Some of us would relish the opportunity to find out. And some of us seem to be afraid to do so. I'd rather face off against a player's skill than their willingness to spend more dollars on the game.


In other news, my corpmates are presently flying a Svipul that, with links has 40k EHP, two neuts, a 45m sig radius, does 4k cold in prop mode and over 400 DPS cold. CCP can't release decent ships because links make them batshit insane.

Well people like Abannan and Crosi who have invested time and money training or buying a booster don't want to see them go awat, any more than some cap pilots wanted to see skynet go away. It's understandable. I just wish they could look past their narrow self interest to see how badly overpowered OGB is compared to every other form of advantage and even every other conceivable alt setup in the game.

I get dunked alot; doesn't really bother me. It's part of the game unless you are a hyper risk-averse carebear. I would prefer that when said dunks occur they do so because the opponent possessed superior tactics, speed and knowledge of the game rather than because they give CCP more money every month.

"If you take my links I'll just bring a Falcon or logi alt" is a bad argument, as has been duly demonstrated when it's tossed out as a red herring in every single thread on this topic. Suffice to say the risk/reward for those variants of assistance is at a far more appropriate level, for various reasons. (Must be risked on grid, appears on mails, only effective against one or two opponents, etc.)

If you dislike fighting linked ships I highly recommend that you hunt them.

I've killed 8 of them in the last 2 days of action in Pavanakka.

Proof

Also, if you would like assistance in learning how to kill link ships Gallente Militia is recruiting and willing to teach.

- Than

That's the minimum scram range I believe.

I think we all need to discuss one specific issue more closely.

Regardless of whether links are a "good" or "bad" mechanic, which is inherently subjective, what can we all agree for certain about links?

I believe there is no question that links disguise the strength of enemy ships. Put another way, they create uncertainty about the enemy strength, and this is true whether there is one enemy or a whole fleet.

So what?

So, one of the big "time investment" barriers to engaging the enemy is determining their strength. This is why we keep an eye on local spikes. This is why we use d-scan. This is why we use TS3. We all know that we need to pick our fights carefully. And we know we need to keep an eye out for changes in the balance of power.

It is not contentious to say that the harder it is to determine enemy strength, the more time is required before deciding whether to engage.

Depending on how busy you are in real life, and how much you like "the hunt" or "the fight" as game play styles, the time invested in order to get a fight is a real problem.

This has been my greatest frustration with links. You log on, you fit a ship, your corp buddies are also online. Great! Now you can go out looking for small gang PVP. Get some fights.

Except, you can't. Not really.

Because of the ridiculous power of off grid boosts, the range of enemy strength that can destroy a small gang goes from a large blob to one ship.

Without links, you can say with certainty whether the ships in system can offer a fair fight. You can look for such a system, and look to get roughly balanced fights.

With links, you just never know for certain whether you are going to pick a fight you can't win.

Obviously this is not true for larger fleets. Once you have 30 ships and they only have 20, links are not an issue because you can use them yourself or otherwise overpower them with numbers.

But for solo and small gang PVP, links make even one enemy ship invulnerable. You cannot know, for certain, if you are picking a fair fight.

That makes Eve a bad investment of time, and it undermines the idea that Eve is even about fighting.

Maybe PVP in Eve is only supposed to be for massive fleets and risk averse gate campers and OGB gimps.

Maybe that is how you attract the sort of people who play Eve (and who pay for alts).

But it isn't how you appeal to people who want to fight in space ships.

Off grid boosters are not just a treacherous mechanic. They are also a statement of how CCP see and value their player base, and indeed how they see the scope and competencies of their own creation.

If links don't get massively reconfigured to address the small gang PVP concerns, nobody at CCP even believes Eve should be about space ship combat.

It is all just meant to be a chat room with space backgrounds, a facebook for chatty start wars fans.

In Rakapas, the jump gates to Reisato and to Iwisoda are on the same grid. I doubt this is the only occurance.

This allows for the links to be "safe" to an exit that is a warp away whilst still applying the bonus. I am pretty sure the new "on grid links" are going to be gamed effectively just as they have before.

At least Command destroyers are here to completely change the engagement envelope on a number of situations. Damn the Bifost can tank good, if fitted well (o7 St Lucifer).

We have yet to see the true fallout from this change and I suspect I will still approve of balancing passes on all the links and T3C.