Player Features and Ideas Discussion

First off, I have a booster alt and would rather see combat links removed than made into some on grid aoe thing that will only promote more blobbs.

Anyway, to the point. I've seen mention of making links into something you need to target and apply to ships.

This I like, as it makes links into something like logistics which is fun to fly.

But more importantly... it would make neutral links go suspect, just like neutral logi. I like this even more.

If you are reworking links, look at how logi currently functions and take what works from that and go from there. Even if you keep it an aoe effect, it should transfer suspect/criminal flags from any fleet member you affect, just like sensor boosting or repping.

EDIT:

Had another thought while going to sleep last night. Change fleet boosting so links work from anyone in the fleet. That way you could have a single link on several ships in the fleet. Make them work like other utility modules like points and sensor boosters. Just another option to add to a fit. Limiting links made sense when they worked across an entire system and gave huge boosts. If those change, why not let the AOE effect ignore fleet positions?

Currently nobody wants to fly a booster ship. Making them on grid doesn't help any. I love flying logi, DPS is fun, ECM is fun, but flying a brick tank links ship that's going to be an alpha target sounds terrible.

Also... off grid links are being removed. Fine. But... this is direct to CCP... please start your discussion from there. Start thinking about a game with no boosting, and decide "Should we add this boosting mechanic? What will it add? Will people WANT to get out of their DPS ship to fly links?"

If it doesn't add any engaging gameplay, maybe it's not worth adding.

Honestly "off" Grid boosting needs to be rid of.

What I am wondering is why not just make a command ship the only type that can use warefare links, when turned on they create like a bubble effect outward from the ship.

Range...maybe 15km in every direction for a 30km sized bubble, any fleet ships in the bubble get the boosts....that way command ships stay mobile, are in the fight.....

and well i guess that way leadership positions do not need to apply and the meta might change to entire fleets of command ships.....oh and a SB could place a bomb inside that bubble...command ship being the bullseye.

but anyways......

As someone else mentioned, I think that targeted boosts would be much more interesting/rewarding for that role. Booster alts need to be a thing of the past; combat boosting needs to be a fun, active role. This would also be easier to implement I would think (I can't say what all balancing changes would need to happen). If that isn't the answer, I would rather that they get rid of combat boosting altogether. Sure the AoE boost idea would bring more risk to booster alts, but the role would still mostly left to alts (THAT is the problem).

#1: This necessitates a complete and total rework of both T3 defensive subsystems and command ships.
#2: Being relegated to a "buff bot" is crap and I don't like it nor know anyone who does. None of this targeted garbage please.

Finally and most importantly we come to #3: Under no circumstances let the overall decisions be disproportionately influenced by "solo/small gang/FW" voices and the reason I say that is this will radically affect mid scale fights and above, whereas the aforementioned group can and will simply roll into falcons and carry on roflstomping people as before regardless.

By that reasoning, CCP should remove multiboxing.

Delete command processor and hard-limit the number of links each ship can run. Then they will all magically have the fitting to fit their links and a tank. Weapon might be a bit problematic but just like recons, their presence is not for their offensive firepower.

For the purposes of this post I'm going to refer to someone using links as a Command Player, since the Booster role is apparently going away and I want to avoid conflating terms.

Some thoughts/concerns, in no particular order:

• Everything about the current boost modules should be looked at, especially fittings, cap use, and cycle time. As things stand, with OGBs, it makes a fair amount of sense for links to be fitting prohibitive because dropping tank for more links is about the closest the whole system comes to a meaningful trade-off, but with the links moving on grid that seems like a trade almost no one will want to make.
• The duration of links should be long enough that a Command Player can activate links, a fleet can warp a moderate distance, and the boosts still be active when the fleet lands on grid. What a "moderate distance" means is something for CCP to determine, and will obviously vary some with warp speed, but I would say that the base distance should revolve around the 3 AU/s base speed many T1 ships use.
• Links should respect Suspect/Criminal/Station Timer mechanics. More on this below, because this got a bit big for a bullet point...
• The question of whether or not these new AOE links will affect the Command Ship itself should be answered, as should whether or not they affect the ship when it is not in a fleet. In effect can I now mount a high-slot tank module on solo ships?
• In my opinion the bonuses on the links themselves shouldn't be changed, at least on the first iteration. I foresee a lot of calls for the links to be buffed to make up for bringing them on grid but I don't think this is really necessary. The links being off-grid is a broken state of affairs as it's basically all bonus and very very little risk in most cases. Buffing links in response to fixing this broken state of affairs both helps defeat the point of the change and moves the baseline making it harder to determine the actual effect of bringing Links on-grid compared to before.
• EDIT: Is this going to affect drones in space in any way? Overall that seems like a bad idea but a potential unintended consequence of AOE-links. My two main concerns are interaction with Fighters and the potential to turn drones into a massive source of lag (again).

