EVE General Discussion

You know whats faster than these new ceptors and such?

My Jump Bridges.

Anything you can do with 10 people you can do 10 times better with 100 people.

EVE history already has examples of how it can work. It used to work before it was changed. So it's not like trying to guess "what might be," just remember "how it was"

For small gang warfare to be successful, there are 2 major ship balance factors:
1) Ability to make very fast ships. EVE had that during the "nano" era. Very fast ship benefit small gangs more than large ones, because of the dynamics of fast ship combat, it is easier to separate large blobs into smaller, more managable fighting units. It also increases chance of smaller fighting unit to get away from large blob, unless that blob splits into small fast units itself. Either way, nanos benefited small engagements more than large ones

2) lower TTK (time to kill) - this benefits smaller engagements in several ways. One way is that ships can fight each other and finish the fight before their friends arrive. This reduces the blob escalation. The longer it takes to kill a ship, the more people are needed to kill it effectively. Many small scale engagements happen as "hit and run" tactics, so fast kill is essential for success.
EVE actually when thru this stage since its release up to about 2005, after all ships received 50% boost in hp, and before major stacking nerf. Throughout later years, the defensive ship capabilities have been increasing at faster rate than offensive ones

Besides ship balance factors, there's also the motivation factors - opportunities/objectives of small scale fights vs large scale fights. EVE went thru several stages in that respect. Initially, before all the POS stuff, there was really no special motivation for blobbing. Pretty much all fights were small scale. But things always moved gradually toward undermining small scale fights and shifting focus on larger fights. The main contributing factors are"
1) POS mechanics - they are designed specifically to be immune to small scale fighting and only support large scale fighting
2) cap ships - again, same as POS stuff, these ships are designed for the blob
3) jump bridges - they work to make it easier for alliances to move large forces around quickly and give them much easier time countering any small scale enemy force. Since most small scale combat happens around the star gates, jump bridges further discourage them by reducing stargate traffic. These days, roaming in 0.0 looking for fights is much more boring experience than it was earlier in game. And the chance of encountering a large blob is much greater.

EVE also used to have much more low sec systems, that were later changed to high sec. This serves to push PvP out toward 0.0, where blobs are heavily encouraged.

It would be fair to say that EVE did encourage small PvP with introduction of Wormholes. However, it remains as niche PvP, a small fraction of the game.

The point is, EVE already went thru stage of small PvP and CCP made conscious decision to change the game to discourage it. They probably believe that encouraging blobs helps build better teamwork and stronger community, I dunno

Wow, crying about links? Seriously?

Putting aside the fact that you managed to accomplish the incredible feat of thinking the interceptor and warp speed changes are bad for small groups...

Links are very literally the deathblow to solo and small group gameplay. Links create a situation wherein they grant such a strong benefit that unless you get your own boosts they can only be overcome with superiority of numbers. Links (and by that I mean OGBs) are one of the very reasons blobbing exists in the first place.

They didn't go far enough, honestly. Off grid boosting needs to die in a fire, so if people want to boost their fleet they actually have to put their ship at risk on grid to do it. That's what those enormous tanks are for on Command Ships anyway.

Those things weren't bad for small scale PvP

sure 6 km/s phoon was fast, but there was 90% web, and tackler frigs could reach 20 km/s
8 heat sink geddons were powerful, but glass cannons

none of these things are inherently bad, just a different style of gameplay, one that is more friendly to small scale fights than current state of affairs.

Active tanking is only viable when you use officer mods, with only t2, passive/buffer wins every time. Not to forget that logistics cruisers work better with passive/buffers

Please tell us what you want CCP to do to encourage small gang warfare?

In what way can CCP make more people fight in small gangs?

What constitutes a small gang, 5, 10, 15 20 people?

Also what changes have CCP made that is pushing people into forming Blobs?

I see a lot of crying but no examples of where CCP have pushed people into blobs and any changes designed to hurt small gang PvP

I can condense it for you a little more.

Here goes:

Meaning forums in general, not the OP. I'm staying out of that discussion.

OP has 0 kills

They gona nerf the cargo size? Crap!!!