A case to change Cyno mechanics

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
1

A case presented to change Cynosural mechanics.

I’m sure most of us have seen the surprise cyno. It doesn’t matter which side of the drop you’re on, it’s always not the most fun. You’re either overwhelmed or you use overwhelming firepower on one target and it’s dead before you can get a lock.

Black ops

The latest blobbing tactic in null seems to be the black ops blobs. I can’t imagine the concept of the black ops battleship involved it being the main battle fleet. Yet, here we are. Here are some examples.

19 black ops battleships to kill 1 Praxis and a frigate.
https://zkillboard.com/related/30000741/202507130100/

Here are 35 ships, 99% of them Battleships, to kill 1 dread. The thing that should counter being hot dropped, also on the report. A cyno inhib.
https://zkillboard.com/related/30001109/202507122200/

I myself love the theory of the black ops gangs. But they are a far cry of the one or two black ops battleships bridging covert ops equiped ships to battle. With the cost, low risk, and the ever decreasing skill gap in using these ships, there’s going to be more and more cases as above.

Eve is about play and counter play. You bring sniper ships, we probe you down bubble and kill you. You bring capitals, we bring more capitals. But unless you have a fleet on standby and a cyno handy, you have zero real counter other than being faster than the tackle. Not to mention the blue on blue potential.

Let’s also look capital engagements.

Currently, you can surprise drop a single ship with capitals, (I’m looking at ya’ll in supers lol) with much of the same risk mitigation of blops, with the exception of there is a way to counter. With normal Cyno’s you can mitigate by anchoring inhibs.

But the counter to normal cyno, you still run into the blobbing escalation of capitals. Right now you have blocks that can field a lot of capitals. For example, the fight in HB-1NJ. You have large amounts of capitals in one system, on one grid, and on one node.

Watch Galaxier’s video on the fight. The view on the Keep at the beginning has a huge blob of purple. Every single ship there is a dread and a fax. Every single one of these ships can jump to one cyno. There is no gradual growth to these fights. One cyno ship has the power of super blocks capital fleets that can be summoned with one button click. One module can drop hundreds of ships at once. There’s very little chance to avoid the Tidi, the lag, and to react. This ability to field large amounts of capitals in seconds is counter to the rock, paper, scissors aspect that Eve is based on. The only counter to this, is to use the same method. The tactic is numbers.

Numbers as a weapon

When I started playing Eve in the early 2000’s, nullsec was sniper battleships. I remember the 200Km slug fests between fleets. The ECM scorpions and the goal to alpha ships off the field before they could be repped. The tactics today are similar, but there’s fewer opportunities to fight larger alliances with fewer numbers by using superior tactics. There are alliances who field nothing but Ferox’s, because numbers work. The venerable ferox is not an amazing ship. It has a decent passive tank. But it’s not special in any way. They’re cheap and require next to no skills to be somewhat effective. There’s very little in the way of tactics in this regaurd.

The same goes for capitals, right now the biggest threat to capitals are the black ops fleets. When you have 30 ~1,200 dps battleships instantly ontop of you, there’s little you can do. If you do manage to tank the ~36,000 dps long enough for help to start coming to you, they warp off and cloak. They wait out their jump timer then off to the next drop. If you don’t have numbers waiting to counter drop, one ship essentially weilds ~36,000 dps at the click of a button. This makes covert cyno equiped ships the most powerful sub super ship in the game. Once again, you end up with ~30 vs 1-2 or even ~30 vs 10. (Note: In mathematics, the tilde symbol (~) typically signifies approximation, similarity, or belonging to the same order of magnitude.)

Numbers win the battles with the only counter being numbers or don’t play.
Effect on the game
How does the current state of instant and low risk ganking effect gameplay?

For those not lucky enough to live outside range of jump drives, it requires a choice. Don’t play certain content, or risk blobs.

As it stands, there is no incentive to play capitals except in very large alliances under an protective umbrella. There’s no incentive for alliances to try and field capitals that aren’t part of a major block. This means fewer capitals undock for any content. This means the opportunity for escalation with capitals are few and far between. The days of capitals being rare are gone. Most older players have multiple. But they’re hardly ever used, they’re the “break glass in case of emergency” ship. And when they are used, it has the potential to be so large that you can click your weapon, go mow the yard and come back to it just now firing.

