I think the idea is a good one. It is the kind of defense that is a natural outgrowth of warfare. You want defense in depth, if you can't keep the enemy from shooting at you (ECM) then you prevent them from hitting you (This idea) and if you can't do that , you mitigate the damage (Buffer tank) and if that is not enough, you repair (Logistics).

This idea is a good one for a niche that doesn't exist currently.

Implementation could be difficult. I am not sure that the game is built to do complex geometry for EVERY weapon firing. That could get pretty messy.

Perhaps a different way to implement it would be to make some pretty graphics that make it look like it is defending the **** out of someone but on the backend all it is doing is providing a boost to defense against some specific weapons.

I.E. when module "anti laser thingy" is active, a buff of "25% less damage from laser based weapons" is applied.

If it needs to be positional, then the simplest way would be to have it calculate a quick ratio of distance to friend vs distance to foe and apply that ratio to some flat damage modification percent.

Then it would work better the greater your ratio.

Conversely, if you made it an absolute ratio then you would have best results being EQUIDISTANT from each (the larger range is always the denominator so anything but equal results in a less than one ratio)

This would also be murder on the server as every shooter has to be calculated for in order to mitigate damage.

The other problem with this simplified approach is that I fear it will not provide the positional maneuver we are looking for since the complexity required to check if the destroyer is INTERVENING in the line of fire would be even harder to accomplish. That means that the "shield wall" you envision would be difficult to make happen.

I am not completely opposed to this, however do have a suggestion. Aegis cruisers of modern navies utilize point defense weapons (usually in the format of a 20-millimetersuggestion gatling gun linked to radar and acoustical detection). So with that I would say give these new ships "point defense batteries" that require you to target the aggressing missile boat and when missiles come in these batteries open up with an extremely lightweight ammunition in 4-shots per point defense battery. Let the Aegis detroyer fit 4 of them and give it a percentile chance to destroy the incoming missiles and you reduce incoming damage. Also make it so said batteries are purely defensive so that they cannot be utilized to engage other ships and you're golden.

There is not much of a point to these kinds of systems in a game like eve. The reason for it being that if it were to be useful at all, then it would have to have a considerable effect, but being able to reduce greatly or negate the damage of 150 Maelstrums firing in unison would break game logic. Nothing would die as both sides would field so many protection ships that nothing would ever get hit.


Defender missiles already exist, and you're forgetting one crucial thing: How the game mechanics currently work. everything except for missiles and drones deal instant damage, and do not actually have a physical form or shape in the game from a design standpoint. All you see are the effects, there is never an actual round generated in space to be countered, as doing this would create horrible amounts of lag and doing calculations to counter these items would only help increase the load.

This would also be devistating on the market, as whilst new bpos give the manufacturings more things to produce, the reduced damage taken and by default, ships destroyed, there would be fewer ships to replace and fewer people would need to buy ships. The Entierty of the eve market is dependant on a single thing occuring: Things being blown up. Adding more ways to prevent that from happening is shooting the market in the foot, that and guess what effect this would have on caps :3

There is not much of a point to these kinds of systems in a game like eve. The reason for it being that if it were to be useful at all, then it would have to have a considerable effect, but being able to reduce greatly or negate the damage of 150 Maelstrums firing in unison would break game logic. Nothing would die as both sides would field so many protection ships that nothing would ever get hit.

I get what you're aiming at here, but this idea has been brought up many times in the past & shot down each & every time.

Lets say you have 2 blob fleets facing each other, both completely protected by these Aegis Destroyers. Both fleets need smaller ships to kill the 'Ship creating big shield preventing all incomming damage'. Smaller ships race toward said Aegis Destroyer, out of the protection of their own. The small ships on both side get alpha'd. The result? 2 blob fleets are still facing each other & the only damage happening was on some cheap frigates.

I'm not denying that it's a cool idea in theory, but cool theories often don't work out in this game.

I think that the gap you speak of makes sense for EVE combat. It is 3-dimensional and filled with open, empty space. If shots coming at you are going to be blocked, you can't really expect your friend next to you to be carrying the shield. It makes a lot more sense for the blocking ship to be blocking damage from itself.

But prevention of the attack can be done against anyone shooting-regardless of who they're shooting at-with electronic warfare.

I'm not trolling when I say you did not use the word-phrase defender missiles in the original post.

