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Player Features and Ideas Discussion

 
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Grouping of fighters with Time Dilation
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zitellona
No Risk No ISK
#1 - 2017-07-18 11:30:35 UTC
I think it would be a good idea to offer players the ability to group their fighters, fighter bombers and support fighters when Time Dilation goes below 80%, to reduce server lag.

The fighters must be of the same type to be grouped.
So if you have 3 squadrons of 9 fighters, it becomes 1 squadron of 27 fighters.
The downside is that the fighters become more susceptible to Electronic Warfare (1 aero superiority squadron can tackle all your fighters). To balance that out, I propose to add a 5% DPS bonus to grouped fighters.
Donnachadh
United Allegiance of Undesirables
#2 - 2017-07-18 13:16:34 UTC  |  Edited by: Donnachadh
Deleted
Old Pervert
Perkone
Caldari State
#3 - 2017-07-18 16:28:20 UTC
I suspect this would require a massive back-end job to make it work.

The simpler solution would be to add more anti-fighter capabilities to other ships Twisted... something like a CIWS. Or bombers :)
zitellona
No Risk No ISK
#4 - 2017-07-19 15:19:10 UTC
Old Pervert wrote:
I suspect this would require a massive back-end job to make it work.

The simpler solution would be to add more anti-fighter capabilities to other ships Twisted... something like a CIWS. Or bombers :)


Next time read the entire post before commenting.
Cade Windstalker
#5 - 2017-07-19 18:49:41 UTC
Couple of problems with this.

First and foremost drones, at least these days, aren't the primary contributor to TiDi and server lag, the primary contributor is simply the massive queue of inputs that need to be processed. Reducing Fighters from 3-5 squads to 1-2 would only help this a very minimal amount. So the actual benefits to this idea are already questionable.

On top of that this becomes a pretty significant balance concern. In a fight large enough for TiDi to break out ECM pretty much stops being used against individual squadrons and it becomes more about massed Light Drones set on Aggressive or Smartbombs, both of which would be less effective against one squad of Fighters compared to Three because you can only kill on Fighter at a time so in that respect this is already buffing Fighters.

On top of *that* adding something like this wouldn't be trivial. There's a lot of stuff that would need to be modified in terms of game code and mechanics without even getting into the potential balance implications.

Overall I just don't really think this is needed given how questionable the potential benefits are, the potential for bugs and other issues, and the balance concerns on top of that.
zitellona
No Risk No ISK
#6 - 2017-07-19 22:46:23 UTC  |  Edited by: zitellona
Cade Windstalker wrote:
ECM pretty much stops being used against individual squadrons


ECM? I wasn't talking about ECM, but warp disruption and webbing, both of which are accomplished by a single space superiority fighter squadron.
Space Superiority fighters are essentially fighters designed to kill other fighters. They have both web and warp disruptor so that the target fighters can't escape.
By putting all your fighters into one squadron, they would be sitting ducks against just one squadron of space superiority fighters.
A carrier could launch 3 squadrons of these and basically destroy the DPS of 3 supercarriers (if the 3 supercarriers group their fighters).
Regarding smartbombs, these are useless against heavy fighters as their optimal exceeds the range of smartbombs.

You are quite ignorant on the topic of fighters, and quite an arrogant troll.

Whenever the supercarriers pull out their fighters, you can see TiDi kicking in immediately. They are a HUGE contributor to server lag.
You have no idea how many inputs fighters need. Right now fighters and heavy fighters have both 2 weapons. One has automatic cycling. The other has to be cycled by the user every 30 seconds on average. That's on average 1 input every 10 seconds (because of the 3 squadrons). If there are 100 carriers/supercarriers, that alone would result in 10 inputs per second, just to cycle the weapons on the fighters.
The amount of cycles is limited and the fighters need to be scooped and refueled frequently. So add the frequent recalling of fighters, refueling, launching fighters and sending them out to attack again to the amount of inputs needed.

Btw, carriers, supercarriers, dreads and titans don't have ANY drones.
When was the last time you played the game? 2007? Instead of trolling on the forums, start the eve client and go play some EVE. You will learn something.
zitellona
No Risk No ISK
#7 - 2017-07-19 23:02:42 UTC  |  Edited by: zitellona
Cade Windstalker wrote:
it becomes more about massed Light Drones set on Aggressive or Smartbombs, both of which would be less effective against one squad of Fighters compared to Three because you can only kill on Fighter at a time so in that respect this is already buffing Fighters.


