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I suggest the tether-jump fuel cost to be set so that a max-skilled character will empty their entire fuel bay to tether jump their max capacity, to their maximum range. So an all level 5 super pilot can jump 50 people to the max range, but it will empty them entirely. In this way, supers wishing to tether-jump long ranges must carry fuel transports with them.

I feel that this change would make rapid deployment and reinforcement more dangerous and hence more exciting for all involved.

i like te idea but i would keep it as a titan only option just like the jump portal now

and as for fuel i would make it depended on the mass of the ships going with the titan

so that a full fleet of heavy plated BS would leave just enough fuel for the titan to jump out alone

I like this idea except for this part. The logistical aspect of this proposal adds an enormous amount of extra work to a relative difficult game mechanic. Leaving a 25bil isk ship vulnerable as it lands on grid is a bad idea.

And if you were to implement the idea of tethering, this should continue to be a Titan only capability. It would mean putting titans on the field when your bridge a fleet

his change would just make rapid deployments slower and essentially make it harder and more of a logistical pain for players to create content.

Really like this idea. Needs some working on, but really fixes hot-dropping etc.

Carriers limited to 1 gang seems steep though. Make it fleet for any tethering and tie in a fuel cost based on mass or ship size, meaning a carrier cold tether 30 cruisers or 15 BCs but a Mship would be needed for a BS fleet.

This change would just make rapid deployments slower and essentially make it harder and more of a logistical pain for players to create content.

I think the tethering should be done by the player being jumped and has to be renewed after every jump. Other way around it would dumb down to: wait, lock target, F1.

How about letting the tether-cyno only be able to act as a target for jut one tetherjump? Surely with a little twist. :)
A carrier, a dread or a JF can act as a tether target for a squad. These can be tethered to a super-carrier or a titan, which can act as a tether target fro a wing. And then only a titan can act as a tethering target on a fleet level with the additional benefit that it lowers the fuel costs for jumping or increases the jump range.

On the other hand I'm not sure how this mechanic should work for Black Ops.

Fly safe!

While the idea is already stated rough around the edges...I see merit in it. Why not use bridging effects while built into the fleet system? Seems elegant to me, but people would have to retrain themselves during large fleet ops obviously.

The 'more work' part is just getting everyone in the fleet in the correct position. That could be a hassle. How about we set up macros or presets for pilots that join a fleet, they can request a certain Wing - Squad slot? This would be under fleet preferences. if the slot isn't available it tries to at least put you in the wing somewhere.

Now to the issue of "putting a 25b ship on the field with no support"...I think that is a bit silly. Your support would be bridging with you. Capitals would not HAVE to be allowed to tether bridge each other, they can use the same cyno to jump themselves (range issues would have to be tweaked).

Overall, I think the idea has merit and it would be a shame if more people did not put the anvil and hammer to this and work out the details.

tethering a full fleet/wing/squad will not empty the fuel bay just add a delay timer for jumping/tethering.
say 60-120 sec for a (supa)cap to jump out.
5-10 min for one to tether jump again (reducable with a skill).

Still trying to find any downsides to this that can't be fixed. The idea is very sound.

I agree, very nice proposal.

I would suggest that Black Ops have a lower limit of tethered ships, say 4 or 5 tops.

The reason being is that:

1: Black Ops are less powerful that cap ships and should not be able to take as many with them.

2: More importantly it places a larger emphasis on actually NEEDING the combat capabilities of the Black OPS BS in the majority of encounters... indeed you will probably want to send several if the target system is active.

This would bring Black Ops battleships into much more common active use in combat, instead of simply used as a taxi service.

Hi Ranger, I agree with your logic, anything that gets black ops on the field more is great. Can you think of a way to fit that into the "squad range" vs. "wing range" vs. "fleet range" mechanic?

I guess one alternative is to make it a pure numbers check. The only thing with that is potentially you get this cluster **** situation where 249 peeps are all trying to tether to the say the same carrier or super-carrier and having to re-try when they get rejected. It's not that big a deal, especially if the tether range is 10 or even 15km from the ship. It's likely that you'd just clump the tether-jumpers up and have the fleet orbit the jumpers at say 5km, then you can reach any tether-jumper pretty quickly.

Once again, that's what we're endeavoring to do. We want to force supers be a physical part of a deployment. We also want reinforcement to be difficult. We don't want to it to be easy to do the logistics required to shift vast quantities of people across light years. Spatial location of fleets should be important as opposed to the compressed nature of space that results from easy-access bridging.

So what you're really looking for are ways to make your space safer.

By making invasion even more annoying and pain staking than it currently is your space is safe because people just wont bother.

Final word
I can't claim this idea as mine. That honour goes to redditor Acidictadpole who posted the first reference to it in the comments at TheMittani.com

Also, this idea doesn't do anything to address the sheer power of super-capitals. It is still possible for dominant coalitions to effect risk-free deployments with an overwhelming show of force on jump in. The only difference is, now that alliance or coalition is required to show force for that 'risk-free' deployment.

Except that if this were done (hopefully in conjunction with a similar revamp of jump bridge mechanics) it would make defense more difficult as well.

Currently it is a trivial matter to cyno in a large defense fleet without the need of even risking your capital assets.

Mass as a single limiting factor would put shield ships in favor over armor ships. Using a factor like singature/mass could level it.

So yeah, if you don't also nerf jump bridges into the ground then iis massively overpowered for the defender, they can reinforce easily with 0 risk. GG, you've just made null even more stagnant.

And how do you do a similar jump bridge revamp? make the tower also jump to dest? it's such a terrible idea to a non-problem.