Sorry, here's the screenshot I made earlier of it being used on the Madirmilire gate of Niarja earlier today, feel free to burn a hundred km downwards to see it yourself.

i too can wait until the gate is clear to make a screenshot

clearly all 27 people in local were just sitting on the gate

proving grid fu with screenshots is pretty difficult

especially when your overview is cluttered with celestials

yeah, terrible image, lackluster proof, and overly defensive remarks aside, i guess i forget the point of linking a highsec system in regards to a nullsec thing

But I mean....You start using the link from a position, you can not deviate more then 90 degrees or a certain verible from the start position or the link breaks....would this alleviate any of the trolling concerns at all? Considering people are worried about users trolling by orbiting at 100+km with a small sig moving at 7km a sec... Not just one guy, but like a fleet of 40+ inty or something in orbit doing a troll circle....If they had to stay within 90 degrees of the start position relative to the structure(you may be able to track them at some point if they make a mistake in their spiral with a couple long range defenders/trolling requires piloting skill etc).

Sov structures have these little windows on them that are lit up, I've always assumed lore wise that there are some crew members manning them...especially stations, and I-Hubs

Based on the goals stated, I'm struggling to figure out why this isn't a new-style deployable.

Give it reasonably high EHP/omni resists along the lines of an MTU. Give it a TINY sig rad to make it hard to bomb and slow for sniper fleets to lock w/o significant sebo. Make it 50 to 100m3 in size. Make it vulnerable to ECM (though omni only; eg omni strengths that must ALL be 0 before jammed) so that it pauses cycling while jammed. Make it impossible to rescoop until a cycle completes successfully (eg destruction or win, no scoop and run).

Grid control? Check; virtually impossible to keep alive a deployable w/o grid control.

Troll-y? Not really... frigates can only carry a few without resupply. This allows legitimate use in fastfrigs/intys to contest abandoned sov, but makes it much tougher to troll entire regions (since they can't rescoop deployed units unless/until they cycle completely).

Occupancy? This makes it even easier for defenders to "prove" occupancy. Any ship that can control grid/apply DPS can destroy a troll deployable, without requiring a defensive e-link of their own. That said, the behavior that deadlocks control when more than one alliance's e-links are deployed should remain. Multiple can be deployed; only question is whether a single pilot should be able to deploy more than one at a time.

Defensible? With a good mix of EHP and sig, should be possible to tweak to a point where sniper/bomber attacks are not effective enough without grid control to pop it before it cycles successfully. Also, true null grid control against sniper/bomber is required (eg proper use of defensive bubbles).

Based on the goals stated, I'm struggling to figure out why this isn't a new-style deployable.

Because part of the idea, at least in my read of things, is to have more people active and vulnerable in space. While a Trollceptor could conceivably only carry a few, a cloaky T3 could carry far more - and a Blockade Runner could carry dozens and dozens. This would allow a single pilot to carpet bomb the hell out of a constellation or region, while not putting himself at any risk at all - there would be no requirement for him to even be uncloaked for his multitude of sov deployables to do their dastardly work. In addition, it would take an appreciable amount of time for a defender to kill them all.

The disparity in effort would be even more Trolltastic than the fabled unkillable uncounterable Trollceptors.

If it doesn't require you to be on grid, active, and unable to escape grid without losing your progress... it doesn't fit the bill.

What about ditching the whole Entosis link entirely. Make a Entosis deployable. It takes 10 minutes to come online. It needs to be deployed within 25/250km of the objective. Once it is online and there are no more enemy entosis deployables on grid the owner can right click it and instruct it to attack/hack the objective.

This goal is why we intend to use the lightest touch possible when working towards the first two goals. It would be easy to overreact to potentially unwanted uses of the Entosis Link by placing extremely harsh restrictions on the module, but we believe that by looking at the situation in a calm and measured manner we can find a good balance.

An interesting idea...

