EVE Search - At long last, Bloggers #20-something, Tuxford on Blobbing

Check My IP Information

All Channels

EVE General Discussion

At long last, Bloggers #20-something, Tuxford on Blobbing

» Click here to find additional results for this topic using Google

Monitor this thread via RSS [?]

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 .. 12 :: [one page]

Author	Thread Statistics \| Show CCP posts - 2 post(s)

kieron	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:10:00 - [1] It's late, but it's still Friday! So, here it is, the promised Tuxford blog. It's not about ship nerfs, so all of you that were betting on whether the tier 2 Gallente BC was getting more or less drone slots lost it all. Why? It's about bloBBing (not bloGGing) & focus firing and some of the things he is considering to make fleet combat more interesting. None of this is set in stone yet, so feel free to discuss to your heart's content. Just don't call Tux 'primary'. Yet! kieron Community Manager, EVE Online

Amthrianius Destructive Influence Band of Brothers	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:12:00 - [2] :/ ---------------
Tsavong Lah Caldari Solar Storm Axiom Empire	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:18:00 - [3] heh, at least he's tackling something that needs to be looked at... I got a jar of dirt!
BlackHawk177 Forsaken Empire	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:18:00 - [4] hmmm... not really sure what to say to that one.
Tao Han Caldari Crucial Electronics	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:19:00 - [5] Originally by: Kunming Reading.. looks like a nerf on long range... finally! pulls out blaster Or one hell of a boost to Smartbombs Sig removed, lacks Eve-related content - Cortes Leave my sigs alone *sob - Tao Han
Admiral IceBlock Caldari Northern Intelligence SMASH Alliance	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:19:00 - [6] Smile fellow EVE Citizen, SMILE!
Kunming Amarr adeptus gattacus Lotka Volterra	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:19:00 - [7] Reading.. looks like a nerf on long range... finally! pulls out blaster
Nyphur Pillowsoft Interstellar Starbase Syndicate	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:20:00 - [8] So much for letting people play the way they like. Now blobbing needs "fixed"? Eve-Tanking.com - For tanking spreadsheet and resources.
Hakera	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:23:00 - [9] hmm, decreasing range has been mentioned many times or rather splitting and reducing sensor boosters, but a big portion is the tech 2 ammo's. I really dont see how any of this could increase survivability of ships as range affords survivability and you will never break from the focus fire method really. personally and this is just me, you have to find ways for blobs to be broken up, currently, you can sit on a gate and eventually a fleet will either jump through or wait for you to. I believe that we should look at jump drives and dynamic entry/exit possibilities for all ships as a more manoverable fleet could easily out-run a slow moving blob. unfortunatly everything you mention about changing is really at eve's foundation and like many of th eproblems i see stem from an inability to change whats always been done such as mining into cans or multi-racial corps for eg. in all honesty i found blob fights the most boring things ive ever witnesed and took part in. I much prefer smaller engagements but again, the crux of the problem is the current need for gigantic fleets reqiuired for pos defence and also many rely on sheer numbers for victory.
Runt Mcgoire Caldari	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:24:00 - [10] Originally by: Tao Han Originally by: Kunming Reading.. looks like a nerf on long range... finally! pulls out blaster Or one hell of a boost to Smartbombs Grenades type weapons? Return of mines? /me dust off the mine collection he's been hording all this time...

Alexi Borizkova Caldari New Age Solutions	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:24:00 - [11] Edited by: Alexi Borizkova on 01/09/2006 21:24:49 I just got flashbacks of starfleet academy's six sided shields... This might be a fun way to take eve. Maybe something along the lines of the more attacks you recieve from a single vector the higher your damage resistance is, maybe.... hard to say. In Corporate Caldari, taxes pay YOU.
Alessar Kaldorei Caldari	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:24:00 - [12] Hehe, give torpedoes AoE damage to go with the disproportionately huge shockwave they generate, and you'll see blobs dispersing.
Vantick Iscod CHOSEN FATE	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:25:00 - [13] I always liked the 'Make ECM super effective at longer range, and no effect at close range" idea for reducing range...
Linerra Tedora Amarr Criss Cross	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:27:00 - [14] ahh been waiting for this one... but i cannot be bothered to read it now.. i'm busy downloading pictures of my newest favourite model... EvE-CCG Spoiler Database
Vincent Gaines	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:28:00 - [15] an initial simple solution? remove player names as ship identifiers.
Tipz NexAstrum Celestial Horizon Corp. Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:28:00 - [16] Good to know you're working... dunno what else to say about that. -------------------------------------------
Admiral IceBlock Caldari Northern Intelligence SMASH Alliance	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:29:00 - [17] On a more constructive note; Why not try to make combat a bit more "mobile"? Meaning you should move and shoot instead of just parking your ship and select fire? I do not think a simple penalty to the blob sphere is a good idea, rather make an initative to fight different. One of the ways to do this maybe is to reduce range on all kind of ammo, only have 3 kinds of ranges on ammo - -50%,-25% and 0%. This will make the overlapping very small, which again means that depending on weapons you will have to move and rearrange your position to shoot at others. Of course people might just sitt in a blob with the same kind of weapons and shoot the enemy so we're back at step 1. Maybe if you added manouverability to be more mandatory when in battle? Really, I am clueless but I have good faith in you Tuxford, very good faith in you!
Laocoon Veto.	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:30:00 - [18] Originally by: kieron drone slots drone slots?! gimme some! - Lao Veto. Corp
Alexi Borizkova Caldari New Age Solutions	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:31:00 - [19] How about AOE torpedoes that use their fuel as explosive material. The longer they have to fly the less damage they do. This would require you to get as close as possible for maximum effectiveness, and be a built in limiting factor for their usefulness. In Corporate Caldari, taxes pay YOU.
Linerra Tedora Amarr Criss Cross	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:38:00 - [20] ahh read it.. and downloaded alot at the same time... so he's looking for a way to discourage blobbing... never seen one myself, but if it's going on at 10-20 km, couldn't one make a special ship that could suicide, delivering massive damage in an area around it... then you have your fleet with a few of these in front.. if the first scout finds a blob, the rest jumps in, spaced with a few seconds between... and nuke the blob to heck.. but if the guys on the other side is spread out, this ship won't accomplish anything but damaging a few ships a bit.. EvE-CCG Spoiler Database

Derran Minmatar Khumatari Holdings Ushra'Khan	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:39:00 - [21] Nice to see you are working on it. Like most others, I'm not sure what to say either. It's a tough problem to tackle. AoE weapons would be a good way to split up the blob but I have mixed feelings about it. I suppose you could give everyone a free titan. j/k. I suppose the problems come with battleships being so common so opponents tend to blob up to inflict the massive damage they can all at once then cycle to the next and so on. If battleships only had jump drives like capital ships and required fuel so they weren't so common... oh well. Too late now I guess.
Tao Han Caldari Crucial Electronics	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:39:00 - [22] Originally by: Alexi Borizkova How about AOE torpedoes that use their fuel as explosive material. The longer they have to fly the less damage they do. This would require you to get as close as possible for maximum effectiveness, and be a built in limiting factor for their usefulness. Bring back the torpedo splash, easy and simple. Let the fools use them for empire war and may concorde go on a rampage. Sig removed, lacks Eve-related content - Cortes Leave my sigs alone *sob - Tao Han
War Ping Caldari Insubstantial Industries	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:39:00 - [23] Edited by: War Ping on 01/09/2006 21:40:15 Originally by: Vincent Gaines an initial simple solution? remove player names as ship identifiers. winner ;/ oh and bring back the bumping from gang warps that was great fun to get bumped 200k doing like 8k a sec <3
Ghoest	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:40:00 - [24] The blob/focus fire problem exists for 3 main reasons. Tux mentioned 2. 1 As Tux mentioned ships have too long of ranges in groups. This should be fixed. But on the other hand you dont want to turn solo and small group long range ships into gimps. 2 As Tux alluded to there is no penalty for blobbing. There should be penalties or increased dangers for ships too close to too many friendlies. 3 Tux didnt mention this. In a real fleet your damage would be reduced by blobing. A good part of the time your gunners(or really a computer) would have to halt firing so as to not hit friendly ships in your way. Since EVE physics dont work like this there should be a damage penalty. Reason 3 is actually the main reasons formations are used by both ships and air planes historically. Wherever you went - here you are.
Marcus Starr Chosen Path Lotka Volterra	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:40:00 - [25] How about collision damage along with formations to reduce blobbing? A positive sideffect is that Amarr can finally have a 3rd damage type. Kinetic! Load an Apoc or Arma up with Armor plates and an MWD and watch them go after Dreads and Carriers at ramming speed!
fairimear Gallente S.A.S	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:43:00 - [26] this 1 makes me cry. on 1 hand blob fleet fights primary calling = the yawn even in 5v5 (if it happens to be u gettng called primary). on the other hand i can't count how many times focus firing has meant that we as a smaller fleet have beaten fleets 2-3 times our number because they are less organised as to com's and we are setup to work as 1 where they all have differing ranges. Makeing your npc hunters SS.
Mrmuttley Imperial Shipment	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:44:00 - [27] One problem with AoE weapons is fleet battles in Jita and the like Today I undocked in Jita in a freighter right into the midle of a 20 man fight (thanks guys I just had to sit there ping-ponging between ships like a fool while you fight around me. ) However had any of them been using AoE weapons I would likely have got caught and some-one would have been Insta-Ganked by Concord. Remeber the days of blast radius on missiles hitting some miners can in a belt in empire when your killing NPCs. WHile thats funny in low sec its not so great when some tard flys a shuttle into npcs your shooting at just to watch you get Insta-ganked by Concord. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I am Dyslexic of Borg. Your ass will be laminated. Originally by: Rod Blaine Eve is not supposed to be fair
Acwron Minmatar Cataclysm Enterprises	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:53:00 - [28] Edited by: Acwron on 01/09/2006 21:59:46 We had really great closerange battles before closerange ammo and the damage mod nerf was implemented. As a BS pilot you had a lot to keep track of. Obviously primary weapons, secondary weapons (for support), drones, your ECM (making the fights last longer even without increased HP (I think Oveur mentioned this was primary reason to boost ECM in the first place...)) and of course your transversal. (check some of the older movies). Today it's 200km align, F1..F6, warpout or not (lag). No need for secondary weapons, no ECM because it's only useful to 60km and you need the mids for tracking comps etc. Not speaking of drones... Anyway if you want to discourage hugging fleets how about splash damage once your ships explodes. The ammount of damage depends on the total base HP of the ship (BS delivering more booom) and the range from the exploding ship. (e.g. 3km 100%, 6km 75%, 9km 50%, 12km 25%, 15km 0%) Could lead to quite a cascade. But thinking about it we might see kamikaze ships... hmm I like that. :)
Verus Potestas Caldari Fiat Mort	Posted - 2006.09.01 21:58:00 - [29] It's nice to know that you guys are working on the issues no-one really cares about Signature removed - please email to find out why (include a link to the original image) - Jacques([email protected])
DirtyHarry Caldari Reikoku Band of Brothers	Posted - 2006.09.01 22:01:00 - [30] Strategy in EVE? who would have thought Step in the right direction imo... Havocide - DirtyHarry

The Speaker The Clue Factory	Posted - 2006.09.01 22:01:00 - [31] Originally by: War Ping Edited by: War Ping on 01/09/2006 21:40:15 Originally by: Vincent Gaines an initial simple solution? remove player names as ship identifiers. winner ;/ Removing player names would be interesting. I could go with this if you also allowed player names to show up for gang/corp/alliance and also if there's mutually positive standings (corp/alliance OR personal).
FireFoxx80 Caldari E X O D U S Imperial Republic Of the North	Posted - 2006.09.01 22:01:00 - [32] Ideas: Bringing back splash damage to missiles would work, but it'd need some serious analysis before implementation. Also, simply limiting sizes of gangs as I've mentioned in the past could prevent the blob-strike Tux mentions. Umm, the smartbomb superchargers, I've seen data for. Or even a second class of smartbomb: double/triple range, but half damage. Or ships cause splash damage to others when they explode? Umm, forcing gangs into a formation? Make ships a minimum distance of 3000m from each other? Harsh: But limit the number of ships that can lock a specific ship: 3 for frigate, 5 for cruiser, 7 for battleship, etc... I cant think of any more... More bree^H^H^Heer! What I do the rest of the time - Vote for a Jita bypass!
Noriath	Posted - 2006.09.01 22:03:00 - [33] This is a great blog! I love that fleet battles are being adressed... On ships being incapacitated though, even if it doesn't help against fleet fights, I think the game would still be better if there was more to a ship then "Alive and kicking" and "Blown to dust" Especially as far as capital ships are concerned that just sucks...
FireFoxx80 Caldari E X O D U S Imperial Republic Of the North	Posted - 2006.09.01 22:04:00 - [34] I guess increasing structure HPs and making module damage could be more effective. Especially as CCP mentioned sub-system damage at one point. What I do the rest of the time - Vote for a Jita bypass!
Sphynx Stormlord	Posted - 2006.09.01 22:06:00 - [35] Having super large strategic targets (500km+) with different parts that are targetable, defendable, and able to provide benefits in different places, might help split up battles. This might be suitable for tasks such as capturing stations (although they are not currently large enough; maybe alien super dreadnaughts to capture and research?).
Noriath	Posted - 2006.09.01 22:07:00 - [36] I think you really shouldn't be able to destroy a capital ship without destroying its picket first. So I think when it's HP drops to 0 it should not blow up, but start drifting, and only blow up if you can fly up to it and hack into its self destruct system or something like that, which you can't do when you're being atacked. That would make capitals on the battlefield more desirable, because they wouldn't just be huge focuss fire magnets that are so expensive that destroying them makes it smart to just ignore everything else on the battlefield if you have to kill everything else in order to take them down.
The Speaker The Clue Factory	Posted - 2006.09.01 22:07:00 - [37] Edited by: The Speaker on 01/09/2006 22:10:16 Originally by: FireFoxx80 I guess increasing structure HPs and making module damage could be more effective. Especially as CCP mentioned sub-system damage at one point. Module/subsystem damage would rock actually. Personally, I think that it should be pretty draconian in terms of how much gets disabled/destroyed as you get further and further into structure since let's be real here - in a lot of cases when you go into structure, your survival chances are purely yes/no. By having a harsh ratio of modules disabled/destroyed as you go into structure, you can adequately harm/disable an opponent even if they do manage to escape or survive. I'm not entirely sure I'd be behind a significant increase in structure HP since this borks a lot of the rest of the game balance stuff and adds another level of balancing complexity/hell. I think that with harsh enough module/subsystem destruction, enough will be gained tactically even if your quarry manages to disengage.
Steppa Gallente Sturmgrenadier Inc R i s e	Posted - 2006.09.01 22:11:00 - [38] I don't know why everyone fights this so much, but why not put stacking penalties on successive pilots attacking the same target? Adjust it for the size of the targeted ship and call it "target lock redundancy interference" or some such. To rationalize, if you have multiple sensors sweeping back and forth over a target, the more sensors (ie the more individual pilots) you have hitting the same target, the more disrupted the returns get to the originating ships and, thus, progressively poorer fire control and thus, progressively poorer damage. For an example, let's say we arbitrarily decide that 4 battleships can attack a single battleship before stacking penalty (ie less damage for each successive pilot). Maybe 8 cruisers and 16 frigates could do the same before stacking penalties apply, but remember, I'm just being arbitrary. Maybe the rigth mix is 4 battleships, 6 cruisers, 8 frigates. Whatever. This doesn't have to apply to just damage. Progressive penalties could apply to jammers as well. The point is, if you're in a 200 man fleet and the stacking penalties are that structured, and you as a fleet commander (knowing full well the weaknesses of modern scanners and their drawbacks), you know that you need to organize your fleet into squadrons and wings, of which EACH ONE would be calling it's own primary and secondary. THEN, in addition to the reduced extreme ranges Tux was talking about, we would get the kind of running, mixed, Star Wars-type battle I think everyone is wanting but no one will admit to. I have grown to hate Star Wars, so don't label me as a fanboy. But damn, I would LOVE Eve fleet combat to resemble that. If we use a mechanism like this to force commanders to organize their fleets into squadrons and wings, then we need to provide in-game supports for this. We need easy-to-manipulate fleet templates (able to create, manipulate and save ingame) that a fleet commander can simply drag gang-member portraits from the gang channel into blank spaces on this org chart........and BANG, they are now in mini-gangs that not only allow the mini-gang leaders all the abilities as a normal gang leader (over his members only), but would allow the fleet commander to issue warp to orders that would be followed by all sub-groups. Tie this all in with the upcoming VOIP and make it all seamless and you have given the Eve community a POWERFUL tool for tactical fleet combat.
Verone	Posted - 2006.09.01 22:13:00 - [39] Originally by: Tuxford Well thats it for now, sorry about the length. That's something you should NEVER have to apologise about... Tux 4tw ♥ BACKSTORY AND FAN FICTION
Tao Han Caldari Crucial Electronics	Posted - 2006.09.01 22:20:00 - [40] While I'm here I'll throw some ideas... Damage depending on Hull status? 100% Hull = 100% Damage 50% Hull = 50% Damage If a ship gets taken to Hull it will not be disabled as that would suck for the disabled guy but it becomes less useful in combat. Sig removed, lacks Eve-related content - Cortes Leave my sigs alone *sob - Tao Han

Rehmes	Posted - 2006.09.01 22:34:00 - [41] IMHO what i see in fleet combat is this: Blob of mainly battleships come in guy calls out targets one by one and that = the end. It really lends itself very little to strategy/tactics. "Most of the times" the bigger blob wins and calls it a day. Lets not forget the lag 200+ battleships create in a 50km radius. I think many people have posted some usefull suggestions so ill post some i think would make things more fun imo. 1.bring in aoe weapons (decent damage but larget radious 10-20km) this could be in the form of missles and guns aswell, im sure many of u are aware of delayed explosion projectiles used in some future tech rifles which r in prodiction. A laser version could mean a strong laser beam that once it his a certain target it spreads into many smaller rays and hits anything nearby, Hybrids ( have no clue someone help me w this.) 2. There should be more structure to fleet battles just like in real naval situations. For example: a gang can only have a certain amount of battleships within it, thus allowing more spaces for smaller ships: BC (command),ruisers(HACS) Frigs (t1 or t2). 3. Allow for formation maneuvering. For example: when u gang warp people follow u into warp if ur the leader. IN a fleet battle u can allow the commander to maneuver his/fleet in certain ways (move it a ceratin distance away in any direction) this gives the commander some tactical tools while letting the individual perform his own maneuvering if he so wished. 4. mines....id say they should be allowd by a specific mine ship (cloacked is so possible) and could only be used in 0.0 and ony a certain amount can be deplyed at a time. The mines could be for aoe damage, but could also be a wbber mine with a 10km radius...or maybe an ecm mine W/E u know where im headed. 5. Defensive tools....such as fleet shield generators (not pos powerfull but stron enough to provive a buffer) mind u i dont want to make it that the shield absorbs all damage just merely reduce damage taken when its up. ....ill post again when i have other ideas.
Vincent Gaines	Posted - 2006.09.01 22:41:00 - [42] Originally by: The Speaker Originally by: War Ping Edited by: War Ping on 01/09/2006 21:40:15 Originally by: Vincent Gaines an initial simple solution? remove player names as ship identifiers. winner ;/ Removing player names would be interesting. I could go with this if you also allowed player names to show up for gang/corp/alliance and also if there's mutually positive standings (corp/alliance OR personal). you'd still be able to mouseover, but just remove them from the overview... it'd take CCP 5 minutes to pull the code and release a small patch Sure it won't stop scorps from being called primary, but it would force FCs to do more than just call out random names
pardux Minmatar The Collective Against ALL Authorities	Posted - 2006.09.01 23:18:00 - [43] Edited by: pardux on 01/09/2006 23:18:34 plz dont do any of this except maybe torps AoE ;\| only reason fleets are boring is because you need to wait for the combat and then get lagged to death. if there would be no lag it would be alot more fun =\|, actually seeing your ship die is better then jumping in and seeing nothing/nothing responding/other random lag effect and then ending up in a station ._.
chillz Minmatar	Posted - 2006.09.01 23:28:00 - [44] Edited by: chillz on 01/09/2006 23:28:51 Why not turn freindly fire on. You wouldn't be launching those torps (or projectiles / lasers / etc) if they were going to hit the guy infront of you. ----------------------------------- A gun and a packet of sandwiches. "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S Thompson
Nafri Caldari Cataclysm Enterprises Dusk and Dawn	Posted - 2006.09.01 23:36:00 - [45] Not very interesting, but I give my input. Why blob? No friendly fire No hitzones No direction of guns A blob just concentrates your firepower on one spot. If you want to optimize the surfuace of many dots, you just make one big dot. Ill make some pictures to explain it: Linkage When you would introduce friendly fire, direction in which your guns can fire and some other stuff like plated sides and stuff, this game would be less blobby. When you have to align your fleet like shown above, you have to maximize your surface direction towars your enemy. That would need tactics, and you could finally protect smaller ships with bigger ships. A enemy also would need to shoot targets he can hit, and you could move more armored ships towards the frontline. It would also enable the implention of realy primary, secondary and teriary weapon systems. Primary weapon systems would point into one direction, to oprimize the firewpoer of the ship. Secondary and tertiary would cover other sides, and are just there to cover unguarded points. You could also enable people to decide where to place their guns, give ships more possible weapon places than they actual can fit, so that you can suripise your enemy with a unusual and creative weapon placement. Then you can introduce automatic and self created fligth maneuvers, since you have to point your weapons in the direction of your enemey. A ship with all its weapons as the front can get easy attacked from the rear. But when the ship with the weapons at the front can attack, it will have a huge advantage. For fleets you can arrange your weapons at one side, which will make it easiert to maintain formations, and keep transversal to your enemy. When you combine this modular system with rigs, you can also reinforce certain sides of your ship with additional shield and armor. So that you can create guarding ships with tons of HP, which are able to shield weaker ships in the background. I.E. Megathron: 12 Possible Weapon places. 7 ***ble turrets. 2 ***ble launchers 6x turret front 0x launcher 4x turret left side 1x launcher 2x turret rightside 2x launcher directions of fire. Frontturrets: 6x front or 3x left or 3x right Leftturrets: 4x left 3x rear Leftlaunchers: 1x left 1x rear rightturrets: 2x front 2x right 2x front 2x rear Explanation: All turrets at the front can fire forward. 3 of them can also fire to the left, 3 of them can also fire towards the right All turrets on the left can fire towards left. 3 of them can also fire backwards All turrets on the right can also fire towards right 2 of them can fire also forward 2 of them can also fire backwards Same goes for launchers, like mentioned in the list. Setups: When your solo, its obvius the best to fit the guns so that all weapons can fire into one direction, I think the front would be nice, since you can easily get 7 turrets firing in one direction (fit 5 in front, 2 right). Then you can adjust the guns so that you either have all on the front-right side, or some front-left. Like you want. For solo the launchers will be best to be placed on the left, since they can fire in 3 directions from there. Lowslot distribution: Megathron: 2x frontlowslots 6x rightlowslots 3x backlowslots 0x leftlowslots As you can see, the sides with more guns have bigger problems to fit armorplates and other stuff, since the turretbays will take lot of space. The rightside with hardly any turrets can be heavinly fortified so that you can turn this side towards the enemy when you want to tank a lot of damage. Too make it a bit more complicated. Every fitted gun on one side stops you from fitting armor plates on the same side. Midslot distribution: 1x Front 3x Left 0x right 2x back Midslots are mostly utility slots. Fitted lowslots take away a midslots again. So you cant tank the backside of your ship and place your mwd there to protect it with tons of armor. From Dusk till Dawn
Nafri Caldari Cataclysm Enterprises Dusk and Dawn	Posted - 2006.09.01 23:36:00 - [46] will be edited From Dusk till Dawn
Yggdrassil Amarrian Missionaires	Posted - 2006.09.01 23:45:00 - [47] Edited by: Yggdrassil on 01/09/2006 23:58:45 EDIT: Reading lessons FTW. Steppa's post a few above here covers most I said here Probably a bad idea - its early morning - and dead tired - but.... One way to reduce the effect of focused fire would simply be to reduce the signature radius of the targetted ship by x%. Lets use 10% for the simplicity. So, you got your fleet prepped and ready, and you order all your 300 ships to shoot at one ship. Result: Dang - that thing had 0.33 sign radius - and for some strange reason, you all keep missing it... This way - you will get a lot better result dividing your fleet in smaller task forces, each taking out their own target. The job gets a lot harder for the fleet commmander - who will need to manage a lot more thingys - but you suddenly got a whole lot of squad commanders and wing commanders you delegate tasks to. The complexity of balancing such a radical change will be a real ***** though... Would have to be REALLY careful not to drift too far towards tank > damage dealing. Also - balancing missiles in this... will be really tough. BIG issue: Guns will hit a non-moving target for full damage even if very low sign radius - while missiles won't. Possible solution: Missiles uses "base" sign radius, but suffers a %chance of missing due to the reduced sign radius? I won't even try to make up a believable physics explanation: If it makes GAMEPLAY better - I don't care about realistic physics.... Yggdrassil
Yggdrassil Amarrian Missionaires	Posted - 2006.09.01 23:50:00 - [48] About turning of Friendly Fire. The servers are suffering badly in fleet fights. Adding a lot of calculations about which direction you can shoot at/damage targets in the line between your ship and the target will "probably" not ease the load on the servers... Yggdrassil
Nafri Caldari Cataclysm Enterprises Dusk and Dawn	Posted - 2006.09.01 23:51:00 - [49] Edited by: Nafri on 01/09/2006 23:52:01 Originally by: Yggdrassil About turning of Friendly Fire. The servers are suffering badly in fleet fights. Adding a lot of calculations about which direction you can shoot at/damage targets in the line between your ship and the target will "probably" not ease the load on the servers... Well, of course not, but then CCP cant complain about blobbing tactics But enforcing people with artificial limitations is not great, they should encourage tactics which are logical, not the other way From Dusk till Dawn
Nifel Caldari Reikoku Band of Brothers	Posted - 2006.09.02 00:01:00 - [50] There's been a lot of ideas floating around on these boards about this for a long time. Here's some examples. Modules+skills Tracking Damage distribution The diminishing return when focused fired. Can't find the link. "When I die I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandpa. Not yelling and screaming like the passengers in his car." RKK Ranking: (MIN14)

Caedicus	Posted - 2006.09.02 00:23:00 - [51] What about a EMP type of AOE weapon? It would work like the same way it did in Starcraft. It would put a huge dent on the ships' shields (and maybe powerful EMP bombs would completely disentegrate the shields) that are within the blast radius. This wouldn't hurt people who happen to be bystanders that much, because there's really no way they could die from it. But it will encourage fleets to spread out. Then of course allow gang leaders to be able to set formations that forces ships to un-blob. "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." -Ghandi
Miss Overlord Gallente Garoun Investment Bank	Posted - 2006.09.02 00:37:00 - [52] as it stands now in additon to tacklers destoryers or cruisers with ECM bombs are able to disrupt focused gangs. Thats a key element not many consider but have seen used. Penalties sure with over 50 in gang could work force smaller gangs and make leadership bonuses more required. More server resources CCP stated with the new code 1500 in jita before she overflowed this has been reduced to 800 not mcuh of an improvement over the ol 32 bit. Once again very good ideas but CCP needs to boost resources and cater for the blobs (well small blobs) anyway I think there is a very serious database issue atm and they are looking to nerf before fixing capacity
Pepperami Art of War Cult of War	Posted - 2006.09.02 00:41:00 - [53] Originally by: Amthrianius Edited by: Amthrianius on 01/09/2006 21:18:54 "What is the problem here? Some say its focus firing and I would have to agree." No it's lag. Clicking warp waiting 20 seconds and not warping out then your ship pops. Yes. So true. This last month has been such a dissapointment in stability (really bad, surely the rate must be not far off 1 unscheduled downtime a day - that's gotta be unacceptable) and changes to gameplay (even if they're due to be fixed god-knows when).
Riley Craven Caldari Black Eclipse Corp	Posted - 2006.09.02 00:46:00 - [54] As I have read another one of you blogs I am starting to be convinced that you actaully a carebare hidding in Dev's cloths. First, ALOT of people like LARGE SCALE BATTLES. I know a number of people especially in my alliance play just to try and get some proper fleet fights out of people. In fact, if you've done alot of reading allainces can be judged simply on how big a fleet they can muster and how well they can manage it. There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with this. Secondly, there is nothing wrong with the range of fleets. CCP themselves have coded this into the game and there is nothing wrong with fleets engaging at such ranges. The problem I see with trying to "fix" this is that in order to do so you are going to have to cut back on the range that individuals can obtain, and that frankly is a horrible idea. Thirdly, you are trying to fix something that really doesnt need to be fixed. Fleets happen because players make them happen. If players didnt want them, they wouldnt happen. If anything needs to be "fixed" its your ability to reduce lag for such engagements. People dont want smaller fleets, they want less lag. Try reading the corp and alliance forum someday and maybe you will figure this out.
Kldraina	Posted - 2006.09.02 00:58:00 - [55] Wow, you CCP guys are good, really good. I'm not accustomed to people actually identifying the core problems so accurately. Normally, people just notice the symptoms, and completely fail to understand what causes it. Indirect nerfage for the win (nerfing range, nerfs focused fire. That's why blaster ships don't work well in large groups).
Apertotes Nuevos Horizontes	Posted - 2006.09.02 01:00:00 - [56] Edited by: Apertotes on 02/09/2006 01:04:22 to end with blobbing is quite difficult i think. only thing that would work is line of sight and friendly fire, but that would probably make EVE unplayable when more than 15 moving and shooting bodys are on the same grid. too many calculations. reducing combat distance would be good nevetheless, even if it wouldn solve blobbing, at least it would make fighting more interesting, since there would be more useful modules that dont work at such long distances as fleet fights are today. for example, i have always thought it would be coold that warp disruptors outranged long range guns. anyway, getting rid of blobbing isn't easy. but getting rid of focus fire is. just release a new module. high slot, easy to fit, moderate cap compsumption. what does this module do? when fitted on ship #1 and activated on a target (ship #2), it creates a kind of targetting link between the two, so that the first 5 (or 10, or 15, dont know, it needs some thinking) entities that try to target ship #2, target ship #1 instead. this would create a new whole tactical layer where big gangs could be arranged on many interesting ways. for example. get 5 dedicated tankers with 8 of those modules, protecting up to 40 friendly ships. of course, each of those tankers would have to withstand to fire that should be hitting 8 different ships, so it could be a suicide. to prevent this you could have another 5 ships specially fitted to remote transfer cap and shields to those tankers. another option would be to fit every ship on the gang with 1 of those modules and create a kind of defensive net, where everybody targets a friendly ship preventing everybody on the gang from being instapopped. or even another tactic. everybody on the gang activates the module on the carrier, so that it doesnt go down on 10 seconds, but instead the enemy fleet would have to finish everybody on the gang before starting to shoot the carrier (or command ship, or logistic ship, or titan ) this module would have another very good consequence on my opinion. it would create a new profession. BODYGUARDS! imagine you need to move a very expensive tech 2 BPO and you are not very confident of doing it even on a claw through hig sec. you could contract somebody to be your bodyguard. nowadays we have scorts, but they arent very effective since the ship being scorted is usually very fragile and it can still be destroyed. but with this module, you would be safe (even from scramblers unless you fall on a bubble) until your bodyguard is dead. of course, the bodyguard could betray you, but that is another topic . but think about the possibilities. a whole new profession. pilots could offer their services as bodyguards, and they would win reputation, just like the MC have gotten their reputation as deadly mercenaires. upps, getting a little bit offtopic . the thing is that i believe such a module would make focus-fire tactics much less effective, because at least you would have a way to control how enemy targets are gonna get distributed on your own fleet. of course, AoE weapons would be inmune to this , so, another reason for getting in close and dirty. Apertotes, the Guybrush Threepwood of New Eve
Idara Caldari Cutting Edge Incorporated RAZOR Alliance	Posted - 2006.09.02 01:18:00 - [57] Originally by: Nyphur So much for letting people play the way they like. Now blobbing needs "fixed"? People want to play the generic blob style of combat??!?! ---
rodgerd Gallente Center for Advanced Studies	Posted - 2006.09.02 01:31:00 - [58] Originally by: Alessar Kaldorei Hehe, give torpedoes AoE damage to go with the disproportionately huge shockwave they generate, and you'll see blobs dispersing. Yeah, that'll be the uber Caldari buff. "Well, lesse. We'll halve ship ranges, making the Rokh the uber pwnmobile, and the Raven will be able to obliterate whole fleets with AoE weapons. Maybe we should update the new player guide to warn people not to pick races other than Caldari..." (Of course, if that was counterbalanced by shields suffering a stacking penalty in a blob it might make up for it 8)
rodgerd Gallente Center for Advanced Studies	Posted - 2006.09.02 01:41:00 - [59] Originally by: Ernest Graefenberg Originally by: "Tuxford" Not much really, theoretically you could warp in a group of closer range ships and use your transversal to keep the blob's damage down and use the superior damage output to kill the opponent's ships. This is actually false, due to the Megathron tracking bonus, tracking computers and sensorboosters. Before people start looking at me funny, take a quick look at the total tracking modifiers involved in a sniping 'thron : (snippage) That and of course the sheer concept of 200km sniping is just way, way broken :o Unfortunately the Rokh's preliminary stats are the same, only moreso. Seems like a lack of co-ordination between the senior devs.
DigitalCommunist Evolution Band of Brothers	Posted - 2006.09.02 01:43:00 - [60] Its really hard to have a discussion, when theres nothing to comment on. Tuxford paraphrased something we already know. Theres enough whining about fleet battles to prove it. I was dissapointed with "we are looking into it", instead of "this is what we're going to do about it". Purchasing Complex Fullerene Shards, contact me ingame.

Herring Pimpology Pimpology in Mining Player	Posted - 2006.09.02 02:04:00 - [61] Originally by: Amthrianius Edited by: Amthrianius on 01/09/2006 21:18:54 "What is the problem here? Some say its focus firing and I would have to agree." No it's lag. Clicking warp waiting 20 seconds and not warping out then your ship pops. ^^^^What he said 1. As a dedicated carebear, nothing would **** me off more than successfully defending myself and having the assailant get away with 'severe hull damage' 2. Every single problem I've had with blobs has to do with not flying very smartly (5%) and lag lag lag (95%) Wishing for better mining ships in a system near you.
Unfamed II FinFleet Lotka Volterra	Posted - 2006.09.02 03:14:00 - [62] 2 words. ECM. Bubble. Interdictor.
Noriath	Posted - 2006.09.02 03:18:00 - [63] Yea, there is a big off a problem with first putting the Rokh in the game and then saying "ultra range bad"
MysticNZ Solstice Systems Development Concourse	Posted - 2006.09.02 04:24:00 - [64] Originally by: Idara Originally by: Nyphur So much for letting people play the way they like. Now blobbing needs "fixed"? People want to play the generic blob style of combat??!?! Ever read what it says on the eve retail box? That's right, huge 'fleet' combat. -=====- Xorus is teh nub :D I heard that beats player with big stick now be a good carebear and mine me some veldspar - Xorus
RayGic Luke	Posted - 2006.09.02 04:24:00 - [65] Things that might make fleet combat more interesting than blobbing: 1) Friendly Fire (You just can't shoot thru your mate to hit the enemy, can you?) 2) Weapons AoE damage (Even a small scale AoE weapon will make ppl think twice before hugging each other's ship) 3) Damage from Ship's explosion (Similar effect to small scale AoE damage) If all the above 3 points are in the game, how will a fleet battle turn out?
Jim McGregor Caldari	Posted - 2006.09.02 04:44:00 - [66] Im more worried than happy... mostly because it will change the game so much. But I do agree that fleet fights needs a big fix, because currently its not something Eve can be very proud of. I will try to have faith... something needs to be done, so might as well do it now. --- Eve Wiki \| Eve Tribune \| Eve Pirate
Noriath	Posted - 2006.09.02 05:35:00 - [67] Originally by: RayGic Luke Things that might make fleet combat more interesting than blobbing: 1) Friendly Fire (You just can't shoot thru your mate to hit the enemy, can you?) 2) Weapons AoE damage (Even a small scale AoE weapon will make ppl think twice before hugging each other's ship) 3) Damage from Ship's explosion (Similar effect to small scale AoE damage) If all the above 3 points are in the game, how will a fleet battle turn out? Pretty much the same way it does right now. The ranges that ships can fire at and the ranges that ships can and have to move during a battle are so completly out of proportion that it makes no difference wether your enemys ships are 1km or 10km apart. It's impulse movement that's the real issue in Eve. Nobody wants to impule anywhere, people don't even want to impulse to the gates, and they sure as hell don't want to impulse 200km towards an enemy so they can engage him in a ship that doesn't shoot that far, not to mention that he will simply warp off if you even get close. The whole way ships move in eve pretty much leads to one thing: If you don't warp in within your weapons range you will never get into weapons range, because either you will die before you can fire a single shot, or your enemy will just warp off if you manage to get close enough to still win the fight. Bcause of that long range will always win out in Eve. Also there is the whole issue with large weapons having a really easy time killing small targets that are very far away. Now what the hell is that? If a battleship simply could not hit a frig that's 200km away fleet battles would look quite different, believe that. Pretty much what Eve needs is a change to a point where moving to the right place on the battlefield and the ability to do that quickly is just as strategically valid as how much range or firepower you have. In order to achieve that stuff needs a lot less range, more speed and ability to go places, and most of all, the way warping works right now just has to go. The mobility of a ship will never really play a strategic role as long as all positioning is done by warping rather then acctually moving a ship.
Tachy	Posted - 2006.09.02 06:02:00 - [68] I smell some group love coming. That means the love for groups, not by groups. Fields of fire and defense, friendly locks, yadda, yadda, yadda. The whole group related stuff that EVE's missing. Force field projector modules that can reduce the damage landing on a few ships hiding behind, but with massively reduced efficiency if to many ships are within x km. Disables WCS for x minutes for all ships in range. Fog caster modules reducing the opponent's locking and/or tracking speed. Love for BC, Logistics and Command ships. Semi-autonomous repair drone clouds that get overloaded if to many ships are within range. (Or shipclass points ... inty:1, frig:2, dessy:2, logistics:3, cruiser:4, ...). When overloading they could start damaging ships, reduce weapon efficiency, ... This might open interesting tactics for defenders and attackers. Splash damage on opposing ships - Can be toggled on/off to prevent Concordokken exploits. A bit less damage on the main target, but a chance to do a lot of damage to other ships, drones and structures in the area (not missiles). Voicechat solution that supports groups, command lines, and does work when sound is turned off and when the client bugs out for whatever reason. --==*-- Even with nougat, you can have a perfect moment.
General Apocalypse	Posted - 2006.09.02 06:04:00 - [69] Dicourage fleet battle , discourage long range .... Tux whants us all to go back to 1v1 frigate fights
Brokeback Jim	Posted - 2006.09.02 06:09:00 - [70] Would making it so you could actually warp to ships over 100-150km away help? Within the standard 15km, obviously. Always thought it was stupid I couldn't warp to him.