The black ops gangs are the other content killer. What was intended to be the center of a fleet of bombers and recon ships are now the fleet. The mechanic has bloomed into Frankenstien’s monster and cannot be taken down unless the whole village is involved. And with multiboxing and the software that makes multiboxing easier, this method of low risk pvp is even more stiffling for the game. Why would you risk your marauder doing null sec or low sec sites? What this means is fewer marauders enter null or low sec to do content there.

Current Cyno meta mechanics are content killers, it makes the game boring.

Solution proposed

The solution, with theoretical basis can be as simple as this. Jumping to a cyno is a large amount of energy expended, creating a distortion field around the cyno beacon.

What does this mean?

A cyno beacon is a static location in space, every object that can use a cyno is static when the cyno beacon is active.

When a ship jumps to the beacon, it’s ‘wake’ from the jump creates unstable space around the cyno. The more ships, the larger the ship, the more unstable the space is around the beacon.

How does the unstable space mechanic work?

In a sphere around the cyno beacon (The graphical beacon, not the ship) is an bubble. This bubble is the area a ship can jump to, as ships jump into this bubble, the area becomes unstable. When a threshold is reached, when trying to jump to this beacon, the pilot would receive a message saying “The jump drive is unable to jump to the current location due to unknown interference”.

This sphere, would effect any beacon inside of it, but the ships space stabilization moderator would alter the sphere in space and increase the threshold. Meaning if you light a cyno, your ships moderator allows up to 1 black ops and 10 bombers to jump to the beacon before it becomes unstable. But the enemy also lights a cyno in the same sphere, at the same skill level but in the bubble of influence around the first cyno, theirs is weaker. This means they can only allow 1 black ops and 5 bombers to jump to the fight. In total, the maximum number of ships that can jump into this section of space, let’s use 40KM (a t2 large bubble’s range), is a total of 2 black ops and 15 bombers. However, if the counter drop places their cyno at 41km, they can drop the same 1 black ops and 10 bombers. Meaning, there’s more tactics to dropping a cyno than warp, decloak, mash f1.
How to apply space destabilization and stabilization?

Each cyno’s space stability moderator changes based on the ship size (and maybe ship bonus). Each jump drive capable ship gets a distortion field modifer based on mass.

Black Ops

For example, a covert ops frigate, can stabilize space around it at 15km at level 4 (5km per level over level 1). A black ops ship, with a mass of 141,700,000 kg would destabilize .005% of the space at black ops level 5. This includes the mass of the conduiting ship (carrier for example) and all ships that is included in the conduit if conduit is used.

So, 15km at level 4 space stabilization skill, this would mean a Sin with black ops 5, with a mass of 141,700,000 kg could jump and use 7,085km of stabilized space. Leaving 7,915km of stable space to allow other ships to jump to or conduit. This means, one frigate can jump in two black ops ships. Or one black ops battleship and 107 manticores, with a mass of 1,470,000 kg at .005% with black ops 5.

Capitals

An recon can stabilize 30Km at level 4 (5km per level over level 1). This doubles the amount of stabilized space the covert ops frigate can stabilize. The recon would get a 1% modifier to stabilized space strength per level that effects capital sized ships. This means an Arazu with a regular Cyno could at level 4 (most people have recons to 4 right?) would get 4% bonus to stabilization strength when a capital sized ship jumps to the cyno. This bonus would not apply to black ops, but the strength increase means that capability of the recon is double (as it should be) the covert ops. This means an recon can double the number of covert ships that can be brought to the fight via one cyno. But back to capitals.

The math could look like this for this class -
Possible stabilized space - 30Km
Revelation - Mass 1,290,000,000 kg

Destabilization base at level 4 - 64 500

Capital class modifier at level 4 (4%) - 2,580

30Km/2580Km destabilized space = 11.6 Revelations (one could argue rounding up or down)

This means that an Arazu pilot, with level 4 recon could with one click field 11 or 12 revelations within 30km of itself.

What does this mean?
Composition of ships matters when you jump. This would mean for all ships, black ops to miners.

This makes cyno a tactical option, instead of a numbers option. You need to coordinate more, more cyno’s more variables.

