I'm Down
North Eastern Swat
Pandemic Legion
32
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Posted - 2012.03.28 03:48:00 -
[1] - Quote
I've said for the past 3-4 years that logistics are a huge issue in game since there's very little about logistical warfare that promotes strategic combat. So I've devised a way to keep the intent of logistics, but boost active tanking, and determine more about fitting decisions
The 2 big problems
Currently, active tanking has little role in the game. Everything in game is buffer with no incentive to fit active tank modules.
Logistics are odd in their performance as they require no skill for the person receiving the logistics other than a timely request
So how would I change the concept
Remove the direct transfer of armor and shields from logistics to receiver. Instead, call it a nanobot (armor) or plasma (shield) transfer system.
Here's how it works:
In order to utilize logistics I must have an active repair system on my ship. A small armor repairer can receive the equivalent of a small armor transfer amount per module per cycle. Obviously, it can have multiple remote repair modules working at once, and each module can transfer more armor. But no one remote armor transfer can send more than what the small repairer can receive. However, my active repairer must actually apply the transfer, meaning a cycle time and application.
Essentially, the logistics ships/mods boost the performance of my repairer within respect to my ship size. However, I must have the capacitor, and the cycle time to apply the repair
The same works for shield
- How do you prevent stockpiling logistics repairs on a ship over time?
It's always cycle based. So whatever logistics support you got during that cycle, is applied. For armor, it's applied at the end of the cycle, for shields, you always get that initial base boost, then collect plasma during the cycle time to be used on the next boost.
- Why is this better?
There are going to be obvious gaps in repairs since it's only your active repairers that apply. No more consistent unbreakable stream of repairs, but rather questions of can you out damage the cycle of repair
It also means there are ways to break up logistics networks besides just ECCM
The active repairer takes up a slot that would normally be dedicated to buffer tank
- Why is this needed?
Combat over the past few years has devolved quite a bit to very lopsided affairs far to often. Fights are skewing so badly that it's frequently true for one side to hardly take any losses (5-10) in a fight where 100s of ships are on either side. It develops a sense of hopelessness when one side can be so logistically strong that you can't break the chain of their ships and fights devolve to: bring more people.
The goal is to provide more ways to break up and reduce logistical efficiency, bring back some incentive and reasons to fit active repairers, and reduce the very large buffers a lot of ships fitting.
I'm probably going to heavily refine this idea as I think more about it and see reply, but the overall goal is to make combat less about that initial alpha strike to overwhelm a logistics team, and more about tactical decisions and adjustments in real time. |