Sakura Nihil Tharsis Security	Posted - 2006.09.02 06:17:00 - [71] Splash damage ftw, without thinking about it too deeply. Either that, or make self-destructs do some splash damage instead, and we can have "suicide ships"... Meh, idk. We'll see how it goes. Whorum Skills ftw! I like cheese - Xorus
RayGic Luke	Posted - 2006.09.02 06:56:00 - [72] Originally by: Noriath Originally by: RayGic Luke Things that might make fleet combat more interesting than blobbing: 1) Friendly Fire (You just can't shoot thru your mate to hit the enemy, can you?) 2) Weapons AoE damage (Even a small scale AoE weapon will make ppl think twice before hugging each other's ship) 3) Damage from Ship's explosion (Similar effect to small scale AoE damage) If all the above 3 points are in the game, how will a fleet battle turn out? Pretty much the same way it does right now. The ranges that ships can fire at and the ranges that ships can and have to move during a battle are so completly out of proportion that it makes no difference wether your enemys ships are 1km or 10km apart. It's impulse movement that's the real issue in Eve. Nobody wants to impule anywhere, people don't even want to impulse to the gates, and they sure as hell don't want to impulse 200km towards an enemy so they can engage him in a ship that doesn't shoot that far, not to mention that he will simply warp off if you even get close. The whole way ships move in eve pretty much leads to one thing: If you don't warp in within your weapons range you will never get into weapons range, because either you will die before you can fire a single shot, or your enemy will just warp off if you manage to get close enough to still win the fight. Bcause of that long range will always win out in Eve. Also there is the whole issue with large weapons having a really easy time killing small targets that are very far away. Now what the hell is that? If a battleship simply could not hit a frig that's 200km away fleet battles would look quite different, believe that. Pretty much what Eve needs is a change to a point where moving to the right place on the battlefield and the ability to do that quickly is just as strategically valid as how much range or firepower you have. In order to achieve that stuff needs a lot less range, more speed and ability to go places, and most of all, the way warping works right now just has to go. The mobility of a ship will never really play a strategic role as long as all positioning is done by warping rather then acctually moving a ship. Friendly Fire, Weapons AoE damage & Damage from Ship's explosion will probably affect ppl who blobs. However, the extreme range combat is a different issue. Personally, I find extreme range combats rather boring with little tactics involved. Sadly, I can't think of a good solution for it which does not involve nerfing weapon range. Hmm, do you think being able to warp to an opponent directly (ie: 30 - 50km) will change the way large combat works? Will it bring the engagement range closer?
Miss Overlord Gallente Garoun Investment Bank	Posted - 2006.09.02 07:15:00 - [73] mmm used to be able to warp to 150km + direct to ships now they make it gang mates (getting cloaked ship otherside of gang and warping to is a honed skill for small 10v10 type engagements)
Mordu skal Do Or Die And Live Or Try Genesis Industrial Foundation	Posted - 2006.09.02 07:38:00 - [74] Some good proposals butt it still more beneficial to bring more ships then your opponent (lag) even if there's splash damage or restricted targetting, you just need some more distance between ships and have more target callers. For the long range battles you could introduce some kind of mobile shield generators that reduce damage going thru them like 75%, they could have a diameter of 15km and only one friendly in a range of 150km could be deployed. Ships could still go thru them so you need to get close range to do real damage. Probly have to make it a bit easier to warp to it. As to blob's the only thing that would stop it really is putting in a maximum friendly ship count in the same grid within the server code. --------------------------------------------- I have no idea
booh	Posted - 2006.09.02 07:46:00 - [75] One thing is the lag. Warp orders should be top priority in comunication from client to server. Other thing is... well you can only neutralize an enemy ship by jamming or destroying it. You can't do dmg to weapon system, propulsion systems, targeting systems... The safest way is to destroy the whole ship and you don't have to worry about it anymore (200m lost in 10s and you can't do anything to prevent it). If the ships would have much more HP as they have now, and if you could "neutralize" them by shooting their gun arrays, then it wouldn't be necesary to destroy it right away. On the other hand, the targeted ship would have time to repair itself, his guns or whatever systems got damaged (Scotty, you have 5 minutes to get the guns working!). Destroy their guns or propulsion? Hard choice. If you go for guns they warp away, if for propulsion they are a sitting duck but still can shoot you... ^^ this would give FCs time to play their tactics and get 2 hour lasting battles :)
Littleluk The Ancient Order Imperium Alliance	Posted - 2006.09.02 07:49:00 - [76] Actually I am impressed with this spin. A fancy new direction and a reduction of blobbing??? NAH I think not. I suspect the real culprit here is the plain fact that ummm 200 on 200 battles are utter lagfests and there is no easy solution. Well the obvious solutions are removing bookmarks and increasing the database etc. Of course your trying those as well. This is an interesting way to try and get back to the gangs of 20 on 20 though. Want some easy ways to make ships spread out a bit more... Warp to... any ship over 200km away. Doesn't matter if it is ganged or not. If the computers can track it to shoot they should be able to compute flying to the darn thing if they can do the same job to a gang member. Place some tactical accuracy into tracking. Small ships going in circles can track easily.. their guns dont move, the ship does. Consider adding some detrimental effects from massive ship proximity. ie reduced targeting range and speed. Maybe a 10 percent reduction every 20 ships within 20 km. Signals would certainly get difficult to read with 100 other signals from other ships bouncing around in space real close to you. But give us the whole story. As in how alliance out in the depths of space are going to fight these epic battles to defend their space against a horde of invaders where both sides can fight. The guns shoot, the mods turn on etc when you push the buttons. I think that has to be the end goal and we can certainly accept whatever design decisions you have to make to restore that option but it would be nice to hear the core problems. Everyone needs a little luk.
Plutoinum German Cyberdome Corp Veritas Immortalis	Posted - 2006.09.02 08:59:00 - [77] Edited by: Plutoinum on 02/09/2006 08:59:27 Nice blog, it shows all the problems focussed fire in blobs, also that it's difficult to avoid it, if every BS has a combat range from 0 to >200km and tracking is the only limiting factor. Tracking is usually still enough to hit other mid-/long-range BS that at any range, so it doesn't help here. Good luck to tear the blobs apart and make fights more interesting/longer and tactics more deverse.
Wilfan Ret'nub Singularity.	Posted - 2006.09.02 09:09:00 - [78] Some musings about the blog: First, a lot of people missed the subject of the blog. It's not the size of the fleet fights, but the tactic trying to make whole group act as one ubersized battleship by using focused fire. See: Originally by: Tuxford I'm not talking about the blob that comes up on the map where you have 200+ ships crammed in the same solar system, I'm talking about the blob where those 200 ships are crammed in to the same 10km radius sphere. Why this tactic is so effective? It follows Lanchester Square Law (introduction, real deal) to the letter. Unlike modern combat there's no limiting force conentration, fatigue, different weapon ranges, friendly fire, combined arms approach, battle of maneuver ... Current blobwars are just a straightforward slugfest between two groups of long range battleships. Then Tux gets an idea: Originally by: Tuxford Whats the disadvantage of having a blob formation? Not much really, theoretically you could warp in a group of closer range ships and use your transversal to keep the blob's damage down and use the superior damage output to kill the opponent's ships. Too bad he doesn't elaborate. Why don't we see this tactic used? Not for the lack of trying. I've been in a few fleet fights where we tried this and I've heard of a few attempts by others. The problems are getting into range (covops take time, to warp to popped enemy's can you need to pop one first), holding the enemy in place (getting the intredictor in place, sphere can be smartbombed, aligned fleet warps very fast) and the high damage of arties/beams/rails with short range ammo. There's also the psychological upside to the blob: it's much easier to command than a close range furball. then Tux goes on about the ways to split the blob. I think this is just a partial solution. What's needed is to bring the diversity of small group combat to fleet fights, not just splitting the blob. Blob fight is a blob fight, whether there's one or 5 of them. And the directions he mentions are not promising. Potent AoE weapons would be the best gift to (macro) mission runners. Formation flight is fine, but we first need an incentive to use it. Directional defenses? We'll see, but I can't get the image of Gungan army from my head. ------ No ISK, no fun
Liu Kaskakka PAK	Posted - 2006.09.02 09:18:00 - [79] Make missiles (like they used to) and turret fire hit stuff that's on their way to target - problem solved. Empire wars impossible coz of concordokken? Well, tough *****, pick your shots more carefully. More lag? Well, fix teh game!!! King Liu is RIGHT!!
Cosy Ceaon Gallente Porandor	Posted - 2006.09.02 09:40:00 - [80] make a module that anchor( whit time delay & countdown) the ship get incase the rof and make dmg @ target ( few KM ) and u get a machinegun-ship some like real life machineguns

Sean Dillon Caldari Shadows of the Dead Knights Of the Southerncross	Posted - 2006.09.02 09:48:00 - [81] Fix the lagg first, then blobbing. Thank you.
Kunming Amarr adeptus gattacus Lotka Volterra	Posted - 2006.09.02 10:14:00 - [82] If the range nerf comes in, one thing is for sure, it will seperate the men from the boys Oh and AoE weapons would be excellent tools for dreads in siege mode, you gotta either fit for anti-POS or anti-Fleet. (I'll just ignore the arrogancy of caldari pilots wanting to be the only ones using AoEs.)
Helison Gallente Times of Ancar R i s e	Posted - 2006.09.02 10:33:00 - [83] I am all for a MASSIVE increase of structure-HP of all ships and for using item-damage (including sub-system targeting) Neither the shield or the armor should be able to tank a massive fleet. But the structure should be able to hold a long time, till it goes boom. But while the structure takes damage, the ship systems get worse and worse. With using of sub-system targeting it should be possible for specialised weapons (perhaps special role for assault frigs?) to damage modules even if the shield is still up. This approach would be really needed for Capital Ships (it should be very difficult to destroy them with a BS-fleet, but possible to damage them), but it would also help smaller ships a lot.
Hermia HIVE	Posted - 2006.09.02 10:33:00 - [84] I agree with tux's observations but his ponderings on how blob warfare "could" be fixed im not sure about. Mechanics designed to fix problems by limiting attributes and their effects is far less elegant than design of better game play. so i dont like seeing too much of: More hitpoints, reduction in range, incapacitate modes, and all that talk about penalty for focus fire is really stupid. Some of these are worth exploring, but as stand alown fixes they are cheap and nasty! It seems that Tux only wants to address the mass fleet warp-in, that splitting up the blob is only about avoiding the big crunch of ships into a tiny space. Surely the biggest problem is the reason why blobs have to form in the first place (In the same grid) Having too many people in the same grid presents for me the biggest problem with eve game play. The fact that alliance warfare on huge swathes of 0.0 is locallised to only a handfull of grids is pathetic gameplay. I think the problem is tied with how space is taken over and how many stratetic points on the map there are, not random stat changing. If we are ever going to get full scale warfare, than the problem will most likely be fixed when you guys install proper player made infrastructure, coupled with methods to nurture squad level combat by making it more effienct for conquest.
Helison Gallente Times of Ancar R i s e	Posted - 2006.09.02 10:35:00 - [85] Edited by: Helison on 02/09/2006 10:35:42 delete, double post
Wheya Amarr Bruderschaft des Wahrhaftigen	Posted - 2006.09.02 10:51:00 - [86] I am very happy to see Tux talking about the problems that needs to be fixed. Finding solutions, which can work without too much stressing the servers, seems to be very difficult. I have thought about this problem for a long time but unfortunatly each time I have had an idea I found drawbacks. To implement splash damage from torps is such an idea with drawbacks. 1. Under certain circumstances this could make the Raven the most powerfull fleet combat ship. That's a new ship balance issue. 2. Splash damage used for pod killing was a huge advantage for torp users in the past. I like the idea of Kunming. Dreads with AoE weapons. Unfortunatly this would not stop concentrated fire. It would only stop concentrated blobs. The range of the AeE would have to be huge and therefore most likely way too powerful to take real effect. My vision of fleet combat would be if game mechanics encourage a lot of 1:1 and 2:1 fights because in that new environment that's the most effective way to do the most damage. I think fleets should have many frigates as tacklers and many cruisers to fight this tacklers. On the other hand carriers will find their role on the frontline in such an environment. Regardless of the new hope this blog gave to me let's not forget other problems. Blobbing was invented for a reason. If every battleship can safely slowboat to the next stargate even without instas because concentrated fire is no longer effective then we have a new problem.
Deviana Sevidon Gallente easyCredits O X I D E	Posted - 2006.09.02 11:06:00 - [87] One possibility would be to bring combat away from gates and POS and to certain environments. Like forcing them to fight in areas that create advantages to some ships and disadvantages to others. I.E: Plasma Storm. All Ships inside suffer from a greatly decreased sensor-range and there is also a random chance that a ship is being struck by a random bolt of energy while inside the cloud and taking massive damage. When a ship is hit, all ships nearby (perhaps 10km radius) also suffer from AoE Damage. The chance of being hit is based on the signature radius. Small ships are less likely being hit because of their smaller Sig. and take less damage. While it should be fairly safe to bring in Frigs or Cruiser sized Ships, engaging a MWD or even bringing in a BS with MWD is highly dangerous. The biggest problems I see is to force both sides to fight not at a stargate but instead in such an environment.
Dark Chasm	Posted - 2006.09.02 11:19:00 - [88] Edited by: Dark Chasm on 02/09/2006 11:22:46 I tend to agree with Wheya (2 posts up) There is no easy solution to this and it's good that it's being adressed. Moreso a problem is the RPG effect, do what u wanna do with close to no restrictions. If the game starts telling us how to do fleet battles, we'll end up with a WoW type of game, where tactics are handed out and so on. I can only imagine how difficult it is for al the devs in that respect. Giving items such as ECM, gang bonusses, warfare link modules and so on a minimum distance so that only above that distance they have an effect sounds reasonable, but I'm sure they thought of that already. it would seem to fix blobbing (and possibly ECM) I'm not convinced however that concentrated firepower should be fixed or even can be. It is almost always the basic strategy for any combat situation where u need multiple shots/salvo's to take out an enemy. DC NB: maybe cloaking can do something ? it would be very cool to have entire fleets just come out of thin air
Gloria Stitz	Posted - 2006.09.02 11:19:00 - [89] Of all the possible solutions, the only one that isn't going to cause balance issues is a limit on gang size. Maybe introduce a skill for making a larger gang. But what size of gang would work to still be effective, whilst lessening focus fire? 12? 20? It doesn't take too many BS to instapop a single BS
Reptile Minmatar The Collective Against ALL Authorities	Posted - 2006.09.02 11:36:00 - [90] Edited by: Reptile on 02/09/2006 11:38:21 Well I don't usually comment much on the forums, but I must voice my concern of doing something as drastic as nerfing range in EVE. I dont think that is the problem nor will it solve the 'blob'. What I do agree is that the game is missing AOE weapons which has the potential (depending on the implementation) to really discourage people from forming huge groups. Those blobs could be taken out by a smaller number of ships through AOE weapons (e.g. 5 ships specialized on AOE severly damaging a group of 50 or 60). This would discourage blobing imho and you would probably have less blobs (since blobs would mean juicy targets and killmails to some) Also, with AOE weapons you would automatically force people to engage at shorter ranges to avoid the deployment of any AOE attacked.

ParMizaN Body Count Inc. Mercenary Coalition	Posted - 2006.09.02 12:01:00 - [91] Mothership anti-blob weapons :D sig edited for lack of pink really PINK -eris Pink is overrated, yellow is the new pink - Xorus
Naughty Boy	Posted - 2006.09.02 12:06:00 - [92] Edited by: Naughty Boy on 02/09/2006 12:14:01 Originally by: Wilfan Ret'nub [...]then Tux goes on about the ways to split the blob. I think this is just a partial solution. What's needed is to bring the diversity of small group combat to fleet fights, not just splitting the blob. Blob fight is a blob fight, whether there's one or 5 of them. And the directions he mentions are not promising. [...] I like this post. Blobs are blobs because they have got a very high effectiveness for a very low coordination cost: the marginal gang member brings only a small marginal coordination cost, for an always higher return. This is partly what rewards focused fire so much, so much more than it should be (to limit the numbers involved in focused fire, you need to have decreasing returns past a thresold defined by "the circumstances", which are brought by coordination costs increasing with the number of people involved). In such a way, there's an optimal size for gangs in a defined circumstance. You can still add people, and still get a benefit from doing so, but given your other constraints such use of a resource can come sooner at an opportunity cost... Hence, the real question is - as a few posters above pointed out - how to increase coordination costs in a way that rewards planning, specialisation, intelligence and adaptation, decentralisation and organisation of the fleet in appropriate groups... Not because it's the only thing you can do, but because it's the best thing to do. That's why artificial targetting limitations/damage penalties will never feel right (though it could very well solve the most visible problems, it is not going to make the game more tactical). So, the problem of blobbing is more related to the problem of mixed fleets/lack of counter to some tactics (see t2 sniper ammo) than the to problem of focused fire. Focused fire is pretty much a given, there's little you can do against it that will ever feel natural. On the other hand, to have mixed fleets you need to reward with performance the extra coordination cost over "non mixed fleets", characterized by their low coordination costs. How to create/increase coordination costs then ? You need to increase complexity (the amount of relevant variables in different situations), by increasing the impact of range, tracking and everything related to ship sizes/classes in general, various forms of targeting disruption requiring coordination... NB. In Rust We Trust
Ithildin Gallente The Corporation	Posted - 2006.09.02 12:21:00 - [93] Edited by: Ithildin on 02/09/2006 12:22:44 So, did I understand it correctly? Near the BLOB is the SOD. The SOD is bad and dangerous. And the effective reach of the BLOB is a COD, and extension of the SOD. Dark skies torn apart Heavens open before me I, the light of death
Luric Vizjier The Legion of Spoon Curatores Veritatis Alliance	Posted - 2006.09.02 12:34:00 - [94] Edited by: Luric Vizjier on 02/09/2006 12:35:12 Edited by: Luric Vizjier on 02/09/2006 12:34:47 Said it before and I'll say it again. Environment and player blocking. You should not be able to hit through an asteroid or station anymore than another player's ship. This would SEVERELY stop blob tactics as you would have to have a clear line of sight to your target so as to not hit a friendly ship. Range is not the problem. Am I wrong? EDIT: Plus, this brings in new roles to fleets like giving tankers an actual purpose such as being able to block fire from other ships. -----------------------------------------------
Zar Dim Minmatar Anus Horriblis	Posted - 2006.09.02 12:36:00 - [95] I like the idea of the force field, which prevents high speed particles in, but allows slow ships to come inside the radius. That should discourage 200km sniping. You are eather trying to break field which should be pretty hard but manageble, or trying to close down with an enemy and launch short range ships - weapons. Also add AOE effect to torpedoes. This is not resource intensive and should help to spice up battles and decrease long range fighting and reduce blobs.
Xenofur Di-Tron Heavy Industries Knights Of the Southerncross	Posted - 2006.09.02 12:39:00 - [96] dunno if it was mentioned yet, but one way to create a powerful AOE weapon that wouldn't be teh pwn would be to create bomb drones. drones that do damage like smartbombs do, and can be set on a single ship, which it then approaches and on contact promptly explodes. they would have to be quite powerful, but even when you go as low as 10m¦ per bomb drone they would be VERY limited in terms of ammo as well as would reduce the number of normal drones you could bring.
Akira Kaneshiro Caldari Perkone	Posted - 2006.09.02 12:53:00 - [97] Originally by: Ghoest 3 Tux didnt mention this. In a real fleet your damage would be reduced by blobing. A good part of the time your gunners(or really a computer) would have to halt firing so as to not hit friendly ships in your way. Since EVE physics dont work like this there should be a damage penalty. Reason 3 is actually the main reasons formations are used by both ships and air planes historically. ---- sig of truth ---- Stop whining. Deal with it or quit the game.
Shao Lyn	Posted - 2006.09.02 13:00:00 - [98] A few suggestions... 1) Make most ECM weapons burst type weapons which affect all ship friend or foe. This would increase fleet cohesion racially and spread friendly fleets out greatly. 2) To keep ECM platforms viable, those ships would be able to use ECM mods which center on a ship target and area of effect is a cone. This would ensure enemy fleets keep spread out too. (Do this with the standard 95-99% reduction in cpu/grid for the ecm platform ships) 3) Gang size should increase locking time for the gang exponentially after say 10 in gang. Would encourage smaller gangs, and make them an even more effective anti-blob tactic. (Could be countererd to some effect with the use of command modules) 4) Have each ship be limitted to how many people can target it at once based upon it's sig radius. (No more 10 man killmails on a shuttle) 5) Introduce logistical modules for logistical ships. Something that would say give 10 ships a 10% armour increase. Have stacking penalties as normal and only highest skill score in effect per gang. 6) Module damage on hull hits anyone? 7) Have the load processors take into account structures in a system (POS, outpost, etc.) might help a tad with lag too. That's all for now from this noob. Wonder if I'll have a face...
Gabriel Karade Office linebackers Blood of the Innocents	Posted - 2006.09.02 13:29:00 - [99] ItÆs still lacking a reason to not focus fire all the time. Under most situations you would want to put as many of the opponents under 'stress' as possible, as a combatant not taking fire, not suppressed, is far more dangerous than one who is (plus the whole LOS issue which has been mentioned previously) Essentially if you have 10 of your ships firing on one, the other 9 unmolested ships should be causing havoc by putting all of your fleet under fire, causing damage and reduction in offensive capabilities (this would be a whole new layer of complexity beyond the simple # HPÆs remaining). And working LOS would be a god-send for high damage, heavily tanked close range ships - if an enemy does bunch up and blocks all their own LOS, you get in amongst them and tear them apart. ---------- - Office Linebacker -
Nafri Caldari Cataclysm Enterprises Dusk and Dawn	Posted - 2006.09.02 13:34:00 - [100] Things which will ruin Eve PvP: artificial limit on how many ships can target another ship stacking penalty on damage (only the first 3 will do full damage, then the damage will get nullified) Eve PvP is just dots shooting other dots, and intregrating unlogical stuff to compensate for that is wrong, and wont feel like a spacegame. From Dusk till Dawn

Lacero Callrisian Minmatar Solar Storm Axiom Empire	Posted - 2006.09.02 13:56:00 - [101] Originally by: Tsavong Lah End of the day, what is needed is to reduce the percentage of "gangers" in the average fleet, and make the players interested in doing more than pure damage - it's difficult, but it's been pulled off in WoW and other games well, CCP just need to think outside the box and see what can be played with. Removing kill mails would be a good start. /me hides in his asbestos bunker
Leign	Posted - 2006.09.02 13:58:00 - [102] The effect of trying to fight amongst a tightly packed group of ships would be to reduce your opportunities to fire on the target due to obstructions. So your rate of fire drops, making the gang less effective in a blob. How could this be simulated in Eve? Add up the sig radius of every ship within a 5 or 10km radius and use this as a negative modifier on your RoF. Possibly include the number of ships as a factor, as it would be easier to keep a small number of ships from obstructing each other than a large number. However, if your target is also within that radius, the RoF modifier doesn't apply.
Isyel Minmatar Masuat'aa Matari Ushra'Khan	Posted - 2006.09.02 13:58:00 - [103] Originally by: Nafri Edited by: Nafri on 02/09/2006 13:38:37 Also people forget why we focus fire: A enemy can warp out within 2 seconds if he is aligned, in that 2 seconds you need to kill him or you wasted time and firepower. Unless CCP changes the way ships behave to be more inline with what they should (afterall we fight with real big ships) there is no way fleetcombat will change. To stop focus firing a bit you need several stuff: - friendly fire - direction of fire - sluggy ships - hitzones - rework of tanking - rework of warping To kill a BS must need much more time, BS must be much rarer and basicly Eve would need to be rewritten. I agree regarding the BS behaviour. I dislike the EvE scaling, BSs even look small. (they are like 1km in lenght usually) Thy should behave like that too, not to mention in any common space game they would already be Capital Ships (they're actually bigger than usual cap ships i think :S). But it's a bit too late to change stuff to make BSs rare.
Merdaneth	Posted - 2006.09.02 14:06:00 - [104] The problem is not that focus fire is an effective tactic (thus encouraging blobbing) its that focus fire is easy to execute and the opponent has almost no ways to disrupt the tactic. Limit Overview What I would like to see is that the overview only lists the nearest 10 hostiles or so. If you want to target others, you can, but you have to do it manually. This would set up lots of tactical and formation options. For example: a group of interceptors rushing forward may disrupt enemy tactics pretty badly (especially if they reach enemy lines), requiring the enemy t to counter with interceptors (or interceptor killers) of their own. It is a fairly simple solution (and easy to code) but just think of the tactical possibilities it opens up. Picket lines, support ships positioning themselves at the back of the fleet, tanking ships on the frontlines, ships rushing forward and then back again in an attempt to disrupt enemy fire control by alternating available targets, fleets getting an advantage if they attack enemy flanks or rear. Interceptors rushing to support a breached flank etc. etc. Of course, large area of effect weapons can also discourage people to blob, but that is just a 'fix' for blobs, not an option that actually opens up tactical options. This probably needs to be combined with a reduction of range, so that ships from both fleets actually have a chance to get in close.
Daxes Cataclysm Enterprises Dusk and Dawn	Posted - 2006.09.02 14:33:00 - [105] Tux reminds me of someone who wants to fly to another galaxy while he isnt even able to get to the next damn planet. Even if there are all those new fancy features (which will anyways never happen) how do those help you if u are lagged to death? Its just a blog stating the obvious and tells noone with any clue something new. It even leaves out some thing like that the "destruction" of blobs would mean that it gives even more strength to the defender of a place. Any AoE weapons mean that u would have to warp in from many different directions/positions, alone this would give the defender a great advantage and would discourage fleets even more to warp into the enemy as long as there isnt something like a formation feature in Eve and tbh i dont expect a working one before the year 2012. So what do we have in the end? Again a lot of talking and new ideas/feature which will (like always) leave the biggest problem aside => lag.
UndergrounD Caldari Corsets and Carebears Whips and Chains	Posted - 2006.09.02 14:41:00 - [106] Try reduced targeting range based on ships in the grid. Like, Introduce an accumalative dampening effect when 20+ ships are in the same grid, increasing the effect as more players enter that grid. would prob crash the servers when a 100 man gang warps in, but by all acounts that nothing new anyway. -----------------------------------------------
Tohm Raerdor	Posted - 2006.09.02 14:45:00 - [107] Reading the blog and the suggestions, I agree with line-of-sight calculations and area-of-effect weapons. The calculation for line-of-sight is a simple dot-product calculation coupled with one range check, which should be pretty fast even if you have 200 ships in system. To reduce the calculations for large fleet battles, you could use the same line-of-sight check for weapons fired within 2 or 3 seconds of each other. Maybe ignore moving drones. And you may not have to update certain line-of-sight calculations if both X and Y ships haven't moved. As pointed out, this alone will encourage formations (simple line formations of follow the guy in front of you will suffice). Area-of-effect weapons increase the incentive to spread out. Pretty straightforward. Maybe allow interdictors to launch AoE damage weapons in addition to their warp bubbles with their launcher? That is currently the only ranged AoE weapon that I know of.
Cherybol Trader's Academy Daikoku Trade Syndicate	Posted - 2006.09.02 14:57:00 - [108] I think that when ships blow up, they should do damage within a certain radius. I mean common, flying metalic shrapenel. I just kinda skipped the pages just so i can add my 2 cents. And if this is already happening, then make it more powerful. It makes sense, and it discorages people to get in a pack of 20 people. AoE would be sweet to.
Malachon Draco eXceed Inc. Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.02 15:01:00 - [109] 1. Don't limit the number of ships that can target a specific ship. It will be abused. What prevents 5 friends locking each other to make sure they can't be locked by others or by less enemies? 2. Line of sight checks? Do you want more lag? I cannot imagine how this could ever be implemented without increasing lag considerably. You'd have to check for every shot whether people are between you and your target. 3. AOE damage might work. I'd limit it to dreads though. Gives them a role in fleet combat, and prevents it from being abused by every tom, **** and harry for ratting or whatever. Make it expensive ammo. 4. Other viable solution would be some kind of interference depending on the number of ships near you. Problem is that if you do this not exactly right, range becomes even more important. Because if you want to have a lot of friends near, they have to be spread out. And which means if you want to spread out, but still hit the same target, range becomes everything.
Lucre STK Scientific Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.02 15:11:00 - [110] I know drawing historical parallels is sometimes iffy. But historically there were 2 reasons "focus fire" didn't happen. Back in sail days, it was because your arcs of fire were relatively narrow so if everyone aimed at the same target, the ships would all be sailing in different directions and your formation would be messed. In WW1/WW2 days, range/arc was no longer an issue - the problem was shell-spotting. If everyone aimed at the same target (or even more than one ship aimed at a target) then working out which "splash" became problematic and your accuracy degraded as you couldn't tell which way to adjust fire. Interestingly, whilst most suggestions to fix focus fire have tended to use the second analogy e.g. effectively putting a stacking penalty on focus fire, your ideas almost seem closer to the first, especially the directional defences. Fascinating idea. Say ships could fit a genuine "invulnerability" bow shield - could be triggered like a siege module and use fuel. Probably stop you firing too. But the effect on fleet actions would as you say then be to force fleets to try and surround the enemy as otherwise any ship you focus-targeted would just retreat behind its shield.

Ethan Magnar Gallente	Posted - 2006.09.02 15:28:00 - [111] I'll voice my thoughts not just on blobbing, but combat in general. I haven't put any real thought into a solution, but I'll post my thoughts, in hope that the devs take notice. The biggest problem with combat in EVE, in my opinion, is that it's too quick and not tactical enough. Right now, you just call primary and alpha-strike your target, it goes down in a matter of seconds and you move on to the next. Now, about a year ago, a game called Nexus: The Jupiter Incident came out, a space RTS/sim. The beautiful thing about this game is that it took quite some time to take down a ship. Not only did they have generally more hitpoints, you had to think about what weapon you were gonna use at what time (there were different types of weapons against shield/armor etc), subsystem targetting, etc. Ok but that game is not EVE you say. Correct, but I do think it's something to work towards to. In general, I think battles in EVE should take far, far longer than they do now, and should be a lot more tactical instead of the call primary then alpha-strike. On topic then about the blobbing: dunno who said it, but I liked the idea about your exploding ship doing damage, I think this would not prove to be a final solution by a long shot, and raises problems of it's own, but I think it's a start.
herot Icarus Ascendant	Posted - 2006.09.02 15:34:00 - [112] Edited by: herot on 02/09/2006 15:34:47 One way to deter from close knit fleet formations would be to introduce a damage effect from exploding ships, akin to the damage done by a smartbomb but with the damage effect lessened by distance. This would force the commander in a fleet engagements to have to make a tactical decision about; whether to keep his ship close, to maximise the damage to prime targets, whilst running the risk of increased damage/loses if the tide in the battle turns again him, and his own ships starts to disintegrate under the enemy fire; Or should he instead spread out his fleet risking not having all in his force able to bring their weapons to bear on the primary targets, but on the other hand not as susceptible to a domino effect of losses, induced by his own ships breaking up. Of course the ship types would have to cause different amount of damage and at different ranges. But a frigate should be forced to think twice about being close to a capital ship on the verge of breaking up.
Gierling Gallente Celestial Fleet Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.02 15:51:00 - [113] This is a lot of awkward guffawing about the only really practical solution. SKill based limits on gang sizes with accompanying organization changes.
PhalHell Minmatar Rome SMASH Alliance	Posted - 2006.09.02 16:22:00 - [114] Originally by: Noriath Originally by: RayGic Luke Things that might make fleet combat more interesting than blobbing: 1) Friendly Fire (You just can't shoot thru your mate to hit the enemy, can you?) 2) Weapons AoE damage (Even a small scale AoE weapon will make ppl think twice before hugging each other's ship) 3) Damage from Ship's explosion (Similar effect to small scale AoE damage) If all the above 3 points are in the game, how will a fleet battle turn out? Pretty much the same way it does right now. The ranges that ships can fire at and the ranges that ships can and have to move during a battle are so completly out of proportion that it makes no difference wether your enemys ships are 1km or 10km apart. It's impulse movement that's the real issue in Eve. Nobody wants to impule anywhere, people don't even want to impulse to the gates, and they sure as hell don't want to impulse 200km towards an enemy so they can engage him in a ship that doesn't shoot that far, not to mention that he will simply warp off if you even get close. The whole way ships move in eve pretty much leads to one thing: If you don't warp in within your weapons range you will never get into weapons range, because either you will die before you can fire a single shot, or your enemy will just warp off if you manage to get close enough to still win the fight. Bcause of that long range will always win out in Eve. Also there is the whole issue with large weapons having a really easy time killing small targets that are very far away. Now what the hell is that? If a battleship simply could not hit a frig that's 200km away fleet battles would look quite different, believe that. Pretty much what Eve needs is a change to a point where moving to the right place on the battlefield and the ability to do that quickly is just as strategically valid as how much range or firepower you have. In order to achieve that stuff needs a lot less range, more speed and ability to go places, and most of all, the way warping works right now just has to go. The mobility of a ship will never really play a strategic role as long as all positioning is done by warping rather then acctually moving a ship. QFT. I don't want to highjack this tread but making all ships faster could resolve this and the bookmark problem in one way. Why ? Because moving faster will allow more tactical moves outside warping as it is now. Shortrange guns could add speed as an attribute. It is logical to do so as no one would fit short range weapons on slow ships. The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of my corps, not necessarily mine, and probably not necessary.
Skid Pants	Posted - 2006.09.02 16:29:00 - [115] How about increasing the lock time if you have more than say 4 or 5 ships targetting you ? Would make focus fire still viable but less economical, especially if the locking times stacked making a 7th or 8th person trying to lock you almost a waste of time.
Wanten RONA Corporation	Posted - 2006.09.02 16:48:00 - [116] I think shortening the range on a ship might allow for longer battles although it doesnt stop the ships warping in ontop of the enemy and "blobbing" them. Although i think linked with an idea like ships within a certain range of friendly ships say 5km will cause damage every time a ship fires a weapon, clearly this cant be 100s of hitpoints but it needs to be enough that if there were say 4 ships in the close area it would worry the pilot, hopefully this might encourage people to disperse their fleets. ----------------------------------------------- Rona Corp
Rafein Eye of God Axiom Empire	Posted - 2006.09.02 16:49:00 - [117] My ways of changing things. 1. Gang size should be limited by gang skills, following a tree much like corp skills. Now, anyone can join a gang at any time, but for gang bonuses to be applied, someone must have the skills to contrl the gang. Gang is too big, no one gets gang bonuses. But new skills and gang controls appear, fleet command, so it gets broken up into a more military structure. Each gan shares their bonuses, which then answer to their squadron leader, which answers to the fleet leader 2. New gang mod- Damage link. Basically, it adds the variable of moving ships into combat. When the mod is running, a flat 10 % of all damage taken by a target are instead taken by his gangmates, if gang bonuses ar shared. So the "primary" takes 10% less damage, but the rest of the gang takes some of the damage for him. Also a skill that adds 2% per level, so a 20% max reduction in Primary's damage taken, but the damage isn;t lost, the rest of the gang shares it.
Crellion Art of War Cult of War	Posted - 2006.09.02 17:02:00 - [118] Tux mate just fix the lag the rest is irrelevant. With no lag issues on can dance around a blob all day.
Miri Tirzan Caldari Reikoku Band of Brothers	Posted - 2006.09.02 17:59:00 - [119] Edited by: Miri Tirzan on 02/09/2006 18:04:16 . I can think of several things that would help with this issue but to be effective it would be a complete redo of the way fleet combat is done. Suggestions: Gangs 1. Have two levels of gangs: Squadron and Fleet 2. Have different sets of formations for Squadron or Fleet 2. Have gang leaders at each level 3. Put a gang size limit based on the leaders skills and ships on how many can be in a gang. 4. Restrict Fleet gang members to only Squadron Leaders Then 1. Make called fire a squadron command with no penalties 2. Make group fire by individual ships (not members of the same squadron) have penalties for multiple ships firing at the same target (I would think that anything after the first 3 do no damage) 3. Make the formation of the squadron affect the quality of the called fire 4. Make the formation of the Fleet affect the quality of squadron fire Additionally 1. Make the Fleets Area of Control be a map gird and if two fleets of the same corp. or alliance over lap then all the bad things listed below for squadrons happen to the fleets. 2. Make an area of control for the squadron gang leader that contains the squadron 3. If any squadronÆs in the same fleet enters the area of control all gang bonuses are removed 4. If more than 3 or more squadronÆs area of control over lap for the same fleet, then the gang bonuses become gang penalties 5. Make the range of remote energy/armor/shield be larger than the formation of a squadron 6. Make the use of remote energy/armor/shield be squadron (gang) list based 7. Make the use of utility drones use the squadron (gang) list Additionally this makes taking out leaders much more effective that just killing the biggest ship. I would also suggest that once a Squadron or Fleet Leader is killed. There would be a time period where no new gang commands at the level of the loss could be issues. This reflects the change of command. I also thing that regardless of who dies during the battle, no gang benefits change until the battle is over (but that may be hard to program) svetlana - "whining gets you stuff. that is why humans got to the top of the food chain and all the other animals got nerfed."
FactorzGT Quantum Industries	Posted - 2006.09.02 18:00:00 - [120] 1)increase relative ship maneuverability can you imagine 20 BS's being gang warped to 15KM of the same destination ... and then trying to double click in space to head in all different directions and form a meaningful fleet formation ... all the while trying to avoid the pitfalls of not accidentally clicking on some [moon, planet, stellar object] that would result in the game not receiving the correct command if you give a pitch, yaw, and roll interface then pilots would be able to conceivably form and keep formations ... additionaly the relative movement is key. instead of the "turtle race" that would ensue by BS trying to form up ... make afterburners non modular ... don't have them use cap, but rather their own independent "cap" ... it would allow battleships (and all ships) a boost of speed to cover distances and increase gaps in the formation' the speed boost can be easily tweaked via attributes to maintain an even keel across the ship classes and races 2) give us the option of an in***pit view with its own set of keyboard mapped ship controls like a dogfight almost, but without getting away from combat as we know it also incorporate true space movement ... if i head in vector A at 300m/s ... i can then rotate my ship 90degrees clockwise to in effect have a strafing view of my opponent ... my thrusters having been fired in the direction of Vector A will be disabled, inertia will maintain the vector, and maneuvering thrusters will have pointed my*pit in the direction i want to view now, using 1st person***pit view, i want to fire on my opponent, ... step 1, allow me manual targeting, allow the use of my mouse reticle to track, lead, and shoot a ship ... if this is the method in which i'm trying to shoot an oppenent then you better believe i don't want a blob of a fleet around me 3) obstructions i'm torn on this one ... but an ammo round fires in a straight line ... if a non targeted [ship, obstruction] is in the way, the ammo round would hit that ... sooooo ... if a blob of ships is your formation ... and if the target was obstructed by a friendly ship ... this would greatly discourage the blob additionally, a small ship could then in theory hide inside a hollow asteroid ... however in theory this hollow brittle asteroid is being hammered by huge ammo rounds, it deteriorates and would over time expose a hole to then blast the small ship in the case of missiles ... well they're guided so a blob fleet shouldn't affect them, i would say the missile would bump off the friendly ship, using up precious flight time ... once the missile gets near the target hiding behind the object, slow dumb missiles would just explode only dmg the obstruciton ... but fast smart missiles like light missiles, would track around the object, and (flight time permissive) make it to the target one last note about obstructions - wall like obstruction would protect ships only until the fleet maneuvered around them, however this might be just enough time the ship needs to align for warp and get away

