Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Whilst i know many of you will see some of the proposals here as likely to incur a server performance hit if rolled out, plz be aware of its effects in large scale combat in eve (200 player fleets+)

i have gone through the list of common thread topics and havent found this concept to be part of it.


Proposal:

Space in Eve is largely devoid of anything that can affect large scale combat. although we know that in RL space is anything but a trivial "walk in the park".
There are many instances where travelling to certain parts of a solar system could induce an effect on a ship (by this i don't mean gravitational eddies) but other effects as well, particularly effects that can apply/mitigate damage, affect lock speeds or indirectly break locks. these things have more commonly been part of WH space where an effect is always system wide.

What i propose is to look into bringing localised effects into every system in eve. possibly into areas of strategic or tactical advantage.

Smaller scale combat is probably better than it has been for a long while (though personally there is still quite a discrepancy between armor and shield tanking mechanics). its various nuances have the space in order to sway battles, the lack of actual mechanics to help organise atypical tactics and use of mods at this scale isnt a particular problem, and actually is within the realms of possibility, further fuelling new innovative tactics like we've seen on ATX.

if you read/know much about war based games, tactical handbooks and examples of large historic battles you will know that one of the defining aspects of a successful smaller force attacking a larger force is the force multiplyer of the terrain they fight in. Sun Tzu's art of war even devoted an entire chapter to it.

Whilst normal land based war games have typical mechanics to follow, in space the idea of terrain is much more abstract. we dont have high areas or low areas, they do not provide the advantages when in weightless space. but if you know anything about science and cosmology there are insane forces that take place in space between / around planetary bodies that can be used to improve large scale tactical PVP in Eve Online.

Would love to hear interesteing and unique comments and criticisms on this, not just "blllaaarrghh server laaagg!" as i had commented at the start of this proposal!

well, what forces causing what effects are of course the subject of this topic and totally up for debate.

Some that are the basis for this proposal are of course damage type specific DPS in certain locales, for example:
warping to 0 on the systems star, or electrostatic forces between large planets and some close orbit moons.

but it doesn't just stop there, as you can think of physical damage from heat or electric discharge to be 1 part of the EM spectrum, you can scale up and down that spectrum to have grid wide localised jamming/lock breaking occurring, penalties or buffs to ewar effects even repping power. and this could also be applied using various signature sizes adding tactical advantages or disadvantages to bringing shield or armor fleets.

how this advantage is applied to a smaller force against a larger force is situational, ill give a few examples:
baiting a larger fleet with a streamlined omni-efficient fleet doctrine into a location where local effects affect them greater than the ambushing force can give tactical advantage.
The reverse also applies where the other fleet is hit with damage that they've specifically had to sacrifice tank for to negate local effects.
ECCM can help a fleet that have taken the precaution of fitting when going into strategic battles on a POS or iHub where local effects break jams say on a typical t1 ship with approx 20% chance, allowing locks to hold for longer and DPS to be applied.

the list for these sorts of things can grow and grow exponentially when u add localised effects, and then add tactics and stratagems used in conjunction with them.

that is very true, and i do feel that balance would be key to making this work.

i would like to point out however that as much as this may seem a buff to defence, its not something that a defending force can change, the areas will be set to stay.
But the mechanic does favour a force FC'd by someone that 'knows' his surroundings, i will admit to that, but its not something that cant be scouted, and generally the areas a strategic fight will take place are always scouted before.

currently fleet warfare is based on the rock scissor paper method where a fleet ships are optimised defensively to be as balanced as possible. you'd hear eft warriors talking about the best fit having less defensive holes in terms of resists etc...

This more dynamic localised effects in systems will force FC's to ask themselves if an omni setup is preferable, and if not, if a more tailored fit will result in theyre fleet being countered by the enemy firing a different damage type (using the damage they're augment fits are weakest to) or lowering their EHP to counter naturally occurring ECM/target breaking.

adding the terrain element helps break the monotony of rock paper scissor fleet battles where 9 times out of 10 its more about fleet numbers than strategic skill. after all most large coalitions fly multiple fleet types to counter the counter of their fleets.

sorta... but not "jump into system, feel effects immediately"

more like "jump into system, all is fine and dandy, warp onto particular grid in system - hmm thats an interesting effect affecting me"

if by 'chest high walls' you're referring to the level of difficulty it'd impart to regular small scale PVP, most of that goes on at gates, in asteroid belts and at stations.

they wouldn't generally be areas that'd have these local grid effects.

and yes you may associate those effects in wormholes, but they have amazing potential to revitalise large scale PVP in null and low sec, yet they're wasted as an oddity and general fancy piece of tinsel in W-space where their potential could be used to such a greater extent in low/null.

The problem with this idea, aside from the OH MA GOD!!!!!!!! server melting properties is: how would you know what is where?

For this to work, and I am ignoring the programming hell, is how would your ships know what zone has what aspects? You are expecting a server to have zone with certain advantages and disadvantages. How would the pilot know what is where in a 3D environment? Would it have some visual representation as some missions have stellar dust in them?

If so, how would this work when constantly shifting in and out of them?
How far in between would they be?

Such things are key to the idea, but you did not address these problems. Sorry but I keep sounding offensive.

But just because you came up with an idea does not mean it is a good idea. You propose something without even going beyond 'hey I want chest high walls'. CCP already made the fluctuational environment in wormholes. And guessing based on them making them the same in the entire wormhole that making regional fluctuations would be a nightmare.

Similarly, some such zones might buff you beyond believe while others will turn off your capacitor or targeting range to -0.1?

Thats very true, and if i thought my idea was perfect in every way i wouldnt be here, id have been pitching it directly to the devs at Eve Vegas and other places, but i appreciate the strength co-operative brainstorming gives to an idea. Plus im not an expert on the inner workings of the graphics engine eve uses. if a grid grows, i dont know if a cloud effect can grow with the grid size. if it does awesome! if it doesnt then lets find another way to represent it, say with a popup like u sometimes have warping to sites?

as to the comment of knowing whats where, pilot orientation n all that: you have an overview right? and a working tactical view that shows you up and down right? plus an overview that you can select things and press approach right? i mean come on!



well this is a total exaggeration of what i was proposing. although in CCP infinite wisdom i wouldn't put it past them to royally screw up some local effects tbh! even so, it wouldnt be as extreme as that, itd only cause people to rethink a couple of mods on their ship, parting an imbalance on their fit.

The effects would be on preloaded grid aka the grids like the star the planets the moons and maybe on sites aka anoms etc...
I would stress that it wouldnt be on all and it would definitely NOT be on gate grids or station grids.

you do realise you contradicted yourself in the space of 5 lines. but if you want to give me an example of how a localised effect on a pre-loaded grid would only give the defenders advantage id gladly show you the other side of said coin =)

Now that is definitely a worthy idea to spice up the space warfare. And if done properly shouldn't actually melt any servers as well. As is see it, it's like some kind of bonus/malus effect that affect some of the base ship stats, they can be pre-calculated and applied really fast depending of where the ship is. Think of it as of a grid-sized booster with either positive or negative effect on some attribute(s).

MWD's have been useable in deadspace for a few years now. And as cool as this idea sounds, I get the distinct impression it would also set the hamsters on fire.