You already have a good deal of these options with respect to skill trees and modules that exist.

Leadership skills & their associated modules increase resists and the like *IF* you choose to use them that way.

The only low-end limit I might see would be allowing a specifically designed destroyer model to use them - the old "small gang command ship" suggestion.

As such, your module recommendation would be in addition to what these command modules and skill trees do - which is a very big boost in a direction that can turn major fleet fights into mini-POS bashes with the composite.

I don't know... It just seems to have the potential to be way overpowered or lessening the value of things already existing.

Greetings

All for new shiny sh*t! Assuming the math works right I support the idea! This seems to me to be the perfect roll for a Tech3 destroyer.

vr
East

Thank you for your support.

My only worry with a Tech 3 destroyer is that would make already diluted cruisers entirely useless (T3 is about versatility at an efficiency level between Tech 2 and Tech 1). Destroyers today are characterized by a frigate tank with roughly double a frigate's punch. I can see making an Aegis Destroyer another tech 2 hull, but I'd prefer a brand new tech 1 destroyer with a role bonus.

Damn, you had to go all technical on us. I thought T3 stuff was so bitter vets could have something new shinny and completely full of awesomeness so as to thumb our nullbear wealth at the lowly rabble of high-sec.

Okay. But a logistic ship can have the same effect by having reps on something before the attack begins. If the effect these new ships have, were to be effective without targeting your allies (eg. over the anti-weapons' range, 50k or something), then there were would be a big enough difference in my opinion. How then would the ships mod decide who to protect and who not to? Only those in fleet? By standing? By corp or alliance?

I do see another problem though. A fleet of these ships could be used to make a fleet completely invincible to any fleet smaller than it.

There is a partial solution to that of course. It would be good to see the ships mod shooting projectiles out of space without collaboration ie, they randomly choose a projectile to shoot at. This would mean that the more ships you had that did this, the more likely they were to be shooting the same projectiles (ie negating some of their effect).

Which would mean the more of these dessies you had in a fleet the more likely they would be to end up shooting the same targets and wasting their effect. It would also mean the bigger the enemy fleet (ie, the more projectiles coming) the less likely statistically they would be to shoot at the same projectiles as each other. It might actually scale quite nicely. It would give small fleets more effect against big ones and big ones less effect against small ones... and so on and so forth. That is only a small fix to the problem though. I still think they would be difficult to balance in numbers.

There are a lot of concepts to be ironed out. I'm not giving my support to this thread quite yet. But neither am I dismissing it.

[snip]

Second iirc EVE projectiles and missiles only count where they were shot from and where they were shot to. Then you just negate a percentage(not all of it!) of damage on the receiving end if it is within the range of the module. May even add a factor of how much distances is between the edge of modules range and the protected ship on the vector of projectile's/missile's path to determine the exact effectiveness. This way a close range brawl would be more effective since the distances between the target are minimal at default which would potentially lead to the rise of blaster boat doctrines.

Add some special effects to make it beautiful so that the pilots that use them won't be bored.

Still not a bad idea, if handled properly.

I still would go with point defense (such as Phalanx CIWS-type modules).

This thread belongs to features and ideas.

Idea has multiple flaws and is not even closely properly finished to be discussed or evaluated seriously.

Having more complexity for fleet fights is certainly one of the aims of this idea.

[quote=Ayla Hanaya]
Position and Effectiveness
First, the limitations of positional requirements: distance to line of fire, and perhaps distance to protected target are factors in the effectiveness of the modules. The closer the Aegis destroyer is to the line of fire between attacker and protected target, the more time the module has to intercept incoming fire, hence the more effectively it places the countermeasure.

The notion of reaction time also generates the second factor for effectiveness. The closer the Aegis destroyer is to the midpoint of the line between attacker and protected target, the more effective the countermeasure is. Being too close to the attacker reduces reaction time, being too close to the protected target reduces the space in which protective measures may be deployed. The ideal position for an Aegis destroyer, then, is midway between attacker and protected target, directly on, or very near the line of fire.

Naturally, skills at using the modules, and the effectiveness of the modules themselves would also be a factor. Beyond that, the effectiveness should also be proportional to the size of the weapons system, in the same way that weapons system size affects ability to hit targets today. Incoming fire from a frigate would be nearly impossible to intercept, whereas incoming fire from a battleship is much easier to mitigate.