Many eve players complain about remote reps making fights into battles where one side loses next to nothing and the other loses everything, but is nerfing remote reps the best solution?

Sounds like bombers to me...

The hamsters would veto it. AOE weapons are bad for server calculations apparently.

Yes, it is.

It more than sounding like lol.....


They are trying to avoid bombers can be squishy. They are kind of copycatting the recent page 1 post of the anti-capital BS bomber. Just in this case its not spelled out as clear....only archon mentioned briefly. And is aiming for smaller logi as well.


They want something bigger and tankier I would gather. Since bombers either die if fast locked and engaged fast as hell or spend a fair amount of time if they clear warping out to realign to come back in.

Which is kind of the intended tradeoff really. can put out some pain, but if it hangs around too long it will go boom.

Their new slant also seems to be damage based by hardpoint mount size. Probably to avoid the issue I brought up in that other thread of how to make this AOE not wipe everything op style. However the solution is an overcomplicated mess really.

It be either be 4 new types of ammo that magically work the same across all weapons sizes. Want to smash the frigate roam with frigate logi my say scorpion would have a large launcher that fires, with no penalty, the small bomb to smash it.

Or we get N+1 again. As you have to bring the frigates fit with this to deal with frigs, the cruiser with medium "bombs", the bs' with large. and hell....caps for x-large.

Or....you could just bring some damn bombers now lol.

But if your damage is so much lower than the other side's, you're going to drop below critical mass well before they do...

What if your side's reps are holding? The side with AoE damage can grind down ships while the single target side can only focus on one target at a time. Exact numbers haven't been decided but it needs to be low enough alpha that a group of ships fitted this way cannot act in the same role as bombers.

Then you'd probably have them outnumbered, outgunned or out-logid enough to win the fight with conventional weapons anyway?

CCP doesn't know how to optimize square root and sin/cos functions properly. :-(

CCP doesn't know how to optimize square root and sin/cos functions properly. :-(

I would love to see anaconda and python mines return to the game.

Yes, it is.

Let's say remote reps are nerfed to 1/4 of their current strength, this is a massive nerf in power and not likely something CCP would actually do. Now what would happen as a result? Would anything change? No. Fleet comps would simply adjust to include more logi ships and we are back to square one, I believe something more is needed.

A Guardian can repair faster than an Oracle can damage. A lot faster, in fact, especially if the involved third party has high resists.


Remote reps could be nerfed down to one quarter strength and they'd still be a valuable addition to fleets, but would be less to prevent anyone from being shot down and more to fix them quickly after a rough fight. They would assist with keeping everyone up against small fleet encounters, enable recoveries from bombing runs, make primaried pilots last longer which buys time, or mitigate external damage effects like gate guns, POS guns, or NPC pirates.

That's reps at one quarter strength.



I think cutting them in half is more than reasonable. Even at half power, they will still be used the same way they are now: to prevent fleet members from being destroyed while sustaining heavy fire. But cutting them in half will make onboard reps more important, and allow them to stack better against remote reps.



edit: here are the attributes:
Oracle with max skills, T2 Tachs, IN Multi, and 3x T2 Heat Sink deals 865.7 DPS
Guardian with max skills and 4x T2 large RR repairs 341.3 HP per second
* With 61% average resists on target, the Guardian repairs 100% as fast as the Oracle damages.
* With 70% average resists on target, the Guardian repairs 31% faster than the Oracle damages.
* With 75% average resists on target, the Guardian repairs 58% faster than the Oracle damages.
* With 80% average resists on target, the Guardian repairs 97% faster than the Oracle damages.
That's with four RRs. What about a Guardian with five? What about if the Guardian has Remote Repair Augmentor rigs?

Any large fight already has a chance of being throttled down by the server because it has trouble keeping up and you want to add a large number of calculation on top of it?

I think cutting them in half is more than reasonable. Even at half power, they will still be used the same way they are now: to prevent fleet members from being destroyed while sustaining heavy fire. But cutting them in half will make onboard reps more important, and allow them to stack better against remote reps.

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Other games manage to include AoE without melting, and computers love calculations so I'm not convinced by the "think of the servers" argument. When CCP decide something is good for the game they find a way to make it work. How about the server keeps track of how much damage is applied to the target from AoE weapons over a server tick and then a fraction of that is applied to ships in AoE range (similar to a smart bomb) over the next tick.

