It seems that there is no Command Ship buff coming in Odyssey.

When we're finished with tech 1 hulls we are going to start looking into more advanced roles, starting with Command ships

As a side note, as we announced a while ago, we are not pleased by having Warfare Links work outside the battlefield zone, and will be investigating options to move them on grid. Command and Tech3 ships providing that much of an advantage should commit to an engagement instead of being safely parked inside a POS bubble

Just making them be required to be present on the battlefield is stupid. They're glass ships that can be popped in 2-3 Tornado volleys.

They can fix links by making them unable to work inside a POS shield, while at the same time giving them the siege mechanic that immobilizes the boosting ships during use. Then you either have to choose between deploying them to the fight itself, or risk getting probed out and killed without support.

A damnation can get over 300k buffer...

A damnation can get over 300k buffer...

With how many links?

The three it's intended to have.
Hell, even the wtfawfulineveryway Eos gets 140k EHP.

With how many links?

edit: Let me put it to you this way: command ships will probably get rebalanced to some degree so we can't guess around in regard to their future fittings, but I really don't see T3s getting the same treatment at all. As someone who's pretty used to fielding a glass T3 booster since when I do fight, it's usually five to one to ten to one odds, I can tell you for a fact that the ships are so thin, you could gank them with a few thrashers. And while this isn't a problem in empire, neither is off-grid boosting per se.

The only people such a change would affect would be null and wormhole dwellers, and the only solution will be to have backup boosting ships, aka more alt money for CCP.

That's the part I don't wholly agree with.

That's the part I don't wholly agree with.

I think the person disagrees with the ship being intended to use 3 links at once, hence limiting its ability to provide dps to the fight. Or something along those lines.

edit:
fielding more links wont help since links dont stack over top of other ones. Only the highest bonus per link type is provided. You should learn mechanics better

Nah, dps is irrelevant.

What I'm trying to say is that my paper T3 booster in high-sec will never die even if it needs to be on grid. Meanwhile, players everywhere else would not be given the same advantage.

Requiring on-grid boosting would create a new balancing issue that would shift the risk/reward formula ever more in favor of high-sec.

What are they going to do, make boosting non-corp-members give you a suspect flag?

Oh, ****.

Or they can use a command ship to fill the role of command ship.

GǪwhich, by the way, rather neatly answers the original question: command ships will get their revamp together with T3 so make the CS better at being command ships than the T3s are.

Which is nice and has my support, but I'd still like to know why they're giving null players a crutch like this.

And T3 ships will still likely be viable boosters due to the 50% probe strength sub.

Personally doubt we will see or hear anything with regards to CC revamp until they find a solution to the off-/on-grid link question as splitting those two development wise would mean more work overall .. all pressure is on the coders to solve the grid vs. system riddle and it will increase as stuff is crossed off the tiericide list.

How quick does a single battleship die in a big fleet battle?

They can fix links by making them unable to work inside a POS shield, while at the same time giving them the siege mechanic that immobilizes the boosting ships during use. Then you either have to choose between deploying them to the fight itself, or risk getting probed out and killed without support.

Just making them be required to be present on the battlefield is stupid. They're glass ships that can be popped in 2-3 Tornado volleys.

Depends on the quality of your logi.

They also said one day they'll fix POSes and overhaul drones.

They can give all the boosting ships an extra million hitpoints and my argument will remain the same. I'm not arguing against the concept of the defense/payload tradeoff, but the fact that the change constitutes a simple cash grab by CCP since the only way to compensate for it will be to field more of the things.

Why..not use standard battlecruisers for boosting...? Or is command ship boosts that mandatory to completely disregard the latter?

I sort of disagree with this. Off-Grid boosters are much too powerful. As part of a group of people that has small gang roams in Syndicate often, the off-grid boosts really hurt us in that we have no way of taking down their booster in order to come onto an equal playing field.

Also, I would appreciate on-grid boosts more in that we would have a viable command ship - it would not only provide boosts, but would be quite fun to fly for people like me, who don't have an alt or can not afford one.

The lack of bonuses just doesn't make them worth it. Especially considering what's often at stake.


This is a mind trick. Boosters aren't just available to groups who are outnumbered as a means of gaining an advantage; they're available to everyone. As such, if we have off-grid boosters, then both sides (your small gang and the larger enemy) both keep them safely off-grid, and both get the benefit of their bonuses. Your small gang might not get extra benefits, but at least gets an equalizing factor that prevents the larger enemy from having an extra advantage.

If boosters are to be kept on-grid, then you will actually be at a disadvantage because the larger enemy is more able to kill your booster with superior firepower, while keeping their own alive with more logistics. If anything, making boosters required to be on-grid will almost eliminate the utility that small gangs get from them.

This makes sense! I did not think of this before.

A damnation can get over 300k buffer...

They also said one day they'll fix POSes and overhaul drones.

That's the part I don't wholly agree with.

Six-link setups are dumb, hth

Stacking ECCM makes them pretty difficult to find, even when there's no POS in the equation.

