Shereza
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
89
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Posted - 2013.05.25 14:29:00 -
[1] - Quote
CCP Fozzie wrote:So I do honestly welcome people's cool ideas about what form gang links could take. Don't limit yourself to small changes to the status quo, because it turns out with this system small changes aren't necessarily any faster to implement than off the wall changes.
Well, how about these ideas? 
#1 Warfare Link Disruptor. Cruiser-sized high-slot module that disrupts all gang links within 7.5km of the cruiser it's mounted on. Not so much an idea of what can be done with links as an idea of what to do to them.
#2 Distributed Tracking Network. This would probably require too many calculations to be do'able, but it's a nice idea. For every one of your ships within lock range of a given target the effect of that target's velocity is reduced by a percentage. Stacking penalties, of course, apply.
#3 Missile Defense Grid. Defender missiles fired by any ship affected by this gang link will auto-target incoming missiles on any other ship affected by this link on a nearest to firing ship basis. This would allow defender missiles to be used as part of a fleet, or at least squad, defense strategy. Of course for this to truly shine defender missiles and how they affect gameplay as well as how useful missiles are in PvP would likely have to be... adjusted. 
#4 Multiple Volley Processor. Synchronizes the firing rates of all affected ships to match the rate of fire on the slowest guns in the squad/wing/fleet. In effect it would help coordinate alpha'ing down targets. The downsides are that if you start firing mid-cycle you don't actually shoot until the next cycle and that it's based on the slowest firing speed in the affected group. This can lead to predictable patterns in firing as well as partially negating the effect of skill training if you mix people in your "alpha squad" who are highly skilled with others who are barely skilled.
#5 Manifold Warp Core Stabilizer. When activated each ship in the fleet receives a +.5 bonus to warp core strength and a 20% penalty to scan resolution and max target range. Each ship in the fleet adds an additional .25 to that value under the pretext of distributed networking to allow your fleet members' ships to devote spare CPU cycles to aid a scrambled ship's CPU. A 5-man squad, for example, would see a total warp core strength bonus of 1.5 while a full 10-man squad would have a bonus of 2.75. While this could be a hefty advantage in and of itself just consider how quickly that advantage drops as soon as you start popping ships or they start running. As soon as they're off the grid their contribution to the gang bonus goes away, and that's not including the link disruptor I suggested in #1.
#6 Signature Obfuscation Broadcaster. A simple module that offsets your apparent location on a grid by up to 75km with the minimum distance being 25km base and modified by skills for the purposes of introducing uncertainty when an enemy warps to one of the affected ships. One of the issues with long-range combat is that beyond a given distance (150km or so?) straight out warping to a target is possible, and probing/warping is always an option as well. With this module active a degree of uncertainty will be introduced resulting in incoming ships landing as little as 25km off from the target (50km perhaps with maximum skills) on up to 75km away.
#7 Vulnerability Assessment and Targeting Subroutines. The idea of damage "leakage" has been around for quite some time. In fact without Tactical Shield Manipulation you start seeing damage leak through to your armor as soon as you hit 25% shield HP. What this module could do is allow a base amount of 2% of affected ships' damage to bypass shields and hit the armor directly, and once the shields are down do the same to armor/hull. The result is that while, for example, some shield-tanked ships might be able to rep all incoming shield damage eventually their armor, and hull, will get eaten away to the point that they have to retreat or die. Armor-tankers or heavily plated ships in RR spiderweb fleets will face similar issues without hull reppers as well.
#8 Thermal Influx Processing Subroutines. This idea's a relatively "normal" one compared to some of the other ones. Reduce the amount of head damage affected ships take.
#9 Multiple Drone Link Augment Coordinator. Allow affected ships to "piggyback" their drone commands through fleet members' DLAs providing they have unused drone slots. The up side is that with enough ships fitted with DLAs in between you and a target you could, provided you have the range to lock the targets, use the full (post-Odyssey) optimal range on your dominix's T2 wardens to peg stuff at 180km without having to fit nothing but DLAs in your high slots. The down side is that if any of the ships providing the "links" between you and the target move out of mutual support range or are blown up the chain is broken and you can no longer "share" bandwidth past the point where the link is broken. While this might be most seen on drone ships which have an obvious use for DLAs it could promote the usage of DLAs on ships that otherwise have no drone capacity just to extend the "bubble" for extended drone control.
#10 Warfare Link Reflector. I figure that only one anti-link module isn't enough so here's a second idea. The module sets up an electronic "hall of mirrors" effect of sorts that "backscatters" the target ships' link bonuses back to your squad with a 50% penalty.
Just a few ideas off the top of my head. |