Can the larger alliances still blob?
Yes. But doing so requires cordination.

Making a change in this manner would make black ops more, black ops. It would change from everyone get on the titan to, let’s make sure this group goes first to ensure they all make it in. It changes the limiting factor of moving so many ships from point A to point B on a titan bridge from do you have enough fuel? To do we have proper cyno’s in place? Does the titan pilot have high enough skills to make it worthwhile to use him as a bridge? Is the cyno going to have level 1 and neuter the fleet?
Why should CCP consider this?
Think of the hamsters! This would force a more gradual escalation in instant transportation. Imagine a tactic where each side goes to the system closest to the objective to cyno people in to spread out the instability. What does that mean for the servers? You get fights in different systems. You spread out the load, you get opportunity for less Tidi and more actual fights.

Gameplay improvements, you uncap a large number of end game. Right now, for most of us in Null, we cannot use marauders to do stuff. We cant drop one carrier on a group and conduit is useless for most situations when a titan bridge does it better. This means you can take your Paladin out and have a chance to fight a gang that comes in. You can still die to a Redeemer and 100 manticores, but you have a better chance than trying to fend off 30 1,200 dps battleships. So this means more paladins undock. This means more Kronos are warping gate to gate to get picked off in small gang fights. This means MORE CONTENT for those not in major blocks.

This unchains smaller alliances. Not having 100’s of dreads dropped on your 20 dreads by ONE cyno means you stand a chance to participate in the end game content. Meaning players stay longer in the game. Do larger alliances still have the upper hand? Yes, but they have to supply more cyno ships. Meaning the numbers still plays a role, but to use these numbers they have to coordinate better.

I feel this would bring back smaller fights, would free up a lot of the end game content in null sec and would make players stay longer. I also think this would open up use for carriers, as they are vastly underused because they’re so vulnerable.

TLDR - Fix cyno’s by making them not jump everything with the only counter being kill the cyno before the whole fleet can mash jump.

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The litmus test is very simple: if this mechanic did not already exist, would it be laughed at as ridiculous and stupid when proposed today?

Cyno mechanics are dumb and promote dog piling as you said, CCP should just remove them completely but watch as it never happens.

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Uhm, you make a mistake there.

The cyno inhibitor does not counter being hot dropped.
The cyno inhibitor has succesfully been used here!
The cyno inhibitor is a defence mechanism by the blops fleet to stop capital escalation. It stops regular cynos, not covert cynos.

As you can see the Rapier who dropped the inhibitor also was part of the attackers, I bet he was the one who caught the Dread. They were hunting with an out-of-corp pilot.

As someone who has been in these kinds of fleets it isn’t uncommon to bring overwhelming firepower.

Often your fleet brings enough firepower to kill target X, but happens to kill target Y instead.

For example your hunter spots a good target like a Dreadnought (see your other link), Carrier or even better, everyone gets ready and 3 minutes later when the group is sitting outside it turns out the target ran.

Luckily there is a Gnosis in the next system over and your fleet, deployed and ready anyway, decides to drop on that target instead.

You’re at war after all and a kill is a kill.

I even dropped 20 people on a Vexor once while flying a Deluge.

Not because we really needed all that firepower to kill a single Vexor, but because we needed a mid system on our way to kill a carrier, and that Vexor just happened to be a nice mid point.

That said, I do agree cynos can get a nerf.

Cynos are invaluable in moving around black ops and capital ships, but they are pretty much impossible to react to with how they let ships jump through immediately.

I also have some opinions about the amount of Redeemers in black ops fleets. It’s always Redeemers, Redeemers and more Redeemers and maybe one or two Widows in the mix. No Panthers, no Sins. I think that’s a sign Black Ops balance isn’t very healthy at the moment.

Your suggestion to nerf cynos - some complex calculations with destabilizated space to make it impossible to jump the entire fleet to a cyno

I’ve read your suggestion. I don’t fully understand it, and I don’t think it’s fun or comprehensible while playing.

Yes, destabilized space that stops black ops fleets or capital fleets from jumping too many ships to a cyno sounds like a good idea to limit the power of cynos.