Lardarz B'stard Amarr Out Of Exile	Posted - 2006.09.02 18:45:00 - [121] Originally by: Rafein My ways of changing things. 1. Gang size should be limited by gang skills, following a tree much like corp skills. Now, anyone can join a gang at any time, but for gang bonuses to be applied, someone must have the skills to contrl the gang. Gang is too big, no one gets gang bonuses. But new skills and gang controls appear, fleet command, so it gets broken up into a more military structure. Each gan shares their bonuses, which then answer to their squadron leader, which answers to the fleet leader I agree totally with this one, and in fact suggested it myself 2 weeks ago. Charisma needs a boost anyway. Exiles Recruitment
xaioguai Minmatar	Posted - 2006.09.02 18:52:00 - [122] In current fleet battle, its more like 2 giant gatling cannon firing at each other trying to destory each other's barrels. Why focusing fire? because the opportunity cost of firing is so low when focusing fire. for instance, when FC call someone's name, everyone fire upon him, 100 tempests, 100 people hitting F1-F6 at the target. Should he die? yes!!! did he die by 600 large shells? No!!! he probably died at the 40th shells. and what about the rest of people firing their guns? those shot was never fired because the target is already dead. and for those people who's shot didn't get registered on to the server, they can use the shot for the secondary target. second example. say.....3 scorpions vs. 3 other BS, will the 3 scorpion pilots drop all their jammers onto a single target? guess no one is silly enough to do that, cos there is no reward for doing that, and on the other hand, you wasted your cap plus opportunities to jam other ships. situation number 3, Torpedo ravens firing at a NPC BS. Many of you missiles users already know you have to actually counting how many missiles you have fired. Stop launchers and going after the second target before the first target is neutralized. That is because of delay damage. Guns on the other hand, doesn't have such kind of issue. So, here is my idea. 1. Ship should continue absorbing damage even when hull HP drop to 0. It should then start a self explode count down instead blown away immediately. It make no sense in RL that no ship sink in split seconds (ships take hours to sink) also hurt the fleet battle when players can recycle their shots because target inavailable. 2. hide player target HP. Guess work makes the game fun and also encouraging NOT to hit F1-F8 blindly at the target. You just shouldn't know if the target is dead, close to dead or completely healthy.
Dr Felonius Caldari Civilian Purposes Limited	Posted - 2006.09.02 19:19:00 - [123] I have two proposals which complement each other. The underlying in-game story retcon is the same for each - let's add a new idea that when weapon hits target (be it shield, armor, or hull), all the radiation, heat, and debris created interferes with sensors. One, instead of targeting penalties based on the number of ships targeting a given ship, impose stacking accuracy penalties based on the number of ships actually hitting the target. It might make sense to do this by modifying sig radius but it might not. I don't know the underlying math well enough to be sure. Two, add a mechanic that allows ship A to gradually refine its lock on ship B (allowing a slowly increasing damage multiplier and/or weapon signature resolution) over time, if ship A doesn't take any fire. Any time it takes fire the counter gets reset. There's some extra server math for this but it's purely arithmetic and counter-based, so it should scale linearly with the number of ships involved. It creates a new environment where massing fleets is still very desirable but the fleet commander now needs to find ways to distribute his fire across all enemy ships. FC skill (and the skill of those to whom the fleet FC delegates authority) become paramount, which in my mind is a good thing.
G Dabak Magellanic Itg GoonSwarm	Posted - 2006.09.02 19:43:00 - [124] Edited by: G Dabak on 02/09/2006 19:44:51 Well, for any blob fixes to work, you'll need a better gang system, because as it is there is no way to quickly get information about who is where and flying what. Changing this might even help on its own to encourage people to split up into smaller groups moving more independently. Beside subgangs and dragging people between them and all that stuff, show the gang leaders information about each member which they can filter and sort. Like ship type, ship class, warp speed, current solarsystem, etc. Or hell if you wanted to really go the distance, you could have a customizable form that the gang lead makes and the members fill in. Like say you get 5 "custom" fields in addition to the ship type/etc ones. A gang lead could set #1 as a checkbox labeled "EW", #2 as a number labeled "optimal range", #3 as a number labeled "scramble points", and #4 as text labeled "other" so people could let the FC know that they're in a comedy typhoon with 7 nanos. That would really help with large gang organization because an FC would have a nice grid of sortable info of just the stuff he wants to know. He'd know the names of people with certain capabilities without asking and filling up gang chat with responses. He could form people into squads and warp them in at the right ranges, or quickly put a group together of the most appropriate ships to perform a certain task. If he had to split a gang in two he'd know what was left in each half after losses were taken. I guess I've made my point now. Please post a blog about the gang changes soon because I'm obviously interested.
Malthros Zenobia Caldari Independent Navy Reserve Kimotoro Directive	Posted - 2006.09.02 20:28:00 - [125] If you want to discourage close blobs, give missiles splash damage. Then when citadel torps and rage torps are hitting dozens of ships at a time, theyll spread out. :D Sorry you can't afford a dev so you get me instead ^^ - Xorus
Grim Vandal	Posted - 2006.09.02 20:34:00 - [126] AOE weapons and line of sight are the solution. that's it Greetings Grim
Hllaxiu Shiva Morsus Mihi	Posted - 2006.09.02 21:11:00 - [127] I can't imagine what kind of lag line of sight code would do to this game! --- Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail. - Emerson
Apertotes Nuevos Horizontes	Posted - 2006.09.02 21:16:00 - [128] i think many people are focussing on blobs, and how to destroy them, when the real problem is focus fire. it doesnt matter if it is a blob or if they are on a formation, the problem is that when 60 enemies target you at the same time, you go "puff" on 1 second. blobs may encourage this behaviour, but even if we made people move and spread out, focus fire would still be the problem. that is what makes fleet wars boring. "xxxxx is primary"...1...2...3... "yyyyyy is primary"...1...2...3... unless we find a way to make focus fire not so effective, fleet battles will still be boring, even if every ship on the gang is 10 km from another. so, AoE weapons... right, we force pilots to spread out. so? as long as they are still in range, everybody will shoot at the primary target and battles will still be boring as hell. exploding ships when destroyed... the same as before. what this would do is encourage even more focus fire, to try to destroy ships as soon as you can to see if with the following explosion you still can hurt somebody else. so please people, think about solving focus fire effectivenes, not blobbing. and no artificial restictions like maximum gang size, or lessening damage done by more and more weapons, or increasing locking time with the size of the gang. those solutions suck. reducing range might be a good begin. Apertotes, the Guybrush Threepwood of New Eve
Mthathar Ad'am Black Reign Lotka Volterra	Posted - 2006.09.02 21:20:00 - [129] LOS code would add a small ammount everytime you are firing a shot. Multiply that with every gun on every player firing and it ammounts to a lot of lag. But, if you want to "penalize" blob formations, why not make them vunerable. For example, have interdictors being able to deploy EW bubbles which doesn't disrupt warp but have a chance of continously jamming anything within say 10-15km radius.
Kerr AVON Gallente Freelancer Union	Posted - 2006.09.02 21:43:00 - [130] Edited by: Kerr AVON on 02/09/2006 21:44:34 How about this as a fix to focused fire (as well as making combat more protracted and tactical)? Of course warping would need to be changed to keep players on the battlefield long enough to disable their ships. VERY high hullpoints (i.e. it can take an age to destroy a ship, depending on its size) Hullpoints are hidden from opponents, so they are not sure when it's 'about to blow' Modules and propulsion can be damaged to a point where they stop working When your ship has been disabled, you can either - 1) abandon ship in your pod and re-enter the combat in a replacement (the disabled ship would mouse-over as abandoned and could be entered by another pilot, either friend or foe) 2) you could stay onboard and wait in hope for repair help from your friends (logistic ships/repair drones). This would leave your side light on combat pilots, but would stop the opponent trying to salvage your ship to use against you This could result in the following scenario: a) Your opponents could focus fire to completely destroy 1 ship at a time (which could take a while) b) They could focus fire to disable one ship and then move onto another target (after all, the other ships are still dangerous, as they are shooting at them!). This could mean wasting a lot of firepower on a ship that is 'dead in the water' after 50 pilots have fired at it, and the next 150 pilots are only getting through that hullpoint total c) They could split their fire to try to disable more ships in a shorter amount of time Imagine repair ships frantically flying around trying to make damaged ships battle-ready, while avoiding the same fate. Or salvage ships from the opponents fleet trying to patch up abandoned ships enough to steal them from under your nose. What about 'playing dead' to make the opponent switch their targeting to someone else? (you stop firing and moving, even though your onboard repair systems are still operational). Then making a surprise re-appearance when they least expect it... The victors (who hold the field at the end) could have a number of salvageable ships they could patch up to use in future engagements. Scrapping insurance would probably be a good idea. This could work well for pirate ransoming situations too. Originally by: Gabriel Karade Under most situations you would want to put as many of the opponents under 'stress' as possible, as a combatant not taking fire, not suppressed, is far more dangerous than one who is I really like this idea. Maybe something along the lines of a percentage reduction in your offensive effectiveness when under fire (your crew are running around like maniacs trying to keep everything working while explosions are happening all around them). This would make a force much more likely to split their fire among many targets at once. _____________________ Questions are a burden to others; answers a prison for oneself.

Mother Clanger Royal Amarr Institute	Posted - 2006.09.02 21:45:00 - [131] Why not have a special torpedo type that causes splash damage, rather than having them all create splash damage? That way if you don't want to use them in empire you don't have to. I think the torpedo idea is particularly good because it gives Ravens a use in fleets again. As soon as the Rokh comes out it's going to disappear from everything but small gangs.
WarGod D00M. Triumvirate.	Posted - 2006.09.02 22:31:00 - [132] Combat is fine, range is fine, graphics r fine, EW is fine, HP of EVERY ship is fine, cloaking is fine. Making ships do less damage because there right next to there gang member is stupid Making a ship useless when at 50% hull in a fleet battle is stupid, a commander isn't gonna say to his 100man gang "everyone STOP SHOOTING HIM HES AT 50% HULL HE CARNT DO ANYTHING.. OMG U IDIOTS U KILLED HIM!" Here is what needs to change in eve fix the dam lag and Delete stabs. D00M. WarGods Kills
Darknesss D00M. Triumvirate.	Posted - 2006.09.02 23:14:00 - [133] Originally by: WarGod Combat is fine, range is fine, graphics r fine, EW is fine, HP of EVERY ship is fine, cloaking is fine. Making ships do less damage because there right next to there gang member is stupid Making a ship useless when at 50% hull in a fleet battle is stupid, a commander isn't gonna say to his 100man gang "everyone STOP SHOOTING HIM HES AT 50% HULL HE CARNT DO ANYTHING.. OMG U IDIOTS U KILLED HIM!" Here is what needs to change in eve fix the dam lag and Delete stabs. EW could perhaps use tweaking, but nothing major, but i agree with wargod, reducing damage because ur next to a gang member is an absolutely ridiculous idea, infact is monumentally stupid. (DONT DO IT).
Apertotes Nuevos Horizontes	Posted - 2006.09.02 23:25:00 - [134] Originally by: Darknesss Originally by: WarGod Combat is fine, range is fine, graphics r fine, EW is fine, HP of EVERY ship is fine, cloaking is fine. Making ships do less damage because there right next to there gang member is stupid Making a ship useless when at 50% hull in a fleet battle is stupid, a commander isn't gonna say to his 100man gang "everyone STOP SHOOTING HIM HES AT 50% HULL HE CARNT DO ANYTHING.. OMG U IDIOTS U KILLED HIM!" Here is what needs to change in eve fix the dam lag and Delete stabs. EW could perhaps use tweaking, but nothing major, but i agree with wargod, reducing damage because ur next to a gang member is an absolutely ridiculous idea, infact is monumentally stupid. (DONT DO IT). i agree with both of you. still i think that besides lag and EW, focus fire needs some nerfing. even if CCP got rid of lag completely, you would still find yourself dead on 2 seconds on a fleet battle. but of course, nerfing damage, tracking or sensor resolution is not the way to go. Apertotes, the Guybrush Threepwood of New Eve
WarGod D00M. Triumvirate.	Posted - 2006.09.02 23:47:00 - [135] Originally by: Apertotes Originally by: Darknesss Originally by: WarGod Combat is fine, range is fine, graphics r fine, EW is fine, HP of EVERY ship is fine, cloaking is fine. Making ships do less damage because there right next to there gang member is stupid Making a ship useless when at 50% hull in a fleet battle is stupid, a commander isn't gonna say to his 100man gang "everyone STOP SHOOTING HIM HES AT 50% HULL HE CARNT DO ANYTHING.. OMG U IDIOTS U KILLED HIM!" Here is what needs to change in eve fix the dam lag and Delete stabs. EW could perhaps use tweaking, but nothing major, but i agree with wargod, reducing damage because ur next to a gang member is an absolutely ridiculous idea, infact is monumentally stupid. (DONT DO IT). i agree with both of you. still i think that besides lag and EW, focus fire needs some nerfing. even if CCP got rid of lag completely, you would still find yourself dead on 2 seconds on a fleet battle. but of course, nerfing damage, tracking or sensor resolution is not the way to go. well if there was no lag u would be able to get ready to get shot, unless its the start of the battle, u will get called 2nd target, meanin ur getting locked at and not shot, and once 50 people have u locked, would be smart to warp off :P but with the lag, u got 1fps and all u will see is everyone goin yellow, then red, then ur ina station D00M. WarGods Kills
Apertotes Nuevos Horizontes	Posted - 2006.09.02 23:57:00 - [136] Originally by: WarGod well if there was no lag u would be able to get ready to get shot, unless its the start of the battle, u will get called 2nd target, meanin ur getting locked at and not shot, and once 50 people have u locked, would be smart to warp off :P but with the lag, u got 1fps and all u will see is everyone goin yellow, then red, then ur ina station yeah, but what is the point of that? wouldnt it be better if fleet battles weren't about warping out and back in? then the enemy fleet calls secondary another pilot, and he also warps out, and then another, and another, and another... that is pointless. ships need to get destroyed, battles are to destroy ships. destroying ships is both good and fun. but not when it is done in 2 seconds. what is needed is a way to evenly distribute the targets of a fleet among the enemy fleet, but without stupid restrictions like lessening damage done to a single target by many ships shooting at the same time. Apertotes, the Guybrush Threepwood of New Eve
Alessar Kaldorei Caldari Free Space Alliance	Posted - 2006.09.03 00:30:00 - [137] Three things I'd like to see, which might help with focus fire and blobs: - Line of Sight: This could be checked client side and have the client give a fire/nofire answer to the server if there's something there. Making the check clientside should help limit the lag, and there should be some measures to make the calculation quick and not too expensive in terms of resources (you don't need to check for ships farther away than your target, for instance). This makes formations valuable, meaning tactics become useful. And it's not an arbitrary decision forced by programer, but something that makes sense. - Area of Effect Damage: In any of the ways proposed (ships exploding, missiles, other). This naturally leads to a danger associated with tight formations. Again, it's not an arbitrary measure, and pilots can still decide how close to their friends to fly. - Make turrets (with the exception of lasers) have muzzle speed. Meaning, the farther away something is, the longer it takes for the projectile to hit. This shoudn't be too long, just not instantaneous. And the projectile shouldn't be physycal. Keep the guns working exactly as they do now, except damage is dealt with a few seconds of delay. Why? currently, some guns have over 100km range. Assuming they took one second to hit, that means the projectile is traveling at a speed of 100km/s. In the game, they're instantaneous, meaning infinite speed. It's ok for them to have imperceptible delays at close range, but not a 200km+. It's insane, when one considers the different types of guns in the game. A railgun should be the only weapon capable of reaching projectile speeds surpassing several km/s. Projectiles should be the slowest, and no idea about how a blaster works. Probably a speed between projectiles and railguns. Lasers should remain instantaneous. This adds a bit of realism, and punishes focus firing. Currently, if a target dies while the player is clicking F1-F8, the turret will simply target the next target, meaning there is no cost of opportunity associated with having everyone shoot the same person. With the small delay, if you hit F1 while the ammo from the rest of the fleet is still 'flying' to the target, some shots will be wasted. An efficient FC will divide his fleet into smaller groups and order different targets for each group. Some ships may be able to survive a salvo if they have a lot of HP, meaning they get a small window of opportunity to repair or jump. Others will still get blown up as before. But on the whole, should add some more realism to the battle, and again, punishes focus firing with a valid reason (projectiles don't move at the speed of light). As for skill limits to gangs and the like, I don't think any arbitrary measures to limit blobing and the like should be in place. There really is no reason to do it, and it doesn't feel right.
Apertotes Nuevos Horizontes	Posted - 2006.09.03 00:50:00 - [138] AoE weapons, while nice, help nothing at all with focus fire, at least if ships still maintain those crazy ranges. Line of Vision would create an infinite lag, and if client side it would be a home for exploits, like on CS and those invisible walls cheats. and delay damage for projectiles would do nothing, just like for missiles. instead of using tempest people would be using geddons, or they just wouldnt mind at all about 10 or 15 ammo units lost. no good commander will prefer to not waste those ammo units for a sure kill. Apertotes, the Guybrush Threepwood of New Eve
dalman Finite Auxiliary	Posted - 2006.09.03 01:31:00 - [139] I guess this is an issue that I've 'debated' before. As I'm very very very against the extended versions of the current POS wars that seems to be planned. Because: 1. The server can not support the fleet battles required by the game mechanics (POS mechanics) 2. Neither can the client support the same fleet battles. 3. And the game mechanics for fleet battles really is 4tl (what this blog is about). Basicly, all ship balance in EvE is from a 1vs1 perspective... Or at least not more than 10vs10. Yet CCP continue to introduce 'features' for 100vs100 battles which (above) neither the hardware nor the game mechanics can handle. If my battleship was supposed to have 100 ppl firing on it I would expect it to have 1M HP. IMO there's 3 possible solutions: 1. Gang modules much much better than the ones we have today. Of course these would have to be limited as well so they're only useful in big fleets. 2. Diminishing returns (in various ways), which kinda sucks. 3. To simple make it impossible to call out targets. Remove the player name from the overview for example (after all, it doesn't make sence it takes me 20 seconds to lock a frigate but I somehow instanly knows who flies it). Am I forced to have any regret? I've become the lie, beautiful and free In my righteous own mind I adore and preach the insanity you gave to me
Apertotes Nuevos Horizontes	Posted - 2006.09.03 01:52:00 - [140] Originally by: dalman Basicly, all ship balance in EvE is from a 1vs1 perspective... Or at least not more than 10vs10. that is the biggest problem. ships damage and tanking are balanced so that it is possible to kill another ship on a 1on1 fight. that means a 2on1 fight is usually an easy win (unless different ship sizes/classes), a 3on1 fight is almost always a very easy win, and anything higher should result on a slaughter for the lone ship. so, making it so easy for a fleet to target the same ship at the same time makes for a very boring fleet combat mechanic. but also, limiting the number of ships that can target a certain ship sucks a lot. and of course is very easy to exploit, since all you'll have to do is get everybody on the gang to be targetted by 4 friendly ships. if the limit is 5 targets on every ship, that means the enemy fleet can only use 1 ship to target every hostile ship. no, those artificial limits dont work. same as limiting gang size. or diminishing returns. that is why i propposed a module that would let you "steal" the incoming target atempts of a gang mate. this way you would have many more options to defend your fleet, and could priorise which ships should be defended more, or which ships should take a heavy beating. no limits at all, just an intelligence and tactics combat between commanders. if used correctly, this module could make battles last hours. do you remember BoB defensive tactics on the Alliance tournament? with this module you'll be able to do something similar, and logistic ships would be useful again on fleet battles. Apertotes, the Guybrush Threepwood of New Eve

Avernus Gallente Imperium Technologies Firmus Ixion	Posted - 2006.09.03 01:58:00 - [141] Breaking up blobbing... This isn't fully thought out, but perhaps you could consider introducing an AoE ECM Cruise Missiles. 4 racial types and 1 general all purpose type (like multispectral, or burst). I'm thinking a weapon such as this should have the appropriate penalties: - Requires a specialized launcher (can only fire ECM missiles, not standard ones). - Very slow rate of fire. - Intensive fitting requirements for CPU. Requires quite a few skills to use: (for example) - Electronics L5 - Electronic Warfare L5 - Long Distance Jamming L4 or - Frequency Modulation L4 - Missile Launcher Operation L5 - Cruise Missiles L5 - ECM Cruise Missiles L1 General stats could fall along the lines of current (or soon to be adjusted) ECM strengths for jammers. Racial missiles would have a larger AoE and strength than multi-varient missiles. You get the idea, I'll leave the balancing to CCP. Nothing in life is quite so sweet as the taste of payback.
Citizen Zero	Posted - 2006.09.03 02:29:00 - [142] Some thoughts: 1) AOE damage on ship destruction. If ships are blobbed and one pops it explodes causing severe short range AOE (1-10KM) damage. Think exploding warp core. Adds a risk element to blobbing. 2) Add freindly fire. If people are blobbed together make non missile weapons act liek the dumb projectiles / beams of linear energy they are. If your gang mate is in your line of fire when you open up or crosses your line of fire as your shooting they get hit instead and at very close range. 3) Gradual damage applied to ship mods and weapons. In the real world as a ship takes damage things stop working or at least stop working as effectively. Implement damage affecting installed items and it will be more realistic and may reduce the "shoot until it pops" mentality. This would potentially also make logistics / repair ships more useful in large fleets. 4)Implement sectional shields and armor. IE have damage apply to various sections of the hull / armor / shields independantly. So if your taking heavy damage to your forward shields / armor you should be able to turn your damaged side away from who is firing at you. IE use real world physics for non "smart" weapons. An extension of this would be the ability to fit plating / shield hardners to different areas of your ship up to a overall total. 5) Mines. OMFG do we need mines back. Make them like drones so you have to be near them for them to be active. This prevents people from laying mine fields at gates and then flying away and messing up the game by griefing. Making mines like drones will also limit the number of active mines each player can deploy at a given time. I agree with the earlier post in this thread about having different types of mines. Direct damage, sensor dampening, stasis field generators etc. Essentially like sentry drones but one shot deals rather than mini-ships. 6) "Long Term Damage" weapons. It would be nice to have a weapon that could be fired into fleet positions that would create a long term low damage field. Think radiation pocket. It would function like cyno field in that it would require fuel to fire. It should take at least a minute to "spool up" the weapon (which would give the enemy time to target and try to interupt the firing). The weapon would dispearse a field at the target location over a given AOE and would cause low but constant levels of constant damage or sensor interuption. While not enough to be a super weapon liek the "I win" buton, it would force stationary gate camping fleets to move or suffer interferance / damage at their fixed loaction. This will add a much needed layer to fleet tactics and will make fleet engagements much more dynamic, chaotic, and realistic. An additional thought for this weapon system is to make it so that say if being in the field reduces sensors by 50%, then trying to target something that is inside the field from outside the field would reduce signal strength by 25%. This makes it a more balanced weapon. 7) With the new ship destruction mechanics (where there is a ship wreck instead of a can), make wrecked ships and maybe even highly damage ships emit interferance and radiation that causes damage and or interferes with nearby ships. The longer a battle goes the more nasty the battlefield will get. Just some thoughts, CZ
Suze'Rain	Posted - 2006.09.03 02:31:00 - [143] a twisted little thought just came into my head. you want to break up blobs? simple. Area of effect damage.... not from torps (which would make ravens even more popular), but from ship destruction. just think what happens when that hoary fireball of death shockwave blast from your wingmate's death blows off half your sheilds tooo.... and while inverse square damage to range would be great (but probably kill the server) in an ideal world, even a simplified version (3 spheres, of 5km, 10km and 20km perhaps) like that might make people more inclined to keep their distance. and would make all those monstrous ship explosions seem a little more visceral :)
Albrecht Wassenar Caldari Tsurokigaarai Kimotoro Directive	Posted - 2006.09.03 04:15:00 - [144] Edited by: Albrecht Wassenar on 03/09/2006 04:18:30 Tux, there are many issues which you touched on in your blog, and one of which, the rediculously large Coconut of Death (CoD) can be solved in two simple steps. 1) get rid of T2 ammo. 2) split sensor booster enhancement bonus's of both range increase and sensor resolution into 2 separate modules (which has been discussed previously). These two things alone would reduce the rediculous CoD size quite easily to somewhat more manageable levels. Some other ideas: make a maximum range on Gang assit modules, while initially this would seem to make people blob together even tighter (and some might), this also might encourage fleets to break up into smaller groups so as not to deal with trying to cram that many ships in too small a space. Also this opens up the avenue to adding more AoE weapons as if they are all going to cram into gang module radius, they will make a ripe target for AoE weapons, hence balance. However, griefing with AoE weapons must be taken seriously. Just my 2 cents. I also really like SuZes idea of splash damage from exploding ships being increase. ------------------------------------- KD Director of Foreign Relations ------------------------------------- Join "TKI-net"/"Directivenet" for more information
Minikrimi Extreme	Posted - 2006.09.03 04:37:00 - [145] The best solutions would be the ones that introduce the FEWEST complexities. The FEWER calculations required, the better. Things like area affect explosions of ships = good. I also enjoyed the idea about transferring locks aquired on one ship to another ship with EW, though I don't think that would resolve anything having to do with blobs that much. All I can think of is daisychaining this effect from one ship to another right back to the enemy fleet! It would be very humerous to watch torps circle back and hit the ships that launched them due to hacked targeting systems. However, things like LOS and hit locations on ships, for now, = bad. Lag is bad enough for now. As realistic as those systems might be, Eve generally does not go to that level of physics because the greater the realism the more those hamsters have to gasp for breath, and the sooner they have to go for a lie-down. This is not a realistic combat game, and has never been one.
Jormunrek Amarr Mining Bytes Inc. Xelas Alliance	Posted - 2006.09.03 04:48:00 - [146] Pretty much all of the suggested fixes are either related to blobs (and not adressing the issue of focus fire, which is what the blog was about), would significantly INCREASE the amount of lag already incurred, or are just plain silly. If the ships are in one tight blob or 5 (or even 10) smaller blobs it won't address the issue discussed, focus fire insta-popping. The only way to counter focus fire is to prohibit the ability of a force to communicate or have an FC call primary. Which would be rediculous to attempt to lower the ability for people to communicate with each other (an almost impossible because of vent, ts, etc...). Just to play devil's advocate I would counterpoint that it would actually make more strategic sense to have a gang mod for Command Ships (Fleet, not Field) and possibly motherships that allowed for the FC to assign a target to their fleet and it activate the individuals' targetting system on the assigned ship/pos/veldspar/whatever. Possibly a limited gang version for Field Command Ships but priority given to the Fleet variety. Although in the end I'd like to point out that while focus fire insta-popping might be considered an issue there are so many other issues that have a much higher priority on the list of things to do that I cannot understand why this topic was even approached at this time. And two other minor points: If you increase hull points it will unbalance eanm II x2 DC x1 even more If you increase hul points I want the DC I bpo seeded asap along with a COSMOS awarded bpc version. ;) Jorm
Pesadel0 Vagabundos	Posted - 2006.09.03 08:17:00 - [147] Damm and here i tough that tux was releasing a blog about the new ships ;(
Helmut 314 Amarr J.H.E.N.R Pure.	Posted - 2006.09.03 09:18:00 - [148] In the words of Josef Stalin, "Quantity is a quality in itself". The blob and focus fire isnt the real issue. Focused fire is efficient on many levels, not only does it ensure some kills, it also streamlines the command and communication structure in a fleet. As long as we have to rely on OOG tools like teamspeak and whatever they can offer in way of communication improvements the blob will rule. We need better gang tools. ECM also needs a massive overhaul to make it more realistic. ECM should degrade targeting systems, confuse them and make shots less accurate, not shut down targeting systems. ECM should have the ability to create false targets that can only be tuned out when you get to close range. Targeting data should be shared in the gang via automated datalinks, when one ship is locked by the gang leader all other ships aquire the target as well. ECM should be a supporting system, not main armament. Sensordampers : cuts the targeting range and speed of all ships not in gang by a set percentage. (Datalinks compensate your gang for the dampening effect) ECM:s : Generates false targets and slows down locking speeds of all non-ganged ships. Two modes, active and passive. In activated mode a targeted ships sensors are confused and has a set chance of generating a false duplicate of your own ship. In passive mode all non-ganged ships locking speed is reduced slightly and there is a set chance of creating a false duplicate of your own ship for all the enemy. Tracking Disruptors : Reduces the accuracy of both turrets and missiles. Adds a set percentage chance of generating a miss. Works on two levels, defensive and offensive. In defensive mode (non-activated) it lowers the accuracy of all ships not in gang by a small amount. In offensive mode (active) it lowers the accuracy of a targeted ship by a higher amount. Target Painters : Reduces the efficiency of ECM modules of the targeted ship. ________________________________ Trying is the first step of failure - Homer J Simpson
Lucre STK Scientific Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.03 09:48:00 - [149] Originally by: Gierling This is a lot of awkward guffawing about the only really practical solution. SKill based limits on gang sizes with accompanying organization changes. Trouble, limiting gang sizes alone won't do much on its own whilst people still have access to third party comms like TS. You don't need to use gangs for fleet fights, and if you start limiting gang numbers or penalising large gangs then the fleet sizes won't change - they'll just split into multiple smaller gangs and coordinate on TS.
Death Kill Caldari direkte	Posted - 2006.09.03 10:05:00 - [150] So all of a sudden focus firing is wrong? Got ganked? Recruitment

Sae Marr Amarr 0utbreak	Posted - 2006.09.03 10:31:00 - [151] Did I misunderstand something, or is CCP trying to discourage fleet engagements through changing game mechanics instead of giving the server more juice? -
Hermia HIVE	Posted - 2006.09.03 11:31:00 - [152] Originally by: Sae Marr Did I misunderstand something, or is CCP trying to discourage fleet engagements through changing game mechanics instead of giving the server more juice? Unless we're running optronic processors (which is still a good 10 years away), you get what your given in terms of technology. We can deal with it through clever game mechanics. Plus, even if it was possible to "brute force it" with un-economically viable server power, the gameplay would be such that 1000 vs 1000 people fighting (without lag) wouldnt create excellent play because of current mechanics.
murder one Gallente Death of Virtue	Posted - 2006.09.03 11:52:00 - [153] With respect to the idea of splash damage for exploding ships: if that is included, which I think would be cool, make the optimal range for blasters 25km so I don't have to be inside the core of the explosion EVERY TIME. Because I said so...
Ling Xiao	Posted - 2006.09.03 11:54:00 - [154] Edited by: Ling Xiao on 03/09/2006 11:56:21 Wow, a whole blog to say "whoops, we gave everyone too much range". Yeah no **** sherlock. And here comes the Rokh Just hire DigitalCommunist already and let him fix it. At least dig up his monumental post describing what needs to be done, which most of the community was behind 100%. edit - here it is
Death Kill Caldari direkte	Posted - 2006.09.03 12:55:00 - [155] Originally by: Ling Xiao Just hire DigitalCommunist already and let him fix it. lol you nutter. Recruitment
Marcus Aurelius Colossus Security Services	Posted - 2006.09.03 13:48:00 - [156] Edited by: Marcus Aurelius on 03/09/2006 13:51:02 So like, alot of words stating that nothig's been done about an issue that's been one of the main discussion points of Eve pvp combat since...like...launch ? You even haven't really thoguht about it in depth yet ? Unimpressed, to the extreme. edit: hell no, i'm not unimpressed, i'm ***** flabbergasted that CCP hasn't even studdied an issue that you've been told is at the core of Eve's main combat issues for ***** YEARS ! So what did you do all that time ? Rod Blaine is on holiday, I'm replacing for the moment
Trac3rt GoonFleet GoonSwarm	Posted - 2006.09.03 13:59:00 - [157] Blobbing and focused fire are not problems, and do not need to be fixed with in-game mechanics. It is blatently obvious that Tux does not have much experiance of actual 'blob' combat. There is a lot more to this style of combat than simply focusing fire to win. There is a lot of skill involved in managing a fleet, and the choice of what to call primary can make or break a fleet engagement. There are three main types of Blob combat. 1)Individual vs Blob. If a solo ship warps into 50 hostiles they are dead, any game mechanic to change this would be silly. 2) Blob vs Blob. This is the main reason that large blobs are formed, fleets facing off in space each one trying to capitalise on their advantages and prevent their opponent from attacking their weak spot. 3) Siege/Cap Ship combat. Combat involving capitol ships, you pretty much need a blob to kill a dread/carrier/mothership/titan, and anyone placing such ships in a combat situation hae to field their own blob for protection or risk billions of ISK loss. Blob on Blob combat is the most common. The objective is to reduce the combat potential the opposing blob has as quickly as possible, and while focusing fire is the primary tool used to acheive this, being able to select which targets to call primary in which order is the real skill to blob combat and is what seperates a good fleet commander from a bad one. Fleets have four main componets. 1) DPS. Mainly Battleships and HACs, they deal the most damage over the largest range and are the most important element of almost every fleet. 2) Electronic Warfare. Frigates, Cruisers, Recons and Scorpions. They have the ability to instantly 'shut down' one or more ships without destroying them using ECM, tracking disruptors and sensor damps. 3) Tacklers. Interceptors, Frigates, and Interdictors. Used to prevent enemy ships from escaping the battle. 4) Support. AF's, Cruisers, anything not covered by the above. Usually used to take out hostile tacklers, but can be redeloyed easily to other tasks if required. A fleet commander has to manage each group, and apadt to the tactics being used against them. For instance if the enemy EW is completely shutting down your DPS, you may reassign your support to attack the EW as well as calling EW primary. If their support are taking out your tacklers and their DPS are warping out before you get the kill, then you may have your EW take out their support. There is an awful lot of decision making to do, and one or two mistakes can be the differance between the win and the loss. Fleet combat while looking simple on the outside has a massive amount of depth and a huge amount of skill involved, it does not need to be nerfed at all. The only thing that needs to be seriously looked at is POS combat. With the introduction of Cyno-capable ships, POS's can be fueled risk-free without suply lines to hit, and with a static there is no 'cat and mouse' gameplay where two fleets dance around each other both trying to get optimal warp-ins. POS warfare is simply a case of gathering a big enough blob that the opposition cannot do anything to stop it, shoot the POS with dreads, and then wait 12 hours to repeat. The joke that CCP calls load balancing doesn't help either. The server cannot dynamically reallocate server resources, and canot cope with any sort of large scale combat unless both parties have been logged into the same system 24/7 for several days. Warping/jumping one fleet into another can lead to one fleet being completely destroyed before they even load the space around them, and if they do it takes several minutes to activate a single module or warp out, and heaven forbid there is a hostile POS on grid. Large scale fleet combat doesn't need any changes, it works well as it is, and requires a large amount of skill. The only changes need to be made with the load-balancing lag situation, and with POS warfare where the attacking blob doesn't get to do anything 90% of the time. ___
Godar Marak Amarr Return Of Red Dawn	Posted - 2006.09.03 14:06:00 - [158] Originally by: Trac3rt It is blatently obvious that Tux does not have much experiance of actual 'blob' combat. Nor in flying Amarr lol
La Tortura Infinite Style Incorporated Chorus of Dawn	Posted - 2006.09.03 14:10:00 - [159] What if we just would allow to shoot if the line of shooting is blocked by other ship? Not friendly fire, it would be to harsh, but just deactiveting weapon if you're "behind" would break the blob. -- ignorance is bliss
Lacero Callrisian Minmatar Solar Storm Axiom Empire	Posted - 2006.09.03 14:16:00 - [160] Edited by: Lacero Callrisian on 03/09/2006 14:21:51 Edited by: Lacero Callrisian on 03/09/2006 14:18:41 Originally by: Kerr AVON Edited by: Kerr AVON on 02/09/2006 21:44:34 VERY high hullpoints (i.e. it can take an age to destroy a ship, depending on its size) Hullpoints are hidden from opponents, so they are not sure when it's 'about to blow' Modules and propulsion can be damaged to a point where they stop working This is brilliant, mostly solves the problem (although as you say warping needs to be changed, and range is still an issue). Originally by: Kerr AVON Originally by: Gabriel Karade Under most situations you would want to put as many of the opponents under 'stress' as possible, as a combatant not taking fire, not suppressed, is far more dangerous than one who is I really like this idea. Maybe something along the lines of a percentage reduction in your offensive effectiveness when under fire (your crew are running around like maniacs trying to keep everything working while explosions are happening all around them). This would make a force much more likely to split their fire among many targets at once. Honestly, this solves even more of the problem. Reducing damage dealt based on number of hits taken (rather than damage dealt) might be even more interesting as teams of frigs could effectively pin down a battleship so it's only dealing half damage or something. [Edit: ok thats maybe kinda dumb, it makes autocannons insanely good. But the poor acs need some love they have no range :(] I think this would have to work even if the enemy misses, you're still having to avoid the shot right? This makes range even more powerful but we can't sovle everything at once. Best post I've read in a while, thanks :)

