Then they are not different to any other low sec. As said, missions and exploration plexes have the exact same protections. Requires a bit more effort as you cannot just warp to a plex, but you can prevent the “oppressive hostiles” from just dropping on you as well. Especially in missions and plexes without notifications, where you can ambush the tackle Arazu on the first gate. Guess what I do all the time to farm the locals in my null area that want to remove me from their space?
Lone Newbros don’t have scouts, that was my point.
But again: If this is only a dampening effect in low sec, I am fine with longer cyno spoolups. Absolutely no issue from me.
They are. In FW areas the most fights happen outside or inside the complexes, where you can’t hotdrop. And they can happen there, because you can’t hotdrop.
In normal Lowsec most fights happen on gates or outside stations. Some at structures or in belts. (see famous “meet Amamake top belt” meme). And here you can hotdrop and basically end the engagement by turning it into a massacre. Thats why nobody except those large blobgroups can mine in Lowsec. Or most camping groups these days have cyno backup. It’s all open space and the next best cynoship just stops whatever you try to do. Fewest people are actually doing missions there where it would matter if you are in a deadspace complex or not.
Lone newbros can use the map. And if they see a big red dot with lots of ship kills and pod kills they can decide to take another way. Lone newbros can also be advised to use a cheap frig for their first few steps, which enables them to crash the gate in a single AB/MWD cycle and not flying around in a cruiser not really knowing what environment they are dealing with. Lone newbros who really want to live in Lowsec are best advised to look for a group (big or small) to actually teach them, which includes to fly in a group to learn, which gives them… scouts. I mean, lowsec isn’t really the area for solo+beginner players. They would die do anything anyway there, gatecamp or not.
Fine thing. I even agree that adaptation is possible (yes, dampening is one way), but thats actually good. What matters is the balance of the duration, to make sure BLOPs stay a viable tool to cause havoc behind camped/intelsecured regions in Null, but aren’t oppressive as instakill tools against small/medium groups or local residents or daytrippers doing daily business like roaming around, ratting or mining in LowSec - those should be tackled the normal way, fast tacklers, fast ships, moving gangs hunting around trying to catch things.
There are multiple ways it could be designed. I prefer a combination of
Cyno-spoolup to force the cynoship to evaluate the situation and make a tactical decision (is my tank sufficient against the hostile ship(s)? Can I risk opening the cyno right on top of them or do I need more range? Can I even open the cyno right here or do I need it to open offgrid/next system and have my fleet actually warping in? This leaves room for error and room for counters by the targets. The smaller and more mobile the target fleet is, the lower the chances to successfully catch them with a hotdrop. Immobile ships, especially those with long timers (Orcas, Capitals) will be caught easily. Marauders… if you bring damps on your Cynoship you might have a chance. Roaming gangs or a T3/HAC/Stratios running complexes… no.
JumpDrive Spoolup (like MJDs) to balance out shipclasses and combat power. Bombers can jump very fast, T3s, Recons and BlackOps can jump laters. So the FC needs to also make a tactical decisions: Do I send in the Bombers first to get more tackle? Can they survive long enough until the Recons are there for ewar? Can my Cynoship survive until the T3s or BOs can actually jump? Again: Room for error, room for mistakes, room for counters.
Active Measures on specialized ships like HICs or Interdictors that can actively prevent Cynos from being opened inside a small area. If you want to attack these, you would have to make sure the Cyno is opened far enough away, like 40, 50km. Same mechanics (K.I.S.S.) like for the warp disruption bubbles. HICs can make a bubble around them, 25km range. Or use a focused script, 35km range - but then they have to lock the cynoship to shut down the cyno or prevent it from being used. Interdictors can throw bubbles, 20km. It’s a question of design preference to allow or ban those in LowSec or not.
Times I would have in mind for a first try:
Normal Cyno spoolup: 20-30 seconds (could be skill-bound)
Covert Cyno spoolup: 5-10 seconds (could be skill-bound)
Frig Jump Drive spoolup: 5 seconds
Cruiser Jump Drive spoolup: 10 seconds
BS jump Drive spoolup: 15 seconds
Capital jump Drive spoolup: 30 seconds
That means:
Scenario I: “Hunter” hits the Cyno button, after 5 seconds the Cyno appears. Then the Bombers could hit the jump button, system transfer begins after another 5-10 seconds. Lets say the jump itself takes 8 seconds (I actually tested jumping a normal stargate with a frig).
