Assembly Hall

Maybe what it means is that you need two fleets. Or that you need boosters in every wing. Or that you need to properly separate your squads or wings and have a supplemental booster with an appropriate ship. This seems very natural to me and I don't know why it seems to be a concern for you. You simply need enough qualified commanders and people who will fly ships with links.

Gang link ships can be made completely combat worthy. Command ships and Strategic cruisers are renowned for their ability to tank. Sure, they can't fit the most epic tank once you fit them properly (with gang links) but doesn't that make sense?



That is a completely separate problem.



It certainly would not. It would make useless ships useless (six gang-link Tengu anybody?). There are plenty of combat effective T3 gang booster fits and I see them used regularly. You might even come to think of them as more useful, because if the gang links have to be on grid, what better way to make it less obvious which ship has them than to put them on a T3 and blend in with the other strategic cruisers? It might mean you have to choose which bonuses you want, which again I would argue is a good thing.

Please expand on this. Maybe with three more one-line posts in a row.

Do you mean that it would encourage fleets to be larger to fit in a gang link ship? Because I believe I am suggesting that the alt who (under current mechanics) sits off-grid gets replaced with a real player who is on-grid. Assuming a fixed number of pilots, that's actually one less in the gang because there isn't a purpose for the alt anymore.

Maybe you mean that solo players who use link alts will become a gang of two, thereby doubling in size! Clearly this cannot be allowed, as twice as many pilots on grid (regardless of whether they were in system before) is most certainly a blob.

Do you, instead, mean that any suggestion about improving EVE encourages blobbing because it's a simple one-liner to get people to poo poo it? Because I have no argument for that.

I'd actually love to see the stats on pilots sitting in Logi and Command Link ships inside NPC corps, actually.

I've always been a big proponent for ending Neutral RR/Cmd boosts in Hisec and the like, but then Incursions pretty much solidified that that mechanic is here forever.

I can definitely get on board with this idea, though. And I come from the position of someone that actively takes advantage of this mechanic. I'm all for a nerf, since it would make for better, balanced PvP.

Pretty much this. Although your example is a bit flawed, a more reasonable example is a 15-man gang. You have a WC 5 Claymore in the wing command slot and everyone else is in Cynabals, Vagabonds, Huginns and Lachesis. An Erebus is dropped on the gang and the Claymore is doomsdayed, the Lachesis and Huginn pilots are revealed to be spies and proceed to point and web their buddies so they can get taken out one by one by the maniacal titan pilot's guns.

A 20-man gang in sniper HACs take out the Claymore before the other ships can burn to them, the long-range tackle bonuses are gone and they just go home because being kited is boring.

(this example is probably unrealistic but I really can't think of anything better right now)

Just a thought, but maybe a compromise would be that only command ships can pass gang links in fr om off grid. Means you could have offsite boosters, but only if there was a command ship in the squad ongrid to pass down the bonus' from higher up the chain.

It would maintain the flexibility of fleets that are spread out over a solar system, but increase the vulnerabilty of a squad using offgrid boosters. You could destroy the command ship and effective cut the chain of boosts.



EDIT: by command ships i mean both command ships and t3 ships with the command subsystem.

Honestly, this whole proposal sounds a lot like "I can't fly a certain type of ship and I feel that because of that no one else should be able to have something better than what I can use because that's totally unfair" type of proposal.

Besides whats already been stated, I'd only support this if grids worked 100% correctly 100% of the time. I've been in fleet fights before where I run off grid at somewhat random locations, separating fleets in abnormal ways. In those cases, I'd rather not be penalized gang-bonus wise for something I nor any of the other pilots in fleet can change.

Wut? You forgot to add logic to your post. I point out that the only fleet command ship able to stay on the field in fleet fights is the Damnation, you say that fleet command ships are supposed to be tanky, then admit that the rest of them aren't tanky enough, but that's not a problem when we're proposing forcing them to all be on grid.

Active tanking has been an irrelevance for fleet fights for years. It seems to me that when you're proposing a change to Fleet Command ships work in fleet fights, then a look at the ship bonuses might perhaps be a very unseperate problem indeed.

10v1 isn't nearly as one sided as you might think. When solo, I typically fly one of the following ships

1) Arty cane
2) Curse
3) Rapier

All of these can orbit at 30km+ and fight effectively with a loki booster alt. The arty cane does 550 dps (4k volley) and is pretty cheap. The t2 disruptor on it has a 34km base range and 40km with heat. It also goes over 1700m/s without heat, ensuring it's among the faster ships out there excluding frigates.

The last one I lost was attacking an obvious bait and this scenario is pretty typical these days. It was a myrmidon sitting in a belt just waiting for me to attack (I was the only other guy in system) but I knew he had at least an absolution with him sitting one jump away. Knowing he couldn't point me back easily, I warped in at range and attacked. I held about 30km off and slowly worked him down. He was active tanked but sooner or later he'd run out of boosters. I was hoping he'd call in the abso to save him, that would have been a nicer kill. Instead they threw a proteus with a faction scram at me.

I was able to hold range for a pretty long time and had him worked down to low armor despite his 200k+ EHP tank. Unfortunately, I drifted a little too close and he got the scram on me. At which point all his buddies piled in and took me down in seconds. However, that proteus was likely very worried as I had him down to around 10% armor when I popped, a few more volleys and I would have taken him down with me, or possibly even gotten away. If I'd had a wingman, I don't think there is any question that I would have won. And this is a case of me losing such a fight. Typically I score a kill or two and then escape.

This thread really does look like a case of you just moaning about being unable to use the ship yourself. Off grid boosters are very much a field leveling tool. They allow you to take a small weakness in an enemy fleet composition and convert it into a huge gaping whole that a heavily outnumbered force can pull a victory from. The loki + nano ship is the simplest and most obvious example, but a well flown active tanked ship + appropriate tanking bonus booster can be just as effective if dps/tracking is the opposing fleet's weakness.

combat probes, use them you must

Jag Kara gets it...flank steak does not.