EVE General Discussion

Totally. Gogela from 2 days ago that is a pretty good observation. I'm amazed that no-one has thought of this. Think FPS'ers are gonna go for time dilation?

Yah... me either...

I'll be honest. A lot of what I was going to post has already been touched on several times in this thread. From the different kinds of orbital bombardments, both from different sizes of hulls, different guns and different ammo, to planetary defences like shields, both Tactical and strategic level bombardments and of course, the planet shooting back at you. Most of the other things I already brought up at the Orbital Warfare round table at Fanfest, but I think I'll go from the top anyway for the benefit of discussion, even if it means I'm repeating myself or what others have said. These are rough ideas, and will need some working for balance/technical reasons

Firing from orbit

• In order to fire, you would have to be positioned in orbit above the district in question. Every district has a static warp in point above it, available at all times.
• I would prefer to see any ship capable of fitting the weapons(both launchers and guns) and the requisite module (at this stage, a Bombardment Computer) able to perform orbital bombardment. If that means you can fit a Battle Badger as a Bombardment Badger, then so be it (It's larger cargo hold might come in handy after all for extended sieges)
• The different sizes and types of guns need to have distinct differences. Exactly what those differences are would be subject to game balance, but for the most part I would like to see them follow racial lines for the different types, and power/accuracy for the sizes. (e.g. Amarr small sized weapons would be more effective for pinpoint strikes against vehicles where if they don't destroy them, they would cause them to shut down temporarily due to the EMP pulse, and cause fires on anything flammable.)
• Make sure that the bombardment computer and specialised guns does mean that the fitting used will not be effective in PvP against other EVE players. However, it shouldn't remove the ability to fit a proper tank - after all, even with out any capsuleers attacking them, chances are the planet below will. The Bombardment modules should also immobilise the ship or give other penalties (the least of which should be preventing warp while active). If a ship is capable of moving while bombarding, then it should receive penalties to accuracy it is does so.
• Bombardments would have a team based cooldown per battlefield, as well as an individual one for the bombardier for shooting anywhere in the district. This would prevent one team from simply just spamming them.
• By the same token, it shouldn't be impossible with a properly setup fleet (and I mean an actual fleet, not one guy multiboxing 4 ships) to duke it out with the planet below.
• For strategic level attacks, maybe it should be possible to put structures and installations into a reinforced mode by shooting at it from orbit. However, this shouldn't be a quick process, nor should it be able to actually destroy anything - merely take it offline for a matter of time (depending on the structure). Items such as shielding could prevent direct attacks on structures.
• While most attacks can only disable structures, Titans should be able to glass districts. This would pretty much remove every structure from the district. However, it shouldn't just be a matter of "push button: receive destruction" - it should involve a fair amount of setup and risk to the titan pilot. Before the district could then be used again a substantial ISK/material investment would be required to "clean" the district taking several days before any structures could be built. There would also be a penalty to resource extraction rates for a period of time once the "rebuilding" completed.
• Kills using orbital bombardment should generate kill mails for the bombardier. The kill mail should list the names of the players killed and the types of dropsuit/vehicles they were using at the time. Listing modules being used by players on their dropsuits and vehicles would be a preferable, but might be a little too much information for a single killmail.
• If possible, it would be nice to actually see the bombardment hit in a small window (like the one shown in the CCP Presents keynote) either looking down from orbit, or though the eyes of the mercenary that called it in (or possibly both).
• EW is certainly an option, called down in exactly the same way as an orbital strike. Each module would function like it's DUST 514 counterpart, except much more powerful. Those that don't have counterparts in DUST 514 wouldn't be able to be used. It would still share the same cooldown as normal bombardments.

