Cunning
Caldari
Chronos Empire
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Posted - 2006.12.17 18:02:00 -
[1]
 Originally by: Cha Wen
Truthfully, if your mates spent the time to train each of the leadership bonuses up to level 5 then spend the time to get the leadership skill so that you can form a fleet and make a squad for the bonuses. I think leadership level 3 takes about half a day... that's 6 squad members  There is no obligation to train fleet command if you are running such a small team.
I narrowly avoided the pitfall that the GP is highlighting:
I often fly with the same group of people, and we were planning on each getting a couple of the relevent gang bonus skills (the ones most directly relevent to each member, obviously) to level 4. That way, when we formed a gang we could enjoy the benifits brought to it by however many of the small group could make it. Luckily, I read the patch notes and warned my gang mates of the changes before they each wasted a few days of training.
Under the new system, if any one of us is the squad leader, only the (one or two) bonuses we have trained apply. In order to get the same set of bonuses as pre-patch, one person has to train up all the various gang bonus skills and be the squad leader. And if that guy can't show up, nobody gets any bonuses.
I can see how the fleet system could be really cool. It adds strategic tools that would be invaluable in actual fleet combat. But for those of us (probably the majority) who fly in small groups, the nerfing of the gang system is a Bad Thing(tm).
If I have my maths right (I'm not a CS-grad), the server-load problem of working out gang bonuses and sending health status updates (which was what the gang-nerf was meant to fix) is a geometricly-scaled problem. This means that doubling the number of people in a gang created 4 times as much load on the server. So I can understand why large gangs had to be nerfed. But I see no reason why the old gang system couldn't be brought back for small gangs (<10) - there would be minimal load issues, and it would greatly simplify the routine task of operating a small gang.
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