Nicholai Pestot Gallente Havoc Inc	Posted - 2006.09.03 14:47:00 - [161] Firstly-fix the lag. I dont care if its not your job Tuxford, just fix it Give a bonus to a persons sig radius for every weapon over the first 8 that hits them. Set the bonus to last for 5 seconds. Small weapon- 0.5% Medium weapon- 1% Large weapon- 2% XL weapon- 4% If a person takes a wack from the firepower of multiple battleships, there is going to be a hell of alot of debree/shockwaves/energy released around them, making it damn hard to hold a good bead on them. If, for example, a person took a broadside from 4 megathrons then for the next 5 seconds their sig would be reduced by 40%. I heartily endorse the reduction of weapon ranges and ask only that capital ships are not touched by this. Suddenly they have a use in a fleet fight . One final thing that always bugged me, shouldn't the sig radius of the ship your shooting at vary based on distance from your point of view? A cruiser at point blank range is going to damn near fill your screens. The same cruiser 100km away is going to be smaller than a pin*****. Might actually make it worth it to take logistic cruisers into a fleet fight. Hmmm, what else.... Kill tactical BM's Change POS models so they dont cause so much lag (i dont care if its not your department...DO IT ) Introduce kipper kannons There, jobs a goodun. I want the proposal ready and blogged by 6 am monday morning. ________________ What you do is you store up the rage, let it fester while you gain strength, then use it to gank those weaker than you... and so the circle of life is complete
Grymm Arann	Posted - 2006.09.03 15:02:00 - [162] Originally by: Linerra Tedora ahh read it.. and downloaded alot at the same time... so he's looking for a way to discourage blobbing... never seen one myself, but if it's going on at 10-20 km, couldn't one make a special ship that could suicide, delivering massive damage in an area around it... then you have your fleet with a few of these in front.. if the first scout finds a blob, the rest jumps in, spaced with a few seconds between... and nuke the blob to heck.. but if the guys on the other side is spread out, this ship won't accomplish anything but damaging a few ships a bit.. I could see this actually. Possibly a destroyer sized ship for speed and make it instantly self-destruct. It does massive damage within 2-3 km and the damage lessens all the way to 15km or more.
Mitch Manus Regeneration Axiom Empire	Posted - 2006.09.03 16:41:00 - [163] Originally by: Amthrianius Edited by: Amthrianius on 01/09/2006 21:18:54 "What is the problem here? Some say its focus firing and I would have to agree." No it's lag. Clicking warp waiting 20 seconds and not warping out then your ship pops. agreed
Eriv Kendri Caldari Quantum Industries Prime Orbital Systems	Posted - 2006.09.03 17:56:00 - [164] Edited by: Eriv Kendri on 03/09/2006 17:57:30 Some ideas ive had on this subject. 1. Allow control of your own ships transponder broadcast. For example you could limit it to only corp/alliance and/or gang members. Ships not broadcasting transponders are only seen on the overview by their ship size or alternatively signature size no other info is gleaned without a ship scanner or physically looking at the target. 2. Hide the hitpoint display on targets unless the target is locked with a ship scanner. Ship scanners can be countered with a new module. 3. Targets under fire take stress. Can be implemented either by module damage or a simple across the board percentage degrading of effectiveness. This would include agility and other propulsion effects. 4. Increase hull hps. 5. Perhaps allow all ships (maybe not frigs or cruisers) a fortified mode that would significantly increase hull hps or resistance but not allow warping or module activation (ships in fortified mode do not warp out if the player logs off - they stay in space until fortification wears off and then warp off with normal aggression timer in effect).
Caanan Finite Horizon	Posted - 2006.09.03 18:12:00 - [165] Lag is the killer of blob warfare. If we had no lag at all then blob warfare would be more fun, because you would actually have a chance to survive, instead of having to load the screen for 10 minutes then finding out you're podded. Because we cannot remove lag entirely we should be looking for ways to reduce lag using ingame mechanics. What tux is proposing is going to help fleet battles be more interesting, but it's not going to stop you from getting killed before you can see it.
Lurtz Caldari Gunrunners and Gamblers	Posted - 2006.09.03 19:19:00 - [166] Originally by: Kunming Reading.. looks like a nerf on long range... finally! pulls out blaster no what I read is big splash damage from weapons and ships blowing up.... stay further apart if your wingman is being shot at unless you want some too!
Cemial	Posted - 2006.09.03 19:27:00 - [167] Your shipÆs gravity field and active sensor systems should interfere with any ship too close to you, making it slightly more difficult or even impossible for big concentrations of ships to lock a target. Make EW modules that have a spread like are of effect in the shape of a cone, so that a whole blob of 10km radius could be jammed by a single ship. They should only be effective towards a direction rather than following a target or they could be exploited by jamming a friendly interceptor which is flying at top speed through the battlefield. EW grenades that generate an area of electronic interferences so that any ship inside would be affected by some negative effect to force ships into moving out of them. When the grenade explodes you can see a nice sphere marking the position and size of the field. Limit the duration of the effect, to prevent lag, as well as the recharge speed of the module, and give it some high fitting requirement to balance it. Also, in my opinion, reducing weapon ranges and increasing base speed for ships would help to get ships moving in a battlefield rather than sitting in a blob. I love damage from ship explosions. A kamikaze module to detonate your ship making as much damage as energy stored in your capacitor could be a good idea as someone mentioned before.
DigitalCommunist Evolution Band of Brothers	Posted - 2006.09.03 19:51:00 - [168] Heres a summary of suggestions in this thread - Lag is the problem, fixing lag will make fights longer - Make people lock slower if they're too close to one another - tactical environments - nerf gang sizes - bring back mines - split sensor boosters - boost smartbombs - nerf tech 2 ammo - introduce personal jump drives - directional shielding - bring back torpedo splash - make ECM ineffective at close range - remove player names as ship identifiers - reduce range of all ammo - have only 3 different ranges to ammo - kamikaze ships - bring back gang warp bumpage - diminishing returns to focus fire - collision damage - healing auras - AOE weapons - line of sight computations - splash damage as a result of ship death - ship formations to space out the blob - limit the number of people that can lock you - increasing HP + tanking - terrain; fighting inside an incomplete Death Star - module/subsystem damage - restrict the amount of certain ships a gang can have - fleet shield generators - firing arcs for each ship - reduce target sig for each successive lock - Semi-autonomous repair drones - limit the number of friendly ships you can have on a grid - remove tactical bookmarks - allow warping to ships over 200km away - subsystem targetting I got up to page 4 or something. Tired of rolling my eyes, so I'll stop here. Its sad to see that most of the people here think overcomplicating the game with arbitrary mechanics will fix it, when in fact it will make it worse. Purchasing Complex Fullerene Shards, contact me ingame.
vipeer Celestial Horizon Corp. Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.03 20:16:00 - [169] Littletuk said it first. I was thinking about this idea and developing it in my head for the last 24 hours. I am sure we all agree that in the areas where there is a lot of different signals radiating there will be interference. You can easily test this by calling someone on a cell phone and put that cell phone near a speaker. The cell phone's signal will interfere with the speaker signal and the radio will start making funny noises. Im sure everyone knows that. When solar wind erupts 150 million km away it jams the satelites in orbit and sometimes even disrupts electrical power supply and signal on the planet we live on. During the night radio works a lot better. My radio bought 15 years ago for 229 Deutsch Mark can, with a broken off antena, get a signal from all over Europe and even north Africa. Night is the time when radio signal waves are least polluted by other signals and thus can reach great distances. Why not implement this into large blob warfare. In battles of 200 vs 200 there at the ranges of 200km each ship will need to have at least 2 sensor boosters equipped. That's 800 devices made to amplify the signal for it to gain a lock on an enemy ship far beyond the range the ship sensors were designed for. The signals in large blobs will be overlapping each other and create interferences making them less powerful as originally intended. This should manifest itself in a decrease of locking range and maybe a very slight decrease of the locking speed. The penalty should start working at an arbitrary combined maximum targetting range of the ships in gang. Yes that would mean if half the gang warps to one side of the enemy fleet and the other on another side the penalty would still apply. This would encourage FC's to create more gangs instead of one blob. The sensor penalty would apply to all ships from the same gang on a grid. The exception would be the grids where a POS is erected. More on this subject later. Maybe a combined max targeting range of 2000 km would be that arbitrary number. The ships attributing to this number should only be the ones that have two sensor boosters / sensor amplifiers or more equipped and online. It would still be able to fly a short range BS in the same gang without adding a penalty by using only one sensor booster. This would cap maximum number of super range shiper BS to 8 û 9 which is still a massive amount of alpha strike but will render huge blobs of near server crash proportions useless. These 8 BS would be able to acquire a target lock at their maximum possible distance. Maybe make this penalty a 2% decrease of maximum targetting range for every 100km of max targetting range above 2000 km. This will still enable a bigger than 9 sniper BS gang but if there is like 50 sniper BS in gang and each has 2 sensor boosters and a sensor amp online they will have like 250km max targetting range each before penalty. That means a combined targetting range of 12.500 km. That is 10.500 km above where the penalty starts kicking in. That's also a stack of 105 1% range decrease penalties. That means their original max targetting range being 250km would be decreased back to 87.023 meters to about where it started and the pilots in a blob would have wasted 2 or 3 slots. I think this solution is quite mild on the resources needed to implement and use it.Since you'd be only adding a small amount of data that needs to update constantly. It also opens a box of other tactical posibilities. You can have 5 gangs of 8 BS along with one or two command ships for support shooting at an enemy blob and anhilliating it. It would require a high degree of communication and tactical planning but what's better than to outperform a bigger enemy and literally crush it. Use the behemoth's size against it. This way T2 long range ammo stays in use because in smaller gangs you can still use it at uber ranges and will end the blob warfare as we know it today.
vipeer Celestial Horizon Corp. Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.03 20:17:00 - [170] Above post is work in progress but if i could get some input and constructive critisism that would be wonderful. Maybe Tux or some Dev could comment... Wait and see ;) More coming

Celinthis Gallente Titans - Royal Antwerp Warriors 3rd Front Alliance	Posted - 2006.09.03 20:38:00 - [171] Most of the statements are all just patches that are mostly purely out of game thinking instead of finding the most natural solution! http://oldforums.eveonline.com/?a=topic&threadID=388549
Maya Rkell Forsaken Empire	Posted - 2006.09.03 22:27:00 - [172] Tux, As you well know there is ONE reason why sniping, long range, is so effective - T2 amo. Short range damage with +100% range. THAT ALONE causes a nasty part of the problem. And yes, sensor boosters need slashing in their effect by a third too. Those changes, alone, will shorten engagement ranges and allow the tanking changes to really matter a heck of a lot more in larger combats.. the EW changes too, if you pick something like my partial jamming / flare jamming not to mention WCS range reductions. There are soloutions, which have been discussed over and over on these forums. //Maya
Eriv Kendri Caldari Quantum Industries Prime Orbital Systems	Posted - 2006.09.03 22:28:00 - [173] Originally by: Celinthis Most of the statements are all just patches that are mostly purely out of game thinking instead of finding the most natural solution! http://oldforums.eveonline.com/?a=topic&threadID=388549 LOS is not practicable because of the lag associated with its implementation. Additionally it contains a turret nerf as a side effect. Furthermore, if LOS is added, the fire concentrating blob will just adapt a line or ring formation to negate it.
Maya Rkell Forsaken Empire	Posted - 2006.09.03 22:31:00 - [174] Edited by: Maya Rkell on 03/09/2006 22:31:14 dp (?) //Maya
Grey Area Caldari	Posted - 2006.09.03 22:43:00 - [175] Originally by: Ghoest 3 Tux didnt mention this. In a real fleet your damage would be reduced by blobing. A good part of the time your gunners(or really a computer) would have to halt firing so as to not hit friendly ships in your way. Since EVE physics dont work like this there should be a damage penalty. Love this idea...but not a damage penalty...a rate of fire penalty. Not sure how the maths would work, but say no penalty up to a 5 man gang, then an exponentially increasing penalty such that for gangs of (example) 50 or more ROF was down to about 1/50th of normal. This would reflect the amount of time that a shot was not viable due to a friendly being in the way. Could also work in conjunction with a locking time penalty - not because of all the scanners as someone suggested, but simply to reflect the difficulty in picking out the desired target in a sea of friendly ships. Maybe the ROF penalty could be less sever for smaller, more nimble ships, reflecting their better ability to get in the best position for a shot...this might balance smaller groups of frigates against "top heavy" fleets consisiting of mostly battleships. --- Monty Pythons spoof of the EVE Forums; Palin: "Is this the right room for an argument?" Cleese: "I've told you once."
Maya Rkell Forsaken Empire	Posted - 2006.09.03 23:04:00 - [176] Yes, let's PUNISH TEAMWORK. Moreover, you want to do it in a way which dosn't hurt pirate gankers who one-volley indsutrials and frigates one bit. Gee, wonder why that is! So basically under your system there is NEVER any point to bring more than 10 ships, and any ship which is not a gank-fitted BS actively REDUCES the gang damage potential and is a plain parasite. Oh yes, I forgot global ECM in my last post too. All these things have been discussed to death. The "nerf teamwork" lobby is a bad idea...making smaller ships more viable, making ECM work against focused fire, making WCS reduce range and most of all removing the broken T2 amo will do it ALL without massively impacting the smaller group combat which is allready interesting and varied! //Maya
Grey Area Caldari	Posted - 2006.09.03 23:24:00 - [177] Originally by: Maya Rkell Moreover, you want to do it in a way which dosn't hurt pirate gankers who one-volley indsutrials and frigates one bit. Gee, wonder why that is! If you're implying I'm one of the gankers, then you know nothing about my play style. I am, if anything, the gankee. Try to keep your wild speculations to yourself. Originally by: Maya Rkell So basically under your system there is NEVER any point to bring more than 10 ships, and any ship which is not a gank-fitted BS actively REDUCES the gang damage potential and is a plain parasite. That said, this is a good point, and reducing damage rather than ROF would be a better option...it prevents that devastating first strike. Originally by: Maya Rkell making WCS reduce range Ah, so you get all gooey eyed about haulers being ganked, but are quite happy to cripple mission runners who may actually want to run a mission in a 0.4 because their idiot agent sent them there, and fit WCS to give them a chance to run from an opportunist ganker. Let me tell you about missions...they're not particularly clever. They involve doing a lot of damage as quickly as possible. The NPCs don't use anything I would be happy to describe as "tactics"...they are just pretty tough (VERY tough, in a couple of notable cases). Thus if you fit out to give yourself a chance against PVPers, you are in SERIOUS danger of not being able to complete the mission in the first place - or, it taking MUCH longer which increases the risk you WILL be found by a PVPer. You don't need ECM mods for the mission, so carrying them "just in case" would be a total waste (and, for them to be effective, you need quite a few). WCS are a good backup plan. They do NOT need a nerf that affects the combat effectiveness of mission runners. --- Monty Pythons spoof of the EVE Forums; Palin: "Is this the right room for an argument?" Cleese: "I've told you once."
Maya Rkell Forsaken Empire	Posted - 2006.09.03 23:28:00 - [178] I'm implying that you are suggesting gameplay to favours one gameplay style. And yes, Grey Area is a carebare. Your other characters? Um. (I can't know...) "happy to cripple mission runners who may actually want to run a mission in a 0.4 because their idiot agent sent them there" 10% each. A mission runner can take a 20% range hit and live. The Vagabonds and sniper BS with a 50% range hit have viability issues. A sensible alteration, in other words. //Maya
Rift Scorn Caldari Black Nova Corp Band of Brothers	Posted - 2006.09.04 01:23:00 - [179] Edited by: Rift Scorn on 04/09/2006 01:24:15 I have to say that there are two sides to this coin that i've seen so far. Nerf blobs eh? Annoying seeing as this is meant to be a game where players/groups of players are meant to be totally free to play in anyway they like. On the postive, it means 'blobbing' par se will still be here; your FC in fleet situations will just have to be more tactical/creative about how to distribute his 100+ strong fleet and where. Stagger ranges, different warp in points and play much more to the assembled fleets ships strenghts; it won't be an end of fleet fights as such. There will still be 200+ fleet fights that go on for 30 mins and lay waste to hundreds of players. There's nothing like that feeling when you sit there burning up in 50% structure with enemy cans & drones all over the place and you got the warm glowy feeling of winning. Much like there is that bitter disappointment when your the ones sat at a safe spot scanning for probes after you've taken an absolute drubbing and are in a pod surrounded by 90% of your mates, also in pods. That's the reason i play this game above all others. On the Negative, as i mentioned restricting people's game play in such a way is frustrating. Nothing like a slug fest, calling primaries & Secondaries and going through the list and seeing who comes out on top. All fleet allignment un-hindered but close to each other and just go crazey and duke it out. To have the nerfed is a big strong, as it nerf people's prefered playing style, or in some cases when they're hugely outnumbered, the only thing you can do is keep everyone together get various positions with coverts load long range, and try and whittle down the numbers with Alpha strikes whilst keeping your losses to a minimum, until you can engage; or are willing to. Doing this will mean more time sat at safes, or bouncing around safes, whilst reducing combat time. For those that love the PvP this will be a monumental kick in the testicular region. Well, those are just the potivies and negatives i see at the moment. I've probabley missed a bunch, but i do find it worrying that for the first time in 3 years, i've seen talk of nerfing player tactics in a player driven game. Mess with modules, mess with ammo, balance and change this that or the other, but not player tactics. Your friendly clone activation expert, free of service to the eve community since '03!
Maya Rkell Forsaken Empire	Posted - 2006.09.04 01:48:00 - [180] Edited by: Maya Rkell on 04/09/2006 01:47:57 Originally by: Rift Scorn Mess with modules, mess with ammo, balance and change this that or the other, but not player tactics. /agree //Maya

Gyn Seng	Posted - 2006.09.04 06:33:00 - [181] Edited by: Gyn Seng on 04/09/2006 06:33:34 re-introduce splash damage to all weapons which normally would have it. then make it so that war targets in empire space are only affected by it and in 0.0 everyone.
Hugh Ruka Caldari	Posted - 2006.09.04 07:04:00 - [182] Edited by: Hugh Ruka on 04/09/2006 07:06:01 Well I got my laugh at the blog :-) Now I realy like that something like that is looked into. One note, I did not read the entire thread (I usualy do, but not always) so please spare me the flame when some of these have been already suggested, just say so, I'll read the thread when I have time. Give us proper target designation abilities and warp in/movement capabilities. What makes blobs so easy is the absence of any terrain in space. Also that there is not obstacle impact calculated in eve. So we need to get around the obstacle calculation a bit. I will address all 3 points: 1. Target designation/calling. There is only one option and that is target tagging. I tried to use it once to coordinate a mission with corp mates. Short verdict: unusable. We need something that is clearly visible in overview, and that we can filter it. The number tagging is OK, but please make it visible in overview that the target is tagged (different icon or something like that). This way target calling gets easier and even non-TS folks can participate in a fleet fight. 2. Warping/movement. Right now we have the ability to warp to a few ranges from a target. Usualy this means covops ships in front of the enemy. The problem is that the warp in is strictly constrained in the direction from which you warp. If I could warp at all the range BEHIND the warp target, that would be usefull. Imagine you have a fleet waiting at a SS, fleet commander warps in to enemy fleet in covops at say 100km. Then the snipers warp to 100km in the conventional style, while close range ships warp 100km BEHIND him, so they end right in the middle of enemy fleet. This also helps with the T2 long range ammo issue. T1 snipers can warp in at their optimal, this way we get a nice layered fleet at different distances. It would be good if we would get also the option to warp in at a different plane like 15km above/below etc. This should ONLY work with gang mambers, not normal warps to celestial objects and gates. 3. Obstacle impact calculation. There is no terrain in space. This means no obstacles in the path of the shot/missile. Actualy this I think was already suggested. Make another "tracking" parameter that measures blob density and make guns miss based on that parameter. If there are 100 ships cramed into a 10km sphere, they should shoot each other and not the enemy !!! So in this case they do not shoot from time to time. This should simulate the friendly ship in line of fire situation. Something like a stacking penalty should apply. The more ship density the less fire goes through. The above points deal only with larger fleets. And should introduce some more tactical decisions. However it does not do that at the side of the target. There is one idea that comes in mind from conentional warfare. Imagine a few heavy howitzers shooting a target on mother Earth. They will throw so much dust and earth in the air, that they will not be able to see the target after a few rounds and have to shoot only by balistic coordinates. This could be applied to EVE also. Let us introduce a sensor interference when shells/missiles impact ship armor/shield. This should work in a way that calculates DPS and impact shots per second. The more shots and DPS on the target, the harder it is to hit (reducing signature radius for example to affect both missiles and guns). In an extreme scenario, the target would not be locakble for a short duration. /flame away Originally by: JP Beauregard The experience with Exodus playtesting has scarred me for life. Those were bug-reports, not feature requests, you numbskulls....
Hugh Ruka Caldari	Posted - 2006.09.04 07:57:00 - [183] Edited by: Hugh Ruka on 04/09/2006 07:58:28 Well after reading a few pages. I see many of my points above have been voiced. The BEST way of solving the blob problem is to ENHANCE the tactical/strategical possibilities we have in game. NOT byt restricting the blob. Introduce more effective ways of fleet combat that however require som more coordination. That way the stupid and blobing ppl will get eaten by the smart and coordinated. As I said above, we have too few options to coordinate and manouver a large fleet ingame. gang organisation is NONEXISTENT. We have to rely on out of game tools like teamspeak to get some organisation. Nobody will use delicate tactics if they are difficult to execute. Fleet formation templates, gang command hierarchy, designating objectives ingame, more effective ship movement and warping are some of the points that would help. A fleet commander should be a fleet commander, not a name calling monkey. DO NOT NERF existing options, INTRODUCE NEW ONES that are more effective when used right. The game should EVOLVE and not degenerate (be nerfs). The most effective tactic today should be only an option tomorrow as new ways of accomplishing the same are introduced. Originally by: JP Beauregard The experience with Exodus playtesting has scarred me for life. Those were bug-reports, not feature requests, you numbskulls....
Storm Mage Amarr Forgotten Souls	Posted - 2006.09.04 08:00:00 - [184] Why not make it so gun projectiles/beams don't go through objects anymore? IE currently a gun can shoot and pass through anything in its path until it hits the target, change it so that it will hit anything between it and the target. I mean missles go around stuff so why can't guns hit stuff between them and the target? Let the lightning be your warning and the thunder your battlecry!
Kanuo Ashkeron Eve Defence Force Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.04 08:25:00 - [185] Edited by: Kanuo Ashkeron on 04/09/2006 08:24:54 I think the lag is the real problem. And maybe a few things like Tracking computers and sensor boosters (as they do both enhance range/locking time AND tracking/locking range). But the lag actually denies you to use tactics which need good timing and coordination. And that are the key features of good tactics: Timing and coordination. If you send a few interceptors to the enemy blob to provide a warp in point for the close range group, they actually cannot determine the right time to issue the warp-in command. A second problem is of course the sniping small-ships on long range. I don¦t know how easy it would be to implement, but I think making the sig radius of guns dependant on the target range should solve such problems. 425mm t2 rail, Sig radius: 400m + 1 m/km range Kanuo
Garia666 Amarr adeptus gattacus Lotka Volterra	Posted - 2006.09.04 08:53:00 - [186] Edited by: Garia666 on 04/09/2006 08:54:21 Mabe its an idea to focus on your customer support first instead of thinking about yet another change. What about the drones which supposed to be give out less lag and make things way faster. With every new change you solve one problem and get more problems back and unless people get rich of the new problem it takes a VERY LONG time to get it solved. And by this i am not stating you guys are doing a bad job, but if i was CCP i would set my priority`s differently. And work on customer support first! Take a look at the forum rule 21. You see that email adress? it doesnt even work..
Sharcy Sonnema	Posted - 2006.09.04 09:28:00 - [187] Originally by: Runt Mcgoire Originally by: Tao Han Originally by: Kunming Reading.. looks like a nerf on long range... finally! pulls out blaster Or one hell of a boost to Smartbombs Grenades type weapons? Return of mines? Nucleair missiles and shells? --

Tuxford	Posted - 2006.09.04 09:35:00 - [188] Sorry I haven't replied to this sooner, I've had a rather busy weekend. I've glanced through the thread a bit and have a few comments. We've been through how different people have different roles at CCP. Do I really need to say it again? I can't fix lag, there are other people working on it and I doubt they need my help or that I can give any to them. Splash damage to missiles - There was a reason for it being removed, very good reason. Yes I know it was great fun but it made fighting with missiles in empire really really dangerous. AoE weapon - We are not limited to smartbombs, we can make new modules. I'm afraid we are a bit limited in the effects we can achieve right now, we can make burst effects, like damage and burst jamming but not continuing effects. Take less damage the more people are shooting at you - This has always sounded to me like it would be severely exploitable. This also just doesn't make logical sense to me. Lowering the rate of fire depending on ships close to you makes a bit more sense but I'm still not sure its the way to go. Less ranting, more on what you're going to do - Usually I get knocked around for just telling what we're doing and not explaining why we're doing it. I guess I just have to find that golden ratio of how and why. This blog wasn't originally supposed to be about blobs and how they are bad it was supposed to state the reason why we need to reduce range. How we're going to do that is subject for another blog. _______________

Sharcy Sonnema	Posted - 2006.09.04 09:38:00 - [189] Originally by: Hugh Ruka If there are 100 ships cramed into a 10km sphere, they should shoot each other and not the enemy !!! This is so logical that it's hilarious (or sad) this isn't the case in EVE today... --
Garia666 Amarr adeptus gattacus Lotka Volterra	Posted - 2006.09.04 09:42:00 - [190] Edited by: Garia666 on 04/09/2006 09:42:58 Originally by: Tuxford Sorry I haven't replied to this sooner, I've had a rather busy weekend. I've glanced through the thread a bit and have a few comments. We've been through how different people have different roles at CCP. Do I really need to say it again? I can't fix lag, there are other people working on it and I doubt they need my help or that I can give any to them. Splash damage to missiles - There was a reason for it being removed, very good reason. Yes I know it was great fun but it made fighting with missiles in empire really really dangerous. AoE weapon - We are not limited to smartbombs, we can make new modules. I'm afraid we are a bit limited in the effects we can achieve right now, we can make burst effects, like damage and burst jamming but not continuing effects. Take less damage the more people are shooting at you - This has always sounded to me like it would be severely exploitable. This also just doesn't make logical sense to me. Lowering the rate of fire depending on ships close to you makes a bit more sense but I'm still not sure its the way to go. Less ranting, more on what you're going to do - Usually I get knocked around for just telling what we're doing and not explaining why we're doing it. I guess I just have to find that golden ratio of how and why. This blog wasn't originally supposed to be about blobs and how they are bad it was supposed to state the reason why we need to reduce range. How we're going to do that is subject for another blog. Well first of all Its good that CCP is telling the community what they think of. And they should keep doing t hat. However CCP has to keep inmind that what you say can have big Impact. Dont forget Many people in EVE are walking on there toes ATM. There is a lot going on and it seems there is no end to it.

Demon Johnson The Scope	Posted - 2006.09.04 10:28:00 - [191] Originally by: Tuxford Take less damage the more people are shooting at you - This has always sounded to me like it would be severely exploitable. This also just doesn't make logical sense to me. Hmmm... I know what you mean: 5 people shooting a pirate with civilian guns and make him immune to fire from somebody who really wants to harm him. To counter this not the number of people fireing at you should decrease damage, but the amount of damage taken. This should be a exponential function. The result would be that there is a theoretical minimum time to loose a given ship, like a battleship lasts at least 1 Minute, a Cruiser 40 seconds and so on. But how can we do this RP-wise? The targeting computer on your ship simply does not target any part of a ship, but known weak-spots. A good hit with high damage means, that you have hit a critical area, a bad shot simply bounces off. When a ship now gets under heavy fire (meaning it takes damage), the disintegrating hybride-shells, the EMP of lasers and the explosions of missles and projectiles create such a high amount of electromagnetic interferences, that the computers cannot aim so well and must wait for a short break in the electromagnetic interferences to fire, reducing the ROF.
Zarch AlDain Friends of Everyone	Posted - 2006.09.04 10:40:00 - [192] Originally by: Mrmuttley One problem with AoE weapons is fleet battles in Jita and the like Today I undocked in Jita in a freighter right into the midle of a 20 man fight (thanks guys I just had to sit there ping-ponging between ships like a fool while you fight around me. ) However had any of them been using AoE weapons I would likely have got caught and some-one would have been Insta-Ganked by Concord. Remeber the days of blast radius on missiles hitting some miners can in a belt in empire when your killing NPCs. WHile thats funny in low sec its not so great when some tard flys a shuttle into npcs your shooting at just to watch you get Insta-ganked by Concord. Good point, but I think restrict it exclusively to Torpedos (not all missiles) and you could have a winner here...(would need a clear warning on torps as well to avoid using them in empire). You now actually have a use for missile boats in fleet fights as they try to get some torpedos into the middle of that nicely packed fleet. It would need the problems with torpedos not working if you start to die/warp/cloak/do anything fancy though as you would die before your torpedos hit unless you had some options. Zarch AlDain
Zarch AlDain Friends of Everyone	Posted - 2006.09.04 10:55:00 - [193] Originally by: MysticNZ Originally by: Idara Originally by: Nyphur So much for letting people play the way they like. Now blobbing needs "fixed"? People want to play the generic blob style of combat??!?! Ever read what it says on the eve retail box? That's right, huge 'fleet' combat. But we still want huge fleet combat - we just want it to involve a little bit more than 'shoot primary, lock secondary, repeat until dead'. Zarch AlDain
Dux Dar	Posted - 2006.09.04 10:59:00 - [194] Edited by: Dux Dar on 04/09/2006 11:04:03 Originally by: Grey Area Originally by: Ghoest 3 Tux didnt mention this. In a real fleet your damage would be reduced by blobing. A good part of the time your gunners(or really a computer) would have to halt firing so as to not hit friendly ships in your way. Since EVE physics dont work like this there should be a damage penalty. Love this idea...but not a damage penalty...a rate of fire penalty. Not sure how the maths would work, but say no penalty up to a 5 man gang, then an exponentially increasing penalty such that for gangs of (example) 50 or more ROF was down to about 1/50th of normal. This would reflect the amount of time that a shot was not viable due to a friendly being in the way. Could also work in conjunction with a locking time penalty - not because of all the scanners as someone suggested, but simply to reflect the difficulty in picking out the desired target in a sea of friendly ships. Maybe the ROF penalty could be less sever for smaller, more nimble ships, reflecting their better ability to get in the best position for a shot...this might balance smaller groups of frigates against "top heavy" fleets consisiting of mostly battleships. Love this idea, but i would like to take this one step further. Assumes your ROF penalty is calulated as the number of non-enemy player ship inside a sphere radius around your ship. You also get a inertia/speed penalty, as you got to be careful not to crash into your neighbour. The ROF penalty should be reduced if you're flying in "formation", to a degree that flying in formation would be REALY good. The larger the angle between your formations present direction and your present target, the larger the ROF penalty you would get. If your target is more or less streight ahead of your formation, the ROF could even be INCREASED (if in formation), while the ROF penalty gets realy large if the target is behind you. Gang/fleet skill could play a even lareger role in ROF/inertia/speed penalty and the "influence radius". Then we will still have blobs (with strong fast focused fire streight ahead), but gradually peeling a blob from the sides or from behind would be very dooable by smaler more agile forces With the interia/speed reduction, ships in a blob would be slow to repond to flanking attack, but smaler ships in a blob/fleet should be able to respond faster, as they should be able to move faster to a point where the number of ships in its "influence radius" is starting to become neglectable. With something like this i think the end result would be smaler groups flying in formations, spread out all over, trying to constantly outflank eachother, joining into blobs (for better focused fire in one direction) or peeling off into smaler groups for better defence and flanking attacks, as the situation dictate. Also, as ships in a group starts to go kaboom, the rest of the group starts to get better ROF/intertia/speed (and a better chance of escape).
Kanuo Ashkeron Eve Defence Force Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.04 11:45:00 - [195] Edited by: Kanuo Ashkeron on 04/09/2006 11:46:54 I think many people see the problem from a wrong angle. I think the problem is not the blob. The problem is, that you can do nothing about it. If there would be the stone-scissor-paper game with tactics as well as with modules there would be no problem. If someone is using the blob-tactic, take out the anti-blob tactic and you win. But that¦s not possible today. And as stated above, and I think many other posters have the same opinion, lag is the first and biggest enemy of advanced (anti-blob) tactics. Again, the blob is only the symptom not the cause. Kanuo
The Major Caldari StateCorp Veritas Immortalis	Posted - 2006.09.04 11:56:00 - [196] I am so not reading the whole topic but I just thought of something: Friendly Fire and Collateral damage. Any shots that "Miss" their target have a chance to hit a random target within a short range of the original target instead. The greater the number of ships within this space the greater the chance one of them will get hit by a stray shots. These stray shots can hit anything (Frind or foe but NOT cargo containers, drones or pods) withthe chance of hitting determined by relative signature radius (so Interceptors are the least likely to get accidently blatted by a 425mm Rail). At the same time the large concentration of targets around your locked target makes your weapon systems less accurate (lots of noise, fog of war etc). Can even have a skill to reduce the effect of this a bit. This by no means removes blobbing from the game but it will break up focussed fire as the primary target will be taking less hits. Might not work brilliantly as it turns blobbing into a defensive technique while reducing it's effectiveness as an offensive one. I did just think that Autocannons versus blob of Interceptors would be interesting. You'd have guns firing wildly at fast moving ships and every shot that misses has a chance to hit one of the other ships. Could be interesting.
Admiral IceBlock Caldari Northern Intelligence SMASH Alliance	Posted - 2006.09.04 12:00:00 - [197] Well another way to fix focused fire to make it less powerful is to reduce the amount of weapons you can have fitted. In the old days fitting 4 tachyons on an apoc was normal because really you could not fitt any more. The extreme people that fitted 5 and 6 tachyons had to use at least 5 grid extension modules. These days fitting 7 tachyons is no problem, neither is 8. It is infact just normal. If you made it normal to fitt 4 tachyons and almost impossible to fitt 8 people would not be able to fitt 8 tachyons and full rack of damage mods and tracking enhancers.
Gunship Amarr FATAL REVELATIONS Lotka Volterra	Posted - 2006.09.04 12:35:00 - [198] lag is your problem in big fights #1 #2 is that ships need better hit points, perhaps another 25-50% inc on all. So you want to join us?
Death Kill Caldari direkte	Posted - 2006.09.04 13:34:00 - [199] Edited by: Death Kill on 04/09/2006 13:42:58 Originally by: Tuxford This blog wasn't originally supposed to be about blobs and how they are bad are they? Recruitment
Sable Schroedinger Gallente Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction	Posted - 2006.09.04 14:07:00 - [200] My opening thoughts are this: Increased effectiveness of Smart Bombs and the creation of AoE ammo for missles and Arty's (as was hinted at). With concorde taking out anyone that fires such a thing in empire - maybe even making them illegal to have in empire? Change ECM bursts to actually work well. With their cycle time and range they are a pale immitation of an ECM module. Increase the effectiveness of transversal. A large blob sitting around in one spot should have more problems hitting than a mobile dog fighting squad (looks cooler too ). Make range effect things far more than they do - as has been mentioned many times before, the whole locking range/speed mod thing. coupled with an increased range/sig radius effect. Thus forcing a fleet to split into different ranges. At the end of the day, there should be a trade off for every tactic and only by combining can someone reach the optimal. -------------------------------------------- Nothing is as cruel as the righteousness of innocents

Gabriel Karade Office linebackers Blood of the Innocents	Posted - 2006.09.04 14:21:00 - [201] Originally by: dalman 3. To simple make it impossible to call out targets. Remove the player name from the overview for example (after all, it doesn't make sence it takes me 20 seconds to lock a frigate but I somehow instanly knows who flies it). I suggested this some months back, and the typical response recieved was "I don't want to shoot nameless squares" - well I still think it could warrent looking at in conjunction with improved gang functionality e.t.c ---------- - Office Linebacker -
Sable Schroedinger Gallente Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction	Posted - 2006.09.04 14:30:00 - [202] I don't like the idea of removing names, purely because it opens a whole "disguse" can of worms - also prolly means things like fleets all naming their ships the same and other sillyness. -------------------------------------------- Nothing is as cruel as the righteousness of innocents
Grey Area Caldari	Posted - 2006.09.04 14:37:00 - [203] Originally by: Maya Rkell 10% each. A mission runner can take a 20% range hit and live. Nope. Not against the swarms of interceptors in some missions. The single best tactic is to target them all and fire one, maybe two modules at each from extreme range...they turn their MWD on to come in and take massive damage, killing them much more quickly. Using this tactic, if there are four Inty's, I normally get three before they have closed. If you make them 20% closer, then more of them are going to get in close, thus taking much longer to kill, thus making me spend more time in the dangerous places where the PVPers can find me. --- Monty Pythons spoof of the EVE Forums; Palin: "Is this the right room for an argument?" Cleese: "I've told you once."
Koronos Interstellar eXodus R0ADKILL	Posted - 2006.09.04 14:45:00 - [204] Originally by: Amthrianius Edited by: Amthrianius on 01/09/2006 21:18:54 "What is the problem here? Some say its focus firing and I would have to agree." No it's lag. Clicking warp waiting 20 seconds and not warping out then your ship pops. I agree. I really feel like the line of this blog is working on fixing something that ain't broke (tech 2 battleships and using them successfully in large scale combat). IMO adding massively powerfol AoE weapons would only increase suicide ganking, and some of the other suggested ideas would result in their own problems. My suggestion: work on reducing lag, not on changing the whole way fleet battles are fought. Successful unlaggy fleet battles are incredibly exciting, when you can have them, and part ot the intensity of that is whether you can get out in structure and get back into the mix. Koronos
Grey Area Caldari	Posted - 2006.09.04 14:46:00 - [205] Originally by: Dux Dar Assumes your ROF penalty is calulated as the number of non-enemy player ship inside a sphere radius around your ship. I wanted to suggest something like that, but I'm sure it would place a hell of a load on the server...how often would you want to update that number? I DO like the formations idea though...would give a better use fo tactics like "squadron leader" etc. I liked the way Homeworld (I know, EVE is not Homeworld) used formations. Some dealt more damage but took more, others dealt less but took less. And maybe, just maybe, range ISN'T the problem. Maybe it's the fact that range is greater than visibility. If we keep maximum warp in at 100km, then maybe maximum range should be reduced to 75km. If we keep current ranges (250km) then maybe there should be a "warp to 350km" option and you should actually be able to see ships from that distance. It always did seem odd to me that there is no "approach" of enemy fleets by the time you are up to BS size - if you can see 'em, you can hit 'em. IF there was some period BETWEEN sighting the enemy and engaging them it might give more possibilities - for instance...blobs would become self defeating...if you are THAT badly outnumbered then you choose not to engage (or, as I often put it "Run Awaaaaaaaaay!"). A blob therefore might choose to disband into smaller units, with the other units being called upon when combat was joined. --- Monty Pythons spoof of the EVE Forums; Palin: "Is this the right room for an argument?" Cleese: "I've told you once."
Malachon Draco eXceed Inc. Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.04 14:52:00 - [206] Edited by: Malachon Draco on 04/09/2006 14:52:49 Does the solution really lie with combat itself? Isn't the real problem that if we would want to assemble 200 BS from all over alliance space, the travel time is only 20 mins for 20 jumps? Just like when an alliance is attacking. Isn't the problem that if ASCN would send a fleet to fight D2 in Tenal or wherever they live these days, and we get a report about a hostile fleet coming in, that we can dock at the nearest station and clonejump home? if we had to fly all the way back, we never would have sent 200 BS up north. Too risky. We might send 50, but certainly not 200. Big alliances are the ones making huge blobs generally. Short traveltimes make these blobs very valid, both in offense and in defense. Make traveltime longer, and blobs will be smaller.
Grey Area Caldari	Posted - 2006.09.04 14:55:00 - [207] Originally by: Tuxford Splash damage to missiles - There was a reason for it being removed, very good reason. Yes I know it was great fun but it made fighting with missiles in empire really really dangerous. Yes it did. And taking it away was the first step in creating all the cries of "Missiles are easy mode" and "Missiles are for noobs". I HATE it. I use missiles all the time, and if anyone starts a petition to reintroduce splash damage I'll be at the head of the line signing it. Twice. For each alt. I may even open another account to sign the damn thing again. I repsectfullly submit that the devs caved in too quickly to those who found themselves Concordokkened having just "defended" a corp mate by launching several hundred tonnes of high explosive into the fray. Real life analogies were often used..."Why can't I help my friend who is being attacked?". If my frined was being mugged and I shot the mugger, he might thank me. I doubt he'd be so pleased if I lobbed a hand grenade in his attacker's (and HIS) general direction. You removed the one main negative of using missile systems. Now we are left with missiles that were neutered because they were regarded as overpowered...and we still have turret users who claim we don't have to think about transversal and speeds of target because "missiles always hit". PLEASE...reintroduce splash damage. It would be the best thing ever to happen to EVE, even though I know as I say this, it would make my style of play in particular considerably more difficult. --- Monty Pythons spoof of the EVE Forums; Palin: "Is this the right room for an argument?" Cleese: "I've told you once."
Reachok Amarr Low Grade Ore	Posted - 2006.09.04 15:27:00 - [208] Originally by: Alessar Kaldorei Hehe, give torpedoes AoE damage to go with the disproportionately huge shockwave they generate, and you'll see blobs dispersing. Yeah!!!
Hugh Ruka Caldari	Posted - 2006.09.04 15:31:00 - [209] Originally by: Grey Area Originally by: Tuxford Splash damage to missiles - There was a reason for it being removed, very good reason. Yes I know it was great fun but it made fighting with missiles in empire really really dangerous. Yes it did. And taking it away was the first step in creating all the cries of "Missiles are easy mode" and "Missiles are for noobs". I HATE it. I use missiles all the time, and if anyone starts a petition to reintroduce splash damage I'll be at the head of the line signing it. Twice. For each alt. I may even open another account to sign the damn thing again. I repsectfullly submit that the devs caved in too quickly to those who found themselves Concordokkened having just "defended" a corp mate by launching several hundred tonnes of high explosive into the fray. Real life analogies were often used..."Why can't I help my friend who is being attacked?". If my frined was being mugged and I shot the mugger, he might thank me. I doubt he'd be so pleased if I lobbed a hand grenade in his attacker's (and HIS) general direction. You removed the one main negative of using missile systems. Now we are left with missiles that were neutered because they were regarded as overpowered...and we still have turret users who claim we don't have to think about transversal and speeds of target because "missiles always hit". PLEASE...reintroduce splash damage. It would be the best thing ever to happen to EVE, even though I know as I say this, it would make my style of play in particular considerably more difficult. generaly I am against missile splash damage. but you did put it nicely in your post and I tend to agree. there is a middle ground however. make t2 missile with splash damage, leave t1 without (or the other way around). Tux: the damage reduction based on amount of fire on the ships is quite easy to do. you have to calculate shots as well as damage per second. any friendly ship will not shoot a target with barrage fire for much damage, so it would be neglected in the formula. one problem with the damage reduction base on "ship density" around the attacker is very easy exploitation. imagine a larger group of frigs hugging a bs. the BS would not be able to shoot (or for minimal damage). and if we base it on a gang member basis, the result will be small gangs. the second may be a good thing, but it puts more strain on the out of game coordination of the fleet (and you need a warp target in each gang to warp them in). However this could promote mixed tactics. Originally by: JP Beauregard The experience with Exodus playtesting has scarred me for life. Those were bug-reports, not feature requests, you numbskulls....
Goberth Ludwig eXceed Inc. Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.04 15:45:00 - [210] Quote: The average ship running around in fleets today has over 200km range and that's one hell of a "Coconut of Death". The more CoDs you have overlapping, the bigger area you contain and the more concentrated firepower your fleet has in that area. You probably see where I'm going with this, the range of ships in fleet today is simply too great. This blog makes me moist. Thank you Tux \o/ - Gob [IXC] Admiral Goberius