Instead of direct AoE which has technical issues, perhaps something more like Chain Lightning would punish blobs without being so taxing on the servers.

It could jump from target to target, though determining what should get hit might be hard.

Another option is perhaps a feedback beam. When you shoot a ship with it, other ships repping it or boosting it, or vice versa, also get hit. It is much more controlled and directed, no distance calcs needed.

Chain lightning..... really??

In other games and IRL, the reasons for not blobbing are line of sight, line of fire, friendly fire, and AOE.

Eve doesn't have #1 or #2 which is why aoe seems like a reasonable suggestion.

And unlike all those other games, EVE also does not prevent you from taking 1000 of your friends each with their own 5 drones with you for the ride this multiplying every AoE calculation by thousands.

Is there any game beside FPS that really somehow reduce the effectiveness of blobbing?

As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, RTS games like Starcraft, Homeworld, Age of Empires, etc. do.

Some of these games have hundreds of units on field at a time. And the main things that control blobs are terrain (doesn't exist in space) and splash damage.

And no, you don't win rts games with n+1 splash damage. Aoe tends to be much lower dps than normal attacks, and the units that fire aoe tend to be either very slow or very fragile.

For instance instead of doing 500 dps to one target you would do 75 dps to multiple targets. A fleet composed of the splash damage ships will be murdered by brawling ships or well spaced sniping ships.

This whole thread is du..... not smart. Eve doesn't need AoE or chain lightning (???) weapons. CCP should (and I think is) make reasons to not blob up to add depth and interest to the game. Adding effects and/or mechanics to punish folks for blobbing up is negative programming and not moving the game forward.

Don't push CCP to add things that punish blobs. Push CCP to add things that are more interesting and better than being in a blob.

I'm not sure how entosis will work out, but it's positive programming and adding something new and interesting to the game to move it forward.

I'm just like most other folks - I don't like blobs, lag or getting alpha'd either. I also don't like negative programming / game design.

Chain lightning..... really??

I don't see this as a method to punish blobs, I see it as a trade off people can make. Either they can fit for single target damage and high dps, or they can fit for AoE at the cost of dps but both have their own advantages. In ALL other strategy games blobs are countered by splash damage. Eve presents it's own problems with the sheer scale of some fights but IMO a way needs to be found to allow AoE on reasonable scales without killing the server. Remember people do already manage just fine to topple the server with the sheer sizes of blobs that unchecked N+1 gameplay leads to.

Also I never suggested chain lightening, it doesn't feel right in EvE and I don't believe it would involve any less calculations than a sphere of AoE.

The best way to cheaply counter AoE in RTS games is to send blobs of cheap units right on top of the AoE dealers so they splash each others into oblivion. Zerglings on top of siege tank are hilarious.

Can we please limit talking about other games and if you do can you relate what you are saying back to EvE?

If I understand you, you're saying AoE doesn't counter blobs because you can get on top of the AoE damage dealers and make them kill themselves? How would this relate to eve? Ships in eve are expensive and I can't see many people suiciding ships in to try and somehow kill the AoE-dealing ships that way. Also I like the of "ah you did this, now I can counter by doing this " of your example, counter play is good gameplay and should be encouraged.

AoE alone is not a monster that ruins the game.

Your logi is so backwardly flawed I don't even know where to start. Let's begin with the current meta from a lot of so called "elite" pirate groups. Their elite fleet comps tend to favor a 50% DPS, 45% Logi, 5% Tackle. If you cut down the effectiveness of logi by half, you will either a) force players to bring 50% more logi to make up for the reduced effectivenss or

How many throwaway ship do you think the blob can send at the smaller fleet with warp at 0 to have them kill themself? Every single "counter-play" is better achived by the BLOB. The very existance of the BLOB is their better skill or willingness at herding cats. The chance they will field wings of ships just to counter your AoE over their normal dps/logi wings is much greater than the chance you have of achieving critical mass for your AoE to beat them.

Every single time you try to counter the BLOB in EVE, you shoot yourself in the foot because they ALWAYS have the best tool to counter everything in EVE, MORE of anything.

Don't push CCP to add things that punish blobs. Push CCP to add things that are more interesting and better than being in a blob.

I'm just like most other folks - I don't like blobs, lag or getting alpha'd either. I also don't like negative programming / game design.

