Lord Maldoror
Fairlight Corp
Rooks and Kings
517
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Posted - 2014.02.23 18:17:00 -
[1] - Quote
I've never minded that Logistics ships don't show up on killmails. I understand that a logistics pilot wants to be remembered as an important (perhaps, indeed, the most important) part of the fight. However, the mechanic as it is creates a number of important consequences:
1) It makes it harder for massive groups to track logistic participation, since they can't simply use killmail stats. This, in turn, leads to sub-optimal fleet compositions which allows smaller groups, on occasion, to defeat them against the odds.
2) The need for good statistics on participation in large alliances leads to custom solutions like the creation of 'PAP' stats, which assign points to different vessels and track participation in enormous detail using OOG tools. Essentially, this thus generates 'jobs' in the Eve metagame.
3) The more complex the meta, the more room for creativity and manipulation.
4) The absence of logistics on killmails rewards those alliances and groups who can motivate players to fulfill key roles on the basis of narrative causes. Narrative arcs are better motivations than Battleclinic scores in terms of generating Eve's great stories.
5) As Grath mentioned, means do exist to get your logistics ship onto a killmail, if you so choose.
I'm not massively against logistics being on killmails but equally I see no desperate need to change the status quo on this. RnK is a group that has traditionally relied extremely on its logistic ship support. If we would have been unable to motivate our logi pilots to make that their calling in life beyond a KB score, then in the end we would have rightly failed.
I doubt Agent Xer0 knows what his Battleclinic score is, or has ever even looked at it. It is simply not a measure of his reputation and worth: he counts only in fleets routed versus fleets lost. In a way, the mechanic, as it is, favours those who can play for the bigger picture. The same is true for scouts, cynos, etc. - and the groups that can find narrative means to reward those pursuits are rightly rewarded in turn by results.
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