Defenders must shoot the structure deployable. This is of course different from the SBU, as it has to be dealt with immediately (it will reinforce the thing, unlike SBU where the attackers must come back and still structure grind).

Too bad it will probably be buried, but a nice suggestion

Because part of the idea, at least in my read of things, is to have more people active and vulnerable in space.
M
If it doesn't require you to be on grid, active, and unable to escape grid without losing your progress... it doesn't fit the bill.

Coming from a high-sec salvager, who claimed to be an alt of a sovereign null resident when called out for commenting on a type of environment has no prior experience with, your sentence is almost entertaining. Almost.

Now this makes the most sense of all.....+1

That being said, I'm left wondering what role CCP has for capitals in the future...

The fix to that is alluded in my op; only allow pilots to have one of these deployed at a time. Sure, this is still gives a slight change (you can travel to your next target while it cycles, if willing to leave 100m deployable behind and undefended), but would cap the troll rate. Increase cycle times slightly to compensate for this travel edge and you are no worse off than now.

But again - it's not *YOUR* butt at risk. It's a deployable, which can easily be sacrificed if you're isk-immune enough. And even if you can only deploy one at a time, YOU are still not at risk - you can sit around cloaked waiting for a defender to come by, or scoop it right back up if they don't.

It's not keeping you on grid and vulnerable. That's a bad idea if one of the design goals is to force you to control the grid to make progress.

its shockingly funny to watch all of you running around worrying about frigates.


it clearly shows how incapable you are of understanding the very simple layout of these sov mechanics.

[if you allow interceptors to fit entosis links] You are allowing the attacker to risk nothing, a completely disposable interceptor that will very likely never be caught. Whilst the defender risks their entire home and are forced to come out and fight and do 10x the amount of work if they aren't quick enough.

That is pushing it far too much in the favor of the attacker.



I ask you to make it so that the attackers must risk something if they want to attack sov, be it a cruiser or battlecruiser or above. At least they can be caught.
I understand your worry of 'artifically shifting the meta towards larger ships', but if you if you allow interceptors or frigate sized ships to capture sov then you will artifically shifted the meta towards frigate killing/max mobility, since they will be the most optimal choice to attack.

The fix to that is alluded in my op; only allow pilots to have one of these deployed at a time. Sure, this is still a slight change (you can travel to your next target while it cycles, if willing to leave 100m deployable behind and undefended), but would cap the troll rate. Increase cycle times slightly to compensate for this travel edge and you are no worse off than now.

EDIT: Even better, since you add risk for the troll. If someone is trolling space, instead of popping their deployable, I can choose to just drop a defensive one and leave it deadlocked. Now the troll has to waste MORE time travelling back and popping mine, waiting on theirs, and rescooping, OR popping their own, before they can deploy a new one.

Some quickly made images to illustrate this concept:

The actual angles could be different, this one assumes you pass 90 degrees from the start point in relation to the structure which would deactivate the link.

2 IMAGES:

http://i.imgur.com/2A90q5S.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Ndgfimz.jpg

There would be a plane you can not pass or the link will be broken.

But it's true. Look at all the posts pointing out how scared we must be.

Well ok, it might take more than just massadeath, he probably has to get some people from moa to do it, and maybe even a third party. But this is well within the reasonable range of possibilities.


Thus, we are scared.

Sorry we were busy killing a few bill of your ships in YAO ..i would link you the kills but i think its against the rules..suffice to say some poor guy lost 800m+ in a hauler carrying what looks like all his goodies. Guess he thought he was safe deep in goon SOV territory...

the way I see it.... any change from what we have is a step up..and change is good and fun

Sorry we were busy killing a few bill of your ships in YAO ..i would link you the kills but i think its against the rules..suffice to say some poor guy lost 800m+ in a hauler carrying what looks like all his goodies. Guess he thought he was safe deep in goon SOV territory...

the way I see it.... any change from what we have is a step up..and change is good and fun

Was that before or after you decided to drop Reagalan's FC damnation and impotently shoot at it until he got bored?