I like blobs I also like to see if they get bombed or pipebombed or any other creative idea of taking them apart(FYF).

We already have Fozziesov which is entirely based on the idea of making the fights smaller which is not going to happen.
The problem with all this ideas is that they only think 2 steps in to the future not 10 or 20.
EVE players especially in the big alliances are very good theorycrafters. That is why they have so much power they outsmart CCP and the other players they find the easyiest most isk efficient way to achieve there goal.

Let's face reality, even if you set an artifical limit on how many players can be in a system the site with the bigger numbers wins.
They have more ressources and players to choose from and if that is not enough they can pay someone to fight for them.
There is no counter to metagaming and everytime someone tries it makes the game worse.

There were a lot of counters in the past but due to a lot of crying in the forums they are gone.

Bottlenecks: We had that when there was a cynojammer cover over EVE
Line of sight : We have that its limited to 250km or the grid and gridfu is not allowed because it is overpowered to a point that is not even funny.
AOE it is one of many options you have . There is a reason why FYF exists.


If you think blobs are to easy to manage then you forget it is only this way because the targets at the moment are easy to kill.
There are blops with a high complexity but most of the time it is not needed, the target is stanading in front of you and it is a pure battle of dps vs repair with no ewar and no second fleet involved. In such a battle the site with the bigger numbers will win 9 out of 10 times.

ya know, you're right... I remember when stealth bombers were totally wrecking battleship fleets, they just brought more battleships and BAM problem solved...

Can we start saying coherent things again?

ya know, you're right... I remember when stealth bombers were totally wrecking battleship fleets, they just brought more battleships and BAM problem solved...

Can we start saying coherent things again?

It's not like we have a mainfleet doctrine consisting of armor battleships highly resilient against bombs...

If the goal is to nerf Logi by increasing the complexity of the role wouldn't damage over time weapons/ammo have the same effect while being less taxing on the servers?

No because it would have to keep track of all the DoT timer generated. Instead of checking one time for who is in range, it know you are always in range but has to take into account how often and for how much you get it on each tick.

CCP doesn't know how to optimize square root and sin/cos functions properly. :-(

Because I'm truly evil and love to see explosions (and would love to see battles where two sides smash into eachother and one side does not just walk away unscathed), I'm all for even more extreme measures. Don't just drop remote reps to 1/4 effectiveness, lets also add diminishing returns to prevent people from just trying to compensate with 4x logi.

It would be awesome if we actually had to start using local active repping in fights, and not just depend on buffer and logi. The long standing meta of everyone focusing fire on a single target in hopes of overcoming incoming reps is, while tactically sound, boring.

Missile AoE needs BrainInABox or massive TiDi.
But it would be awesome! no more anchoring. more manual pilot. hurray!

The point in concept is that in a large fleet fight, one side shouldn't completely dominate the other based on logistics. I suppose I have a concept in mind that ships should evaporate on both sides, provided they are both positioned properly. Having to resort to alpha doctrines isn't interesting gameplay.

When I first started playing this game, I joined a corporation that flew T1 cruisers fully ensured and were nearly free to fly. We would take gangs of 12-15 out and slam them into the nearest vastly superior gang and often all die taking down one "shiny." The destruction of that one hac/recon/etc was worth more than the entire fleet combined. To a degree, I believe that an FC looking at a superior fleet should have the option to ship down and repeatedly throw inferior gangs at the opposing fleet to whittle it down.

At the moment, I simply believe that isn't possible when fleets are bringing 10+ logistics with them.

The fix I would propose is simple. Stacking penalties on logistics. Say after 8 remote repair modules, it becomes noticeable. By 12, it's half. By 16, it's practically non-existent.

Feel free to tell me why remote reps should be stacking penalized while weapon are not. No one ever answer that anyway...

Anchor further away... It's not like missile would get 10k+ AoE blast radius.

Different ammo types could have different explosion radii with the tightest explosion having the most focused (highest) damage. Stacking penalising logi is not a good solution as now it becomes literally impossible to defend against a large enough fleet.

It seems everyone's main problem is server load, are there any programmers among us able to figure out a good easy-on-the-server way to do AoE?

AoE to be used against cruiser and frigate fleets, possibly reducing the attractiveness of cruisers

step in the right direction

Want AoE?

CCP was listening:
The new field warp mechanism is exactly what you were talking of.