John Criten Eve Defence Force Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.04 16:30:00 - [211] Just make ships that explode cause damage that way ships to close to it get a massive bomb going off next to them kinda like a suppped up smartbomb effect
C4w3 Minmatar Phantom Squad iPOD Alliance	Posted - 2006.09.04 16:53:00 - [212] Originally by: Nafri Not very interesting, but I give my input. Why blob? No friendly fire No hitzones No direction of guns A blob just concentrates your firepower on one spot. If you want to optimize the surfuace of many dots, you just make one big dot. Ill make some pictures to explain it: Linkage When you would introduce friendly fire, direction in which your guns can fire and some other stuff like plated sides and stuff, this game would be less blobby. When you have to align your fleet like shown above, you have to maximize your surface direction towars your enemy. That would need tactics, and you could finally protect smaller ships with bigger ships. A enemy also would need to shoot targets he can hit, and you could move more armored ships towards the frontline. It would also enable the implention of realy primary, secondary and teriary weapon systems. Primary weapon systems would point into one direction, to oprimize the firewpoer of the ship. Secondary and tertiary would cover other sides, and are just there to cover unguarded points. You could also enable people to decide where to place their guns, give ships more possible weapon places than they actual can fit, so that you can suripise your enemy with a unusual and creative weapon placement. Then you can introduce automatic and self created fligth maneuvers, since you have to point I just so much agree with you Nafri. "If all the heroes are standing together around a strange device and begin to taunt me, I will pull out a conventional gun and kill
Alexander Knott	Posted - 2006.09.04 17:14:00 - [213] Originally by: Tuxford Take less damage the more people are shooting at you - This has always sounded to me like it would be severely exploitable. This also just doesn't make logical sense to me. Lowering the rate of fire depending on ships close to you makes a bit more sense but I'm still not sure its the way to go. If you were to do this, you wouldn't do it based on attacker count, but rather raw damage sustainable per unit of time. This is actually a fairly common mechanic to prevent people from getting one-shotted. Obviously in EVE it's a bit trickier because everyone can self-heal, so you could easily come up with situations where ships are unkillable or, conversely, resists are worthless in fleet fights. If you're looking for the fiction for this sort of thing, it's not too hard in most cases: the heat of fire doesn't grow linearly based on the amount of fuel thrown on it, multiple EMP detonations near eachother may actually partially cancel eachother out (EMP is a wave effect), etc. I still don't know if this would be a good idea, but there are some aspects of it that people assume are problems but probably really are not.
Malachon Draco eXceed Inc. Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.04 17:31:00 - [214] Can someone explain to me how reducing range in itself does ANYTHING to reduce blobs?
Elisca Black	Posted - 2006.09.04 17:40:00 - [215] I've been in many fleet battles over 2.5 years and there is nothing wrong with big blobs. Except for the fact of the lag. Let me assure you, once the battle has raged for OVER 1 HOUR with each field holding more then 15 ships on the field for over an hour nothing has given me as much pleasure in this game. The problem as it stands is lag, you cant jump into a fleet like this , you have to be in the same system and even then, the battles are decided very quickly because people have 10second module lag and that is the difference between warping out and dieing. FIX the lag and THEN think about fixing the mechanics of it. OTherwise the two will compound each other in a big cluster ****.
Gabriel Karade Office linebackers Blood of the Innocents	Posted - 2006.09.04 18:10:00 - [216] Lag-fixing person! = Tux Nothing wrong with trying to create more immersive fleet battles. There are dozens of things already suggested that would do that, whether or not those could be implemented could only be answered by the Dev's, no-one else here works on the TQ server afterallà As for LOS creating un-manageable lag - well missiles had LOS back in castor and the old server didnÆt melt... ---------- - Office Linebacker -
Kunming Amarr adeptus gattacus Lotka Volterra	Posted - 2006.09.04 19:14:00 - [217] Originally by: Lurtz Originally by: Kunming Reading.. looks like a nerf on long range... finally! pulls out blaster no what I read is big splash damage from weapons and ships blowing up.... stay further apart if your wingman is being shot at unless you want some too! uhmm.. no: Originally by: Tuxford Less ranting, more on what you're going to do - Usually I get knocked around for just telling what we're doing and not explaining why we're doing it. I guess I just have to find that golden ratio of how and why. This blog wasn't originally supposed to be about blobs and how they are bad it was supposed to state the reason why we need to reduce range. How we're going to do that is subject for another blog. see..
Ayla Vanir Caldari InterSys	Posted - 2006.09.04 20:50:00 - [218] Edited by: Ayla Vanir on 04/09/2006 20:51:05 Reducing range may not have the desired impact you think on blobbing. If you want to reduce range, go for it. But the reason that naval ship formations remain spread out is due to concern that a single air-burst will take out the fleet. Not because of issues with over-lapping fire and such. Reducing the range of ships in EVE may just change the size and shape of the blob. For example, instead of a pair of Coconuts of Death, you end up with a pair of Mangoes of Destruction. Anyway, if you want to reduce ranges, and this was just one way to rationalize that change, it makes no difference. If the objective was to reduce the effect of concentrated fire, or to get ships spread out further apart, I can't really see that a range reduction is going to help. I'm just unclear from the thread what the actual objective of the change is.
Helen STK Scientific Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.04 21:03:00 - [219] I find its not blobs that kill people, it's lag.
Emeline Cabernet Amarr KVA Noble Inc.	Posted - 2006.09.04 21:18:00 - [220] swing and miss.... how about fixing the game? or fix the server? dont bring anything "new" into the game. just fix it.

Grey Area Caldari	Posted - 2006.09.04 22:05:00 - [221] Originally by: Malachon Draco Can someone explain to me how reducing range in itself does ANYTHING to reduce blobs? Assumption 1: The blob is not the problem, the lag is the problem. People don't mind dying if they feel they had a chance to respond, but what is happening is "Arrive in warp, screen freezes, you find yourself back at station in shiny new clone" Why? Because fomr the other side's point of view they only have to load one ship (you) whilst you have to load 100. They get to shoot first, and you die, without even seeing who shot you most of the time. However, if the range of weapons was less than the maximum warp in range, you have an option...if you warp into 100km and their weapons are only good up to 50km, they CANNOT immediately fire upon you...they have to somehow close that 50km space first...giving your client a chance to load up and you a chance to assess the situation. That's how range affects blobs. --- Monty Pythons spoof of the EVE Forums; Palin: "Is this the right room for an argument?" Cleese: "I've told you once."
Benco97 Gallente Cosmic Odyssey Chorus of Dawn	Posted - 2006.09.04 22:20:00 - [222] woo, new ships specifically designed for blob dispersal, some sort of special weapon that works like a flak cannon. I'd be perfectly happy with that. Head of the Fedo Appreciation Group (F.A.G) and Registered Fedo breeder
Dux Dar	Posted - 2006.09.05 00:21:00 - [223] A few ideas that are simpler then my last post: Area weapons Basically, area weapons should be non-deadly (meaning electronic warefare like). Using one in hi-sec would not get a response from CONCORD, but anyone (that does not have you on positive standing maybe?) impacted by one will get a 15 min kill-rights on you (both in hi-sec and low-sec). Reduces griefing as much as practically possible. Increased effect by numbers The more ships are in the area around the "point of impact" of a area weapon, the larger effect it will have (it has "virus-like self propagation through ship computers in range" or something). Area warfare expert ECM, jamming, ROF, tracking and damage reduction area weapons/boms/viruses are examples. But be careful, as they works on ALL ships in a radius around the point of impact (even yourself if your to close). Typically role of area warfare expert will be to sitt back and try to influence more of the enemy then your friends. Warp ECM missiles. Shoot a missile/mine/module that will speed ahead of you and explode just as you get out of warp, wrecking havoc on the targeting systems for alot of the ships in range (including your own). Can only be fired when already in warp. Lancher only takes one missile, and has very long reload time (as one shouldnt be able to use it on for instance each jump to a gate when traveling). Splash damage from ship exploding As alot of ppl have suggested. Ships might do some splash damage when exploding. Damage and range depending on ship mass or something. Starbase structure Gang Jump Gate. Will jump a gang to a random star system in the targeted region. Uses ice and stuff for fuel depending on range for the jump and the total mass of the ships in the gang. This makes smal incursions much easier, even if its a "one way ticket to death", (however, it will probably have a larger impacts, as people will be forced to have better control over the space they claim).
Rift Scorn Caldari Black Nova Corp Band of Brothers	Posted - 2006.09.05 03:43:00 - [224] Edited by: Rift Scorn on 05/09/2006 03:43:47 Originally by: Grey Area Originally by: Tuxford Splash damage to missiles - There was a reason for it being removed, very good reason. Yes I know it was great fun but it made fighting with missiles in empire really really dangerous. Yes it did. And taking it away was the first step in creating all the cries of "Missiles are easy mode" and "Missiles are for noobs". I HATE it. I use missiles all the time, and if anyone starts a petition to reintroduce splash damage I'll be at the head of the line signing it. Twice. For each alt. I may even open another account to sign the damn thing again. I repsectfullly submit that the devs caved in too quickly to those who found themselves Concordokkened having just "defended" a corp mate by launching several hundred tonnes of high explosive into the fray. Real life analogies were often used..."Why can't I help my friend who is being attacked?". If my frined was being mugged and I shot the mugger, he might thank me. I doubt he'd be so pleased if I lobbed a hand grenade in his attacker's (and HIS) general direction. You removed the one main negative of using missile systems. Now we are left with missiles that were neutered because they were regarded as overpowered...and we still have turret users who claim we don't have to think about transversal and speeds of target because "missiles always hit". PLEASE...reintroduce splash damage. It would be the best thing ever to happen to EVE, even though I know as I say this, it would make my style of play in particular considerably more difficult. Here's an idea (they don't happen often ) With all the talk of AoE missile effects, how about introducing a new missile class that caters specifically for splash damage? Make them Torpedo, Cruise, Heavy & Standard sizes that maybe do less damage to the target it hits, but ofc has an AoE effect to damage support protecting the main target etc, etc. Maybe increase the size of the AoE effect upon completion of LvL training? or reduction? i really haven't thought it through tbh. But i'm with Grey in that i love missiles, and have been training hardcore Caldari since '03 and me and my CNR love it If you introduced a new AoE class of sile, it would give missile users in empire the option of using missiles as they are now, or splash in low sec & 0.0. This would also give Tux's idea of AoE to break up the blob possibilities. Just an attempt to add a constructive point, even if i haven't thought it through 100%. Hope people see where i was trying to go with this idea. Your friendly clone activation expert, free of service to the eve community since '03!
MIGHTYDWC Gallente Sha Kharn Corp Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.05 03:50:00 - [225] Edited by: MIGHTYDWC on 05/09/2006 03:51:15 Originally by: Malachon Draco Can someone explain to me how reducing range in itself does ANYTHING to reduce blobs? Exactly. Why put the skills and components into the game for someone to use and be able to hit something at 200km, just to nerf that ability and have someone ticked off that they spent all that time training the skills for nothing? Blobing has been around for so long, and there are ways to fix it, ie: AoE events (someone said something about splash damage from warp core explosions)and or counter the blob. Any long range ship doesn't just carry long range ammo. Granted new styles/aspects of combat are always fun to learn, but please lets fix what's wrong with the game NOW before you start putting new stuff in that doesn't work/makes the game unplayable. Favorite saying on TS: This "phoon of Doom" is very easy to kill things with. They die very fast. <---JaegerX
Ris Dnalor Minmatar Khumatari Holdings Ushra'Khan	Posted - 2006.09.05 04:19:00 - [226] there are many ways to answer this question. Here are some of my ideas. 1. Ship explosion. When a battleship in the middle of a closely packed fleet goes down... there should be an effect on the nearby ships. A large amount of damage is probably a bad idea, as we'd have mwd kamikazi pilots abounding, but a small amount of damage coupled with an em pulse that would break target locks of nearby ships should be a nice deterrent to tightly packed fleets... 2. Active scanning interference. Every ship has a scanner strength, as well as a scan resolution & max targeting range. There's alot of em signals being sent out, especially in a large fleet battle. It would make sense that if too many ships were too close together, that their scanners would interefere with each other... causing a reduciton in targeting range, & scan resolution, based on the scanner str of the nearby ships as well as their distance from each other. I would think that radar would interfere with radar more "effectively" than radar would interfere with ladar, etc etc... but i would think that some interference would & should exist, which would encourage ppl to spread out their fleets a bit. 3. AoE. Introduce bombs. They're deployed and after a few seconds they detonate where they sit. this means ppl would have to get the payload to target without being destroyed & beat feet quickly or risk blowing themselves up in the bargain. This would force fleets to not fit for massive damage at a certain range but also to be able to defend against incoming enemies, or more likely scatter themselves so that if a bomber penetrated they fleet, they couldn't do massive damage to many ships... I see a fast durable ship being used for this purpose, assault ships come to mind, or even hacs... or perhaps a new class of true bombers could be introduced... the stealth bombers are so mis-named... -- Talking in Circles is more dizzying than walking in them... Tralala
Lacero Callrisian Minmatar Solar Storm Axiom Empire	Posted - 2006.09.05 06:44:00 - [227] Originally by: MIGHTYDWC Why put the skills and components into the game for someone to use and be able to hit something at 200km, just to nerf that ability and have someone ticked off that they spent all that time training the skills for nothing? It's not like T2 guns will have a shorter range than T1 when they're finished, it's just that all guns would be reduced in range. I agree it won't do much to stop blobbing in itself, you'd have to reduce range to significantly less than the diameter of a blob for that to happen, but combined with something like reducing the amount of damage a ship deals based on the amount of damage it's taking it would allow more manouverability in fleets. I think that sounds more fun, although no one seems to like the idea of ships doing less damage while under fire.
Kldraina	Posted - 2006.09.05 08:00:00 - [228] Originally by: Malachon Draco Can someone explain to me how reducing range in itself does ANYTHING to reduce blobs? Reducing range is intended (along with a few other changes) to make it more difficult to focus fire upon a single target with lots of ships. Since the primary advantage of a blob, is the ability to focus fire, this could reduce the effectiveness of blobs. However, a lot more will need to be done, for blobs to truly become less effective (such as changes in tracking on long range guns, or AOE effects).
Hugh Ruka Caldari	Posted - 2006.09.05 09:08:00 - [229] Originally by: Grey Area Originally by: Malachon Draco Can someone explain to me how reducing range in itself does ANYTHING to reduce blobs? Assumption 1: The blob is not the problem, the lag is the problem. People don't mind dying if they feel they had a chance to respond, but what is happening is "Arrive in warp, screen freezes, you find yourself back at station in shiny new clone" Why? Because fomr the other side's point of view they only have to load one ship (you) whilst you have to load 100. They get to shoot first, and you die, without even seeing who shot you most of the time. However, if the range of weapons was less than the maximum warp in range, you have an option...if you warp into 100km and their weapons are only good up to 50km, they CANNOT immediately fire upon you...they have to somehow close that 50km space first...giving your client a chance to load up and you a chance to assess the situation. That's how range affects blobs. While nicely explained, only holds true when the enemy fleet is alredy in place and your fleet warps in one by one (which is not the case usualy). Also the lag reduction will not be that much when both fleets fire as the client has to draw many lines and process much impact data from the server. A simple option would be to add a switch to graphics menu so that only the icon representation of the ship is ever drawn. Like the red crosses for enemy ships, stations and other garbage can remain the same. This is an advantage on the client side lag, but also a disadvantage in certain situations (no visual scouting, no sens of when ships will bounce each other etc.). Every idea that works with damage/sensor effectivnes reduction based on ship density in an area is seriously exploitable, and if restricted to gang easily circumvented imho, so not that good an option. Originally by: JP Beauregard The experience with Exodus playtesting has scarred me for life. Those were bug-reports, not feature requests, you numbskulls....
Donmadefy	Posted - 2006.09.05 09:33:00 - [230] We could have cloaked suicide ships ... fly into the middle of a blob and click the smartbombs/ECM burst. Hopefully the loss of the cloak will give your side the edge :) I reckon there should be a Smartbomb booster module, like the shield booster module, but it increases the range of the burst effect. What about missiles that have an AoE that is like a temporary tracking disruptor/dampener? Although thinking about it, that may be a more complicating effect and thus more lag.

Morikai Acler Caldari The Whitesands Consortium	Posted - 2006.09.05 09:47:00 - [231] I personally dislike flying in large fleets, or giant blobs. Tactically Focus fire is an obvious thing that anyone who flies in a gang should learn. I'm no fan of getting called primary for it though, which has happened too many times for my tastes. Real amusing considering the fact that even during all my time in the former Phoenix alliance I was never a fleet commander. Think the thing that really needs to be done, is to #incorporate a "stacking" penalty based on the number of ships currently targeting another ship. The more people already targetting a specific ship, the longer it takes for others to lock on to said target. This could have a flag based on whether or not said target was in the same gang, making it possible for support ships in the same fleet to be able to target and assist that ship without that penalty. This could be due to sensor interferance caused my so many targetting systems pinging the same target at once. Problem with Blobs is even in reality thats the way things work for fleets, if you're close to each other it's easier to boost each other. I don't think its necissarily and issue of the fighting ranges of the ships involved. For example I as a Raven pilot with level 5 caldari bs skill and good missile skills can easily fire cruise missiles 220km. I need to run 2 tech 2 sensor boosters to lock at that range though. And you know how many of those missiles will hit in a long range focus'd fire fleet battle? Not many, unless its against a cap ship or starbase. Another reason blobbing occurs is because of current game mechanics. Most fleet battles are forced to occur either near a stargate, or starbase, and on rarer circumstances around planets and moons. There's no way for example to set up a warp disruption bubble in a strategic area between gates and such and have the bubble actually work to pull ships out of warp. Hell, you could make it so small warp bubbles could pull frigate sized ships out of mid warp, since anything bigger would have too much mass for the small bubble to stop. Cruisers for medium bubbles, and BS's for large bubbles. This could help to break up some blobs and cause fleet confusion, but at the same time it also allows the fleet using the bubble to blob. Could also make it so lock times get a penalty if you're flying in a blob fleet when you try and engage. The more ships within X Km of you the longer it takes everyone to lock. Ships sensors interfering with each other. I think maybe that would be the best way to discourage blobbing, or at least to use combined close and long range tactics.
Kanuo Ashkeron Eve Defence Force Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.05 09:59:00 - [232] Originally by: Ris Dnalor 2. Active scanning interference. Every ship has a scanner strength, as well as a scan resolution & max targeting range. There's alot of em signals being sent out, especially in a large fleet battle. It would make sense that if too many ships were too close together, that their scanners would interefere with each other... causing a reduciton in targeting range, & scan resolution, based on the scanner str of the nearby ships as well as their distance from each other. I would think that radar would interfere with radar more "effectively" than radar would interfere with ladar, etc etc... but i would think that some interference would & should exist, which would encourage ppl to spread out their fleets a bit. Maybe this could be implemented by giving each ship a default module like the Remote Dampener but works like a ECM burst. By default module I mean it is just there but don¦t need any slot cap, pg or cpu (just to clarify that bit). As suggested the stats should depend on sensor type and sensor strenght, and the range could be about 7km + 7km. Kanuo
Haruko Red Caldari Xenobytes Against ALL Authorities	Posted - 2006.09.05 10:23:00 - [233] Edited by: Haruko Red on 05/09/2006 10:23:50 DISCLAIMRL: Everything below makes sence only in lagless battles. Fix the lag first! Blobbing is not the problem - epic fleet battles are the reason to play this game for me. Focus fire is. Why focus fire exists? Tux thinks it's a result of tight fleet formations and long range guns. But in my opinoin it's a result of battles being held in SPACE. Huge open space with no obstacles, no friendly fire and no directional tracking automaticly create a perfrect conditions for sniping and blobbing. How to solve this problem? Two words: TACTICAL ENVIRONMENT. Example: In typical fantasy MMORPG a well organized group of archers in open area will WTFPWN anything, even with lesser damage of ranged weapons. But inside a building or in case of landscape obstacles their effectiveness is greatly redused for obvious reasons and other classes comes in play. I dont think, what removing long range fleets from EVE is a good idea, they just shouldnt have a decisive role. In order to make close combat a viable option we need a proper task for closerange ships in fleet battles. (Actually there is such task - gate camps, but is it what we really want?). Creating an environment in space is a hard task indeed. Currently I can imagine only couple of possible ideas. Example: Blind spot for POS guns. Such spot(s) can be inherent or created by destruction of out-of-pos-shield turrets. In order to put a dreds in this spot you should clear it from enemies (and possible turrets). Make a shied-in POS guns unable to shoot ships close to POS shield or something like that (or reduce their tracking so they could only hit capital ships in close range. You should still move in order to be out of thier reach). It will be a fine task for closerange ships - jump in, clear the area form enemy ships and turrets, get the dread and snipe cover fleet jumpin in a relative safe space. I do realize, what this example is vulnerable to critics (and LAGS too!), but I just want to show my view of the problem and possible way of resolving for it. ________________________________________________ "I dont smoke." (C) William Blake
Eta Carinea Art of War Cult of War	Posted - 2006.09.05 10:28:00 - [234] As others have said i think the best way is to formalise the Flight Commanders role make it a career path , He should train all leadership skills but have others added for size of gangs, ship types, maybe even weapon types and range that comes into effect Only when A fleet Commander is or has gang lead. The benefits for him/her forming the game is new tools at his/her disposal such as some other suggestions diverting remote repair operations against primaried ships. Perhaps a revived tactical overview with grid references that can look over a whole solar system based on skills. the details can still be fed in via cov-ops but he has a general overview of where ships are not types. I may even go as far as to say that probes launched from cov-ops ships relay details to his overview. :) (Maybe for the future). The bonus should come from a separate class of ship that is weak not battle hardened so it needs to be out of the way but has excellent command modules that can improve the accuracy of information and other bonuses. such as repair facilities that can withstand focused firing. ( This coming from someone whom has been in more than one battle where fc is podded and TS suddenly has the inevitable ermmm ermmm. lol), He should be able to group his gangs and send orders either via VOIP or screen splash messages go to grid X autopilot maybe for the pilot? The skills should be extremely expensive corp/alliance purchase only but with enough incentives to make large corps/ alliances want to invest in. The tools should allow more tactics that ultimately would avoid the focus fire syndrome. and provide better options for large fleet battles. One thing i see as a possible exploit is the fact that the fleet commanders may use these tools when in small gank squads perhaps limit the options to a minimum amount of ships. Or to bring things like grid references in local space online for all which may allow for better more spread out battles in small gangs too. Just some thoughts Quid Si Coelum Ruat
Spanker	Posted - 2006.09.05 10:39:00 - [235] Why not just limit the number of simultaneous locks people can have on a ship? Apart from the fact that your entire fleet would be locking each other to limit locks from enemies I mean. Actually that opens up for a whole lot of funky stuff. Not only would it prevent 5 to 1 ganking and focused fleet fire, it would also mean some king size tactics would be available. Probably a bit like chess. Say you can only lock two seperate player controlled ships at once, and your own ship may only be locked by two other players at any one time. That means a group of say 3 ships could lock themselves down so they couldn't fire or be fired upon. Fleet battles would go on for aages with people coordinating all kinds off stuff - Shpank
Tana Pleiades Caldari Phoenix Knights	Posted - 2006.09.05 10:57:00 - [236] Exactly! the guy above has it right, however I would simply say that each target lock takes longer to achieve. If you have 3 ships locking you the first guy is normal, the second is a third slower, and so on. Untill locking with anymore than 5 ships simply is not worth it. As someone said before role play it with "subspace interfance" Ie each others targeting ping effects each others. DONT JUST NERF RANGE! That would effect many other areas of the game. And we hate nerfs they are like evil smerfs. If your desire is to stop blobbing create a solution which only effects blobbing. If a max of only 5 ships could lock, large blobs would have to be turned into 3-4 man squads which would create proper military structure it would be awesome! You would actually have to make sure each 5 man team is balanced and able to jam scram web and kill! An FC could assign a different enemy to each squad. Also if you a lone guy coming through a gate you ahve half a chance of getting away as a max of 5 people can hit you. The intys would get you first and they you would have that little bit longer to kill them or jam them before the rest of the blob can lock you. In other words you would have half a hope in hell. The game would be way more fun!!
Kanuo Ashkeron Eve Defence Force Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.05 11:34:00 - [237] Edited by: Kanuo Ashkeron on 05/09/2006 11:34:51 Originally by: Haruko Red Blobbing is not the problem - epic fleet battles are the reason to play this game for me. Focus fire is. Why focus fire exists? Tux thinks it's a result of tight fleet formations and long range guns. But in my opinoin it's a result of battles being held in SPACE. Huge open space with no obstacles, no friendly fire and no directional tracking automaticly create a perfect conditions for sniping and blobbing. How to solve this problem? Two words: TACTICAL ENVIRONMENT. You are completly right. You cannot hide, you cannot cover you can do nothing in space. So you cannot compare EVE-warfare to infantry warfare but more to naval warfare. And in this, technology superiority is one of the only determining parameters. I suggested something about Tactical Enviroments a month ago.
Arthegon	Posted - 2006.09.05 12:45:00 - [238] A dampening/neutralizing/destabilizing/(list other negative effects useful against long range fleet ships..) kind of weapon working in much the same way the interdictor bubble works today. This could be either launched at longer distances or would require (specialized?) ships that would either launch these at range or drop them in the way interdictors do.. such a bubble would have negative effects that would have a major impact on the ships inside it and so would force them to move, and or reorganize - and ultimately unblob. How much such a weapon wuld cost in terms of isk, skills and such - that would be a balancing matter for the devs to figure out.
Bishop 5 Gallente Perfect Order	Posted - 2006.09.05 12:48:00 - [239] Originally by: murder one With respect to the idea of splash damage for exploding ships: if that is included, which I think would be cool, make the optimal range for blasters 25km so I don't have to be inside the core of the explosion EVERY TIME. Bam! someone talking sense... a very good point.. what happens to your blasteranis when the BS you're tackling goes kabooooooom? I don't want to die everytime after you've finished off a ship with blasters. I really like the idea of exploding ships, but ffs don't forget the blaster lovers amongst us. ------------- meh
Gragnor Order of the Arrow	Posted - 2006.09.05 12:49:00 - [240] Every now and then I read something put out by the developers that annoys the crap out of me. This is it. Fleet warfare and focus firing is not the problem because the simple solution is to warp out when you are targetted or caught by surprise. Once again IT developers focus on the "tres elegant" solution and not the problem. The problem is LAG- lag - lag- lag - lag - not focus firing. The simple tactic of warping out when a huge fleet catches you ends the range debate. Of course, I would argue if you're caught you should be pwned but not the geniuses who run CCP. Fix the problem - not the symptoms. YOU KNOW IT MAKES SENSE.

Malachon Draco eXceed Inc. Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.05 13:13:00 - [241] 1. Longer locking time? You can't make locking time harder dependent on how many people locked someone. Thats silly and so easily exploitable it aint funny anymore. Gatecamping fleets effectively gets an extra advantage. Everybody is locked by 5 buddies so it takes ages to lock them, while jumping in fleet has no locks on their buddies and is locked faster therefore. Yeh, brilliant. 2. Limiting gang sizes? Right... Like people won't just make 2 gangs then for most things, or 3 gangs or 5 or whatever number is needed to accomodate all the people joining in. Limiting gang sizes does nothing to reduce blobs. 3. Reducing range? What good does that do? It only makes blobbing more important. Currently a smaller fleet with a few long range snipers can be effective if they outrange a blob, picking off targets. If you reduce range, even that isn't possible anymore. You want solutions? I'll give you 10. 1. REDUCE LAG 2. REDUCE LAG 3. REDUCE LAG 4. REDUCE LAG 5. REDUCE LAG 6. REDUCE LAG 7. REDUCE LAG 8. REDUCE LAG 9. REDUCE LAG 10. Additional option is AoE weapons. The splash version of torpedoes seems very appropriate. So does a beefed up smartbomb, and the concept of ships blowing up causing damage to other ships nearby. As for not being able to use splash weapons in empire, who cares? Empire is not the place where you will see 200 man blob vs 200 man blob. You get a warning when using smartbombs in empire don't you? Make the new torpedoes give out the same warning and be done with it.
Shidhe Minmatar The Babylon5 Consortuim	Posted - 2006.09.05 13:35:00 - [242] About blobbing - why not have sensor clutter reducing sensor ranges/times? If I am in a blob, i have lots of ships in 10Km radius - my sensors get lots of interference from nearby ships - therefore I get reduced range or increased lock time for my sensors as my onboard computer tries to make sense of all the information. If I am in freer space, with few ships around, my sensors are not overpowered by lots of nearby noise, and I can lock normally. It might work, and it makes sense (to me, at least...) * Apologies if someone else said this - havent had time to read all the pages...
Drommy Gallente DarkSide Inc	Posted - 2006.09.05 13:41:00 - [243] There is only one feasable way to reduce blobbing that i can see, and that is to limit the amount of signature radious that can attack another ship at any one time. if only 4 (hell i dunno pick a number) bs could shoot another bs at any one time, and then maybe like 7 BC's, and so on and so forth. say that maybe whatever ur signature radious is, only 5x that can lock u at once. only prob with this i can see is that gang members will lock each other so no one else can shoot them. so say maybe u do it with actually shooting, but then 5 bs could just fire 1 gun at each other and there all immune :S, darn it this is harder than i thought. goes to get some coffee and think long and hard no lost it, better go get some food too................ ooooooooo new idea, might even be a good one weapons all have a sig radious too right....... so lets say u can only have a certain sig radious shoosting u at any one time. (cant log in right now so im making all these numbers up) eg. a 425mm rail has a sig rad of 10 a 250mm rail has a sig of 7 torps have a sig of 10 ect ect once the amount of weapons currently harming that ship reaches 280 no other weapons can be engaged on it. i cant currently see a way that this could be exploited. ofc it would lead to many smaller scale battles, instead of one big huge one. although they might just take place at the same point in space and be laggy. but it would mean that smaller ships become more viable. using smaller ships means u can have more men in a gang. means u have greater survivability too as it takes longer for the openent to switch targets. but what it realy means is that suddenly support ships will start being used and recons and things too ida thought. only prob i can see is cap ships. attacking them and being attacked from them, would a dreads gun and missile points be to much to even attack a bs? obviously 5 bs couldnt take down a carrier let alone a dread, so maybe they would have an increased amount of weapon sig attacking them. in that case smaller ships could have a lower amount of sig attacking them at once, but then ya have problems with frigs not being able to get hit by a bs cos his weapons wont attack it ect. i think that just cap ships should be the excepton to such a rule. i think im done for ideas for the week now. im gonna go lay down. shout some abuse and tell me someones already had that idea so i can go eat choclate and cry IF YOU AINT BLUE... YOUR GOO DARKSIDE INC
Tana Pleiades Caldari Phoenix Knights	Posted - 2006.09.05 13:59:00 - [244] Quote: 1. Longer locking time? You can't make locking time harder dependent on how many people locked someone. Thats silly and so easily exploitable it aint funny anymore. Gatecamping fleets effectively gets an extra advantage. Everybody is locked by 5 buddies so it takes ages to lock them, while jumping in fleet has no locks on their buddies and is locked faster therefore. Yeh, brilliant Yes obviously things would need to be done to ensure it wa not exploitable. For instance. If you lock a ship it is unaffected by "lock time weighting" This would mean that even if a bunch of guys got their mates to lock them so they took longer to lock, if they targeted a guy who popped out of a gate this would not affect his lock time.
Ishana Minmatar Neo Knight Errant	Posted - 2006.09.05 14:05:00 - [245] I haven't read the whole 9 pages, but I'll add my own thoughts on the matter, since I've been in a fair share of blobs. (although i doubt tux has ever been in one...) The problem with blobs isn't focus fire. This is a sound tactic and it will never go away. The real problems with blobs are: 1.) lag delay on everyting. people don't get to warp out when they are going down. although the fact that they aren't instantly killid is also a matter of lag so it's a dual edged sword. 2.) no blob drawback because of alignment at speed. the reason why nobody attacks a sniping blob with a close range blob is simple. You won't catch them period. The reason is that people are ready to warp at a moments notice. If you really want to make it possible to counter attack a blob, you have to take this away. You could for example make a warp countdown for all ships. So in theory all ships have a warp delay no matter what direction they are facing or what speed they are going. This will allow people to counter blobs using another blob of the opposite kind, although it will still be hard. 3.) T2 range ammo. The reason people are fitting rediculous ranges are ONLY because of these ammo types. Imho all the T2 ammo needs to be reworked, because like they are now they are game breaking. That's my 0.02 isk. _________________________________________________________
Tana Pleiades Caldari Phoenix Knights	Posted - 2006.09.05 14:09:00 - [246] AND Simply create a lock time increase dependant upon the ship type locking you. (shuttles make no difference bs make large difference) Also increase the locking time for multiple targets. (each target locked it gets slower and slower) This would mean that people wouldnt be able to lock with noob corp guys in crap ships to make any difference, and if they used large ships they are taking that ship out of the fight as its lock time will be increased! Result would be ships only locking one ship in groups of 5, bad planning or FC and they will screw each other over by stopping each other locking fast, allowing more skill in fights. (a small organised force could kill a massive one) 3-5 ships ve one is a interesting fight for a pro player ve some ill equiped ones and he would be able to actually fight back! It would stop the frigate blobs that the goons use that everyone hates. And would increase the need for balanced fleets. (inty, bb, bb, raven, per target)
Drommy Gallente DarkSide Inc	Posted - 2006.09.05 14:14:00 - [247] Originally by: Tana Pleiades AND Simply create a lock time increase dependant upon the ship type locking you. (shuttles make no difference bs make large difference) Also increase the locking time for multiple targets. (each target locked it gets slower and slower) This would mean that people wouldnt be able to lock with noob corp guys in crap ships to make any difference, and if they used large ships they are taking that ship out of the fight as its lock time will be increased! Result would be ships only locking one ship in groups of 5, bad planning or FC and they will screw each other over by stopping each other locking fast, allowing more skill in fights. (a small organised force could kill a massive one) 3-5 ships ve one is a interesting fight for a pro player ve some ill equiped ones and he would be able to actually fight back! It would stop the frigate blobs that the goons use that everyone hates. And would increase the need for balanced fleets. (inty, bb, bb, raven, per target) thought about that a while ago, but it just means that people will lock otherpeople on there own side to slow down a targets lock IF YOU AINT BLUE... YOUR GOO DARKSIDE INC
Spanker	Posted - 2006.09.05 14:17:00 - [248] Originally by: Malachon Draco 1. Longer locking time? You can't make locking time harder dependent on how many people locked someone. Thats silly and so easily exploitable it aint funny anymore. Gatecamping fleets effectively gets an extra advantage. Everybody is locked by 5 buddies so it takes ages to lock them, while jumping in fleet has no locks on their buddies and is locked faster therefore. Yeh, brilliant. I find your lack of vision disturbing. It is in fact brilliant. Some wrinkles in the theoretical plane need to be ironed out but the basic idea sounds good. Please make an effort to fix what's wrong instead of just pointing out bad things (like I'm doing now). You are not a Jedi yet, young Malachon! - Shpank
Pete Starblade	Posted - 2006.09.05 14:22:00 - [249] reducing range wont effect focused fire. focused fire exists because its effective gang size should be dependant on the ship gang leader is in and allow damage sharing between gang members. e.g. capital ship has 60 gang points 5 bs at 4 points 10 cruisers at 2 points and 20 frigates at 1 point each gang point is 1% of damage shared making it more worthwhile to take out the rest of the gang first as gang members get removed from the action you loose proportion of damage shared unless you bring in a new gang member. bs could have 40 gang points cruiser 20 frigate 10 for example. this would give you balanced squadrons and allow for more tactics to be used as a squad of ewar frigates/ceptors wont be top of the 10 bs sniping squad's kill list as it stands now.
Ishana Minmatar Neo Knight Errant	Posted - 2006.09.05 14:26:00 - [250] Originally by: Pete Starblade reducing range wont effect focused fire. focused fire exists because its effective gang size should be dependant on the ship gang leader is in and allow damage sharing between gang members. e.g. capital ship has 60 gang points 5 bs at 4 points 10 cruisers at 2 points and 20 frigates at 1 point each gang point is 1% of damage shared making it more worthwhile to take out the rest of the gang first as gang members get removed from the action you loose proportion of damage shared unless you bring in a new gang member. bs could have 40 gang points cruiser 20 frigate 10 for example. this would give you balanced squadrons and allow for more tactics to be used as a squad of ewar frigates/ceptors wont be top of the 10 bs sniping squad's kill list as it stands now. making gang sizes dependent on the ship the commander is in won't work. the gang chat doesn't really serve much perpuse since all commands are called though Teamspeak. So you would only have more gangs shooting at the same target instead of 1. _________________________________________________________