→ 5sec + 5-10sec + 8sec total delay after the “Hunter” has hit the Cyno button
→ 18-23sec until the Bombers could begin to fire/ewar/tackle
→ 23-28sec until the T3s/Recons can fire/ewar/tackle/neut/rr
→ 28-33sec until the BlackOPs can fire/ewar/neut/rr
So, yes to catch a Marauder you would need a very well tanked Recon or better a T3 - IF the dropped pilot instantly reacts and begins to lock you. There is a chance you might lose that Hunter ship, but we want risk to be involved, right? Or you might try 1 - 2 Bombers with damps, might work as well if you can prevent him from locking.
Scenario II: A medium/large group wants to escalate a fight with FAX/Dreads. Their Cynoship needs to survive 20-30 sec (cyno spoolup) + 30sec (capital jump drive spoolup) + 8sec (system travel). Thats ~1 minute (hint: that is approx. as long as it took 2010 to jump a Cap into another system - and that worked…). So depending on how much RR or Ewar they have on Grid, they would need to decide to open the Cyno right on top of the fight, 50 off to dodge large parts of the enemy fire. Or 200 off and actually warping their caps in after the jump (delaying the escalation even further, enabling the opponents to re-evaluate the situation and bringing own reinforcements or disengage, or sending a small tackle-group to stop the caps from warping down, opening up a second front to deal with). Or even opening the Cyno at a station/structure and retreat there, then checking if the other side wants to keep engaging. Or, using mutliple Cynoships at once to make sure one stays alive to bring the own Caps in. Thats tactical gameplay. Room for error. Room for reaction. Decisions that matter.
Just a tidbit I had in mind earlier: I would not make it skill-bound. This only makes it more unpredictable for the targets and the skill is easily trained (sp trading FTW), which means the lowest time becomes the norm for the big groups anyway (we have seen this with the Rorqual PANIC timer already).
In place of skills, I envision a scaling effect depending on the sec level of the system. 0.4 has the highest dampening effect (longest spool-up-time) since they are the most numerous systems and the ones next to high sec. 0.1 has the lowest dampening effect because those are the more dangerous systems where the greatest riches are (supposed to be), and which sometimes even border systems to null sec.
We already have this in high sec with the scaling response time of Concord, or with the Clone soldier distribution in low sec. Hence, the system itself is not completely new to players.
The illustrative figures you mentioned can stay the same, but they should be impacted by the system’s sec level instead of skills so that players have to adapt to the environment and cannot game the system with SP trading.
I don’t think that players should be in control of every aspect of the game. Some adaptation to set-in-stone. dictatorial environments puts them into their place for a change, instead of allowing them to alleviate any hardship with a bit of quick skill training.
This was my initial idea tbh, but since EVE already is so complex this would add another set of times to know, to remember, to take into consideration when moving from one system to another. And since - in my opinion - one of EVEs biggest problem in getting new players is it’s huuuuuge and often unnessesary overcomplexity in little things, I have asked myself if we really need that kind of complexity here.
I think I would prefer a fixed time for opening cynos, easy to learn, everywhere the same in LowSec, (0 in Nullsec). Based on a “standard value” which all “jump related modules” should be designed around. Lets have an example:
The “jump” module most new players will come in contact first would probably be the classic MJD. The game could (should) use this as “standard baseline”. It is currently based at 12sec activation time, but the skill “Micro Jump Drive Operation” can bring it down by 25% to 9sec. Now we can tweak that or not if we want, but lets say we use 12sec as initial value for Cynos as well and give the 25% reduction to “Cynosural Field Theory” (which would fit), so the standard Cyno-Char who would probably have this skill on V would also end up with 9sec Cynodelay. Along with Medium Micro Jump Drives, Large Micro Jump Drives. Covert Cynos get a 50% bonus on Spoolup time, easy to learn, easy to remember.
So we get (at Skill V, which is obviously standard for comparing mechanics):
→ Medium MJD Jump: 9sec
→ Large MJD Jump: 9sec
→ Cyno opening: 9sec
→ Covert Cyno opening: 4.5sec
Fine so far.
Now we adjust Micro Jump Field Generator: from 9 to 12sec base. But let it profit from the Micro Jump Drive Operation as well. This would bring down it’s base to 9 like the MJD. Streamlined, easy to learn, easy to remember, lets add it to the list.
