It seems we never agree.
You think it would dumb the game down to require booster ships on the battle grid? I think that is a very hard case to make.

at least not solo like I normally do.

If they intend to make eve a game that can't be played unless you are multi-boxing alts then yes its working as intended.

Is that good for the game?

You did not answer my questions so I will take it you admit it does not dumb down the game to require link ships to be on grid.

1) It can work but it's work should not directly influence a battle that is happening on grid.
2) Yes and I am not suggesting we remove every reason to build a pos.
3) Yes it has a counter. The counter is the immersion breaking GÇ£eve is a choreGÇ¥ option of dragging an alt around yourself and multiboxing your combat so you can compete. That option sucks. The other GÇ£countersGÇ¥ don't work well as explained above.

+1 to OP

Makes no sense that you can boost from 100% safety. You're gang should be assembled in order to receive gang bonuses.

I'd be totally satisfied if it was completely axed, but a variation (and more dev work) to this could be that off-grid boosting is nerfed to something like 20% of full value, and stays full value when the booster is on-grid.

If the t3 ship is already aligned and using an afterburner the pilot would have to be afk to get caught. Meanwhile the gang that is uselessly trying to chase the booster ship is short at least one pilot that should be on grid during the fight.

The advantage will not be slight once t2 links are out. People who do not use these alts will not be able to compete.

They are not used solo.

You do not need to run a T3 gang link alt to be competitive, believe it or not

After 8 pages of posts it is blatantly clear that the only people who don't want this change are the ones that abuse this mechanic already.

No...it has to do with immunity from the risk vs reward scale that EvE is supposed to have.

Please don't sully the thread with ideas about crews. When I first started playing, capsuleers flew all of their ships solo. At some point, this changed, and it's not a change for the better. It belongs in a different thread.

Leadership boosts on grid only, please.

Gang links should only apply to the grid where they are active.

Off-grid gang links these days are pretty popular with "solo" players and small groups that operate in a single solar system. I believe that if a pilot and ship are affecting your on-grid combat, they should be on-grid with you so that there is a chance to eliminate the force multiplier. This is already the case with every other ship and module that affects combat unless you count assigned fighters -- and in that case you can destroy the fighters to eliminate their effect.

I have no problem with gang links in general as I've been the beneficiary probably more often than the victim, but someone ought to be at the helm and the ship ought to be vulnerable to counterattack.

Likely the main detractors will say that since a gang linked ship has to be uncloaked to provide bonuses it is vulnerable -- but this isn't true if the ship is at a POS.

+1 for making me go look that up. And yes I agree. There's no reason to apply special treatment to miners. If they want the bonuses then the orca or whatever bonus giving ship should be fulfilling it's role by being on field.

...... Roqual could be kept inside the shield and used for compression but if you want to benefit from the fleet boosts you need to take it out of the POS.

Just my 0.02 isk, and for the record I do run mining fleets and usually have my ORCA in belt with the other ships. So much more efficient and a little risk reduces the boredom.

I understand where people are coming from on this, however i disagree with making boosters only work on grid. Since the removal of "unprobeablilty", T3 boosters have become increasingly vulnerable to combat. They have very week tanks and arn't that hard to catch. I feel that most people are whining because they have been killed by someone with a booster, and thus try to use it as an excuse for being bad at PVP. If someone brings a boosted 100mn tengu into your system, undock a webbing loki; problem solved. In my opinion, having a booster in a pos gives the owning corp/alliance a "homefield" advantage to people trying to come into their system and blob them. If you fly smart, boosters are easily countered. People are just stupid and get easily butthurt about some guy killing their lolfit fleets.

By "better prepared" you mean people should have a "scanning alt" to find the "boosting alts."

Alts-online.

This is one of the most upvoted proposals on the csm's assembly hall but it didn't get much from their meeting:

"Seleene brought up the topic of off-grid boosting, and Fozzie responded that technical limitations were the only reason it continued to exist. Fozzie could not comment on when this issue would be resolved and stated that GÇ£one day Veritas will come up to me and say GÇÿhey I fixed off-grid boostingGÇÖGÇ¥, but he had no idea on a potential timeframe for this sort of miracle. Elise emphasized that while off-grid boosting was an issue, just the simple way that bonuses are applied in a fleet is flawed."

http://community.eveonline.com/council/transcripts/2012/CSM_CCP_Meetings_December_2012.pdf

Is Veritas actually assigned to fix this or is this something he may, or may not do, in his spare time?

Can anyone at csm at least ask this? If he is not specifically assigned to correct this will anyone be assigned to correct this? Some follow up would be appreciated.

If the ship is on grid you can see it and decide if you still want to take the fight. You can't warp 300km away from someone.

bottom line: Forcing ships to be on grid will solve the problem.