Suspect/Criminal/Station Timer thoughts and mechanics:

If you activate links you should get a gate/station timer and any criminal flags possessed by someone affected should be passed to the activating player. This both solves one of the few remaining consequence-free methods of remote assistance (in high and low-sec) and increases risk to Command Linkers by preventing them from playing station games with Warfare Links. That said, this still leaves a few holes in the mechanics which would need to be plugged.

To avoid griefing or avoiding penalty mechanics I would suggest that someone who commits an aggressive act against another player lose Link Bonuses passed by someone who is not currently aggressable by that person/a criminal. Basically you have to activate your links *after* (if only just) someone else starts shooting that freighter/rookie ship/carrier trying to jump into High Sec.

To prevent griefing in public fleets Link Bonuses respect the safety in who they pass to, so someone with a green safety can still activate their Warfare Links but can't give Link Bonuses to someone who is currently in a state that would violate the green safety, the Links affect everyone else normally. Otherwise you're going to have people joining things like Incursion Fleets, waiting until the links are about to activate, and going suspect or criminal to either A: prevent the Command Linker from activating his links *or* B. get him killed, either by Concord or by the ganker's friends.

Some may say that Link-griefing should be allowed but this harkens back to the days when anyone in fleet could shoot anyone else in a fleet and this was pretty much *only* used for griefing and limited the utility of fleets and pushed players away from working together casually. This is both bad for the game generally and actually makes it harder for a dedicated or experienced troll/griefer/saboteur to ingratiate himself to a group by discouraging casual and temporary cooperation that might transition into a more long lasting relationship.

Thanks for making this thread FuzzySteve, I look forward to seeing what CCP comes up with here! :)

Yeah, making links into a targeted module is a much more interesting approach than the buff bubble, by turning fleet bonuses into an active role akin to remote-rep logistics you create a much more engaging gameplay style and much more room for individual pilot decisions and input to make the difference.

Here's how the version of fleet bonuses works in my head:

=========
1: Ganglinks are an active module and require a target lock to apply.
2: To use a ganglink the linking ship must lock and activate the module on a member of their fleet in any command position.
3: Once activated as above, the link bonus provided by that module applies to the targeted fleet member and any fleet member below them in the chain of command.
4: The higher up the chain of command the targeted fleet member is, the more diluted the ganglink effect becomes.
=========

So if I'm in a ganglink ship in a full fleet of 256, I can target the FC, activate my link module(s), and (assuming their Leadership skills are up to it) all fleet members including myself will receive a small bonus from my ganglink. Or, I can target one of the Wing commanders, which would mean that the Wing Commander and all pilots in that wing receive a more powerful ganglink effect. Or, I can use my link on one of the Squad leaders. The ganglink will only affect the 10 members of the squad, but the effect of the ganglink on those 10 will be much more powerful than spreading it out across the whole fleet.

Alternatively I guess we could have a boring AoE bubble which doesn't give any of those interesting gameplay choices, encourages the whole fleet to huddle together in a big stupid blob, and can be performed completely passively by the FC's alt character just like today.

You can already do this by yourself by not trying to jury rig more than 3 link on a command ship. Most if not all of them will be left with most of their slots open for tank and the same for dps. The stupidity of 6 links command boat doesn't have to still be a thing once we get links on grid. You could hard-cap the link in 3 "class" where command ship bring 3, T3 cruisers and destroyer bring 2 and command destroyer bring 1. The funniest thing about this is you could then make then all give equivalent boost value since ship would probably flat out make sense to bring in different scenario instead of it being T3 or bust for a large majority of setups.

This isn't really particularly interesting though, it just increases the number of Command Ships you need to bring on field to be effective. Other than that it's just "lock up your assigned leadership person and broadcast if you get targeted". That and you've just made ECM hard-counter *another* ship-type.

The end result of this, for any large fleet, would be bring 26/52 Command Ships and have 1 for the FC and one for each squad. That's not a particularly interesting choice or engaging gameplay, it's just another numbers and SP check. If you really want to limit the impact of Command Links then make the AOE smaller than 255km and force people to actually stay near the Command Ship if they want to get boosts, but even that isn't really a *good* solution, because it penalizes larger hulls, never mind what it does to capital ships.

This whole targeted links idea seems like a bad push to relegate Links to solo and very small gang warfare, which would *massively* change the survivability of ships at every other level of the game, especially the Command Ships themselves. Making them a targeted module would be equivalent to nerfing them into oblivion.