Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Totally +1


This makes sense from a balance point of view:

Interceptor or any fast warping ships (hull, rigs) should be able to get ahead of people with it's superior warp speed. At the moment "warp speed" is just a fancy number on your ships details, which has no meaningful impact on the game. But consideration of sub-warp statistics like Agility makes no sense here, since your warp drive takes over and breaks all Eve-Physics laws. Also it would present more of a tradeoff between subwarp and warp capabilities, so that Nanofiber Internal structures don't give you everything you could possibly want in a box.


--

The idea of instantly going into warp once "warp speed has been initiated" - the point at which the warp bubble is formed - is good. The graphics idea of leaving Star Trek-like trails is nice, but might be problematic due to copyrights.

However, the real big problem I see - and this is neither a technical or balance problem - is that instant warp will remove an immersion factor. If you look at celestials while warping, it gives you that feeling that you are really moving in a single system. There is no loading (not anything visible anyway) for the grid involved, there is no instant "Cyno feeling". It feels somewhat real. The user gets immersed.

This may not sound very important to the hardcore Eve player, but would be to CCP, due to their effort to immerse new players into the game more fully. All the recent graphics updates for weapons, richer and more dynamic backgrounds, the beginning of WiS - alll of that is proof that CCP definitely holds a vast interest in this. By giving instant warp speed, the relative movement of celestials would look bad, and feel unreal. Anyone who spends at least some minutes looking around the galaxy, missiles, turret animation every now and then for show - and admit it, even veterans still do this! - would to some degree prefer to keep the graphics cool the way they are.

A second big problem with instant warps would be short range warps, especially on grid warps. Right now due to acceleration and deceleration it is not instant, and takes a few seconds before you either become lockable or gain control of your ship. This is fine and it should stay that way.

As to my proposed solution:

Make the time it takes to reach optimal warp speed fixed, and tweak it as needed.

For the sake of the argument, let's just use a number of around 3 seconds, and let's compare the following unrigged hulls, and their rough respective warp times with my proposed change:

Formula used: (AU / Warp Speed) + (2 * 3s)
Freighter: 0.75AU/s
Battleship: 3AU/s
T1 frigate: 6AU/s
T2 interceptor: 13.5AU/s (I'm assuming Malediction/Raptor/Ares/Stiletto)

10AU:
Freighter: ~19s
Battleship: ~9s
T1 frigate: ~7s (little more)
T2 interceptor: ~7s (little less)

30AU:
Freighter: ~45s
Battleship: ~16s
T1 frigate: ~11s
T2 interceptor: ~8s

60AU:
Freighter: ~90s
Battleship: ~30s
T1 frigate: ~20s
T2 interceptor: ~10s

100AU:
Freighter: ~143s
Battleship: ~36s
T1 frigate: ~23s
T2 interceptor: ~13s

On-grid warps: 6s - no change to this!

This is just a random number to give you a taste, don't argue or discuss about the balance or imbalance in these numbers.

Immersion preserved, balance served - and opening more options. Making small ships in gangs more mobile and large gangs less mobile. And suddenly interceptor can actually intercept ships, by not just being fast and super squishy - but by being able to warp ahead of targets. It would make life in low/null/WH space a little bit (only a bit) dangerous and interesting, since interceptors actually gain more usage, being able to catch up to people and tackle them.

Totally +1


This makes sense from a balance point of view:

Interceptor or any fast warping ships (hull, rigs) should be able to get ahead of people with it's superior warp speed. At the moment "warp speed" is just a fancy number on your ships details, which has no meaningful impact on the game. But consideration of sub-warp statistics like Agility makes no sense here, since your warp drive takes over and breaks all Eve-Physics laws. Also it would present more of a tradeoff between subwarp and warp capabilities, so that Nanofiber Internal structures don't give you everything you could possibly want in a box.

The idea of instantly going into warp once "warp speed has been initiated" - the point at which the warp bubble is formed - is good. The graphics idea of leaving Star Trek-like trails is nice, but might be problematic due to copyrights.

However, the real big problem I see - and this is neither a technical or balance problem - is that instant warp will remove an immersion factor. If you look at celestials while warping, it gives you that feeling that you are really moving in a single system. There is no loading (not anything visible anyway) for the grid involved, there is no instant "Cyno feeling". It feels somewhat real. The user gets immersed.

This may not sound very important to the hardcore Eve player, but would be to CCP, due to their effort to immerse new players into the game more fully. All the recent graphics updates for weapons, richer and more dynamic backgrounds, the beginning of WiS - alll of that is proof that CCP definitely holds a vast interest in this. By giving instant warp speed, the relative movement of celestials would look bad, and feel unreal. Anyone who spends at least some minutes looking around the galaxy, missiles, turret animation every now and then for show - and admit it, even veterans still do this! - would to some degree prefer to keep the graphics cool the way they are.

A second big problem with instant warps would be short range warps, especially on grid warps. Right now due to acceleration and deceleration it is not instant, and takes a few seconds before you either become lockable or gain control of your ship. This is fine and it should stay that way.


--


As to my proposed solution:

Make the time it takes to reach optimal warp speed fixed, and tweak it as needed.

For the sake of the argument, let's just use a number of around 3 seconds, and let's compare the following unrigged hulls, and their rough respective warp times with my proposed change:

Formula used: (AU / Warp Speed) + (2 * 3s)
Freighter: 0.75AU/s
Battleship: 3AU/s
T1 frigate: 6AU/s
T2 interceptor: 13.5AU/s (I'm assuming Malediction/Raptor/Ares/Stiletto)

10AU:
Freighter: ~19s
Battleship: ~9s
T1 frigate: ~7s (little more)
T2 interceptor: ~7s (little less)

30AU:
Freighter: ~45s
Battleship: ~16s
T1 frigate: ~11s
T2 interceptor: ~8s

60AU:
Freighter: ~90s
Battleship: ~30s
T1 frigate: ~20s
T2 interceptor: ~10s

100AU:
Freighter: ~143s
Battleship: ~36s
T1 frigate: ~23s
T2 interceptor: ~13s

On-grid warps: 6s - no change to this!

This is just a random number to give you a taste, don't argue or discuss about the balance or imbalance in these numbers.

Immersion preserved, balance served - and opening more options. Making small ships in gangs more mobile and large gangs less mobile. And suddenly interceptor can actually intercept ships, by not just being fast and super squishy - but by being able to warp ahead of targets. It would make life in low/null/WH space a little bit (only a bit) dangerous and interesting, since interceptors actually gain more usage, being able to catch up to people and tackle them.