Ranger 1 wrote:Respect your opinion Polo, but I have to say this.
Your analogy of Cap ships being essentially a queen in a game of chess being nerfed to having the same movement capability as a king has a minor flaw.
If you used a direct comparison between EVE and Chess, currently the queen is able to jump several tables over and take a key piece in another game.
With the proposed changes, your queen will still be able to move in any direction from one end of the board to the other, she is just limited to only doing so on her particular board.
You got me thinking....Thinking about SCALE.
As any chess player knows, the 8x8 chessboard has 64 squares, and queens (rooks and bishops also, but in reduced dimensions) have a maximum movement range of 8 squares. Since 8 is the square root of 64, I got to wondering what this would scale to in Eve. After a bit of research I have determined that as best I can tell there are 3196 nullsec systems minus Jovian space, and 817 lowsec systems for a total of 4013. The sqare root of this number is app 63.3 which I will choose to round up to 64 since it's the number that started it all.
So lets look at 2 possible '64' range limitations.
1) 64 systems.. Hmm... No. this will often span the entire map, and no one would go for it.
2) 64ly. This is much more in line with the limits everyone is thinking about so let's use it and start thinking about a workable game mechanic.
A hard cap per time period has already been considered and rejected in favor of one with a cooldown mechanic so it will be discarded.
So what about a tether radius of 64ly?. This would correspond to the real life operational ranges which limit most ships and aircraft today.
Of course every operational range requires a base, and defining this base requires a game mechanic, and after a some of thought this is what came to mind:
The JUMP DRIVE CLONE and the JUMP PILOT IMPLANT.
1) In order to use a jump drive, a pilot must have this special implant installed.
2) This implant may be installed in only ONE clone per pilot.
3) He may not jump further than 64ly from where the jump drive clone is installed.
4) The jump drive clone must be in a STATION and cannot be in a clone bay.
5) The jump drive clone can only be moved ONE TIME PER WEEK.
Much simpler and more elegant (and less server lag maybe) than what is on the table now, Ranger 1, this might answer your most excellent 'scale' argument.
Actual scale and numbers can be tweaked to taste.
Thoughts anyone? C'mon this is what a forum is for. Start shooting at this idea and let's see if it will hold water.. :)