it just messes up the overview and would be pretty OP in a lot of respects.

[center]"I don't troll, I just give overly blunt responses that annoy people who are wrong but don't want to admit it. It's not my fault that people have sensitive feelings"  -MXZF[/center]
Therese Ishihara
Council of Exiles
Brave Collective
#7 - 2012-02-25 00:24:53 UTC
Simi Kusoni wrote:
The problem is that in a properly set up overview fleet members won't even show up, this means in fleet fights your enemy essentially becomes invisible.

This is a pretty major issue when that enemy might be a load of ceptors giving a warp in, by the time you've spotted them on grid they'll almost certainly have reached you.

Not to mention the obvious issues mentioned above with entire fleets using this.

Its a nice enough idea, but it just messes up the overview and would be pretty OP in a lot of respects.


The whole point is that as the enemy you become invisible until you take aggressive action or are revealed through some other manner.