I agree with this in principle.

However, given the current fleet bonus' mechanics, I'm pretty sure its not possible to limit fleet booster effects to ongrid without completely revamping the fleet boosting system.

However, given the current fleet bonus' mechanics, I'm pretty sure its not possible to limit fleet booster effects to ongrid without completely revamping the fleet boosting system.

Your proposal is based on a false premise. Namely that off grid ganglinks are immune to attack. Back when it was possible to make a ship unprobable, it was broken as they had no risk beyond spies in fleet. Now however, they can be probed just like everything else. There is nothing stopping you from probing and killing them other than your own ineptitude. Some people do put them inside POS's and although that blocks attacking the booster ship, you can always go kill the POS instead. It probably costs more anyways tbh.

rewards of mining.

What rewards?

I agree as well with the idea of limiting the range of gang links. Especially in respect to mining. I've been in 0.0 before and I have seen plenty of players park their Rorqual/Orca alts in the safety of a POS while other mine (reaping the bonuses). Not much risk there compared to the rewards of mining.

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.

This means that the whole fleet has to stay together in the system. Eg: you cant have the heavy ships shooting a POS and the lights camping the in gate.

Also, the Fleet Command ships will need to be reworked to be able to have buffer tanks comporable to the Damnation; the Eos and the Claymore will need to lose their lolrep bonuses in favour of some kind of EHP boost. Shield tanking Fleet Commands may also need their slot layout revising, as the Command Processors replace tanking mids.

Being required to be on grid would make T3 gangboosters effectively useless.

by the way, just letting you know that your suggestion encourages blobs

but I do believe that fleet boosters should not be in NPC corps

The reason it encourages more blobbing is because practically no one is willing to sit in an unarmed ganglink ship in the middle of a fight, especially if they are heavily outnumbered. If you did put the link ship on grid in we'll say a 2 v 10 fight including the link ship, the very first thing that would happen is the other fleet would nuke the ganglink ship or drive it off grid, and then subsequently crush the lone combat ship.

The reason it encourages more blobbing is because practically no one is willing to sit in an unarmed ganglink ship in the middle of a fight, especially if they are heavily outnumbered. If you did put the link ship on grid in we'll say a 2 v 10 fight including the link ship, the very first thing that would happen is the other fleet would nuke the ganglink ship or drive it off grid, and then subsequently crush the lone combat ship.

Currently it works a bit different in the right hands. The boosting ship is reasonably safe because that 10 man blob didn't bother to bring a prober. All 10 of them are also obsessed with km whoring so no one brought a link ship of their own either. As a result, the lone combat ship on grid facing off against the 10 man gang is able to kite them or in some cases tank them (at least for a while) and put up a decent fight.

Like it or not, off grid boosting is currently about the only thing keeping "solo" and small gang pvp alive. Remove it, and anyone that's alone is just cannon fodder for the 30 man BC/BS gangs with full logi support and a cyno to titan bridge in 500 more if needed. And they won't hesitate to use it all against a single nano-cane if they can catch it. The only counter to that blob mentality is to stay out of hard tackle range so they can't all pile on you so easily. And it by no means makes you invincible either, all it takes is a single rapier on their side and they'll blob you to death regardless.

I believe boosting is working as intended and to change it as proposed would be a serious blow to the game as a whole. The absolute last thing this game needs is changing mechanics to favor blobbing even more heavily.