Your proposal is based on a false premise....

...sit in an unarmed ganglink ship...

Honestly, this whole proposal sounds a lot like "I can't fly a certain type of ship and I feel that because of that no one else should be able to have something better than what I can use because that's totally unfair" type of proposal.

Gang link ships can be made completely combat worthy. Command ships and Strategic cruisers are renowned for their ability to tank. Sure, they can't fit the most epic tank once you fit them properly (with gang links) but doesn't that make sense?



That is a completely separate problem.

Wut? You forgot to add logic to your post. I point out that the only fleet command ship able to stay on the field in fleet fights is the Damnation, you say that fleet command ships are supposed to be tanky, then admit that the rest of them aren't tanky enough, but that's not a problem when we're proposing forcing them to all be on grid.

Active tanking has been an irrelevance for fleet fights for years. It seems to me that when you're proposing a change to Fleet Command ships work in fleet fights, then a look at the ship bonuses might perhaps be a very unseperate problem indeed.

GǪ because a 1 v 10 fight wouldn't have simply squashed the lone combat ship, off-grid booster or not?

Wut?...

Sorry to be rude but most people have no idea how the gang links work.

1. Gang links dont work in warp so ship needs to be stationary.
2. Gang links dont work when cloaked.
3. If CS is on grid nobody is calling it primary due to huge tank capability. If you call a CS primary you are doing somethink wrong.
4. If you cant kill a stationary uncloaked ship you suck at game.

And btw that someone has a pos is no reason to nerf somethink becouse everyone and his grandmother has pos for staging caps, fleets etc...

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.

Given the force-multiplier, if the CS is in a gang of more than 10 or so fighters, you'd be doing something wrong NOT calling it primary after you've taken care of ECM and logistics.

To do this, then they would have to change the mechanic so you can have multiple people boosting fleet at the same time, even if only one of the boosting is actually taking affect. This is because command ships can and WILL among the first targets in an engagment, so there need to be redundant boosters or else boosting becomes near useless in large fleets.

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.

10v1 isn't nearly as one sided as you might think. When solo, GǪ with a loki booster alt.

GǪ

This thread really does look like a case of you just moaning about being unable to use the ship yourself. Off grid boosters are very much a field leveling tool. They allow you to take a small weakness in an enemy fleet composition and convert it into a huge gaping whole that a heavily outnumbered force can pull a victory from. The loki + nano ship is the simplest and most obvious example, but a well flown active tanked ship + appropriate tanking bonus booster can be just as effective if dps/tracking is the opposing fleet's weakness.

combat probes, use them you must

This suggestion is about having to make a choice between having your cake or eating your cake. You shouldn't be able to have both

When it comes to on-grid boosters, there is always the option of using grid-fu to stretch the grid in such a way that you can safely boost from hundreds of km away.

Pretty sure CCP classified deliberate grid manipulation as "undesirable" (ie. exploitive, you will be GM smacked). Messes up the database or something .. way old blurp so won't try to find it, so don't ask :)

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.