Making the command modules work on-grid only shouldn't be hard to implement at all. All they have to do is make the command modules have a radius or range of 100km or so. If you are outside of that range, you no longer receive the benefits.

She uses neutral boosters against wardecced carebears in hisec, it's pretty safe to disregard her opinions in this matter.

If you want to make a miner spit the dummy, tell him that Rorq bonuses will have to be ongrid after Odyssey.

Pure comedy.

If incoming damage exceeds your hitpoints in a small time frame, logistics quality doesn't really matter much. I don't do 0.0 stuff anymore, but I'm gonna go ahead and assume that forty or more ships shooting you with 1400mm is going to be an instant death no matter what kind of tank you have on a booster, generally speaking.

Making the command modules work on-grid only shouldn't be hard to implement at all. All they have to do is make the command modules have a radius or range of 100km or so. If you are outside of that range, you no longer receive the benefits.

What are they going to do, make boosting non-corp-members give you a suspect flag?

Oh, ****.

Posting to confirm that all successful military forces put their top leaders in shiny vehicles and send them to the front lines during actual combat operations.

Correct.

And good thing, too, since it would probably involve a minigame.

General Dannat used to fly to the front line in Afghanistan bumming tabs off squaddies in a chinook to see the lads off.

Prince Harry flew in an Apachi in his second tour of afghan.

Prince Andrew flew a Linx in the Falklands war.

Admiral Sir John Jellicoe was on HMS Iron Duke at the battle of Jutland.

Lord Nelson was in the heart of the battle of Trafalgar on HMS Victory.

General Dannat used to fly to the front line in Afghanistan bumming tabs off squaddies in a chinook to see the lads off.

Prince Harry flew in an Apachi in his second tour of afghan.

Prince Andrew flew a Linx in the Falklands war.

Admiral Sir John Jellicoe was on HMS Iron Duke at the battle of Jutland.

Lord Nelson was in the heart of the battle of Trafalgar on HMS Victory.

Correct.

And good thing, too, since it would probably involve a minigame.

I remember CCP Soundwave mentioning something about Candy Crush recently.

Perhaps the fleet window would turn into a grid and the booster in the CS has to drag 3 Minmatar ships into a line to give them boosts? Then drag 4 Caldari ships in a line to get a super shield boost. And then match that with another super boost to doomsday everything in a 10k radius!

(Maybe a little too far...)

So you don't have any examples of actual commanding happening in the heart of a battle more recent than...1916?

General Dannat used to fly to the front line in Afghanistan bumming tabs off squaddies in a chinook to see the lads off.

Prince Harry flew in an Apachi in his second tour of afghan.

Prince Andrew flew a Linx in the Falklands war.

Admiral Sir John Jellicoe was on HMS Iron Duke at the battle of Jutland.

Lord Nelson was in the heart of the battle of Trafalgar on HMS Victory.

I see no reason why they shouldn't reverse that change (that's not true, I actually see a lot of reasons).

Correct.

And good thing, too, since it would probably involve a minigame.

Yes, and Alexander the Great bravely charged an elephant despite being so Irish that he literally sweats Guinness.

Look, exceptions to a rule don't invalidate the rule. And the rule here is that you don't put your top military leaders and command and control systems within earshot of the enemy firing line.

Also, since when are British royalty brats the top leaders of anything?

What are they going to do, make boosting non-corp-members give you a suspect flag?

Oh, ****.

So you don't have any examples of actual commanding happening in the heart of a battle more recent than...1916?

Posting to confirm that all successful military forces put their top leaders in shiny vehicles and send them to the front lines during actual combat operations.

Also Every single fleet the UK has every sent to war has had its admirals in the fleet on the front line. Every single army has had it command go with it. You cant command these forces in a battle from London.

The queen is head of the military...

Also Every single fleet the UK has every sent to war has had its admirals in the fleet on the front line. Every single army has had it command go with it. You cant command these forces in a battle from London.

Posting to confirm that all successful military forces consist of people living inside goo-filled eggs that take flash copies of their minds when they die and activate them in a new clone so they can get back into their spaceships and fly across the galaxy to blow stuff up.

Also we have dozens of admirals and bugger all ships these days - in fact I think the last time we had less admirals than ships was the 1960s

Gods, well OT again

Point one is made null and void by graphics, or did they pull the link effect again?

The fun starts when you run into 20+ CC's, using two triple link ships and the rest being all death and hellfire running a single link to mess up visual inspection/scouting ..

Link graphical effects "might" give you away in a small gang situation, but who has time to look at each ship of a given type in a large fleet... Usually you're looking at brackets and that's it.

...A living commander can keep commanding, instead of having to fly twenty jumps back in a new ship. Our current system is more analogous to a Roman emperor running to the front of the line, stealing a centurion's fancy hat while yelling "psych!", and then charging into battle with the cohort. That just doesn't really happen....

A larger force shooting a smaller force has plenty of time to look at such things. Oh no, wait, they'll just shoot whatever booster ships are on grid first and then the latter will become ever smaller.

Yeah, big fleets is exactly the thing we need more of in this game.

Hello,
It was a couple months ago when they announced that they would fix off-grid boosting