*continued next post*

On carriers and fighters

• Carriers (and super carriers) should be able to assign their fighters or fighter bombers to a particular battlefield. While they are assigned, they count towards the currently deployed drone count and towards bandwidth used. A maximum of 5 can be assigned to each battlefield.
• Fighters and fighter bombers can be recalled at any time before they have been called in by the DUST 514 commander. Their status in the drone control window will indicate if they are "On station" (waiting for orders) or executing orders (indicated by the attack type - see below)
• A commander has several options for how he can utilise his assigned fighters. They are attack run, overwatch or intercept. Fighter bombers can only use the attack run option.
• Attack run calls in the fighters to strafe a certain area using their weapons. The attack area is a corridor indicated by the commander. For each assigned fighter or fighter bomber, the commander can place one corridor, each of which will be executed in sequential order. Fighter Bombers are more powerful and have a larger attack corridor
• Overwatch requires a beacon and LOS of the target area. Once placed, any enemy that enters the area designated will be attacked by a single fighter. After a short cooldown, another fighter will attack the target if it is still in the attack area. This will continue until either all the fighters have made their attacks, the beacon is destroyed or the fighters are otherwise disabled
• Intercept will have the fighters go on standby, and attack any hostile fighters or fighter bombers that enter the battlefield. They can also, if instructed by the commander, attack any aircraft visible. If both sides task their fighters to intercept, then they both immediately engage each other.
• Both fighters and fighter bombers can be shot down. If one is destroyed, then it is actually destroyed in EVE as well.
• Fighters and Fighter bombers are both weaker than their counterpart weapons fire from ships in orbit. If the carrier or super carrier they are based off of leaves orbit, they will return to it's drone bay
• Once a fighter or fighter bomber returns to it's ship, it will return to the drone bay and will be unable to used until a cooldown has passed (it's being rearmed/refuelled). This applies regardless of whether it executed a mission or not.

Other odds and ends

• Orbital bombardment should be a powerful tool, but it alone should not dictate the victor.
• Bombs (from stealth bombers) shouldn't have any use on the battlefield. However, their siege launchers are a different matter and should be handled as normal.
• As far as maintaining orbit with rotating planets, if they can't make grids that rotate with the planet (best option but a technical nightmare) then stopping the rotation would be quickest and easiest solution available.
• Gogela does ask an interesting technical question I have asked before but didn't get an answer to: What happens if the node the EVE player is on is under the effects of TiDi?

That's just my thoughts at the moment. Hope that helps.

I dont love the vibe of only deploying 5 drones per field.

I Say let the drones blot out the sun(s)!





Moar defenseless carriers in orbit, more space pew pew, more drama planet side when the nerd rage starts.

Bliss.

Yes.

But that should not deprive me from using all the drones my ship can field to strike. If your in favor of varying Orbital Strike Sizes, then you should also be in favor of varying Air-Strike or Bombing Run strikes. More drones = bigger strikes = more destruction.

Basically OB should be dreads only, in siege and with special anti-atmospheric ammo. Counters would be energy shield fielded by dusties with an energy cost and an ability to soak dps up to a point, much like a (very) small tower. Additional counters ought to be air defense batteries which will need either sats in "orbit" for targetting (which would be targets for smaller ships like BS and BC) or ground based radar which could also be targetted. OB should basically be a variation on tower pounding, with hopefully more dynamism as a result of the faster paced nature of FPS.


One other thing, getting DIRECTLY OVER THE TARGET is going to need some fancy scanning, warp to planet V wont cut it.

So you would have to view planet in planet mode, find the target and launch some sort of scan probe there to warp to. I imagine the appearance of such a scan probe in the radar screens of planet bound dusties would be cause for some alarm.

Both EVE and DUST 514 already share the same text channels in the build we were shown. Not sure on voice, but it's planned as well.

Yea I think I remember something about EvE Voice moving OOG, to a browser based platform, so we can share one channel easily.

Which should be sweet

The fighters that dust players use should be superior in performance and should be able to shoot down ANYTHING unless outnumbered or outfoxed by a better pilot.

guys you do also have to realise that DUST514 cant field the level of art resources and variations on things that our eve client can...

thats why theyre limiting drop suit types and vehicle types, so any effects etc... Dust514 side needs to be truncated into less resource hungry instances or colated into preset effect types that can be applied to the battlefield. Otherwise intense fighting between dust and eve will slow both down to a halt.