Pete Starblade	Posted - 2006.09.05 14:31:00 - [251] as an extra thought to this it may be an idea to limit when gang member stops receiving shared damage to say 25% shields on caldari or 25% armour on amarr
Malachon Draco eXceed Inc. Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.05 14:37:00 - [252] Originally by: Spanker Originally by: Malachon Draco 1. Longer locking time? You can't make locking time harder dependent on how many people locked someone. Thats silly and so easily exploitable it aint funny anymore. Gatecamping fleets effectively gets an extra advantage. Everybody is locked by 5 buddies so it takes ages to lock them, while jumping in fleet has no locks on their buddies and is locked faster therefore. Yeh, brilliant. I find your lack of vision disturbing. It is in fact brilliant. Some wrinkles in the theoretical plane need to be ironed out but the basic idea sounds good. Please make an effort to fix what's wrong instead of just pointing out bad things (like I'm doing now). You are not a Jedi yet, young Malachon! WTF have you been smoking. First of all, most of the ideas here are bull** and easily exploitable. If you can't see that, you're beyond help really. Secondly, what is wrong with big fleets? This is a pretty epic game in several aspects. A corp can hold over a thousand people, alliances many times more. And now you want to prevent big fleets? Bull. The problem with fleet combat is NOT big fleets. Its the lag associated with large numbers of ships fighting. Fix the lag and fleetcombat is ok. If you insist, you could say there is a secondary problem. Note the term secondary, it means its less important. Fleets tend to curl up in tiny balls to maximize firepower. I would agree that its not entirely realistic, so a change would be ok, but its not vital really. If you want to change that, read what I pointed out in the post you only partially quoted. Area of effect weapons/ships blowing up causing damage to nearby vessels would make sure fleets spread out more. I dread however that people here keep fantasizing about overly complex, easily exploitable measures that won't do jack ** to reduce the problems with fleet combat and only waste developer's time with inane drivel. Bottomline: - Big fleets are fine. The lag is the problem. - If you want to break up tight formations, make more AoE damage available. - Stop with overly complex, easily exploitable mechanics to solve basic issues. Keep It Simple Stupid.
Malachon Draco eXceed Inc. Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.05 14:46:00 - [253] Originally by: Ishana I haven't read the whole 9 pages, but I'll add my own thoughts on the matter, since I've been in a fair share of blobs. (although i doubt tux has ever been in one...) The problem with blobs isn't focus fire. This is a sound tactic and it will never go away. The real problems with blobs are: 1.) lag delay on everyting. people don't get to warp out when they are going down. although the fact that they aren't instantly killid is also a matter of lag so it's a dual edged sword. 2.) no blob drawback because of alignment at speed. the reason why nobody attacks a sniping blob with a close range blob is simple. You won't catch them period. The reason is that people are ready to warp at a moments notice. If you really want to make it possible to counter attack a blob, you have to take this away. You could for example make a warp countdown for all ships. So in theory all ships have a warp delay no matter what direction they are facing or what speed they are going. This will allow people to counter blobs using another blob of the opposite kind, although it will still be hard. 3.) T2 range ammo. The reason people are fitting rediculous ranges are ONLY because of these ammo types. Imho all the T2 ammo needs to be reworked, because like they are now they are game breaking. That's my 0.02 isk. Now this is someone at least thinking sensibly instead of entertaining silly notions. Lag is the gamebreaker for fleet combat. Dying aint so bad, but being unable to do anything due to lag while dying is particularly frustrating. Not sure I agree completely with the second point, though I agree there is a problem there. On the one side, being aligned for warp is very important in a big fleet fight. Taking 2 seconds to warpout could be enough to get you killed. On the other hand, in smaller fights, its very hard to get kills at long range because of instant warping. T2 Ammo deserves to be better than T1 ammo IMO. It takes a lot of skillpoints to get there, and there are significant drawbacks to using it. Whether T2 ammo should have longer range as one of its advantages is debatable though. I don't really like it because it enables combat against people with less skillpoints to become riskfree to some extent. They can never hit you as you fire, and you can warpout before they get in range. Maybe reduce the range on the T2 large guns, and give it some more damage instead. T2 should be better than T1, but it shouldn't mean your opponent can't even hit you back.
Ishana Minmatar Neo Knight Errant	Posted - 2006.09.05 15:41:00 - [254] Edited by: Ishana on 05/09/2006 15:43:00 The reason why aligning and being at speed is so important is because it allows you to warp out the second a hostile force shows up on your overview. This results in an unbeatable blob, unless that blob decides to commit itself to stay and start shooting. If you could actually warp into a blob with some closerange ships and a interdictor, and be able to deploy the dictor bubble before the whole fleet is gone, there would at least be some sort of counter to the sniper blobs. Same goes for close range blobs only you would warp in a sniping fleet at range and a dictor into the the close range blob. Now you say but warping to a gate all at once is also impotant otherwise you will be picked off one by one as you come in. Well if everyone has a warping delay that is the same no matter what direction he is facing or what speed he is at, you will still be able to do this, although it will take a few seconds longer. This would actually make a close combat fleet viable again, although sniping ships would probably still be the prefered choice. It would however mean you really NEED extra support ships in a sniping fleet to deal with incoming interdictors. The way it is now, it is better to have everyone in BS using T2 sniping ammo, with no support at all. (well maybe 2-3 cloakers...) T2 ammo is broken as hell across the board. Range ammo is just the one you notice more because of blobs being at 200+ km Tbh some of the stuff Tuxford said in his blog baffles me. How could a dev even consider letting a ship be incapacitated instead of destroyed in a game like eve... the fact that he even considered it, makes me think he should be replaced. Tuxford also doesn't seem to understand that it's hard as hell getting all your ships locking and shooting the right target, even though lag is decreasing the speed of the whole thing. The reason why people like BOB are so good at fleet fights over others is because they actually CAN all find the primairy and shoot the damn thing. You wouldn't believe how hard it really is to find a group of people that can actually all do this. So really focus firing isn;t the problem. And if a ship is shot at by 50+ ships of the same size it should go boom, no ifs or buts. _________________________________________________________
Hugh Ruka Caldari	Posted - 2006.09.05 15:46:00 - [255] Originally by: Malachon Draco Originally by: Ishana I haven't read the whole 9 pages, but I'll add my own thoughts on the matter, since I've been in a fair share of blobs. (although i doubt tux has ever been in one...) The problem with blobs isn't focus fire. This is a sound tactic and it will never go away. The real problems with blobs are: 1.) lag delay on everyting. people don't get to warp out when they are going down. although the fact that they aren't instantly killid is also a matter of lag so it's a dual edged sword. 2.) no blob drawback because of alignment at speed. the reason why nobody attacks a sniping blob with a close range blob is simple. You won't catch them period. The reason is that people are ready to warp at a moments notice. If you really want to make it possible to counter attack a blob, you have to take this away. You could for example make a warp countdown for all ships. So in theory all ships have a warp delay no matter what direction they are facing or what speed they are going. This will allow people to counter blobs using another blob of the opposite kind, although it will still be hard. 3.) T2 range ammo. The reason people are fitting rediculous ranges are ONLY because of these ammo types. Imho all the T2 ammo needs to be reworked, because like they are now they are game breaking. That's my 0.02 isk. Now this is someone at least thinking sensibly instead of entertaining silly notions. Lag is the gamebreaker for fleet combat. Dying aint so bad, but being unable to do anything due to lag while dying is particularly frustrating. Not sure I agree completely with the second point, though I agree there is a problem there. On the one side, being aligned for warp is very important in a big fleet fight. Taking 2 seconds to warpout could be enough to get you killed. On the other hand, in smaller fights, its very hard to get kills at long range because of instant warping. T2 Ammo deserves to be better than T1 ammo IMO. It takes a lot of skillpoints to get there, and there are significant drawbacks to using it. Whether T2 ammo should have longer range as one of its advantages is debatable though. I don't really like it because it enables combat against people with less skillpoints to become riskfree to some extent. They can never hit you as you fire, and you can warpout before they get in range. Maybe reduce the range on the T2 large guns, and give it some more damage instead. T2 should be better than T1, but it shouldn't mean your opponent can't even hit you back. T2 ammo: T2 vs T1 should give a small edge in combat (max 15%) that can be negated with good ship setup and engagement control. Right now T2 long range ammo denies both. IMO T2 ammo is NOT needed. All the functions could be provided by existing T1 ammo with small modifications. Only weapons that have a use for the full spectrum of ammunition are projectiles. The other ones use either the 2 most damaging ones or the 2 with longest range (note I have no experience with lasers). Missiles are an exception, they get no variety except damage type for their ammunition. So scrap T2 ammo as it is now, rethink T1 ammo a bit and we are good on one side. FIX LAG !!! Originally by: JP Beauregard The experience with Exodus playtesting has scarred me for life. Those were bug-reports, not feature requests, you numbskulls....
Shidhe Minmatar The Babylon5 Consortuim	Posted - 2006.09.05 16:35:00 - [256] We need more mobility in fleet combat as well as less concentrating of firepower! More star wars style chasing and dogfighting, and less target called...f1.f2.f3... That means that reducing lag is not enough - target calling and blobbing would still be too effective, and too boring. Ideas for reducing blobbing are needed, and with care need not be exploitable. You want to stop your dread being mobbed by so many T1 frigates that its sensors are in a mess? Then you deploy a screen of intys or cruisers to stop them... Stop just shouting LAG please!
xlop Gallente	Posted - 2006.09.05 16:43:00 - [257] you want to reduce blobs, well simple remove t2 long range ammo, it should be eiter as weak as the weakest t1 ammo and have the range as a bonous [thus forcing people in closer or they do crap dmg] or turn it into some other type of ammo increase HP of all ships, lower cap use of weapons XL-smartbombs, 15km range, pretty hard to fit on anything but capital ships! think of a carrier warping right into a blob, activeating 6 of these and taking down anything within its range! also a way to get carriers right into the action! reduce damge a small ship can do to a larger one, and to make it fair, lower tracking of medium/large guns so they find it very hard to hit anything lower than their own class, this will force the use of all types of ships insted of 80% bs 20% something else! split sensor boosters up into 2 classes, one that adds range [say 70%] and one that adds lock speed [again perhaps 70%] this will lead to your average BS having a decent 5sec lock time onto another bs insted of 1secc dont kill range!
Hygelac Body Count Inc. Mercenary Coalition	Posted - 2006.09.05 17:35:00 - [258] Edited by: Hygelac on 05/09/2006 17:36:07 Line of Sight I believe that Line of Sight is the solution to this problem and it's one of the problems that Eve has had for a long time which greatly limits the tactical options at a Fleet Commander's disposal. In a real world fleet, Battleships and Carriers are screened and kept safe at the centre of the fleet. The Screen is comprised of Destroyers up to Cruisers making the act of getting to a battleship a rather a tricky task. However whilst this works in RL, how well would this work in Eve? GFX engines are already very good at determining Line of Sight, most games are heavily involved in this kind of calculation. But In order to make this a workable solution the following features would need to be added to the game : Fleet Formations At fanfest last year this was mentioned in one of the Developer round tables and everyone agreed that this would be a great idea but we never really heard anything about it since. The premise here is that when a gang leader performs a gang-warp, he also selects the formation. Everyone gets moved around into a tight sphere formation as default at present. But why not take a leaf out of the Homeworld Book, or the Imperium Galactica approach. You can have some predefined formations based on class. æWall of BattleÆ for example, which lands all the ships on a separate plane, Frigates, then Destroyers, then Cruisers all the way up to Battleships of the Line at the back. The reason that this would be required would be to enable the majority of your fleet to actually æsightÆ a target. If you canÆt be assured of landing in a formation where more than 5% of your fleet can actually target someone, you have problems. Additionally this sort of thing can add some impressive future tactical options. For example, keeping your EW/Gang Mod ships at the rear where the enemy fleet might not be able to shoot them, but they can still Jam and increase bonuses. LOS Indicators You canÆt add line of sight without amending the GUI to support the changes. Right now the GUI is a representation of whatÆs out there. With Exodus, more information was added in regards to the state of these objects, whether youÆre at war, if they have you locked, what size they are etc. The most important feature to add would be an indicator of whether you can actually æseeÆ a target. Sure you can scan him but can you lock him? This is critical, right now in fleet combats you simply have a list of 100 of your enemies (thank God for overview filters!), but if they landed in some kind of tight æSphereÆ formation as is the default gang warp, you would only be able to lock the 10-20 on the outer layer. Unfortunately youÆd have no way to know this and youÆd waste most of your time trying to click on the target-able needle in the haystack! But letÆs face it, LOS might not be the answer to the problem. We donÆt know all the technical reasoning behind why things work one way or the other, so hereÆs an alternative idea on countering focus fire. Which I believe only make us of current in-game features: Signature Disruption This is an idea I had a long time ago for a new module in Eve. A kind of æSignature SupressionÆ module which could be used as an æEscortÆ mechanism. The concept is a much simpler one than LOS, you have an active module targeted on another player, this module reduces that playerÆs signature radius by 90%. This suddenly gives ships the ability to æmaskÆ the signature of other ships, thereby protecting them. Sure you could lock them, but with such a small sig radius youÆd be doing pathetic damage to them. The best thing to do is kill the æsuppressingÆ ship then take out the primary target. Again this would require some sort of visual confirmation, not necessarily who is masking whom, but the mere fact of it happening. /Cont ... ---
Hygelac Body Count Inc. Mercenary Coalition	Posted - 2006.09.05 17:37:00 - [259] .../ Cont Perhaps the penalty for doing this is to increase your own shipÆs signature by a scary æmwdÆ kind of amount. Now letÆs look at an example : LetÆs say 10 BS warp in with a 10 Cruiser/Frig screen. Each of them mounting a Signature Suppression module. They warp into a fleet of 20 BS without screen, an æold styleÆ fleet. When your Screened fleet lands all the smaller ships log their pre-assigned ships and activate their Suppression modules. At this point they get an impressive visual effect to indicate what they are doing (maybe like a Nos or something) and their Ship Icons change colour on the overview. If the old style fleet tries to target the screened battleships, not only will it take an age to lock them, but when they finally do so, the damage is at a reduced level because of the tiny Sig Radius each ship is in possession of. So they have to attack the screen first. While they are attacking the screen, the Battleships start to open up on the unscreened fleet. At this point the unscreened fleet are probably loosing a BS as fast as they can take out a screening cruiser. Additionally their fleet commander is having to make tactical decisions about which targets to try and shoot à the ship being screened or the screening ship? This idea makes use of existing features: 1. Signature Radius Changes (MWDs change Sig Radius as to Halo Sets) 2. Colour Changes on the Overview (icons can change colour to indicate whether they are shooting at you) 3. Activating friendly modules to modify your own ships Attributes (Such as ECCM, Tracking enhancers) Additionally this idea has the benefit of forcing a fleet to diversify. You won't be seeing 100 man pure BS blobs anymore, fleets will actively benefit from a well balanced solution ---
Magunus The Forsakened Few The ARR0W Project	Posted - 2006.09.05 19:15:00 - [260] Back when stealth bombers were still on the drawing board, there were also some bombs. To break up those blob, and give bombers another tactic to use, I'd like to see some bomb bay modules introduced, only useable by bombers, which lay immobile bombs which detonate a few seconds later as a fairly high damage AoE weapon. This would give bombers and interceptors both a new role. Non-tackling (or at least dual purpose) interceptors and interdictors would be worth having around because they'd be able to lock and kill bombers before they managed to drop their bombs. By making smaller ships more versatile and necessary, you'd be removing battleships from the blob, reducing the damage focus fire could do. This wouldn't stop focus fire, though. I don't really think reducing range will, either, it'll just reduce the engagement range, or everyone will start using even more cookie cutter setups so the entire fleet does damage at the same range. --- In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, 'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe'

Krav Egad Inc.	Posted - 2006.09.05 23:13:00 - [261] Originally by: Shidhe About blobbing - why not have sensor clutter reducing sensor ranges/times? If I am in a blob, i have lots of ships in 10Km radius - my sensors get lots of interference from nearby ships - therefore I get reduced range or increased lock time for my sensors as my onboard computer tries to make sense of all the information. If I am in freer space, with few ships around, my sensors are not overpowered by lots of nearby noise, and I can lock normally. It might work, and it makes sense (to me, at least...) * Apologies if someone else said this - havent had time to read all the pages... I like this idea. The other idea I really liked is friendly fire--shooting through other friendly ships on the way to hit your enemy, or shooting through structures like stargates or stations. If that ability was removed, another reason to spread out is introduced. Otherwise you can continue to huddle up without gimping your damage output, same as today. Both these measures add realism to the game and achieve the effect of spreading out ships. Krav =====
Corrd	Posted - 2006.09.06 04:14:00 - [262] Has anyone suggested using the skill tree to limit the size of gangs? I'm sure someone has but here's my take: These skills should go into the Leadership section. Squadron Leader (rank 2) Every level increases the max size of the gang you lead by 2. A squadron (gang) can only target one other squadron (or ship) at once. Once a squadron target another squadron or ship, no other squadron in the fleet can engage the same squadron. Squadron members automatically start targetting the same ship the leader targets. Leadership modules are only effective within the squadron A squadron can only be targeted by one other squadron but not necessarily by the same squadron they are targeting. Fleet Command (prereq: Squadron Leader 4, Leadership 5) (rank 5) Every level of fleet command increases the max number of squadrons under your command by 1. If a fleet commander invites a single player, he joins the fleet commanders squadron (dependent on squadron leader skill level). If the fleet commander invites a squadron leader, the squadron joins the fleet under the commander. A tool I would like to see the fleet commander have is the ability to drag and drop players between squadrons on the fly. Call To Arms (rank 3) Increases the range at which you can invite players to join your squadron. +1 system range per level for invites. At level 5, you can invite anyone within the same region. This means the maximum number of ships that can target a single ship is reduced to 10 and the maximum number of ships in a fleet is 50 which reduces lag and a fleet battle turns into many smaller skirmishes giving primary targets a longer life span and making battles last longer which should = more enjoyment. My idea here is to change the paradigm from more spots in the fleet than players can fill to having more players than spots in the fleet. It also shifts the emphasis from having the larger fleet to having the best organised fleet.
Malachon Draco eXceed Inc. Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.06 07:30:00 - [263] Originally by: Corrd Has anyone suggested using the skill tree to limit the size of gangs? I'm sure someone has but here's my take: These skills should go into the Leadership section. Squadron Leader (rank 2) Every level increases the max size of the gang you lead by 2. A squadron (gang) can only target one other squadron (or ship) at once. Once a squadron target another squadron or ship, no other squadron in the fleet can engage the same squadron. Squadron members automatically start targetting the same ship the leader targets. Leadership modules are only effective within the squadron A squadron can only be targeted by one other squadron but not necessarily by the same squadron they are targeting. Fleet Command (prereq: Squadron Leader 4, Leadership 5) (rank 5) Every level of fleet command increases the max number of squadrons under your command by 1. If a fleet commander invites a single player, he joins the fleet commanders squadron (dependent on squadron leader skill level). If the fleet commander invites a squadron leader, the squadron joins the fleet under the commander. A tool I would like to see the fleet commander have is the ability to drag and drop players between squadrons on the fly. Call To Arms (rank 3) Increases the range at which you can invite players to join your squadron. +1 system range per level for invites. At level 5, you can invite anyone within the same region. This means the maximum number of ships that can target a single ship is reduced to 10 and the maximum number of ships in a fleet is 50 which reduces lag and a fleet battle turns into many smaller skirmishes giving primary targets a longer life span and making battles last longer which should = more enjoyment. My idea here is to change the paradigm from more spots in the fleet than players can fill to having more players than spots in the fleet. It also shifts the emphasis from having the larger fleet to having the best organised fleet. What exactly in your plan prevents 3 fleets from forming up, each of say 50 people, all on the same TS, with the same guy issueing firing orders? Splitting fleets does only 2 things: gangwarp gets more complicated, and warping to gangmates is limited in scope. As for the friendly fire. In theory of course a very good idea. Though you can't limit it to friendly fire of course, you could hit anyone with 'stray rounds'. Limiting it to only friendlies would make it difficult to determine who is exactly friendly, which can lead to some abuse by 'creative' people. Also the empire problem of hitting people you didn't intend to hit and getting Concordokkened in the process needs to be taken into account. The combination might be hard to make without leaving room for exploits. Secondly, and much more importantly, the amount of calculations to determine whether you hit someone else with stray rounds or who is in the way of the shot is pretty big I'd think. Currently, on firing a shot, all you need is distance/transversal to the target, skills of firing ship, stats on ship to be fired on. If you want to introduce this, you will need to monitor EXACT positions of firing ship, target ship, trajectory, ships passing through the trajectory etc etc. I don't think we want to burden the servers with that. And then you get the petitions of course:"WTF was I being hit for, there was NO WAY I WAS BETWEEN MY FRIEND AND THE GUY WE WERE FIRING AT. BULL****. I DEMAND MY SHIP BACK!!!!!". Not a viable option.
Gabriel Karade Office linebackers Blood of the Innocents	Posted - 2006.09.06 07:48:00 - [264] The old server used to cope with missile LOS back in Castor, when I joined there were screenshots of a battle with hundreds of missiles in the air and people saying what a great fight it had been. ---------- - Office Linebacker -
Malachon Draco eXceed Inc. Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.06 08:24:00 - [265] Originally by: Gabriel Karade The old server used to cope with missile LOS back in Castor, when I joined there were screenshots of a battle with hundreds of missiles in the air and people saying what a great fight it had been. Missile LOS seems to be easier I'd say, since it actually already plots a course through space under the current mechanisms. The check to see whether it hits anyone would just be like collision detection for ships. For guns I'd think it would be more difficult since you need a lot of calculations at the splitsecond of firing.
Arthegon Dark-Rising Xelas Alliance	Posted - 2006.09.06 10:27:00 - [266] Edited by: Arthegon on 06/09/2006 10:35:03 Edited by: Arthegon on 06/09/2006 10:30:18 Another "simple" solution: (RELATIVE) BLOB SIDE-EFFECTS Introduce negative effects for the ships in the blob relative in strength to the size of the blob. SPREAD-OUT WARP IN OF BLOB. The distance of ships from each other coming OUT of warp could be increased with the size of the blob. This would very effectively also work on range (given the distance bewteen ships is "distorted" enough. Example: 5 ship blob is still contained in a 5km bubble. 10 ship blob is in a 15km bubble. (starts getting interesting travelling in gangs on instas too!) :) 50 ship blob is risking the ships on the extreme boundaries of the bubble to be 100km away. (i.e. 100km bubble) (these distances are just an example) BLOB SPACE SIGNATURE Blob could get own signature type that could be scanned for and probed (realtively quick depending on blob size again). That would make life for blobs hiding about in systems much more exciting :P This is so simple an idea I probably dont need to give examples of its workings. With these changes there would be no need for hacking around with targetting time/limits/smartbomb/splash dmg from exploding ships (which btw I like though it would be a real pain in empire) and many other changes which would introduce more bugs, exploits and lag then they would do good.
Hugh Ruka Caldari	Posted - 2006.09.06 10:44:00 - [267] Originally by: Arthegon Edited by: Arthegon on 06/09/2006 10:35:03 Edited by: Arthegon on 06/09/2006 10:30:18 Another "simple" solution: (RELATIVE) BLOB SIDE-EFFECTS Introduce negative effects for the ships in the blob relative in strength to the size of the blob. SPREAD-OUT WARP IN OF BLOB. The distance of ships from each other coming OUT of warp could be increased with the size of the blob. This would very effectively also work on range (given the distance bewteen ships is "distorted" enough. Example: 5 ship blob is still contained in a 5km bubble. 10 ship blob is in a 15km bubble. (starts getting interesting travelling in gangs on instas too!) :) 50 ship blob is risking the ships on the extreme boundaries of the bubble to be 100km away. (i.e. 100km bubble) (these distances are just an example) BLOB SPACE SIGNATURE Blob could get own signature type that could be scanned for and probed (realtively quick depending on blob size again). That would make life for blobs hiding about in systems much more exciting :P This is so simple an idea I probably dont need to give examples of its workings. With these changes there would be no need for hacking around with targetting time/limits/smartbomb/splash dmg from exploding ships (which btw I like though it would be a real pain in empire) and many other changes which would introduce more bugs, exploits and lag then they would do good. SPREAD-OUT WARP IN OF BLOB - so a few pirates hug a gate and throw you off your instabm you mean ? good thinking. Originally by: JP Beauregard The experience with Exodus playtesting has scarred me for life. Those were bug-reports, not feature requests, you numbskulls....
Arthegon Dark-Rising Xelas Alliance	Posted - 2006.09.06 11:06:00 - [268] SPREAD-OUT WARP IN OF BLOB - so a few pirates hug a gate and throw you off your instabm you mean ? good thinking. The pirates are not part of ur blob. And the fact the the bigger the blob the more spread out they are is NOT supposed to make life easier for the blob OBVIOUSLY. If u warp in instas your pirates would still be in big trouble since the center of the bubble would be the gate, meaning thos pirates would be in range of MOST if not all of the ships in the biggest blob. If the pirates want to stay and take their chanes, fine. :) Better chance of fight breaking out and some new tactics wouldnt hurt... well maybe it would hurt. :P The warping blob idea doesnt solve the GATE CAMPING BLOB thing in itself. CAMPING in a BLOB should have negative side-effects too, but dont forget we DO want an advantage to groups, just not the INSTA-POP-everything-around-you kind of advantage.
Grey Area Caldari	Posted - 2006.09.06 15:34:00 - [269] Edited by: Grey Area on 06/09/2006 15:35:23 It's the range thing that causes insta-pop as I explained. It's very simple really, there are only a few combinations to consider; 1. Lone ship encounters blob. All the lone ship really wants to do is have a chance to run away. The fact that the blob can lock it and fire on it from any sensible encounter range prevents that...so make encounter range greater than weapon range...doesn't matter if you shorten range or allow a "warp to 500km" option...either way, the blob has to get in range before it can lock you, by which time you've done the sensible thing and warped out. 2. Blob encounters blob. I really don't see the problem here. The commanders of each blob are equally affected by lag, and must decide quickly from what they can see if it sensible to engage or not. Focussed fire is an option for both sides, so the playing field is balanced. However, being able to initially warp to a range OUTSIDE weapon range would be a benefit for both sides. The commanders get to assess the opposing force before engaging in battle, which means the "lagged out" period is also a "no fire" period...it would improve things greatly. 3. Gatecamp with blob. Changing weapon range or eno****er range does NOTHING to change gatecamp mechanics...the camp just moves closer, and the encounter distance is fixed because the other ship comes through the gate. Someone in another thread called it "whack-a-mole" which I think is pretty accurate. Something should be done to give the incoming ship a chance to react. Being killed is a fact of EVE...being killed with no chance to do anything about it is just sucky. --- Monty Pythons spoof of the EVE Forums; Palin: "Is this the right room for an argument?" Cleese: "I've told you once."
Minnow maught Art of War Cult of War	Posted - 2006.09.06 16:51:00 - [270] Deja vu ?? Sniping .... Put a cap on optimal range .. perhaps 75-100km so that sniping beyond that range is effected a lot more by the falloff calculations (reduced damage). Lets face it not many people really consider Falloff as they are able to obtain optimal ranges right up to the locking range limit. The other option (harder to achieve) would be to re-do all the optimal ranges of each weapon so that once highly skilled and using long range ammo results in an optimal which is shorter than currently available. T2 Ammo ... Long range ammo / precision missiles .... remove the +100% optimal but increase the damage, reduced tracking is a fair trade. Precicion missiles reduce the damage a bit but remove the speed penalties. Short range ammo / high damage missiles. Remove the cap effects on missiles. Turret ammo generally ok. All T2 ammo is generally too cheap imo for the economics of using it to ever be a concern ... increase the costs so that this becomes more of a consideration. BLOBS .... Reduce gang effects where gangs exceed a certain level. introduce skills to increase this level. Aim to give better bonuses to smaller gangs. Yes people will sub divide their blobs into smaller multiple gangs but as a result will need more leadership trained pilots and organisation to be effective. Gang effects to be detectable on the scanner so that cov ops can more easily track down the command ships in system which are boosting the gangs. This will add an additional element to fleet warfare .... do you leave a defence force with your command ships? (reducing the size of your gank gang) or do you have some ships trying to take out the enemies command positions? Make gang effects more effective for members in the same grid as the command ship or a reduced effect if not in the same grid so that gang need to consider brining these ships to the front line to reap the full benefits. Perhaps a bit radical but ..... consider something like destroying the BC or command ship which is controlling the gang results in the in game enemy gang being disbanded instantly removing gang effects and adding a nice degree of confusion ... a bit like taking out your enemies commanders. Or perhaps if the enemy pilot who is the gang leader is destroyed resulting in the gang being disbanded irrespective of ship type. Or combine these two so that gangs can only be formed by players in a BC / command Ship / carrier and can only be passed to members in this ship type.

Lincoln Armm	Posted - 2006.09.06 18:21:00 - [271] Fleet battles part I: First off there is a problem and fixing lag, which is, again outside of the purview of design wonÆt fix it. The root problem is that s ingle strategy is dominating all fleet battles. Even worse this strategy is itself simple and can be done with a small fraction of the gameÆs skills, ships, and modules. This is clearly bad. To state this more clearly, its not that focus firing is bad inherently, its just that thereÆs nothing else nearly as good. What is wanted is a dynamic environment where different strategies of varying levels of sophistication are available. Some might require a lot of character skills or equipment, others might require a large amount of player skills. How can we create a battle environment that does this? There are other considerations as well. An solution will have to work within the following constraints: Its elements must scale up and down from single ship encounters to fleet engagements. Making fleet combat fun is not worth the cost of breaking the rest of the game. It should use existing skills and systems as much as possible. In particular you donÆt want to introduce large training times to new sets of fleet skills since this would be unfair to existing alliance forces. We also want any solution to involve as wide a range of ships and equipment as possible. Focusing on one weapon system or ship class in isolation will just shift the problem around. So thatÆs the problem. WhatÆs my proposed solution? See part II
Lincoln Armm	Posted - 2006.09.06 18:22:00 - [272] Fleet battles part II To me the answer is to break up battlefield participation into defined roles. Each role would have groups of ships assigned to that role. Each role would have skills and modules associated with it. These roles are mutually supporting. What these roles are could vary but hereÆs a possible setup. Offence force: these are forces capable of delivering tremendous blows. Mounting fleet modules that augment the entire groups fire and the ability to be group targeted by the squadron commander. This is the offensive force of your fleet. Due to the mounting of fleet offence and coordination modules the defenses of these groups is weak. Defense groups: this is a group capable of generating a strong group defense. It is able to not only shelter itself but a limited number of other forces as well. This ability is range limited. Fleet defense link modules project a defensive force that only powerful Offence forces can penetrate. The presence of defense modules makes these groups slower and removes there ability to punch hard but allows survival on the battle field. Screening force These are light ships that use fleet ECM link modules to attempt to probe the enemy fleet while keeping your fleet composition a secret. The modules allow you to identify group types, group hierarchy and commander ships. Screening forces have a group cloak fleet module that makes them difficult to engage except by other powerful ecm platforms (usually their opponent screens). A screening forces composition will be a mix of combatants and sensor platforms. Force composition is held together by C&C. Group size and capabilities is determined by leadership abilities, of which. Each group has a command staff. If you win the screen war and your sensor platforms collect enough data you will be able to decapitate the enemies groups, causing them to loose group cohesion and lose fleet bonuses. So how would this work to meet our goals?. More ships and modules are in use. Both large ships and small ships have roles. Fleet link modules amplify the power of existing modules making lots of other modules also matter at the fleet level. Strategies involve: group composition: lots of offence or lots of defence. Lots of screen or not so much screen. Within a group ship composition will lead to many strategies. Some ships lend themselves to offensive or defensive groups but do you want to telegraph that much info to your opponents? group positioning: Offence groups have to be in range of the enemy and defence groups donÆt but have to be in range of anyone they want to protect. Screens want to close but they also want to keep back the enemy screen. Dynamic battle: Screens clash, data is gathered, offence groups attack probing for weak spots and the commanders switch offensive and defensive forces to meet the changing battle. Once one sides groups begin to collapse desperate measures are called for. Regroup or admit defeat? This is all just a very rough idea but I think this or something like it would add to the game.
Fedaykin Naib 0utbreak	Posted - 2006.09.06 18:25:00 - [273] I'm kinda shocked that CCP sees blobbing as something that needs to be fixed. The only problem with blobs are lag. Not focus fire, fighting at 150+km or whatever tuxford is thinking in his head. I'm amazed that CCP dont see how there thinking of breaking their own basic princples for EVE. Blobbing was an tactic that came about naturally, people come together because more people can provide better defense. This was not the idea of some evil genius to be of an exploit of game mechanics. This is a natural occurance of human nature, just as the idea of scamming, and even how dispecable scamming is, its a part of human nature. CCP created EVE on the idea of a game where the players can do whatever they want, without being told exactly what to do,and how to do. This would be a game of survival of fittest, with whatever a person can do,whatever comes to them naturally, to succeed, it would be allowed. Be it mining, building, fighting, npcing, scamming, blobbing, etc. these would be allowed in the world of EVE. Trying to fix blobbing(fix the lag) is in direct opposition of this princple. Now you want to control how exactly people are supposed to fight, instead of allowing the players to figure how to do. "Long Live the Fighters!"
Lincoln Armm	Posted - 2006.09.06 18:45:00 - [274] Its not that blobbing is in itself bad, its that there are no effective alternitives. Reducing all fleet battles to s single tactic using a small range of tactics is just bad game design. The blob developed as an outgrowth of the underlying ship combat game mechanics and it's both CCP's right and responsibility to alter those game mechanics to make a better game.
Fedaykin Naib 0utbreak	Posted - 2006.09.06 18:57:00 - [275] Originally by: Lincoln Armm Its not that blobbing is in itself bad, its that there are no effective alternitives. Reducing all fleet battles to s single tactic using a small range of tactics is just bad game design. The blob developed as an outgrowth of the underlying ship combat game mechanics and it's both CCP's right and responsibility to alter those game mechanics to make a better game. There are plenty of effective alternatives, and right now there not possible because of lag, not bad game design. "Long Live the Fighters!"
Minnow maught Art of War Cult of War	Posted - 2006.09.06 19:32:00 - [276] Originally by: Fedaykin Naib There are plenty of effective alternatives Trying to think what they are ..... nope cant think of any ... please enlighten us :) assuming 2 gangs have similar ship types and 1 is 100 ships, the other is 50 then my money is on the bigger blob. The only thing I can possibly think of is the drive through sniping run but I'd still put my money on the blob .... simply no effective counter except for luck or a serious defficiency in the larger blob e.g. they're in frigates and the smaller gang is in anti-frigate cruisers etc.
ponieus Black Nova Corp Band of Brothers	Posted - 2006.09.06 20:03:00 - [277] Originally by: Fedaykin Naib Originally by: Lincoln Armm Its not that blobbing is in itself bad, its that there are no effective alternitives. Reducing all fleet battles to s single tactic using a small range of tactics is just bad game design. The blob developed as an outgrowth of the underlying ship combat game mechanics and it's both CCP's right and responsibility to alter those game mechanics to make a better game. There are plenty of effective alternatives, and right now there not possible because of lag, not bad game design. lag is the only thing that irrates both sides more than loosing a ship in one volley.. kill the lag and guess what everyone will be happy. --------------------------------------------- Maybe we will win the war by getting every bob pilot banned from eve maybe.:/ --thebold
Fedaykin Naib 0utbreak	Posted - 2006.09.06 20:23:00 - [278] Originally by: Minnow maught Originally by: Fedaykin Naib There are plenty of effective alternatives Trying to think what they are ..... nope cant think of any ... please enlighten us :) assuming 2 gangs have similar ship types and 1 is 100 ships, the other is 50 then my money is on the bigger blob. The only thing I can possibly think of is the drive through sniping run but I'd still put my money on the blob .... simply no effective counter except for luck or a serious defficiency in the larger blob e.g. they're in frigates and the smaller gang is in anti-frigate cruisers etc. I'm sure you would like to know, but if your not intelligent enough to think of them on your own, then are you really deserving of them? "Long Live the Fighters!"
Grey Area Caldari	Posted - 2006.09.06 20:24:00 - [279] Originally by: Fedaykin Naib I'm sure you would like to know, but if your not intelligent enough to think of them on your own, then are you really deserving of them? Translation: Fedaykin can't think of any either. --- Monty Pythons spoof of the EVE Forums; Palin: "Is this the right room for an argument?" Cleese: "I've told you once."
Grey Area Caldari	Posted - 2006.09.06 20:25:00 - [280] Originally by: ponieus lag is the only thing that irrates both sides more than loosing a ship in one volley.. kill the lag and guess what everyone will be happy. Actually, it's losing your ship to a single volley that you NEVER EVEN SAW because of the lag that is REALLY annoying. Making initial encounter range greater than weapon range would at least fix that part. --- Monty Pythons spoof of the EVE Forums; Palin: "Is this the right room for an argument?" Cleese: "I've told you once."