It however makes for very unpredictable and inconsistent anti-fun gameplay behaviour when someone in your group lights a cyno and you and other ships with jump drives jump there and the last ones hear “you cannot jump there” because of some weird math.

It’s neither simple to understand nor fun to experience.

I agree that cynos need a nerf, so iinstead I propose a different solution with a similar effect:

My suggestion to nerf cynos - just put a delay on the cynos

  • A delay on cynos before they allow ships to jump through.

Your Prospect lights a covert cyno? The enemy target now has 5 seconds to react and one-shot it, or warp off before the cyno gets to the full power to let covert ships jump through.

Your Arazu lights a regular cyno? It takes 10 seconds before the cyno is at full strength for capital ships to jump to it, allowing the enemy ships to either prepare for escalation or kill the ship bearing the cyno.

With some good timing you could even kill the cyno right as it becomes active, splitting the hostile force as part of them jumped while others were a bit slow.

(5 second covert cyno delay and 10 second regular cyno delay are just an example, surely CCP can come up with healthy values.)

  • As second part of the suggestion: conduit jumping should not take along other black ops battleships.

This feature currently makes it very convenient and cheap on fuel to jump fleets consisting of only black ops battleships all at the same time. Removal of conduit jumping black ops battleships still allows the exact same gameplay but heavier on fuel, heavier on blue timer and with a bigger spread in jumps, which is important in combination with the first part of my suggestion.

My suggestion, just like yours, allows an escalating fleet to be split through game mechanics, except now the game mechanics are in the hands of players who can kill the cyno before more ships jumped through.

If you kill a cyno ship soon enough an escalating force may be split between on grid and left behind if they didn’t jump fast enough.

Lastly, nerf Redeemers. Their damage, hitpoints or both.

1 Like
4

I totally agree.

Cynos are one of the main problems of this game. They desperately need to be cut back down to a level they were on when originally implemented.

This would not be a nerf, but rather a fix of an oversight, an adaptation to a changed environment of way faster computers and connections and a re-establishing of the balance that was once inteded when they were added to the game!

In General:
The goal has to be that that between the activation of the cyno and the appearence of the reinforcements on grid at least 30 seconds (Covert) to 60 seconds (Regular) have to pass. So the hotdropped side gets a reaction window to either disengage, break tackle, fight down the cyno ship, pull range, bring in own reinforcements or whatever. This was how the game worked back in the early days when Cynos were originally implemented, the system jump alone took more than 30-40 seconds and then you had often a few seconds of gridload as well. So whenever a cyno did go up, you had at least 30-60sec to react to it before the reinforcements were shooting at you.

Furthermore, LowSec as entry-Area for newer and smaller PvP groups that need an environment to learn and grow some experience in small skirmishes and brawls with cheap but somewhat tanky ships (to tank the sentries if needed) needs to be made largely hotdrop-free. Big entities still should be able to move their capfleets around to siege and protect structures or hold dominance over a sector. But the daily business of sending out baits and cynorecons to curbstomp small gangs or solo players who dare to undock anything bigger than a frig or a destroyer has to end.

Details can be worked out like whatever seems reasonable, but those two points are of utmost importance:

  • delaying the reinforcements coming through a cyno by at least 30 (Covert) to 60 seconds (regular)
  • making it very hard and unattractive to hotdrop small gangs in Lowsec, while still allowing the big groups to move their capfleets through and/or do siege-warfare

I especially agree with the suggestion of not allowing BlackOps to jump other BlackOps. Each BlackOps has to jump on it’s own and require it’s own fuel to do so. Jumping a whole fleet should be costly. And bridging smaller ships should of course cost fuel depending on the ships mass.

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5

While I do think that adding a delay to cynos is good, I think this is way, way too much.

60 seconds to shoot at a lone stationary target with your entire fleet?

This isn’t just a nerf, this is an obliteration of cyno escalation possibilities.

I’m glad you agree that delaying cynos is a good idea, but I feel this delay should be a few seconds at best, 10 at most.

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Maybe add a delay that is bandwidth?

Like only 10 can jump at a time and the next 10 can only jump after the first 10 land on grid.

