Player Features and Ideas Discussion

we dont have specifics, no, but we can already see their limits strained.

few weeks ago (or was it not that long ago?) me adn soem buddies flew outt o C-J6MT to watch the big showdown with goons pl and -A-, server nearly hit a standstill from TiDi trying to compensate for the stressed servers.

now i can already imagine that if we overlayed your now complicated alpha-determination system over THAT hell-hole of lag, the server would have wither dropped to 1% speed and the fight would have never ended, or just jettisoned everybody form the server.

so while you are CORRECT that we cannot see CCP's server specs, i can from personal experience say the servers are already stressed excrutiatingly in many null-sec fleet fights, which are the fleets your concerned so much about the alpha of.

Although I agree with the premise behind your proposal and your follow-up post that broke down the math of the matter made more sense than your OP, it would still have significant implementation difficulties.

Although this was also brought up numerous times before, I am of the opinion that instead of mitigating incoming damage, the amount of red-boxes or aggressive modules targeted at any one ship could be limited or penalised. Again, there is nothing to prevent this being abused by fleets using non-lethal modules on eachother to prevent other aggressive modules being activated against them; which is why proposals like this have never stood the test of time for the past few years.

I apologise for being pessimistic but since I am out of ideas on how to improve this and for the past 6 months there have been no suggestions on these forums that provided a viable solution short of "nerf this plz" tear-threads, optimism is in short supply.

Good luck.

One thing to bear in mind when you put together a real formula: drones.

Just remember that this formula, in a fleet fight of 200 people, is going to have to calculate the incoming damage of not only 100 people per side but also the damage application from 1,000 drones.

Or, as someone mentioned the c-j battle above, that would have been 1,668 sentries all firing separately just from the PL carriers alone. Let alone the 50 supers and 1,800 other randomers that were running around the system at the time.

And no, ignoring damage mitigation for drones is not an option If you're going to use damage mitigation to negatively impact blobs, it needs to impact all kinds of blobs equally. So just remember whatever formula you come up with, it is going to need to be applied potentially with damage sources numbering in the thousands/tens of thousands.

Yeah, we had the same issue. I was quite impressed the server held up at all though, especially given all the separate skirmishes going on all over the system.

I also turned on brackets at one point when I was on grid at the station. Christ was that a mistake

'Alpha' or 'Primary' or whatever you want to call it is no more than simple concentrated fire. A tactic that gets used EVERYWHERE in the game and real life warfare. Doing L4s? Players focus fire on the ewar rats first. Jumping onto a small fleet? Take down the biggest threat first. 'Alpha' is simply bringing enough pew pew to kill the primary target in one volley, rather than several. Nothing wrong with that at all, and as it has already been said, most 'alpha' fleets will 'alpha strike' multiple targets, because of the dps they have at their disposal. Anyone who doesnt concentrate their fire on one or several targets is a complete moron, and will often lose the fight as a result.

Incoming wall of text. There's no way to tl:dr this either because it includes hard info.

Ok here's a preliminary stab at a mitigation formula. It's actually not that complex and only involves a few operations per attack. It doesn't account for time elapsed yet, and I've only done a handful of test scenarios with arbitrary numbers, but it's a starting point. It's showing the behavior I want.

That behavior is, when attacked by multiple attackers doing the full damage expected if the attackers were of the same ship class as the target (making the assumption that the fight is battleship vs battleship for example) by reaching a predetermined minimum, the maximum mitigation is reached. When attacked by multiple attackers the damage is below expected based on the targets ship class a predetermined minumum, the mitigation is reduced proportionately. 0 damage results in 0 mitigation, there is no penalty for exceeding the predetermined minmum. This allows mixed ship fleets to engage without the fleet being penalized for any given ship having lower damage the rest. I havn't accounted for drones yet; I'm thinking I'll count each drone as 1/5 of an attacker and leave the formula the same.