Fedaykin Naib 0utbreak	Posted - 2006.09.06 21:22:00 - [281] Originally by: Grey Area Originally by: Fedaykin Naib I'm sure you would like to know, but if your not intelligent enough to think of them on your own, then are you really deserving of them? Translation: Fedaykin can't think of any either. Yes, keep thinking that. "Long Live the Fighters!"
Berrik Radhok GoonFleet GoonSwarm	Posted - 2006.09.07 06:07:00 - [282] Good luck finding a way to nerf blobbing without also nerfing the utility of small ships. Sig removed, inappropriate content - Cortes
Kanuo Ashkeron Eve Defence Force Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.07 06:38:00 - [283] Originally by: Lincoln Armm Fleet battles part I: First off there is a problem and fixing lag, which is, again outside of the purview of design wonÆt fix it. If you mean, that fixing lag, wouldn¦t fix the fleet battle problem, you are wrong. To part two of your post. What should defensive groups good for? I mean you suggested a few things, but how do they fit in the current game? Or how should the current game being altered so that you suggestions are useful? Kanuo
Gabriel Karade Office linebackers Blood of the Innocents	Posted - 2006.09.07 08:38:00 - [284] Edited by: Gabriel Karade on 07/09/2006 08:38:59 You know re-adding torpedo splash damage would finally bury the Raven vs. Blasterthron argument I previously posted a couple of ideas on how to change turret accuracy at range without nerfing it completely here ---------- - Office Linebacker -
eLLioTT wave Art of War Cult of War	Posted - 2006.09.07 09:01:00 - [285] introduce collisions then watch that blob of ships bouncing off each other (except now crashing into each other) and tearing apart.
Gabriel Karade Office linebackers Blood of the Innocents	Posted - 2006.09.07 09:47:00 - [286] If warping wasn't possible with ships/objects too close to you, then that would also force fleets to disperse more widely. Though, it would have significant repercussions for combat in general... ---------- - Office Linebacker -
Zothike Eve Defence Force Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.07 11:20:00 - [287] I've started to read the thread but i stopped at page 7 as i'm too lazy (many interesting post, i peronnally recommand Trac3rt very good post page6) Here are my thought about the subject -Lag can't be resolved in the near future, unless a revolutionnary breakthrew happening in informatique either at software/hardware level (en even so it have to be cheap to be usefull at mass player level) -dead in 2 seconds? then jump to a carrier and jump in a fitted frigate/cruiser/hac or wathever the carrier have as ship and jump back in battle, that what carrier have been made for, perhaps a new capital ship class like 'carrier depot' with less fighting potential but bigger hangar to store fitted ship, would be a good addition -in some fleet battle you will be primary earlier and in some other, later and even not, trying to get a solution to have EVERYbody have fun for minutes before being destroyed would require a complete rewriting of the game, we must think about an easy way to modify the game as it is now, not building a brand new game, engaging in fleet battle invovle (in case of no lag....) that you will have between a few seconds and a few minutes of fun, it's how the game work -keep focus fire as bs are cheap , and if getting kills are more rare, destroying enemy potential will be more harder/impossible -Range weapons are ok, it give some (more) tactics level in fleet battle But overall the main trouble is how EVE war at strategical level is handled, if globaly tactical war with little gangs (less than 50 total ppl involved) is near lag free and globaly fun, warfare is made of borings hours(days) of gate camping/system locking/pos spamming (and i dont speak about exploits) and all theses boring hours of waiting that very often end in a lagfest where u got killed before being able to see 1 seconds of battle Perhaps how POS war for sovereignity work should be re-writen I have an idea that will prolly get me lot of flamming but let's go I'm not player of Lineage II nor WoW ':p, but Lineage have a system of scheduled warfare is i think interesting, why not making something like that, where some system become key system for a whole constellation and owning them in certain condition give you sovereignity (for what use? it's another problem in some case) then if theses key system are identified ccp can schedule few hour(s) 1 day of each week(month?) when battle can occur and then allow load ressource to get less lag for theses system for the hour(s) involved, then battle(s) occurs and the winner will be determined by the side that gather certain victory conditions (to be defined) The problem with a system like in lineage in EVE is that you have players from each time Zone, then determining that battle will happen between 20 and 23h for London would put ppl living in West Coast in USA as a major problem, then perhaps 3 (or more) scheduled 'battle windows' should be determinate to cover each timezone Theses 'battle windows' could too be determinate by the alliances themselfs , with some rules enforced by ccp, like minimum of number of hours by week/month, variation etc A mix between scheduled battle(they call it 'castle siege' i think) of lineage and WoW battleground please be constructive, critisize but not flame, dont be intTgrists 'OMG he said WoW' let's try to make EVE better It's true it's cool to have a fully opened system when u can attack anywhere, anywhen, with any sized army, for how long u want, but obviously it dont work nor it is fun
SugarDaddy Comando Vermelho Center for Disease Creation	Posted - 2006.09.07 14:26:00 - [288] Just dont let more than 5-6 ship target the same one.
Fubarski	Posted - 2006.09.07 15:54:00 - [289] Why not look for a more eloquent solution that makes certain ships/skills invaluable in fleet warfare? For instance, field command, and fleet command ships, (or gang leader in the case of a skill based system) instead of drone controls, get "formation controls" on their overview pane. Have the number of formations, or bonuses from them increase according to a leadership type skill, with the bonuses applying to a number specifically set according to ship type (field/fleet) or skill type (field/fleet) Have these different formations actually MEAN something. For instance, an aggressive, blobbesque stance grants greater focused fire on a single target, at the expense of mobility, and defense. Likewise a defensive posture provides much more spread out design, with the caveat that your overall damage is reduced, while your maneuverability, and defense get boosted. And provide in betweens/solutions for other types of vehicles besides the big ones. An alpha strike type formation grants bonuses to overall damage, but comes with slower target locking. An evasive maneuvering formation that grants a higher resistance to damage, while mitigating rate of fire, and rad/sec (in the case of turrets). Pro's: If done correctly, it can allow for varied different types of engagements. Maybe it will breathe some life back into smaller fleet warfare, if the leader knows he can actually pit his/her tactics versus a larger enemy, with the possibilty of success. Cons: It would add to the already deep skill tree; and counts on players to cure the lag problem themselves. Won't provide an immediate effect, but more of a future endeavor. It would also have to be carefully tested to make sure one formation type wasn't completely overpowering with certain fittings. The only way I can see to avoid instapopping is to provide limitations not on the locking, but on the tracking and rate of fire for objects based on how many "locks" are currently on the target. That would provide a sense of reality, where one crafts radar can effectiely "jam" someone elses into mitigated utility. With all the signal going out to get the lock, with multiple ships in the area, there's going to be a lot of noise coming back. Of course, CCP could always introduce a HARM missile, or something similar, that when activated, lofts large volkswagen sized objects into the windshield of that insta locker. Mileage may vary on this one, but damned if that wouldn't be funny as all get out to see. Fubar
Shidhe Minmatar The Babylon5 Consortuim	Posted - 2006.09.07 17:15:00 - [290] Edited by: Shidhe on 07/09/2006 17:16:57 About splash damage... I guess it probably can work, as a specialised item (not in general - I remember what happened when it was standard...) The Cloud tech II torp: effectively a smart bomb on a missile. It is big (needs reloading more often), and as a result is slow (dont fire at any frigs unless you have them webbed first...). However it does area effect damage as a smart bomb when it does hit (vary damage to balance). The slow bit means that it can only usefully be used against big targets, and combined with the more frequent reloads means that it wont be used as a general purpose missile. It has one purpose - area effect damage against large, difficult to manoevre blobs... Just to show that it might be possible.

Grey Area Caldari	Posted - 2006.09.07 19:51:00 - [291] Originally by: Gabriel Karade If warping wasn't possible with ships/objects too close to you, then that would also force fleets to disperse more widely. Though, it would have significant repercussions for combat in general... Yes, like warp scramblers would be come redundant, as all you'd have to do is stay within a certain distance of your target. --- Monty Pythons spoof of the EVE Forums; Palin: "Is this the right room for an argument?" Cleese: "I've told you once."
Macath	Posted - 2006.09.07 20:58:00 - [292] While this may have been covered in one of the other posters posts, from what I understand Tux is talking about breaking up the blob. What he said about focus fire had me guessing. Talking out or doing any thing to nerf focus fire, which is not a game feature or mechanic but a tactic is silly. As was said, this is not cast in stone. Focus fire is a tactic used in many situations to this say, as well as in history. For that matter I don't see a way of doing that other than to limit the number of ships that can target another ship, which is also silly. You want to kill the big blob, limit gang sizes. Rather than 200 vs 200 its 4 50 man fleets vs the same. Communications nightmare, maybe. Is it workable, I think it is. Plus it opens up tactical options. Just a thought.
Apertotes Nuevos Horizontes	Posted - 2006.09.07 23:28:00 - [293] Originally by: Macath ... Focus fire is a tactic used in many situations to this say, as well as in history. For that matter I don't see a way of doing that other than to limit the number of ships that can target another ship... bah, there are many suggestions on this thread very valid to limit focus fire effectiveness and they dont involve stupid limitations Apertotes, the Guybrush Threepwood of New Eve
Rolled Eve Defence Force Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.08 03:24:00 - [294] If you want to break the back of the blob you need to make the short range setups viable in fleet battles. lets look at what the main weakness of the short range setup is in fleet battles. It's really simple. It's the approach. Lets look at a prototypical fleet battle. 2 blobs with 200km of no mans land between them. They are both aligned to a safe spot ready to warp as soon as something starts locking them. It's going to be sure suicide for any ship larger then an interceptor to close that distance. All that time spent in transit is also lost time as you are out of weapons range until you start to close (if you make it that far). The entire time you are approaching you are most likely not aligned to a safe spot. Even an interceptor is going to stand a good chance of being insta pop'd on it's way to the oppositions blob. I think short range setups would be a great way to break the back of the blob. You wouldn't have to drastically alter game mechanics to make it viable either. So .. here is my idea.... The ability to warp to with in 15km of anything you have locked. Lock your opposition and warp to them. You still have alignment time for the enemy blob to target and fire on you. You are deffinitally not safe even when in gun range as you will now be targets of the enemy fleet's drones and it's own short range ships. All this time in the enemy camp you also won't be aligned to a safe spot. Thoughts?
c0rn1 Seraphin Technologies Veritas Immortalis	Posted - 2006.09.08 04:02:00 - [295] Edited by: c0rn1 on 08/09/2006 04:03:06 I actually Do not understand the problem of focus firing. Removing that from the battle just removes every skill from fleet fights. A well organized group of people should always be able to kill a twice to triple time larger unorganized fleet. Focus firing would be no problem if you'd finally remove the lag of battles 50vs50 at least. Since the so praised Dragon Patch our PvP gangs are lagging even more than before in engagements. I am in a system with 20 players and have to wait 5 seconds til my modules are activated when I press the buttons (don't wanna talk about the delay when 100 people are in local). Undocking from stations gives us black screens that almost the ship stopped when you finally enter your ship in space. Undock bookmarks are pretty worthless with this. Have you ever tried to do a gatecamp with 20 people and have 20 people jumping into you? experienced the issues the server has with handling and distributing this to the clients involved (I Am not going into 50vs50 here since this is plain unplayable)? Not to mention the regroup order lag and the drone launch lag. I mean those are things which need ALOT of love. Not nerfing another thing where actual skill and coordination of players is involved. Every half-way experienced player is always aligned in fleet battles, ready to warp out once he is called primary (which serves very well as ship saver but not if the lag is that huge that ur ships won't react within a minute and then it's too late). What I see in Eve at the moment are tendencies which really make me said. Playing this game since 3 years after I played Ultima Online I see the same thing happening here which ORIGIN tried to do and flushed it into EA's arms. People were crying for another territory without thiefs. So they created a copy of Felucca, Trammel and the GM thiefs and PvPer were bound to kill and rob each other. It took all my exitement away from UO when I didn't have to watch my stuff at bank anymore for thiefs. Or watch my back for a PK to show up. So I left UO a short time after. You're wearing the game out in nerfs and (sorry) STUPID ideas to attract a LARGER player base. Announcement of 30k+ players on one server, etc etc.. Nice PR, bad for the players. What good is it for if the game is unplayable for the people who wanna do some serious PvP where every second counts? and this is not guaranteed at the current state of the server but that is what EVE makes EVE for a large amount of people. What good would be industry for in this game if there wouldn't be the players who shoot each other and destroy the stuff they build? I don't even dare to take my dread out nowadays because I do know that with a 99% chance the lag will hit me in front of the POS. And if it doesn't I have to reboot my client after an hour anyways because my memory is full of junk of EVE. What I see right now is that you're trying yourself in politics. It's a regular behaviour to focus on other unimportant things to pull the attraction away off the real problems. The same with the bookmark thingie. Why is CCP trying to go the easiest ways nowadays? Who needs Kali if things aren't properly fixed? whats the problem in getting some dev effort along and rewriting the whole code for bookmarks? do they have to be items? why not just simple notices with X,Y,Z coordinate and system they are in which can be easily transferred by ship computers to another player. these are basically 4 fields in a database which have to be copied with a simple INSERT X,Y,Z,System INTO [players.bookmarktable]. those a database can do MILLIONS per second and bookmarks wouldn't even slightly be a problem at all. But no, instead of just putting some effort in you just limit it to 5 bookmarks copied. that's not a solution, this is plain crap, because now people start several threads in copying with the same amount and once the player base is even larger, the same CPU usage will appear again. I thought CCP would be better than that. Regards c0rn1 x x x x x x x x x x x x x x -V- Diplomat -V- High Council Member Life's a waste of time ...
Hugh Ruka Caldari	Posted - 2006.09.08 08:33:00 - [296] Originally by: c0rn1 .... Thanks you. Very good written and to the point sums all what I'd say about the problems of EVE. You have to rely on tactics that yield the most within the restrictions you are facing. If you encounter massive lag in a large engagement, then there is no place to execute delicate strategies to win the battle. Hence the most simple and effective one is used (blob, focus fire). Originally by: JP Beauregard The experience with Exodus playtesting has scarred me for life. Those were bug-reports, not feature requests, you numbskulls....
kliop	Posted - 2006.09.08 09:53:00 - [297] Y not just make it so that if there is a gang of more then 30 ppl when u gangwarp ppl will be able to have 100+km distances between them? or be spread from the gang leader around him for 100km or something that way u would not be able to have concentrated fire... or make them warp around the gang leader but in random small (3-7 ppl) groups? or even if u can say what the groups will be like u wont be able to know at what exact range u will show up etc...and u cant ensure that everyone will be in range to shoot at the primary...instead we would have many small engagements
Kanuo Ashkeron Eve Defence Force Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.08 10:57:00 - [298] Originally by: Rolled The ability to warp to with in 15km of anything you have locked. Lock your opposition and warp to them. You still have alignment time for the enemy blob to target and fire on you. You are deffinitally not safe even when in gun range as you will now be targets of the enemy fleet's drones and it's own short range ships. All this time in the enemy camp you also won't be aligned to a safe spot. Thoughts? Sounds good. But should come with the splitting of Sensor booster into two mods. So you need special ships which can lock the snipers (which are usually far away). Kanuo
Sorja E X O D U S Imperial Republic Of the North	Posted - 2006.09.08 13:02:00 - [299] Edited by: Sorja on 08/09/2006 13:05:46 On Focus Firing: Introduce a new damage control module that shuts down all your mods (or turns off, whatever) and drains all your cap to divert all energy to strengthen your hull. You can't move, you can't do nothing, you're basically in 'reinforced mode' just like a POS, for 'some time', the point is not discussing about figures but about the concept. That module would kick in automatically when you are down 20% structure, which takes your ship out of combat whatever the outcome of the fight. If your fleet wins, you'll go repair, if your fleet loses, you'll be killed, simple as that. [Edit:] That module can obviously not kick in from NPC fire. On AoE damage: it won't work for the only reason that a camping fleet will be spread out (and still all at their optimal) while an attacking fleet will be all in 5km¦ when coming out of warp. So that would favor the campers. On Range: being Caldari I still hold a grudge against our beloved Tux for what he has done (or not done ) to the Moa/Eagle. Take out unbalancing ammo like Spike out of the game, fine with me, but cutting range down would be bad for Caldari. Originally by: Tuxford Take less damage the more people are shooting at you - This has always sounded to me like it would be severely exploitable. Would you please care to elaborate? Either way, with diminishing returns on focus firing or the new damage control I suggested, fleet fights would be much more enjoyable because: 1¦ People would fear fleet battles less and would be less inclined to blob. 2¦ Fights would occur faster instead of the sometimes hours waiting before jumping on an enemy because the first to uncloak are dead. 3¦ Less lag because of smaller blobs. 4¦ More tactics involved and more frigates necessary (there's no need for frigates in many fleet fights nowadays) to pin down ships when they get out of reinforced mode. Whatever the devs decide, EVE needs more fight opportunities, it gets worse over time and all pilots I talk to agree with that. Fear is the reason. Lessen the fear factor and we'll get more fights and more fun. ____________________ Darko1107 > does anything in ascn space have tech II fittings? Quillan Rage > Iron ships
Shidhe Minmatar The Babylon5 Consortuim	Posted - 2006.09.08 13:03:00 - [300] Originally by: Rolled If you want to break the back of the blob you need to make the short range setups viable in fleet battles. lets look at what the main weakness of the short range setup is in fleet battles. It's really simple. It's the approach. Lets look at a prototypical fleet battle. 2 blobs with 200km of no mans land between them. They are both aligned to a safe spot ready to warp as soon as something starts locking them. It's going to be sure suicide for any ship larger then an interceptor to close that distance. All that time spent in transit is also lost time as you are out of weapons range until you start to close (if you make it that far). The entire time you are approaching you are most likely not aligned to a safe spot. Even an interceptor is going to stand a good chance of being insta pop'd on it's way to the oppositions blob. I think short range setups would be a great way to break the back of the blob. You wouldn't have to drastically alter game mechanics to make it viable either. So .. here is my idea.... The ability to warp to with in 15km of anything you have locked. Lock your opposition and warp to them. You still have alignment time for the enemy blob to target and fire on you. You are deffinitally not safe even when in gun range as you will now be targets of the enemy fleet's drones and it's own short range ships. All this time in the enemy camp you also won't be aligned to a safe spot. Thoughts? Problem - goodbye to all long range PvP setups. This is too drastic - and removes nuch of the need to have fast ships. A reply to some others - focus fire is bad because it is boring! We need a variety of tactics, and this particular tactic also means blobbing on a scale that cant easily be handles by the servers - thus lag. To say that lag causes blobs sounds rather strange. In history battles have been lost because of armies losing mobility, becoming crowded, and becoming disordered as a result. We need mobility inside battles.

Kanuo Ashkeron Eve Defence Force Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.08 13:27:00 - [301] Originally by: Shidhe Originally by: Rolled ... Problem - goodbye to all long range PvP setups. This is too drastic - and removes nuch of the need to have fast ships. How do u lock a sniper without sensor boosters?
Kanuo Ashkeron Eve Defence Force Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.08 13:27:00 - [302] Originally by: Shidhe Originally by: Rolled ... Problem - goodbye to all long range PvP setups. This is too drastic - and removes nuch of the need to have fast ships. How do u lock a sniper without sensor boosters?
c0rn1 Seraphin Technologies Veritas Immortalis	Posted - 2006.09.08 16:43:00 - [303] Sometimes I wonder if people actually are thinking before posting here: Originally by: kliop Y not just make it so that if there is a gang of more then 30 ppl when u gangwarp ppl will be able to have 100+km distances between them? or be spread from the gang leader around him for 100km or something that way u would not be able to have concentrated fire... or make them warp around the gang leader but in random small (3-7 ppl) groups? or even if u can say what the groups will be like u wont be able to know at what exact range u will show up etc...and u cant ensure that everyone will be in range to shoot at the primary...instead we would have many small engagements ok, So you want me in my short range tempest setup with my 20 mates (mega & geddon) with around 40km MAX range to warp on top of a sniper group and being spread out by 100km. excellent idea. I can flush my ship down the toilet alone. don't need devs to do that. thnx. Originally by: Sidhe Problem - goodbye to all long range PvP setups. This is too drastic - and removes nuch of the need to have fast ships. A reply to some others - focus fire is bad because it is boring! We need a variety of tactics, and this particular tactic also means blobbing on a scale that cant easily be handles by the servers - thus lag. To say that lag causes blobs sounds rather strange. In history battles have been lost because of armies losing mobility, becoming crowded, and becoming disordered as a result. We need mobility inside battles. Variety. In times of Interdictors/covert ops I do NOT even slightly see a problem with snipers. every half-arsed cov op pilot can setup a warp-in spot for your dictor on the well armed but less defended sniping fleet. Ever seen what a rampage a shortrange group of 10 can do to 30 snipers when warp in on top of them? short range = higher damage output AND a tank. we tank more than 250,000 damage points on our resistances on an attacked mate in battles with shortrange setup in 5 minutes. no sniper setup can tank that since it wastes all it's modules for the sniping setup. there's no room for a tank. If you want variety, think about your own setups and don't make the devs change the system because you lack the ability of dynamic. Eve gives you alot of possibilities to fit your ship. The trick with the 200km deathblob is mono-culture. Eve demands thinking before acting. heroic actions do not have place in this game since they most likely end in death. So what do we do when we meet a 200km deathblob. Easy: first get intel on that group. Ahhh mono-culture sniping setup. Checking setup on our fleet Do we have the numbers? what setup do we have? can we react in time to it because of a closeby station to refit? did I bring all my items I need vor various setups? NOOO. That will be most likely the problem here. That people do not think in advance. No station closeby you say? how about a carrier or 10 in the system you wanna shut down? refit your ships there and back into battle. You don't have the skills to successfully fit different setup on your ship? sorry, but in every other game you attack a lvl XY character with your level XY-10 character you're most likely to die (except the lvl XY character bought that account on epay and does have 0 clue of whats going on). Conclusion: Focus Fire is not a problem at all. It's the laziness of people and heroic acts of the FC which makes you lose your whole fleet against mono-cultures. If you don't have intel and don't have a strategy then don't fight. Don't fight because you HOPE you will win. Fight when you're sure you CAN win. Because the HOPE dies last and you before. x x x x x x x x x x x x x x -V- Diplomat -V- High Council Member Life's a waste of time ...
Magunus The Forsakened Few The ARR0W Project	Posted - 2006.09.08 19:15:00 - [304] Originally by: Sorja Originally by: Tuxford Take less damage the more people are shooting at you - This has always sounded to me like it would be severely exploitable. Would you please care to elaborate? I can come up with one exploit. Have every member of your gang target another member of your gang and shoot them with 75mm gatling rails with iron or civilian railguns. I could see 'support' ships with nothing but a couple of sensor boosters in mids sitting 250km away shooting antimatter out of 75mm rails. They wouldn't do any damage, but how could you not include him in the stacking penalty? You can't go by DPS because the server doesn't work that way, DPS is a player invention. It's useful to use to figure out how long it will take you to do X damage, but the server doesn't care about it. All the server cares about is damage per shot and rate of fire. It makes no comparison between the two. --- In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, 'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe'
Magunus The Forsakened Few The ARR0W Project	Posted - 2006.09.08 19:42:00 - [305] Originally by: Shidhe Originally by: Rolled If you want to break the back of the blob you need to make the short range setups viable in fleet battles. lets look at what the main weakness of the short range setup is in fleet battles. It's really simple. It's the approach. Lets look at a prototypical fleet battle. 2 blobs with 200km of no mans land between them. They are both aligned to a safe spot ready to warp as soon as something starts locking them. It's going to be sure suicide for any ship larger then an interceptor to close that distance. All that time spent in transit is also lost time as you are out of weapons range until you start to close (if you make it that far). The entire time you are approaching you are most likely not aligned to a safe spot. Even an interceptor is going to stand a good chance of being insta pop'd on it's way to the oppositions blob. I think short range setups would be a great way to break the back of the blob. You wouldn't have to drastically alter game mechanics to make it viable either. So .. here is my idea.... The ability to warp to with in 15km of anything you have locked. Lock your opposition and warp to them. You still have alignment time for the enemy blob to target and fire on you. You are deffinitally not safe even when in gun range as you will now be targets of the enemy fleet's drones and it's own short range ships. All this time in the enemy camp you also won't be aligned to a safe spot. Thoughts? Problem - goodbye to all long range PvP setups. This is too drastic - and removes nuch of the need to have fast ships. A reply to some others - focus fire is bad because it is boring! We need a variety of tactics, and this particular tactic also means blobbing on a scale that cant easily be handles by the servers - thus lag. To say that lag causes blobs sounds rather strange. In history battles have been lost because of armies losing mobility, becoming crowded, and becoming disordered as a result. We need mobility inside battles. I agree. It also doesn't solve the 'problem of the blob', all it does is decreases the range of the blob. This solves the 'problem of the sniper'. Not that I agree that either is really a problem. If we were to get the ability to warp to any target at 15km, we'd no longer need long range ships as they'd be useless against someone who didn't want to fight at long range. They'd make fast ships useless, because everyone could warp in to 15km. They'd make missiles useless because missiles lose their lock if the target warps. Autocannon Tempests with sensor boosters and tracking comps would rule the galaxy. I think focus firing is a problem. Erm, let me rephrase. I think dying to focus fire in 2 seconds is a problem. The tactic is valid. I hate the idea of putting arbitrary limits on anything in the game that don't make sense. Sure, you can say 'only 5 people can lock one target at a time', but I've yet to hear a good reason as to why that doesn't involve metagaming. I still think the best solution (whatever that solution ends up being) won't be the removal of focus fire, it will be the addition of some other option or incentive to avoid focus firing. Personally, I like the idea of destroying all loot if the target takes too much damage in too short a time. Add in warp core breaches like someone else in this thread suggested, and maybe a few other things, like some sort of sensor feedback from a breach that prevents you from locking or firing on another target for some amount of time and we'd have a plan. --- In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, 'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe'
Roller The Scope	Posted - 2006.09.08 22:36:00 - [306] Originally by: Magunus Originally by: Shidhe Originally by: Rolled me babbling some nice feed back I agree. It also doesn't solve the 'problem of the blob', all it does is decreases the range of the blob. This solves the 'problem of the sniper'. Not that I agree that either is really a problem. If we were to get the ability to warp to any target at 15km, we'd no longer need long range ships as they'd be useless against someone who didn't want to fight at long range. They'd make fast ships useless, because everyone could warp in to 15km. They'd make missiles useless because missiles lose their lock if the target warps. Autocannon Tempests with sensor boosters and tracking comps would rule the galaxy. I think focus firing is a problem. Erm, let me rephrase. I think dying to focus fire in 2 seconds is a problem. The tactic is valid. I hate the idea of putting arbitrary limits on anything in the game that don't make sense. Sure, you can say 'only 5 people can lock one target at a time', but I've yet to hear a good reason as to why that doesn't involve metagaming. I still think the best solution (whatever that solution ends up being) won't be the removal of focus fire, it will be the addition of some other option or incentive to avoid focus firing. Personally, I like the idea of destroying all loot if the target takes too much damage in too short a time. Add in warp core breaches like someone else in this thread suggested, and maybe a few other things, like some sort of sensor feedback from a breach that prevents you from locking or firing on another target for some amount of time and we'd have a plan. All of these side effects are what is going to break the blob. You would still need the target to be outside of the 100km minimum distance to warp and you would still need to be able to run sensor boosters to target things out to 200km. Now yes this is pretty anti sniper however that is what a blob is. A large collection of snipers. Fitted 100% gank 0% tank. This leads to the focused fire insta poping. If your fleet blob is going to have to contend with enemy ships warping into your ranks your fleet might have to start equiping a little less gank and a little more tank. Never fear pirate gate campers. Keep your opponent from locking you and they can't warp in on your sniper. As far as fast ships go they will still be very useful in a 100km dash. I also liked the idea of a different module needed to make this happen.
Gabriel Karade Office linebackers Blood of the Innocents	Posted - 2006.09.09 08:01:00 - [307] Edited by: Gabriel Karade on 09/09/2006 08:03:31 Focus fire itself is ok, but it should be in-game mechanisms not out of game (ventrillo, TS e.t.c) that allow it, that latter make it too easy. I think most people would want to see (aside from less lag ) more immersive fleet battles than simply listening to some guy saying ôPrimary... Secondary...ö ôPrimary.... Secondary....ö So here's another idea to throw into the works... 1/Overview changes: No names on Overview û For ships, replace with the ship type, i.e. æMegathronÆ, æScorpionÆ e.t.c. Perhaps leave capsules with the player name displayed, think of it from a RP-background as a ædistressÆ beacon (or æabout to be in distressÆ beacon ). Colour coding on ship Icon column û Based on standings, so that you have small/medium/big, red, blue or white squares essentially û this is conjunction with the æcorporationÆ column on the overview forms your IFF. 2/ Hierarchical gang structures: Fleet commander û Gang leader, total gang size determined by level of a suitable skill (Wing Command?), but base maximum size of 40 (for example) +5 per level of skill Squad leaders û The fleet commander (gang leader) assigns pilots in his gang as squad commanders (including themselves). Each squad leader may be further assigned a base of 3 pilots + one 1 pilot per level of a suitable skill (Squad leader). Squad members û Assigned to squad leaders by the Fleet commander, much like you would assign drones to groups. 3/Target tagging: Each squad leader can assign target tags to his/her squad, but not to other squads in the gang. The fleet commander is also a squad leader and therefore has his/her own squad to assign targets for, but again, not able to assign targets to the other squads. The squad leaders are therefore 'calling' their own primaries, the fleet commander is in charge of overall manoeuvres, and the usual gang related stuff. Once battle is joined he/she would basically be giving general orders to his squads rather than micro-managing the whole battle. TS or Ventrillo comms would then boil down to, for example, "Squad delta warp out to planet X and back in at 30km behind the enemy" The squad leaders then handle the rest. Focusing the fire of the entire fleet on one target would then be something special e.g. a mothership roles up, which is a unique and easily identifiable target (and high level threat), and could still be done through voice-comms ("OMFG mothership! Kill it!!11") 4/Flagships? Perhaps this opens a role for Tech II Battleships (though IÆd still like to see jump-drives on them), with a hard-coded bonus allowing additional pilots to be assigned to the squads if the squad leaders are piloting flagships. ---------- - Office Linebacker -
Gabriel Karade Office linebackers Blood of the Innocents	Posted - 2006.09.09 09:48:00 - [308] Edited by: Gabriel Karade on 09/09/2006 09:55:27 An example of how this could be rather interesting: A fleet commander has to pull a fleet together from the following volunteers: 3x Interceptors, 2x Assault frigates, 2x Interdictors, 1x Torpedo Raven, 2x Blackbirds, 1x Celestis, 1x Thorax, 3x Blasterthron, 3x 1400mm Tempest, 1x Logistics ship and his own Eos. Current system - "Aww dammit guys I need more snipers!ö Proposed system, fleet can be split into squads, and there is no longer 1 primary target, 1 secondary target... Squad Alpha: He assigns his own Eos, the torpedo raven, the 2 assault frigates and a Blackbird - itÆs a fairly medium range sort of group with some EW support and reasonable capabilities against all sizes of ships. Squad Beta: The three interceptors, and the two interdictors - their role is quite clear. Squad Delta: The Tempests, a Blackbird and the logistics ship - this is his long range heavy hitting group that should have some extra survivability thanks to the EW, long range and the repair ability afforded by the logistics ship. Squad Omega: (or OMGWTFBBQ wing) All three Blasterthrons, Thorax and Celestis - He's assigned his close range death dealers into one group, they have their own EW support, and can operate independently of the long range Tempests and Squad Beta as they have their own tackling equipment. Given it would be no longer possible to focus an entire fleet on 1 just of the FC's Battleships (well aside from if all of the opposing Squad leaders by chance, happened to tag the same target...) it would be possible to utilise more mixed fleets than the current everyone-must be-the-same situation. ---------- - Office Linebacker -
Sniser 4S Corporation Morsus Mihi	Posted - 2006.09.09 10:04:00 - [309] Problems of Blobs and fixs: 1.- Ping Pong warp tactics are boring. People is just insta warping begin aligned. All ships should have a fixed time for warp, sized ship based. Many calculations need be done to warp in space if you dont want to hit with a planet while traveling (RP). This fix the time needed to get tackled by someone and time to do some damage before he try warps out 2.-A few smaller and support ships can protect a huge blob with only 10km radius. Anti-Support should move between your fleet to protect them or increase your support(less bs). AoE stuff need be different from turret or missile. It should be a utility slot. With Damage and ECM burst stuff(just lock the target but you can relock again). Slow rate of fire also slow explosion velocity. Little ships need dont be insta poped 3.- Name of people should be only visible if you are in gang or its someone of your corp/alliance. Orders should be attack those Scorpions instead attack to 'Insert bad guy name' 4.- Tracking on Long range weapons is far too easy to hit small ships trying approach to them. Someone already wrote how a 425mm t2 have more tracking than a dual heavy pulse Also i want add a special spot why huge range is bad. - It disable all electronic warfare. Its not useful. - It disable some weapons. Missiles are not useful. Even vs support i used my AF as anti support and many times some ravens tried attack me i just warp out since im at 200km away just doing anti support - It disable a lot people while using t1 bs doing anything useful. So instead after 2 or 3 month join as Bs to fleet you need wait 6month. People should fly ships because they like fly them, not because they are forced = im not useful in a t1 bs. Its ok a t2 ship do more damage because you trained for it, But its not ok become useless because you arent a 6month char - It disable drones and sentry drones. So Some ships are not useful( Dominix ) - It enforce to small ships wait until a can pop. Nobody could even try fly 200km until the other fleet using mwd. And if he try it then he is suiciding As you see there are a lot things why huge range is bad. People telling is fine its because they like stay out from sentry guns sniping little haulers without any risk
Magunus The Forsakened Few The ARR0W Project	Posted - 2006.09.09 13:36:00 - [310] Originally by: Roller Edited by: Roller on 09/09/2006 03:03:59 Originally by: Magunus Originally by: Shidhe Originally by: Rolled me babbling some nice feed back me babbling... All of these side effects are what is going to break the blob. You would still need the target to be outside of the 100km minimum distance to warp and you would still need to be able to run sensor boosters to target things out to 200km. Now yes this is pretty anti sniper however that is what a blob is. A large collection of snipers. Fitted 100% gank 0% tank. This leads to the focused fire insta poping. If your fleet blob is going to have to contend with enemy ships warping into your ranks your fleet might have to start equiping a little less gank and a little more tank. Never fear pirate gate campers. Keep your opponent from locking you and they can't warp in on your sniper. As far as fast ships go they will still be very useful in a 100km dash. What do you know there are also in game mechanics to defend against this too. Scram the short range ships before they can lock and warp to your blob. I also liked the idea of a different module needed to make this happen. I don't think changing the range is going to change the blob. All it will do is change the long range mediocre damage to short range high damage. Everyone will just equip whatever they need to get a fast lock, and combat will be even shorter because of the higher damage. You'll probably end up with blaster boats doing the majority of damage, then a few ships that sit at between 15km to 25km doing good damage. Still 100% gank, 0% tank. Range isn't relevant in a fleet blob, nor is tank. Focused fire takes care of that. If you're primary, you're dead, range be damned. I don't see why fast ships would be useful for a 100km jaunt, why not just warp there? You say that you can scramble them as a defense against warping? I've never seen a scrambler that reaches 100km, so you have to leave tacklers at short range anyway, out in the open, waiting to die. Besides, you can't scramble a whole blob with anything less than an interdictor, which definitely won't last long dead center in the middle of an enemy blob. --- In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, 'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe'