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This would achieve basically nothing in terms of getting rid of the stupid hotdrop pressure vs. small- and medscale operations. You cannot even remotely hope to break a tanked Recon or T3 in 10 Seconds (not even counted that you will need like 2 seconds to react alone +5 seconds locking it). Or even break it’s tackle (hello Proteus…).
And then all their Lokis and RR-Legions and BlackOps still land right on top of you, obliterating your whole small gang, ending any fight you had there and making sure their bait can’t die any more.

Strange, how did cyno warfare work for like a decade when in fact exactly this delay of 30-60 seconds from cyno up to reinforcement arrival was in place? It did work perfectly well. All big fights could (and were) reinforced by jumping in Capitals, all the time.

It is rather amusing to hear someone saying “this can’t work” while history has proven it has worked quite obviously.

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8

While small scale may not be able to kill a cyno ship in such time, they are able to warp away the bulk of their fleet within those 10 seconds.

Making it 60 seconds means you’re never ever going to catch a fleet again. At most you’ll grab one or two ships and hopefully can keep them tackled (if the fleet isn’t strong enough to kill your ship in that time) but you can not escalate and fight another unwilling fleet this way.

When I suggested a delay on cynos my intention is to give counterplay possibilities, not to delete escalations.

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You didn’t answer the question. And I think I know why.

How did it work back in the first decade when you simply couldn’t “catch a fleet with a cyno”.

That is the ENTIRE PURPOSE. You shouldn’t be able to “catch a fleet” with a cyno! If you want to fight a fleet, bring your OWN FLEET. Don’t blob them shamelessly so their only reasonable options is to run straight away, but offer them a reasonable force to fight. Hide your reinforcements 2-3 systems out and manually bring them into the fight. This offers so much room for tactical gameplay, because it now becomes a real game of positioning, targetcalling, fast movement, having the right fits for the right squads, sending in interception squad to delay spotted reinforcements with bubbles etc. pp…

It is so frustrating to see that peoble have gotten so used to those cyno-up-spread-tackle ■■■■■■■■ to “escalate” fights (which usually means “curbstomp”). Have you all forgotten how to properly fight and slowly escalate? What skill and tactical planning it requires to split up your fleet into a smaller force that looks fightable but only is the opener for a larger force? All having reaction windows for each sides built in because of travel times and options to block direct warps?

It’s so sad to see that you seem to really think Cynos are the way to get fights. They shouldn’t be. They should be a tool to move fleets strategically from A to B. Not dropping them right on top of a far inferior force AND having the high chance to even tackle most of them while doing it.

10

I wasn’t playing back then, but I heard back then you could lance a titan doomsday through a cyno.

Maybe we shouldn’t compare current gameplay mechanics to how it worked back then, but look at how the changes would change the current meta.

Nowadays after the ‘cyno delay’ you cannot safely boson an entire fleet instantly, you’ve got to jump your fleet there, hold people and fight them.

Different times, different meta, different strategies.

I think 60 seconds delay is way too long for the current meta.

11

The current meta is crap and one of the reasons why this game has become so dull and boring for many players. It doesn’t need slight tweaks. Hotdropping needs to be broken up. Completely.

Hotdrop-curbstomping is no “Meta” that needs to be preserved and protected. People should earn their wins by putting tactical thought and effort into their responses to reports of hostile players, carefully judging and planning how to forge a fight out of it instead of just “cyno up, spread tackle!!!”.

And that is only possible if hotdrops right on top of an already ongoing fight are extremely difficult. Not just 10s delayed which just prolong your death by 10 seconds. You know there is a reason why Marauder Bastion was increased from 30 to 60 seconds? Because a tweak of +/-5s (10s total) would have changed nothing to solve the problem. If you really want to have a chance to reposition or adapt your tactics mid-fight, you need at least 30 additional seconds.

And btw, I was there when EVE was a zone largely without cynos. And we had fights. Every day. And people were extremely good at baiting and slowly escalating. And those who always blobbed were punished by their reputation. Small and medium groups could have their skirmishes and brawls right under the noses of the large groups who didn’t even try to stomp the smaller ones - because they knew they couldn’t catch them anyway if they tried to throw a 100 man blob on them. Unlike today. Cynos need to be reduced to a purely tactical fleet relocation tool. Not in insta-blob mechanic.

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Bump, Cyno meta needs fixed.