The squadrons are composed of individual fighters. When you attack a fighter squadron, you are dealing damage to the individual fighters within the squadron, where the most damaged fighter will receive all the DPS.
It does not change anything if the squadron is composed of 1 or 1000 fighters. When you attack the squadron, you are killing the fighters within it. Their shields are not added together.
Nothing changes if 1 squadron of 100 fighters is fighting another squadron of 100 fighters, or if 2 squadrons of 50 are fighting a squadron of 100. The outcome will be the same.
Except for server lag.

Again, go play the game and stop trolling.
Cade Windstalker
#8 - 2017-07-20 13:38:06 UTC
zitellona wrote:
ECM? I wasn't talking about ECM, but warp disruption and webbing, both of which are accomplished by a single space superiority fighter squadron.
Space Superiority fighters are essentially fighters designed to kill other fighters. They have both web and warp disruptor so that the target fighters can't escape.
By putting all your fighters into one squadron, they would be sitting ducks against just one squadron of space superiority fighters.
A carrier could launch 3 squadrons of these and basically destroy the DPS of 3 supercarriers (if the 3 supercarriers group their fighters).
Regarding smartbombs, these are useless against heavy fighters as their optimal exceeds the range of smartbombs.


Then you should have specified better in the OP?

Just for the sake of argument, if you make this a *choice* and there are a lot of Superiority Fighters out then no one will ever push the button to combine their squads until space is clear. If you make it a forced thing then that's massively changing the dynamics of how a player's ship performs based on something that's outside of the player's control.

Also the range of a smartbomb vs the range of a fighter only matters if you're attacking something on the edge of the fight and matters not at all against a swarm of Light Drones. If your Fighters are shooting someone and the Dread next to him drops a Smartbomb then they're just as screwed.

zitellona wrote:
Whenever the supercarriers pull out their fighters, you can see TiDi kicking in immediately. They are a HUGE contributor to server lag.
You have no idea how many inputs fighters need. Right now fighters and heavy fighters have both 2 weapons. One has automatic cycling. The other has to be cycled by the user every 30 seconds on average. That's on average 1 input every 10 seconds (because of the 3 squadrons). If there are 100 carriers/supercarriers, that alone would result in 10 inputs per second, just to cycle the weapons on the fighters.
The amount of cycles is limited and the fighters need to be scooped and refueled frequently. So add the frequent recalling of fighters, refueling, launching fighters and sending them out to attack again to the amount of inputs needed.

Btw, carriers, supercarriers, dreads and titans don't have ANY drones.
When was the last time you played the game? 2007? Instead of trolling on the forums, start the eve client and go play some EVE. You will learn something.


I'm well aware of how many inputs Fighters need, but in the grand scheme of things they're still a pretty small contributor compared to the hundreds of other players on-grid mashing F1, swapping targets, moving their ship, ect. Worst case scenario is that each Fighter Squadron requires roughly the same server capacity as one normal ship, but Carriers and Supercarriers rarely make up the bulk of a fleet so the actual impact of consolidating Fighter Squadrons is questionable at best.

The reason a Carrier putting Fighters out causes a spike in TiDi is because it's new entities on grid. You get the same effect when a bunch of new ships warp in or a bunch of people drop drones.

zitellona wrote:
The squadrons are composed of individual fighters. When you attack a fighter squadron, you are dealing damage to the individual fighters within the squadron, where the most damaged fighter will receive all the DPS.
It does not change anything if the squadron is composed of 1 or 1000 fighters. When you attack the squadron, you are killing the fighters within it. Their shields are not added together.
Nothing changes if 1 squadron of 100 fighters is fighting another squadron of 100 fighters, or if 2 squadrons of 50 are fighting a squadron of 100. The outcome will be the same.
Except for server lag.


Yes, you're killing the Fighters within it. One at a time.

A Squadron of Fighters takes the same damage from a Smartbomb whether there's 1 Fighter left or 9.

Kindly drop the condescension and the insults, they add nothing to the point you're trying to make and just make it look like you can't actually defend your point with facts and evidence so you have to resort to mudslinging.