Traver Sina	Posted - 2006.09.09 19:39:00 - [311] Edited by: Traver Sina on 09/09/2006 19:40:44 Posted in wrong place earlier oops! The Overview Currently lists Ship type / Colour for determining Status to your own corp, and the Players name. This leads to sorting the overview by name, and the Fleet target callers either starting at the top (or bottom) and working down the list, Ok they may decide to call certain ship types first - but still they simply work down the list. Now If the Overview was to just list the Corp (or maybe the name the player gives his ship) instead of the player charactor name, then Fleet target callers would'nt be able to as easily call out Targets names, (meaning the battle length is not dependant if your name begins with A) this would reduce the likly hood of total focused fire, I'm not sure how it would pan out, it also has inherant problems for tacklers in calling which target they have scrambled. but an adaption of the Target Tagging (already ingame) might eliviate that. <i missed it ealry but there be a very similar post above i appologise...)
alpheon Ars Caelestis Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.09 19:48:00 - [312] You want to make it hard to shoot at long range? make it hard to shoot something far away then. Sure, let me lock on target at 250KM away, but factor in relvestic distances if only when you calcuate hit chance. Even if my Large Hybrid Charge is flying at 100km/s, it will take 2.5 seconds for it to reach its target. A battleship will have moved 300 meters in that time. Effective evasive manuevering in reality will have the ship changing pitch, angle, yaw, and rotational speed at all times when in motion, the effective location of a target over time is represented accuratly as a cone of probability. The cone circumfrence grows larger as time increases. The more time passes, the more probability of locations a target can be at. After 3 seconds, I could move 450 meters, but... not in a straight line, cause that makes me an easy target. Additionally, I think that you should make missiles more useful at long range by giving them more tactical worth then delivering damage. If a missile detonates, it should, effect the sensor line of sight between ships in relation to its position. Launcher ---> missile goes boom here ----> target. If you could draw a straight line between launcher and target, assuming they were both stationary, and it was a Nuke missile.... I propose that there is massive sensor blind spot blocking the line of sight. I can see the target, but maybe I just lost lock as it hides behind the electro magnetic burst given off by the warhead. If you started setting of nuke warheads on earth, a lot of the damage after you flatten a city would be felt by the EM radiation disrupting computers and electrical systems in the region as well. This is the effect I'm talking about. Missiles are currently almost worthless in long range engagements because of the time-to-target. If it becomes worth while to shoot them even as a defensive measure, maybe you'll start seeing shorter range engagements as more people want to use missiles to blind and destroy targets. Don't nerf range. Give us more ways to FORCE shorter range encounters. it should be OUR fault if we are unable to manipulate the battlefield in a way to our chosing. its the argument I've had for a long time. it's OUR fault if theres not enough mapped out warp in locations wehre we can expect a fleet to be. I hope I'm not stating the obvious, but any good defensive strategy should include a **** load of mapped out warp in points in a 3D grid around a strategic location out to at least 200KM. If the aggressor can exploit the weak planning and defensive strategy of the defender, then the defender deserves to die. Don't nerf, give us the tools to force closer range encounters.
alpheon Ars Caelestis Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.09 19:53:00 - [313] This is radical... Allow us to warp to any visible target. Ok, thats radical. Lets make it interesting. If you are in a gang, and two ships can see the warp to target, have a sensor module of some kind (command ship module maybe? that has a cycle time to lock on a warp in point... This makes it so you're not instantly warping to a distant target, but your gang needs to survive a moment or two to make the calculations to warp, with that module. Command ships become MORE useful, and sniper fleets while still usefule, have more to fear instead of being distant invulnerable targets.
alpheon Ars Caelestis Ascendant Frontier	Posted - 2006.09.09 20:02:00 - [314] forgive me for spamming the thread, I've only now had the time to process my ideas. 1: Terrain. I know CCP is talking about making terrain a much larger part of the game. I imagine that when this happens (aka, heres another idea how to fix ranges), it will effect the sniper fleets. Gas clouds radiating with electromatic energy would cut sensor ranges down drasticaly. Hide your rading fleet in there and force the sniper fleet to engage you at closer ranges. 2: A new kind of sensor probe: Make a short range one that flies out 250km rather quickly and provides for a warp in location. zip, instant warp in point for your tacklers, and you need a specialy ship to use it. Again giving us the TOOLS to do the job, instead of nerfing.
Maya Rkell Forsaken Empire	Posted - 2006.09.09 21:02:00 - [315] Originally by: Hugh Ruka Originally by: c0rn1 .... Thanks you. Very good written and to the point sums all what I'd say about the problems of EVE. You have to rely on tactics that yield the most within the restrictions you are facing. If you encounter massive lag in a large engagement, then there is no place to execute delicate strategies to win the battle. Hence the most simple and effective one is used (blob, focus fire). To an extent. I think mechanisms like flare ECM and global ECM would do a lot, also REMOVING T2 AMO. Sorja, why not NPC fire? Give corpmates time to rescue you. Otherwise we're into magiv faeries knowing the origion of blasts which hit you time. Further, basically for larger fleets this amount to a "never lose any ships" button. With dimishing returns on focused fire, the Blob becomes the ONLY way to reasonably fight. And in fleet, you simply have fixed size firesquads. This means slower fights based arround only those fireswuads, with boring no-casualty battles. BIG blobs - you cannot afford to be caught in a smaller squad because ALL the enemy MUST be in gank BS, and their focused squads WILL mince you up in the lag. And yes, it's HIGHLY exploitable. Frigates? Oh, those things which REDUCE your battleships damage and anyone using them for anything excepy pure cloaked scouting is kicked from the corp, right. The single worst issue, for EVERYTHING, which needs fixing (by removal of anything above T2 range and damage is, however, T2 AMO! //Maya
Maya Rkell Forsaken Empire	Posted - 2006.09.09 21:08:00 - [316] Gabriel Karade, "No names on Overview" So basically, "nearest scorp" replaces "names scorp". It makes Eve faceless, destroys any sense of identity and personality compared to fighting a NPC, who I might as well be fighting. "Hierarchical gang structures:" So this makes me use TS and a normal chat channel for the gang, is all. Everyone needs BM's as today, no change there.. oh yea, PLAIN nerf to gang modules, which are now basically worthless. "Target tagging" So it makes even LESS difference for removing names. "Squad delta warp out to planet X and back in at 30km behind the enemy" Can and IS allready done by a number of alliances. "Focusing the fire of the entire fleet on one target would then be" Perfectly normal given command channel functionality on TS, calling targets JUST like today. Except it penalises corps which are not full of 15+ mil SP PvPers, and basically makes fighting an alliance harder and more static still. //Maya
Gabriel Karade Office linebackers Blood of the Innocents	Posted - 2006.09.09 22:41:00 - [317] Edited by: Gabriel Karade on 09/09/2006 22:43:19 Originally by: Maya Rkell Edited by: Maya Rkell on 09/09/2006 21:21:16 Gabriel Karade, "No names on Overview" So basically, "nearest scorp" replaces "names scorp". It makes Eve faceless, destroys any sense of identity and personality compared to fighting a NPC, who I might as well be fighting. Oh noes! I don't know the name of the pilot until I see his pod!... Seeing the names is part of the problem at the moment. Oh and no, the nearest Scorp for one pilot in a fleet does not necessarily correspond to the nearest for another pilot, particularly if squad formations where to also be introduced... Originally by: Maya Rkell Edited by: Maya Rkell on 09/09/2006 21:21:16 "Hierarchical gang structures:" So this makes me use TS and a normal chat channel for the gang, is all. Everyone needs BM's as today, no change there.. oh yea, PLAIN nerf to gang modules, which are now basically worthless. Where the hell do BM's come into it? God you come up with some random stuff sometimes... And no, nothing has changed to gang modules... Originally by: Maya Rkell Edited by: Maya Rkell on 09/09/2006 21:21:16 "Target tagging" So it makes even LESS difference for removing names. Removing the names renders outside mechanics less useful, and therefore in-game mechanics, more useful. I really don't see why you are objecting to a mechanic that would give us MORE options, MORE immersion in fleet battles... Originally by: Maya Rkell Edited by: Maya Rkell on 09/09/2006 21:21:16 "Squad delta warp out to planet X and back in at 30km behind the enemy" Can and IS already done by a number of alliances. Please don't snip my arguments into oblivion so as to loose all meaning...I suggested this would (and yes it would) lessen the micromanagement from the FC and place more roles to his subordinates (gee, sounds like a real fleetà) allowing for more realistic command and control than present i.e. breaking a fleet battle into mulitple squad battles rather than the current blob vs. 1 target, blob vs. 1 target and repeat add-infinitum... Originally by: Maya Rkell Edited by: Maya Rkell on 09/09/2006 21:21:16 "Focusing the fire of the entire fleet on one target would then be" Perfectly normal given command channel functionality on TS, calling targets JUST like today. Except it penalises corps which are not full of 15+ mil SP PvPers, and basically makes fighting an alliance harder and more static still. No, because you have no means of easily identifying a target to call out ôItÆs the tempest to the er...left, er... no not that one the one above, no I meant...ö Say you have 20-odd Tempests and 20-odd ArmageddonÆs to shoot at, all simply listed as 'Tempest', 'Armageddon' and not in a line one behind the other, you have no way of identifying a target using solely voice comms with the proposed changes. And given only squad leaders can assign there targets, no way to focus the entire fleet on 1 target unless it is something æspecialÆ cue Titan rolling up ôOMG a Titan!!!1111ö Originally by: Maya Rkell Edited by: Maya Rkell on 09/09/2006 21:21:16 Realisically: Squad 1: 2 covert scouts Squad 2: 5 gank BS Squad 3: 5 gank BS Squad 4: 5 gank BS Etc. And if Squads 2-4 are firing on separate targets that is an enormous improvement over consecutive, 15 gank BS vs. 1 BS fights. Splitting into squads makes integration of different setups (e.g. close and long range Battleships, cruisers e.t.c) into the complete fleet and overall battle picture much easier. I really have no idea why anyone would be averse to seeing improved gang functionality, and improved tools for the job. Screw TS, give us proper in-game tools for the job and make fleet battles more immersive... ---------- - Office Linebacker -
Maya Rkell Forsaken Empire	Posted - 2006.09.10 01:33:00 - [318] Gabriel Karade, Ohnoes, Eve is a faceless grind. Yea, that's REALLY bad. There is no personality, no sense of difference or drama. It kills the sense of involvement and excitement. These are all important factors! "the nearest Scorp for one pilot in a fleet does not necessarily correspond to the nearest for another pilot" To a large extent it forces it to be - you have far LESS options in combat and nee dot keep the heavy hitters together to a much greater extent. "Where the hell do BM's come into it? God you come up with some random stuff sometimes... And no, nothing has changed to gang modules..." You haven't even considered the BASIC effgects your sweeping changes will have had on anything else. That you have not done this is an inditement of your changes as they are proposed with absolutely NO real thought or care for the consequences! Smaller gangs means gank warping affects less people. Hence BM's are involved, more people need em...if everyone allready didn't. So NO change there. Gang modules..now only affect the few people in your gang direct, max what 6 people, MASSIVE nerf. "Removing the names renders outside mechanics less useful, and therefore in-game mechanics, more useful." No, it's not fast enough to be useful. It's easier to hold the fleet together and let the fast OOG mechanism work. " I really don't see why you are objecting to a mechanic that would give us MORE options, MORE immersion in fleet battles..." Because it does the PRECISE opposite. It reduces the data avaliable, which is BAD. Reducing the data litterally cannot add options, it removes them. People WILL target the ship types anyway. "Please don't snip my arguments into oblivion so as to loose all meaning." The meaining carrys through fine. Your problem is that I've again accurately pointed out another hole in your argument. "I suggested this would (and yes it would) lessen the micromanagement from the FC " No, it will not. ONE target prime and second, as today, over TA, as today. The command and control changes not, except for you're calling a single ship type and position rather than a name. There is NO breaking up beyond your artificial gang size which just complicates warping and nerfs gang modules. "No, because you have no means of easily identifying a target to call out ôItÆs the tempest to the er...left, er... no not that one the one above, no I meant...ö" You ARE clear, or you lose. Simple as that. If it's "the scorp to the left of the fleet", then people go for that, even if the ones in the middle are closer, if they're close together pick on the easily identified ones first for speed. Everyone STILL focuses fire in PRECISELY the same way. "And if Squads 2-4 are firing on separate targets " ONE target, or you lose. Period. You do ot impliment a technical nerf to focused fire, so it will continue same as today. The ONLY difference s you won't have a flying clue about who you're fighting, no way to set standings, to see what's going on beyond looking for the ship called. (again, you didn't give this the LEAST consideration did you? And given standings limits, NBSI just became COMPULSORY, removing yet MORE options from people and making living in lowsec an exhausting nightmare of risk for many players). "I really have no idea why anyone would be averse to seeing improved gang functionality" I'm not, but you're nerfing it and adding nothing. "Screw TS, give us proper in-game tools for the job and make fleet battles more immersive..." You won't stop people using TS, it's simply easier. There are no tools you can offer to stop its use, and your answer of nerf nerf nerf just destroys much of the character of the game and makes fleet battles considerable LESS interesting and PvP appear much closer to PvE for many people. //Maya
Sniser 4S Corporation Morsus Mihi	Posted - 2006.09.10 06:43:00 - [319] Edited by: Sniser on 10/09/2006 06:43:45 Originally by: Gabriel Karade Edited by: Gabriel Karade on 09/09/2006 22:43:19 Originally by: Maya Rkell Edited by: Maya Rkell on 09/09/2006 21:21:16 Gabriel Karade, "No names on Overview" So basically, "nearest scorp" replaces "names scorp". It makes Eve faceless, destroys any sense of identity and personality compared to fighting a NPC, who I might as well be fighting. Oh noes! I don't know the name of the pilot until I see his pod!... Seeing the names is part of the problem at the moment. Oh and no, the nearest Scorp for one pilot in a fleet does not necessarily correspond to the nearest for another pilot, particularly if squad formations where to also be introduced... im agree with Gabriel. If there is formations my nearest scorp may isnt the same than your nearest scorp Originally by: Gabriel Karade Originally by: Maya Rkell Edited by: Maya Rkell on 09/09/2006 21:21:16 "Target tagging" So it makes even LESS difference for removing names. Removing the names renders outside mechanics less useful, and therefore in-game mechanics, more useful. I really don't see why you are objecting to a mechanic that would give us MORE options, MORE immersion in fleet battles... Its more inmersive see 10 mega 5 tempest 5 armageddon than guy1,guy2,guy3 with their names. Tell me where do you find a battle with ships and his names in their heads -.- Originally by: Gabriel Karade Originally by: Maya Rkell Edited by: Maya Rkell on 09/09/2006 21:21:16 "Focusing the fire of the entire fleet on one target would then be" Perfectly normal given command channel functionality on TS, calling targets JUST like today. Except it penalises corps which are not full of 15+ mil SP PvPers, and basically makes fighting an alliance harder and more static still. No, because you have no means of easily identifying a target to call out ôItÆs the tempest to the er...left, er... no not that one the one above, no I meant...ö Say you have 20-odd Tempests and 20-odd ArmageddonÆs to shoot at, all simply listed as 'Tempest', 'Armageddon' and not in a line one behind the other, you have no way of identifying a target using solely voice comms with the proposed changes. And given only squad leaders can assign there targets, no way to focus the entire fleet on 1 target unless it is something æspecialÆ cue Titan rolling up ôOMG a Titan!!!1111ö Im agree again with Gabriel. big targets will still be focused fire. Even if there are many dreads you only need follow the firsts shoots and see your target. Because that target will last enough time alive to do that. a BS will die a lot more quickly and you dont have enough time to look where is it
Bagehi Caldari BFG Industries	Posted - 2006.09.10 07:09:00 - [320] It might be just me, but I think people want longer battles. If each ship tanked more damage (or all the damage amounts decreased) battles would last longer, and there would be enough reaction time for everything but the most rediculous focused-fire attack. With that added time, the rest of the fleet will be able to shift remote reps to that ship and cause it to last. Maybe simply reducing the initial salvo's (or two) damage would work. Call it "finding the range" like artillery fire or ship fire in the days before missiles. Just a thought. At the very least, it would change the dynamic of most fleet battles.

Gabriel Karade Office linebackers Blood of the Innocents	Posted - 2006.09.10 08:58:00 - [321] Maya, you need to re-read my post because you're just pulling out the strawmans now. I really don't care about your 'faceless grind' nonsense because that what it is - you still see the Corp identify of the ship you are attacking, you still see the pilots capsule upon destruction. Removing names nerfs TS not the game - A quick and efficient Target tagging mechanism for squad leaders would effectively and efficiently replace it, have you tried pronouncing some peoples names out there? Well now you would not have to: click primary selected, Click secondary selected - plus it's pretty stupid that all ships wear a "hello I'm the 3rd in the line for destruction because I'm a 'C'!" flag... The gang size would be limited, yes, but the number I used (40) was an example for base gang size for random Joe with no skills. I have no idea where you are getting the idea that it would limited to 6 - the squad would be limited to between 4-9, but the 'global' gang is determined by the FC and his skills (40-65 being a number I used as it's around about the 'nice' fleet size, doesn't have to be that, could be larger or smaller - maybe up to 100 with skills). There is no massive nerf to gang modules because they would still affect the global gang - not limited to the sub-gang the BC or Command ship is in. To summarise: Gang of (for example) 60 pilots, split into (for example) 10 squads - in game target tagging means 10 primary's, 10 secondary's 10 tertiary - 3 clicks for each squad leader is all it took, it's actually more efficient than some blokey telling 60 pilots to shoot 1, but at the same time brings the level of firepower going down on 1 ship to levels that (with EW and remote repair taking into consideration) are not insta-gib, which in turn allows for more manoeuvring and any potential changes to include subsystem targeting/overheating modules. It's not a nerf, it gives more options. If you don't want to split your gang into squads you don't have to, if you don't want to use multiple, independent target tagging you don't have to - but an organised opponent using both would wtfbbq you.... "Guys shoot the Temepst...Nooo!! not that one, why are you all shooting different Tempests??!!" And thatÆs all I have to say. ---------- - Office Linebacker -
Admiral IceBlock Caldari Northern Intelligence SMASH Alliance	Posted - 2006.09.10 11:51:00 - [322] LOS is the way to go AND to reduce amount of weapon you can realisticly fitt. Just like in the OLD DAYS were you could barely fitt half a rack of your ships best weapons. Meaning you would have to sacrifice your lowslot to be able to fitt more weapons OR use lower powergrid weapons OR fitt damage mods. An Apocalypse with 8 tachyons would most likely have his whole lowslot filled with Reactor Control Units. Any of you OLD TIMERS remember how difficult it was to setup your ship with a full rack of weapons? WASNT THAT THE GOOD TIMES?
Kindakrof Caldari Cruor Frater Coalition of Carebear Killers	Posted - 2006.09.10 13:22:00 - [323] P.S. Thanks to Hammer to teach me how to speel oppenent I lol'd --- --- --- my sig is pr0 Thanks for the lemon
TwoShoes	Posted - 2006.09.11 12:59:00 - [324] Might have already been mentioned but what about Friendly Fire ? If the target gets obscured by another ship in the blob then either the weapon should not fire, or the ship in the line of sight gets hit. Would certainly discourage blob formations in favour of a more structured formation. Whether effective enough to solve the "problem" I dunno.
Goneanti Swift	Posted - 2006.09.11 17:40:00 - [325] Just throwing my 2 cents in. The stated problem is focused fire. Changing ranges and damage done really is not really going to change this. If you decrease ranges, the blob just gets closer. If you decrease the damage done (or increase the tank), you just make a linear change to the scale, and the blob adjusts by adding even more ships to counter. My initial thought on a solution would be this. As more ships try to lock on a target, it becomes harder for those ships to pick their own ranging signals or targeting data out of the signal blob being reflected off the target. It also makes it harder to finely focus on the target, decreasing the ability for weapons to land good hits. In game mechanics, for each ship locked or attempting to lock on the target, decrease the targeted ships effective signature radius. Friendlies (gang members and corp/alliance members) don't count towards this to prevent them from all targeting each other and exploiting the mechanics. RP explaination could be, as friendly ships, they've been given a unique identifier code you transmit as a beacon, so they can lock onto you without the need to crudely bounce EMF off of your ship. Let's say it only kicks in for more than 3 ships targeting you, and above that each ship multiplies your sig radius by 0.85 (15% reduction). At 5 ships, your at 75% sig radius, at 7 your at 52%. Have a blob of 20 ships targeting you? You're down to 6.3% of your signature radius, and they're really wasting their time trying to pick the targeting signal out of all the noise coming off of you. This would encourage people to break up into squads and pick different targets to maximize damage done, while having little to no effect on small groups. Numbers of course would have to be tweaked and balanced, those were chosen at random just to show the concept.
Shoele Lialos Gallente MCB Inc.	Posted - 2006.09.11 20:39:00 - [326] Requiring Line of Sight, or allowing for friendly fire mishaps, is one way of handling this, although the missile users might end up being the big winners. Another method, and one that can also be defended by the physics of the situation would be to have ranges reduce when other ships are around. Since your own range is based on several factors, one of which is your onboard sensors being able to lock the enemy, it makes sense that having multiple ships right near one another the Electromagnetic Interference (or the like for Gravometric, etc) from one ship to the next would reduce ranges for all ships involved. A variation of this would have ships using similar sensor technologies (ie. all the same race of ships) might not affect each other so badly due to the ship designers having planned for them to work together.
Noriath	Posted - 2006.09.12 08:45:00 - [327] The real issue is not so much focussed firing as it is the fact that movement and positioning on the battlefield are completly meaningless. You don't get the option of outmanuvering an enemy, or positioning larger ships behind the front lines to support while out of the enemies range and so on, because all travel on the battlefield is instant through warping, and ship speeds are entirely meaningless. Right now your ships needs to do at least 1000m/s in order to really draw a major advantage from impulsing on the battlefield. Even then, getting to an enemy that is 200km away will take you well over 3 minuites, which is more then enough to be dead and burried in Eve. Now most ships don't go that fast. They do 100-250m/s - a speed at which even 100km are nothing short of insurmountable while under fire. MWD and Afterburner are horribly unbalanced in their current state, not as in they make you invoulnerable, but as in, they are the only thing that possibly makes impulsing worthwhile, however, on the same token all the possible warp ins to a location are too close to be balanced for a ship moving at those kinds of speeds. On the other hand warping is fast, and you are completly invoulnerable untill you are where you are going. Essentially you are teleporting around the battlefield, and 95% of Eve combat is boiling down to making warp ins. Think about it, what is the one essential factor in all battle tactic in Eve? Creating the right warp ins... You try to bust someones safespot, you have to figure out how to create a warp in, you try to kill a sniper, you have to figure out how to create a warp in, you want to engage an ememy fleet at the right range, you have to create a warp in... It always comes down to that one factor, Eve is all about warping in at the right place, out before you die and trying to figure out how to either kill someone before they warp out or trying to stop them from it. Immagine all ships in Eve would go 10 times as fast as they do right now, but all warp increments where also multiplied, so you warp in at 150km mininum, and 1000 max. All the sudden a 200km range doesn't cover every single warp-in spot around a gate anymore, and in order to cover all of space around it you'd acctually need fast ships. At the same time warping itself has to be changed. It should take a lot longer to go into warp, cost a lot more cap on top of that, when coming out of warp you should not be able to fight immediatly, so that it's acctually undesirable to warp into a fight, but rather to warp near a fight and manuver into it. Warping away from a fight while being too close to an enemy should allow them to warp right after you, so that it becomes desirable to outrun them before you warp, and not just hit warp and be gone... Warping should NOT be the main mode of movement around the battlefield in eve. Warping should merely get you to the edge of the battlefield, and all the action that's going to take place should be inside a large battlefield where not everything is in range of every ship also, which can only be achieved by balancing how fast ships move compared to how far they shoot better. MWD and AB should be cut back to a reasonable level once that is achieved, and not be so insanely powerful that everything that doesn't have them for all practical purposes might as well not move at all. 500% speed increase is just way too much, it's no longer a fitting option it's a fitting requirement if you want to have a fast ship, so once you balance the game so that the movement of a normal ship is acctually worth something that has to be reduced a little... Anyways, obviously nothing will ever change because of peoples "Never fix a broken system that I'm used to" mentality, but still, theese are the things that really have to change, after that focussed fire is no longer such a terrible gigantic deal, because you will have to correctly manuver in order to focuss fire first then...
Franz Ferdinand AFK	Posted - 2006.09.12 14:07:00 - [328] Other than being very worried that I actually agree with all of the BoB posts in this thread... Isn't this already fixed to a point? Interdictors are being used more and more in fleet combat and this makes having your fleet in a 15k ball pretty dangerous. The gang warp mechanic does currently bunch players and this is presumably where Formations will come in but, other than that, complicating the game yet further is surely not the answer. And as already stated, this is all irrelevant with the current levels of lag anyway... -------------------- Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
corroded	Posted - 2006.09.12 16:28:00 - [329] hmm, just re-introduce splash-damage to missiles, but only affecting ships and drones .. like it should be.. that'll break the blobs up right quick
Noriath	Posted - 2006.09.12 20:30:00 - [330] They can't do that, since they made missiles into the Caldari gun and every damn noob in this game will cry if missiles aren't the ultimate noob-weapon anymore. Missiles were cooler when they were slow, expensive, and did splash damage. Then they were missiles, now they are just th product of tons and tons of whining and devs giving in to it.

GC13 Caldari Freelancing Corp Confederation of Independent Corporations	Posted - 2006.09.13 02:45:00 - [331] I would like to file a motion to have Noriah's ideas more fully-explored in a committee. I think there's some excellent potential there. --- New to Eve? Interested in manufacturing stuff, or doing research on blueprints? Check out my fully-updated Science and Industry guide.
Miss Overlord Gallente Garoun Investment Bank	Posted - 2006.09.13 11:20:00 - [332] Originally by: Noriath They can't do that, since they made missiles into the Caldari gun and every damn noob in this game will cry if missiles aren't the ultimate noob-weapon anymore. Missiles were cooler when they were slow, expensive, and did splash damage. Then they were missiles, now they are just th product of tons and tons of whining and devs giving in to it. they are balanced now what we need next are suicide drones that act like missiles - perhaps with a denoator (could substitue for mines) and have their own launcher - could splash damage the launcher if the target is to close
Shidhe Minmatar The Babylon5 Consortuim	Posted - 2006.09.13 16:09:00 - [333] Edited by: Shidhe on 13/09/2006 16:15:49 Originally by: Noriath ... Immagine all ships in Eve would go 10 times as fast as they do right now, but all warp increments where also multiplied, so you warp in at 150km mininum, and 1000 max. All the sudden a 200km range doesn't cover every single warp-in spot around a gate anymore, and in order to cover all of space around it you'd acctually need fast ships. At the same time warping itself has to be changed. It should take a lot longer to go into warp, cost a lot more cap on top of that, when coming out of warp you should not be able to fight immediatly, so that it's acctually undesirable to warp into a fight, but rather to warp near a fight and manuver into it. Warping away from a fight while being too close to an enemy should allow them to warp right after you, so that it becomes desirable to outrun them before you warp, and not just hit warp and be gone... ... This definitely deserves some discussion. Sounds good so far. Edit: Close range setups would need some attention - it would be more easy to get out of range of such a setup than at present.
Noriath	Posted - 2006.09.13 16:54:00 - [334] It would be a lot easier to outrun short range ships, but it would also be a lot easier for short rangers to get close to a long range ship that can't outrun them. The relative range of webbers and scramblers would have to be looked at when everything goes faster and the battlefield is much larger on principle.
Red Bishop Legio Immortalis	Posted - 2006.09.13 17:16:00 - [335] Edited by: Red Bishop on 13/09/2006 17:18:48 May have been said already but 12 pages... May also prove too heavy a solution but here's a thought: how about friendly fire and line of sight. Not sure but wouldnt a blob lose some of its deadliness if its members couldnt shoot through their own friends? Granted it raises some pretty scary issues in regard to adding processing power needed to calculate wether or not your LoS is clear but i think it could help spreading the blobs ap[art a little or at least prevent the whole blob from firing 100% of the time. And besides how funny would it be to see those tempest rip through the ships next to them in an attempt to snipe the damn intruder over there...
Minnow maught Art of War Cult of War	Posted - 2006.09.13 17:35:00 - [336] There really is only 2 things to think about here .... 1) Breaking up the blob is intended to add a new dynamic to gang / fleet warefare? ( I presume that was the intention) 2) There is too much lag to even contemplate large gang / fleet warefare with added dynamics. (adding more server load) In reverse order: Lag: CCP probably knows where the lag lies and from some posts it appears to be with the server hardware not being able to cope with current features when heavily loaded ... hence the Bookmark nerf and the hint at reducing fleet size (to reduce this load?). I must say I am surprised that bandwidth does not pose a problem as well .... I mean 30,000 users using lets say 20k bandwidth is a gargantuan amount not just from the persepctive of their internet connection but also for the switching / routing hardware to handle. I also think that 20k may be on the conservative side for the data that needs to be sent to users sometimes. By my estimates you need at least 600mbit connection for this. Two options as I see it .... either a major investment in further hardware by CCP or face the reality that some features may need to be simplified / removed. For Eve to continue, it needs to be profitable for those maintaining it so perhaps furhter hardware is not an option? I doubt that their code is particulalrly in efficient ... look what they have achieved so far!! Theres kind of a lack of forsight issue looming in the background also ... When ccp allowed BM's (for example), they probably did not see the issues it would eventually lead to. However now if they decide to re-write / remove them then they will upset there custoemrs a lot ... sort of a catch 22 ... this isn't limited to bookmarks of course there are lots of other areas like this. Perhaps dynamic load balancing is a possibility? At the moment load balancing is done during downtime iirc ... if this could be done in real time then that could help tremendously ... e.g. when a node hits 90%, it steals time from other nodes that are only loaded lets say at 50% or less but only takes it up to a max of 75% ?? OK i'm talking from my rear as I haven't really got a clue how this works but it sounds good to me. GANG WAREFARE: There are so many realism features that could be added it is untrue, however my personal view is that no matter how much I would love to see them added, lag has to be the first priority ... add too many features and the game will be totally un playable. Features I can think of: Split gangs/fleets: in reality 1 person can not be expected to communicate to an infinite number of subordinates so this needs to be split and skill based in someway. I mean a colonel does not macro-manage every single soldier does he and neither does he have the capaciy to do so. Flanking: if you shoot a ship from the side, you are presented with a bigger target to hit than you have from the front or rear (very basic real life combat tactic). I'd love to see this introduced so that battlefield position is important. Command structure destruction: Take out the gang leaders and there needs to be an adverse effect. At present, the pilot in his pod is still giving gang members gang bonuses and still able to run a gang. Focused fire: This IMO is realistic more guns = more damage. To change this would be unrealistic. Gang Logistics: This needs a boost tbh whether at the capital ship level or the logistic cruiser level or perhaps a new level? Logistic BS?. It needs to be VERY much more benficial to bring them into action IMO. At the moment the only use i can see for logisitc cruisers is as a heavy tackler or POS shield repair. Anyway thats my 50c, let the flames and disagreements commence :)
Noriath	Posted - 2006.09.13 17:36:00 - [337] Line of sight and thereby friendly fire won't work, the game just isn't built that way. You have to remember that the combat system of Eve runs entirely independently from what you see on the screen more or less. The graphical representation of ships and weapons is only what your client makes of much simpler combat info. In order to make Eve combat better warping has to be changed so doing it in and out of combat is not the end all be all of strategic movement, but extremly risky, hard to pull off, and never smarter then trying to acctually outrun your atacker. And then you have to balance the amount of movement on the battlefield with the amount of range. Immagine it like a RTS game. In order for it to have any element of strategy the map has to be bigger then how far your units can shoot, otherwise thhere would be no reason to ever move them, so therefore no advantage to speed. So in order to put strategy and movement into Eve the size of the battlefield has to be larger then the range of the units. The feasible battlefields in Eve are a 100km radius sphere, the range of units exceeds 200km easily. A battlefield in Eve should be 1000km radius, and ships should be able to move fast enough to traverse it at a reasonable rate.
Marano Port Royal Independent Kontractors Imperial Republic Of the North	Posted - 2006.09.13 19:05:00 - [338] Wow this is a long thread! I havn't had the chance to read every single page through but here is my two cents and if someone has mentioned this already sry I missed it. To reduce blobbing my suggestion is to introduce a AOE torpedo or gun that is specifically anti BS and limit it to specific launcher/turrents and specific ships. Although I think that a Torpedo is the better weapon to do the job than a turrent simply because it allows a fleet to react better to the threat when they see a AOE torp coming their way. Either introduce a new ship or change up the current Stealth bomber for this job. Let's pretend we will change up the current stealth bomber. The bomber would be able to shoot these new weapons with high dmg and a slow firing rate and the Torpedo would travel slow allowing a fleet to disengage if the bomber is shooting from a long enough distance. The bomber could be cloaked then uncloak and fire and should be allowed to recloak and the AOE torps still hit their intended target without penalty for recloaking. If a bomber would have to wait for the torps to hit their intended target before recloaking the fleet would simply primary them and they would die a horrible death Making a change like this could at the very least give a lvl of unpredicability in a fleet battle and up the strategy involved. As far as lag goes....well we all know it makes fleet engagements on a large size frustrating so this is why I love smaller engagements. As I said my two cents folks
Magunus The Forsakened Few The ARR0W Project	Posted - 2006.09.13 19:47:00 - [339] Originally by: Marano Wow this is a long thread! I havn't had the chance to read every single page through but here is my two cents and if someone has mentioned this already sry I missed it. To reduce blobbing my suggestion is to introduce a AOE torpedo or gun that is specifically anti BS and limit it to specific launcher/turrents and specific ships. Although I think that a Torpedo is the better weapon to do the job than a turrent simply because it allows a fleet to react better to the threat when they see a AOE torp coming their way. Either introduce a new ship or change up the current Stealth bomber for this job. Let's pretend we will change up the current stealth bomber. The bomber would be able to shoot these new weapons with high dmg and a slow firing rate and the Torpedo would travel slow allowing a fleet to disengage if the bomber is shooting from a long enough distance. The bomber could be cloaked then uncloak and fire and should be allowed to recloak and the AOE torps still hit their intended target without penalty for recloaking. If a bomber would have to wait for the torps to hit their intended target before recloaking the fleet would simply primary them and they would die a horrible death Making a change like this could at the very least give a lvl of unpredicability in a fleet battle and up the strategy involved. As far as lag goes....well we all know it makes fleet engagements on a large size frustrating so this is why I love smaller engagements. As I said my two cents folks Great minds --- In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, 'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe'
m0jo Brutor tribe	Posted - 2006.09.25 11:23:00 - [340] Your missing the point here. The issue is lag plain and simple. The reason large fleets fight at long distances is because fleets die way too quick when warping in close range DUE TO LAG. You want to put in AOE weapons? Ok dont you think each side is gonna have an abundance of these? That wont fix the problem just make it worse. Wanna nerf focused firing huh? That wont work with huge fleets and still it wont fix the problem. Fix the lag and you have fixed the problem plain and simple.

Drusan	Posted - 2006.09.25 16:50:00 - [341] Some impressive ideas here and the points about lag have merit as well. As I see it you end up with a few mechanical options to try to alleviate the issues of focus firing. Please note that ultimately we have to remember that these solutions should apply across the board, and by that I mean, if we are fighting NPC blobs of ships, the rules we are considering inputing should help/hinger them just as much as players. Lord knows NPC's focus fire to a fault (they never retask). However, the issues are: 1. No penalty for being in super tight proximity to friendly targets, in fact, highly advantageous in terms of offensive options. 2. Massive ranges allow for pinpoint focus firing from tight formations OR well organized multiple ships. 3. Ships resiliency when faced with focused fire is woefully insufficient, causing destruction before pilots have reasonable opportunity to compensate and respond (lag + TTK arithmetic) To contend with item 1, the options are straightforward. Splash damage from various sources OR start penalizing the accurracy/sensors/locks of ships in close proximity. Hell, if you are cloaked ships within 2k of each other even if friendly, do you disrupt each others cloaks? The range of interference should be directly associated to Signature radius. Smaller ships can stay close to larger ships as their sensors are operating on a difference scale, but put a pair of carriers side by side at 2km and they have issues. You can also go the splash damage route for both offensive systems AND exploding craft (bigger ships = bigger explosions, naturally). And that too should affect friend and foe alike. Maybe those hot shot assault ships should have to think about when to peel off a large battleship so they don't get hammered with debris,firing on the way out of the explosion. This also affects tactical terrain in missions, such as structures. Maybe it's worth blowing up some structures to damage other structures in a mission or the ships orbiting near it (but that is a digression). On item 2, all you are really tackling is the ease of focusing fire. Making it harder doesn't mean it doesn't happen, it just changes the rules of engagement such that they work to achieve the same result another way at a different range. Range is not the real issue, all being able to range the same target without risk comparitive to reward is. A wing of assault ships focuses fire for the same reason a blob formation does, and we WANT fighters operating in blob wings as they have risk associated with doing so, operating at short orbit ranges where drones and smartbombs are a threat. The issue they have is being able to GET to their operational distance facing the same focused incoming fire (at least as i understand the problem, I can stand to be corrected). Which leaves Item 3, which is a fundamental flaw of an arithmetic hitpoint system. More simultaneous damage = faster death. There is no 'cap out' point where the overkill factor is simply wasted. You could use a ships signature not only as a limiter of the damage from any given attack, but quite literally a hard cap on the amount of damage that ship can take in any given period of time. Can a ship with 1000 sp/ap/hps take 1200 in a single shot? sure. Is there a point where being pecked to death in the same instant is not as viable as a portion of shield or armor that was already sucking up a hit is sucking up the same hits at the same time? This is a hard concept to illustrate, but if you were to think of Reactive Armor in the current day, where a plate of armor is literally thrown in the path of incoming damage, that interception diffuses 10 lasers or rockets comparitively to 1 or 2, making the resulting damage to the main ship decidedly less than the simple addition of the ten attacks destructive potential. (Please forgive the kludged description, writing in some haste on my lunch time.) Some form of 'thresholding' may extend the TTK and limit appropriately.
Sir Bart	Posted - 2006.09.26 22:38:00 - [342] Regaurding Tux's comment that concentrated fire is very effective and frusterating for the dead guy.... tough beans, that's they way it should be. Concentrated fire is a valid tactic in the real world, if we could fly spaceships, we'd have computers optimizing our concentration of fire...
Tyranical Teabagger	Posted - 2006.09.27 02:38:00 - [343] why not a module or something that is used with a logistics cruiser or some such that allows them to warp their gang within 15 km of the enemy fleet if it's over 150km away? this crazy t2 ammo only blob sniping stuff would dissapear really quick.
Android Mindslave Gallente Aliastra	Posted - 2006.09.27 03:29:00 - [344] Originally by: Sir Bart Regaurding Tux's comment that concentrated fire is very effective and frusterating for the dead guy.... tough beans, that's they way it should be. Concentrated fire is a valid tactic in the real world, if we could fly spaceships, we'd have computers optimizing our concentration of fire... He didn't say focus fire was the problem. He said the problem was the game mechanics that made focus fire into a monstrosity.
Ath Amon	Posted - 2006.09.27 03:51:00 - [345] i agree with what was said about mobility in battlefield warp provide so much mobility that is no more usefull to maneuver in combat. i think that such mobility should be granted/stopped with new modules or ships. another thing i think is lacking is an inbattle objective. atm you just fire to destroy the opponent and in the end there is not a huge benefit in destroying a target or another. (i'm not speaking of pos/dread battles of course) implementing new modules or ship that grant to their fleet some big benefits and can be an objective for the enemy ship. here some idea. an interdictor ship (star wars style), a big ship that extend an antiwarp bubble over the battlefield. (or disable enemy warp capability) this way will not be possible for normal ship to use warp to flee or maneuver. a (capital) ship able to move allied forces even in presence of an interdictor (SW). this ship will act as a sort of "anchor" and will be able to assign different sector of space around it, to various gang or "squad" members. also a fleet warping with this ship should be able to warp in formation and various ships should vame out of warp in their supposed sector. the sector disposition can be something like this x = anchor ship 123 4X5 678 what will be the benefit of such deployment? as said warp can be impossible with an interdictor so an anchor ship can be deployed just outside the enemy range and move the troop from the front line (in gun range) to back lines (where maybe support ships can heal damage ships or other important ships, as interdictors and carriers can stay out of enemy range): maybe the anchor ship (eventually with its fleet or a part of it) shoul also be able to escape from an interdictor, but the time needed to warp should be quite long, like 10 or 20min and should be visible on the battlefield. (this should make this ship usable in battle) a "painter ship" able to create a nav point inside (or nearer) the enemy lines... this ship will create a nav point (actually a new sector) for the anchor ship using a friendly or enemy ship and painting it. as long as the painter ship will be intact and its target will be in range this ship will provide to the anchor ship a new sector that it can assign as a normal sector. the time needed to "paint" a ship should be different, quite fast for a friendly ship (this way ceptors or spec ops can try to reach the enemy lines for a fast charge) or quite long in case of an anemy ship. this way it will be possible to do some "assaults" using both a mix of close and long range ship. the close range ship can stay in a sector (safe) behind the anchor ship, when the new nav point (sector) is created they are able to rush in front of the enemy. a situation can be something like this there are 2 fleets with 2 anchors X and Y 678 4X5 123 123 4Y5 678 battle is being fought at range in sector 123 of respective fleets, fleet Y happen to create a nav point (sector 9) on a ship in the sector 2 of enemy fleet, the situation will be like this. 678 4X5 123 9 123 4Y5 678 here that now all the close range ships in sector 6 can be assigned to warp to sector 9 actually ending inside of enemy lines. on counter anchor X can maybe chose to move its close range ships from its sector 7 to its sector 2 (reinforcing that sector) or maybe to retreat ships in sector 2 in sector 6 and try to face the close range ships by itself and its support. it could seem a bit complex but the idea is to have a more chess like scenario where ships can be moved to attac and react to enemy moves/attemps
Ath Amon	Posted - 2006.09.27 04:04:00 - [346] this will also make necessary to create different groups inside a fleet and should be needed to have a gerarchical structure. this way an anchor will not be forced to assign a sector ship by ship, but just to a ship group. will also make command ships a bit more needed for their gang bonuses as only the ships inside their group should benefit from it. as said these are just some ideas, and lag for sure can be an issue in this scenario, but i think that something along these lines (to grant remove mobility using ships/modules) can be of great benefit in a fleet bs fleet scenario and will make battles lee chaotic, more varied and exciting as both fleets will be forced to try moves and counters to gain the battlefield superiority. also something like that should be able to make both close and long range ships usefull in a given battle and hopefully the best fleets will have a mix of them. even the strategical disposition of different fleets can be important, maybe i could make the opponent prepare its force for a battle and there that a new anchor with a new fleet warp in (at max interdictor range) in the back of my enemy trying to target all their ships in sectors behind the anchor... as said just some ideas and possible scenarios. another thing that will benefit a lot fleet battles imo is line of sight, it was alredy discussed and i'm all for it... my only fear is that it will not be possible to implement it for the huge resources it will need :(


Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 .. 12 :: [one page]

COPYRIGHT NOTICE
EVE Online, the EVE logo, EVE and all associated logos and designs are the intellectual property of CCP hf. All artwork, screenshots, characters, vehicles, storylines, world facts or other recognizable features of the intellectual property relating to these trademarks are likewise the intellectual property of CCP hf. EVE Online and the EVE logo are the registered trademarks of CCP hf. All rights are reserved worldwide. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. CCP hf. has granted permission to EVE-Search.com to use EVE Online and all associated logos and designs for promotional and information purposes on its website but does not endorse, and is not in any way affiliated with, EVE-Search.com. CCP is in no way responsible for the content on or functioning of this website, nor can it be liable for any damage arising from the use of this website.

my sig is pr0