→ Micro Jump Field Generators: 9sec
Now we change the Command Destroyer ship skill from -5% spool up time to -1sec per level of skill. We end up at 5sec spoolup time (currently 5.06 at Skill V). De facto no balance change for that module, but streamlined mechanics behind it. edit: well, actually not sure about this once since I don’t know for sure if the 1st level does count. If so we would end up at 4s, which would probably be too fast. In this case a -8% reduction would be better, ending up at 5.4sec).
Same for the Capital Micro Jump Field Generator: 12sec base, down to 9 with Skill V. Since Capitals Ships don’t get a bonis for spoolup it stays at 9sec (currently 10s). Acceptable imho. Another mechanic streamlined.
→ Capital Jump Field Generators: 9sec
Then the last part: Jump Drives. For the sake of simplicity we can also have Standard Jump Drive Spoolup at 12sec, but every Skill Level of Jump Drive Operation gives -5%, ending up at 9sec.
OPTIONALLY we could diversify ship classes:
Summary
Frig Size ships get a 50% bonus on Jump Drive spoolup time
Cruisers use standard time
BCs get a 50% penalty on Jump Drive spoolup time (Cenotaph)
BS get a 100% penalty on Jump Drive spoolup time (BlackOPs)
Capitals get a 300% penalty on Jump Drive spoolup time
Ending up with
→ Bombers can initiate Jump after 4.5sec
→ T3/Recons after 9sec
→ Cenotaphs after 13.5sec
→ BLOPs after 22.5sec
→ Capitals after 36sec
Now, where would us lead that to:
Cyno button is hit, lets use 9sec system travel time:
→ 4.5 + 4.5 + 9 = 18sec and Bombers can lock targets
→ 4.5 + 9 + 9 = 22.5sec and T3/Recons can lock targets
→ 4.5 + 13.5 + 9 = 27sec and Cenotaph can lock targets
→ 4.5 + 22.5 + 9 = 36sec and BLOPs can lock targets
→ 9 + 36 + 9 = 54sec and Capitals can lock targets
**If we use no shipclass diversification (except for Caps) it would simply be 22.5sec for all Covert Ships jumping on a Covert Cyno and 54sec for Capitals jumping on a normal cyno. (Ships without own JumpDrive (when titanbridged) have have no jump delay, but the Titanbridge would need the spoolup time of the Titan’s jumpdrive (36sec) to establish a link. The ships can then use the bridge instantly once it is open.)
All numbers would be open for evaluation and rebalance of course, but such a delay would greatly benefit LowSec as a a living area for smaller and medium independent groups, because they would be much harder to hotdrop while doing non-stationary business. There would be always a window of 20-30seconds where you can try to break tackle and get away or kill the Cynoship, deagress, pull range etc… Stationary fights like bigger battles or Structure Fights would be pretty much unaffected, so the big guys could still hold their (economical / structure) dominance over a region, but the smaller groups can live next to them, being protected (to a degree) from quick hotdrops which currently paralyze a lot of activity there.
“I want to be safer without having to do anything to be safer”
I really don’t see this as a positive thing for any part of the game.
You also pretend like the spool up is to make it so the dropping party needs to be more tactical. Yet your opposition to having a tool to completely turn off their cyno seems to show you know just how devastating a delay would actually be in making it almost impossible to catch anything.
Even without a delay blops are really only able to catch 1-2 ships out of a fleet if the fleet decides it just wants to run.
Especially when the majority of the time your catching them on a gate. Battle cruisers would have no issue burning back to gate and jumping out with the times you described.
Ontop of that as a fw player gates are still much more likely to produce fights between fleets than plexs those are where most 1v1s happen not fights between fleets. And they are favored not because I’m not going to get a cyno dropped on me but because i have complete and total control over whatever the fights going to be. Inside one i even get to dictate the starting range.
This is why the smaller ones are far more favored while the large ones are probably the least common to fight in.
First in my original post i said you couldn’t do any of the three jobs at once but you don’t need the crazy tank for most fights. Especially if you have t3 support in a fleet setting
With preators you can get 1996dps with heat and 3 heat sinks before implants and drugs along with 131k ehp with t3 links. Total cost only 2.29b
That said “only around 1800” with the fit you’re talking about still puts it miles ahead of every other blops. And in blops fleets dps is king, it’s one of the few areas of the game where you can actually dps tank. The faster you kill your targets the faster your gone. The panther dps fit struggles to get 1.6k with ogres . I can’t even get a widow to break 1.5k and that’s with far worse application.
But again the problem with the deemer isn’t just high dps it’s the versatility. It can get crazy tank, it can get crazy dps, and it can have extremely powerful nuets. It’s why i suggested either lowering its damage or removing its nuet bonus.
