Dukath
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Posted - 2006.02.08 06:54:00 -
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There are 4 main reasons why the 'old style' fleet combat died.
1) empty space safespots
2) instajumps
3) lag
4) diversity of fleets (aka support ships)
1,2,4 and kinda related in the cause. Fleet combat used to take longer because people under heavy fire would warp out, turn around and come back into the battle to continue to fight. so even if one side was slightly ahead the battle would still turn or would at least take a lot longer. However now we have this:
- support fleet increase the risk of being scrambled if you don't have good support yourself, thus people either stab up, or go for further range and warp out sooner than before. In the old fleets it was short range battleships who did the scrambling, not uber fast frigates.
- empty space safespots: people now warp to a safespot while they used to warp to a random planet or moon when in trouble. The fun thing was that it happened regularly that 2 hostiles warped out to the same planet/moon/gate and small fights could happen there too. Now when a guy is out he is safe. Nothing can happen anymore
- lag: lets hope this one will be fixed a least with the new clusters. When you used to warp out it was still a good idea to warp back in. Sure you had a short loading lag but it was doable. Right now if you come back you can expect up to minutes of not seeing anything. By the time you see anything the battle is over. (firepower has increased a lot while tanking hasn't increased in the same amount) So if you warp back it is certain death. Since ships can't warp back anymore even a slight difference between the fleet quickly grows huge and one side gets overhand. Battle over.
Finally instajumps: this is most important in the smaller engagements. Right now a lot of fights don't happen because one side simply instajumps out fully stabbed. Using bubbles in all those circumstances is not viable and thus over half of possible battle situations are lost due to them.
Finally, a special mention goes to having grown up. The tactics used in those old fleetbattle were not refined, noadays we have covert ops, safespots, instajumps, a lot of people don't take the risk that were taken earlier in the game. This is mostly because the playingfield has been levelled a lot. Before when one corp had a great tactic or setup it took months for it to spread all around, now it can be done in a week or less. Innovative setups or tactics like TWM's dual mwd maller or a battleball are impossible now. Stuff simply has changed.
Still, to get some of the old feeling back the instas and empty space bookmarks should go (make bookmarks attached to an anchorable object only so it ca still be used by placing cans and normal used of bookmarks still have their use; mining, remembering where a certain agent is in space, location of your POS, etc), The lag needs to be fixed. (please make sure that the load balancing thingy never puts a high load empire system together with 0.0 systems, since they can quickly go from 0 to 200 people while the empire system always has a high load) Fix the dual bonus modules and make falloff dualsided (no more 250km instalocking snipers, either you go short range with fast lock or long range with very slow lock, and with dual falloff distance to your target will be more important, so even battleship movement will count while focused fire will be less effective since not everyong will be at optimal range)
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