Also, other features such as a minimum number of attackers (3 at the lowest, which accouts for a 2 v 2 with full drones and not having any penalties applied yet) and mitigation cap and perhaps others would need to be part of a final solution. This is just brainstorming.

Definition of Terms:
Damage Recieved (DR)
Number of Attackers (AT)
Time Elapsed
Mitigation Amount (MIT)
Mitigation Per Attacker Base (MBE)
Damage Minimum Baseline (DB)

The Formula:
If
DR >= DB*AT
Then
MIT= (MBE * AT)
else
MIT=(MBE * AT)*(DR/DB)

Proposition 1: Hard Damage Baseline
Assume:
MBE=5%
DB(BS)=500
Target=Battleship

Scenario 1: 10 ships where total damage equals 5000
DR>=DB*10 ; True
MIT = (.05 * 10) = .5 or 50%

Scenario 2: 10 ships where total damage equals 4000
DR>=DB*10; False
MIT= .5(4000/5000) = .5(.8) = 40%

Proposition 2: Damage Baseline determined by targets Signature Radius
Assume:
MBE=5%
DB= Target Sig Radius * 2
Target=Armageddon (370 sig)
Note for Consideration: Drake with 3 Shield Purger I's and 2 LSE II's is similar, with a sig of 378. Is this a penalization of shield tanks? Or reasonable considering the speed penalty of armor?

Scenario 3: 10 ships where damage totals 10000
DB=(370*2) = 740
DR>=DB*10 ; True
MIT=50%

Scenario 4: 10 ships where damage totals 6000
Db = 740
DR>=DB*10 ; False
MIT= (MBE*10)*(6000/7400) = .5(.81) = 40.5%


Scenario 5: 10 ships where damage totals 1000
DB = 740
DR>=DB*10 ; False
MIT = .5(1000/7400) = 13.5%

Scenario 6: 10 ships where damage totals 10000; Geddon with MWD II Active (sig=2.2k)
DB=4400
DR>DB*10; False
MIT=.5(10000/44000) = 22.72%

This does not scale gracefully between the ship classes; the DB equation may have to be different for every class.


None of this as I have it here would affect fleets where the alpha is enough to destroy the ship in a single shot. That, I think, is a lost cause due to the nature of EVE, and can only be addressed by changing Artillery. In smaller engagements, it would start to take effect and alter the way fleet fights play out. My hope is this system or one like it would make gang warfare more engaging from the individual pilot's perspective. Whether it will work or not will depend on both mechanics and psychology, knowing that people will always take the easiest path. Hopefully I've proven (tear it apart and prove me wrong! this is SCIENCE!) that a fair mitigation formula is possible, the other question is whether it will have the intended result.

And now, my troll minions, I command thee to begin thy art.

I think the only change that could make a difference and make sense would be to make it so shots do not pass through things to get to their target. This would make friendly fire an issue and fleets would have to fly in smaller squads or in formation (CONGA Line!!!)to avoid hitting each other. Fleets could also use in space structures to shield themselves from incoming fire. Firing at enemies, instead of insta popping a ship (though it could) would hit multiple ships that are in the way or hit other ships with missed shots.

However Im pretty sure this is impossible with the current engine so no use talking about it.

Move along, Move along...

This would not happen in an Alpha fleet though.

They are designed to lock the target and all fire at the same time, so every ship's rounds hit you at the same time, therefore any debris will not effect the first salvo at which point your ship has already been destroyed.

Which make this argument null and void

indeed. One thing that I loved (to hate) from other space games (Homeworld series mostly ... can't remember Freelancer combat too much anymore) was the idea of ships having firing arcs. Though, with the way things work here, that might be far too much effort for too little gain (although, seeing 200x abaddon/rokh/etc firing broadside at the other guy would look pretty).

The only thing that makes sense for mitigating the blob incoming dps is requiring line of site between attacking ships and targets, currently you can shoot right through the guys around you if you are in the center of a blob, that apparently requires too much server resources to be practically implemented though.