The only other blops that comes close is the widow. And as i pointed out i think the widow should lose some of its ability to tank to compensate as well
Sure I want it to be safer from hotdrops. Because if it stays the way it is, Lowsec will stay at the horrible status it is currently in. I have never said anything else. I sincerily believe hotdrops are poison for this area and ruin it as natural next-step for pvp learners and small (independent!!!) groups that would want to leave HighSec and explore the deeper PvP parts of this game. Hotdrops are extremely paralyzing to have a living and thriving population in Lowsec and that means I want them to be removed. You would still have 3300+ Nullsec systems where you can do that stuff unhindered. And you would ‘suffer’ that at least mobile gangs couldn’t be caught by you in LS any more, but Orcas, Marauders, Caps etc. still could. Tell me that this is not enough for you. Please. Because it’s pretty obvious what you want: cheap and easy kills with your multibillion ISK toys.
This tool (I think you mean HICs/Dictors) would be very area-limited. Open your cyno at range, deal done. No Marauder, Orca, Porpoise, Capital or structure could prevent your gang being bridged, even if they have placed a Dictor next to it to prevent Cynos. This mechanic is exclusively to prevent ending a an ongoing brawlfight by jumping a BO gang right at zero onto it. And yes, that is exactly what I want. You don’t deserve that. It’s a teleporter-massacre. A mechanic this game simply doesn’t need. It would be better without it.
Absolutely and they should. Because I want to end this busting of small groups via Cyno. Got it!
How does this turn off cynos? And no i meant the suggestion i made earlier about a HS mod that would instantly shut down a cyno
No i want what is currently one of the best tools for small groups to hit larger targets to remain. Ls cynos are currently the reason i can take new bros into ls to do things like mining. Again most of ls doesn’t have these massive groups just constantly dropping cynos. That’s pretty much only happening around lonetrek. You know caldari gallente fw space. The one you said was safest from cynos? That’s where snuffed is constantly dropping them lol.
Again small groups make great use of cynos. It’s how iv intruded a lot of players into pvp who were too nervous about it. Because i can do all of the much more complicated parts and all they have to focus on is flying their ship and getting used to being in fights with other players.
Fear of hot drops isn’t paralyzing. Like with anything it’s the lack of knowledge that’s paralyzing. Cynos are already fairly easy to avoid. You can learn what areas and time zones are high risk. You can learn what hunters tend to do and how to avoid them. You know what ships on grid or descan are likely to be cynos.
I’m currently living in range of snuffed again. Do you know how many times they have managed to catch me or the fleets im in with a cyno? Not once. They’ve only even managed to drop once and it nearly cost them a widow. The only thing that kept it from dying was our new players panicking as they had never seen a cyno before.
Maybe you should follow the discussion then? I outlined the idea of giving HICs/Dictors special scripts/bubbles for LS that would cancel/prevent cynos within their range. This would obviously be very range limited and would only prevent jumping at zero on a brawling fight/camp. Open at range and you will get your ships in. Stationary targets you will still catch, mobile ones not. As intended. You shouldn’t be able to bust a mobile Cruiser/Battlecruiser gang with BlackOps.
Don’t need Cynos for that. Ratters die every day to fast, hard hitting gangs of small ships. Don’t be lazy. And those who escape because they scouted well and reacted fast do deserve to keep their ship. Ratting in LS isn’t a crime that somehow makes the guy deserve to die. If you want that kill, earn it. Thats the opposite of hotdropping.
Please, stop showing NewBros cynowarfare, you will breed an entire generation of scumbags wh don’t know how to fly ships and really believe that hotdropping someone is a fight. If you want to do them a favor, teach them to use Enyos, Hecates, Kikimoras, a bit of EWar an then roam a 100 jumps each evening, dive into WHs to find ratters, filament into null to find ratters, check the Ice-Lowsecs to bust Orcas. Teach them to fly some basic buffer-BC that can tank the gateguns and make small and mobile camps on high traffic routes or how to poke another group by reinforcing one of their POCOs and see the next day what they wanna do about it. Teach them to combatscan, bricktackle, gatecrash, slingshot a burning target. Teaching them how to hotdrop is making them worse players.
My apologies for not realizing that when i mentioned the “tool you rejected” you were talking about one you yourself proposed. Though thinking about it what is it about HICs doing this that you like that you didn’t like about the similar mechanic i suggested for EAFs and T1 cruisers?
I mean in LS this is already impossible to do unless the BC gang makes a major mistake. Your only real chance is to hope they want to stick around to defend whatever member of the herd you managed to grab.
Almost everything you suggested after this point i can find a post where someone is arguing it’s what’s killing the game. And/or how the people doing them are unable to win “real fights”
And yes blops is a great way to teach new players pvp as it breaks up all the important aspects of pvp quite nicely depending on the role you’re playing in that fleet letting you focus exclusivity on.
Piloting your own ship and following primaries.
The best way to utilize differant types of ewar.
Manually piloting and positing as logistic pilots
Taking and avoiding targets and identifying risks/prey.
In a lot of other types of pvp you either have to do many of things at once or never at all.
With blops you’re also regularly going into and out of every type of space with the exclusion of trigs meaning you are constantly reminded of the different mechanics and how those affect the way your fc is going to have you fly.
Why would you need any of that when bridging 15 people on an Orca, Paladin, Drake, Covetor, Porpoise, Golem? I mean, that thing melts in 30 seconds, even if all your pilots simply “orbit 500”. And thats exactly how like 95% of all BlackOps gang kills looke like.
Even if you drop a small gang, the majority of it instantly runs, because they can’t know how large the drop will be. Yes, as you say yourself, you catch those who are trying to fight. Stupid dudes, they should know they never had a chance. shrugs
We won’t find a common ground here, sorry. In my book, it was a major mistake of CCP to even introduce cynowarfare to the game. But the milk is spit, so be it, that probably can’t be corrected without breaking the game as it is now. The second major mistake was, not to rebalance it when the PCs became ever more powerful and the connections ever more faster, which totally broke the speed of hotdrops happening. Thats why delays could at least fix that part, it won’t be a nerf, it would just be a re-adjustment to the original values when this mechanic wasn’t that large of a problem.
I mean, you act like changing that would make warfare and kills impossible, but history clearly shows that you are wrong: Lowsec was better when it took around a minute (yes, thats much more than I propose) jumping from system to system, even through a cyno.
But again, we won’t come together here. So, lets agree to disagree. Since you seem to live there, I wish you good luck and enjoy that mechanic as long as it lasts. But I will rejoice if at some point the moment comes that CCP realize that (instant)power projection is one of EVE’s worst problems and reason for stagnation. And hopefully they fix it then by nerfing cyno warfare quite a bit.
If you mean Black-Ops / Cynos - #10 by Lugh_Crow-Slave this posting, then I can’t find a specified range. Would it work as a burst effect with a fixed diameter? Would the ship need to have a lock on the cynoship?
The problem I see here is that having it on so many (cheap) ships like Ewar Frigs and T1 Ewar Cruisers could result in people just build in so much redundancy into their fleets that they can simply pop this thing every few seconds and shut down as many cynos as they want in a row.
Other than that I actually find it stronger than limiting it to HICs (expensive, skill intensive) or Dictors (very range limited, only 3 charges in the bubble launcher, then a large cooldown).
I didn’t spesify a range but yeah the idea would be that it would be a burst around the ship.
and yes you could bring a load of cheap cruisers but you would only need 1/2 the number of recons to bypass it. Or light outside of whatever range it would be. Filling your fleet with a bunch of t1 ewar cruisers is also going to make you more vulnerable to a more conventional fleet. So just like anything in eve it would be a choice.
That said with one of the ships your already making it significantly harder for a random cyno to result in you getting dropped.
It also means that whatever fleet thought yours was a sure kill risks being split if they aren’t perfectly synced when jumping. This can lead to you need to risk a conduit jump with a BB into a fight you may have preferred to not put a BLOPs on grid.
And I agree it would be much stronger than your idea, thats why i was shocked you would rather the more expensive and less total option.
as someone who does the dropping I like this idea better as there is more interaction between both parties both once each are on grid with each other as well as in the planning stages.
as to what the range should be im not sure but i’d think at least 55km. that puts it so an arazu with T2 points would have less than 3km wiggle room if it wanted to point outside the range. But even as high as 65 i think would be reasonable
Well under these conditions I would think it would be at least viable counter to “direct-on-top” cynos. For K.I.S.S. reasons I would make the range the same as for the Command bursts of Absolutions and the like (49.5 km) at max skills.
Any suggestions for the Sin Black Ops or is it a lost cause at this point? It really seems like it should be all drones or all hybrids (not a mix of the two).
I mean drones would give it back the niche of eating small targets. But you’re not normally dropping in small targets. It would still be something the others can’t do.