So… your idea is that the more guns are firing on a target, the less damage that target takes? Because you’re saying the target’s signature gets smaller, which means all of those guns will be doing less damage. Or do you somehow expect the server to keep track of signature math between every single volley of every single gun, that way each gun does progressively less damage… b/c that won’t make the lag even worse or anything, having to recalculate the signature every millisecond.
First off, your logic is flawed. More impacts and more explosions don’t make a target harder to hit. Besides, there aren’t that many explosions from gunfire. You’re thinking of missiles…
I have a better idea. How about we do away with all the artificial damage caps. There is no reason why damage would stop counting just b/c you’ve got a lot of guns firing on a target, whether it’s a ship or a Citadel. If someone can bring 1k Titans to the field to take down a Citadel, then they should all do even amounts of damage. That means the Citadels will die faster (less Citadel spam). And the solution will require people to kill the Titans faster (less Cap ship spam).
Quite a substantial change imho. Now a well organiced fleet of 500 with 10 sub- FC will be stronger than a ragtag group of 1000 with 1 FC. The N+1 logic will not apply so hard. Still there, but you add “elite pvp group wins F1 monkey” to equation.
This situation happens in WH pvp and as in Wh pvp has its solutions, solutions that involve player action and coordination and that will again make the smaller well organized group triumph over the F1 brain dead fleet.
And by the way, you say that it will not affect blob pvp and that will completly change it in the same sentence.
This is not important in my idea, it may change the way its done, but suicide ganking will still be there.
If I understand correctly it already happens, not sure if in the client side, Think in rigs, implants MWD etc. they the sig- radius. whatever calculation is needed to be done is already happening.
Actually since Im a nerd, I was thinking on whats usually called “semi-dreadnought” which where the final iteration of the pre-dreadnought era of battleship. They where phased out quickly because they where unable to correct their own shooting because they had too many calibers and where unable to identify which splash belonged to what gun, Just with one Battleship. And this was reality, not star trek so it does make sense. This and other factors made Jutland an example of dont-shoot-the-primary battle.
And yet, if we really wanted realism we should be shooting from several million km away, so not a good point to discuss.
I’m sorry to say that your idea dosent appeal to me.
No, it won’t be stronger, because the “ragtag group of 1000 with 1 FC” just won’t exist. The blob is the result of fleet meta evolving toward doing the thing that makes the most sense. If you change what makes sense, the fleet meta will just evolve to doing that.
This fantasy where the 500 man ELITE PVP CREW is now more powerful than the 1000 man bumblefuck F1 monkeys through nothing more than splitting up target calling is purely that - a fantasy. The fantasy relies on the small group evolving into a new meta that makes sense, while the larger group of dumdums keeps trying to employ a tactic that is obviously no longer viable for some reason. The whole idea is literally predicated on the assumption that the larger group of people will behave in a grievously stupid fashion.
In actuality, the meta would evolve to the VERY OBVIOUS new tactic before the thing even hit TQ, and the 500 man blob will still get crushed by the 1000 man blob, because they weren’t actually ragtag at all - they were just doing the only thing that made sense at the time.
You’re still left with a scenario where only one basic approach makes sense, so the idea that anyone, big or small, isn’t going to just do that one thing is delusional.
There’s also a lot of cognitive bias at play in assuming these larger groups are disorganized. You don’t lose because they outplayed you, right? Your group is actually much more organized and elite, the game is just stacked against you because the mechanics favor these “disorganized blobs of mindless F1 monkeys”, so it doesn’t matter that you’re 1337PvP and they’re not… but it should!
Stop and think about it for a moment, though, and you’ll run into some pretty obvious problems with that assumption. Chief among them is that the groups that field massive blobs would struggle to do anything at all if they were the mindless mess that you imagine they are.
Actually, what I said was that it won’t change it in the way you’re claiming it will change it. N+1 still prevails once you abandon the faulty assumption that the larger blob is somehow disorganized or inept.
The British had phased out the majority of pre-Dreadnoughts from the Grand Fleet by Jutland, the battlecruisers were almost universally armed and shoot the primary worked perfectly well for the Germans. By that stage in the war both sides were using mechanical fire control computers to more accurately aim their fire.
Where it fell down was Beattie’s reliance on visual signalling during a battle where smoke, spray and hubris (they cant hit us as much if we fire faster, so open the blast hatches to get ammo up quicker) caused British accuracy in the Battlecruiser Run to fall below the Germans.
When Jellicoe’s Grand Fleet caught up with the running battle, there certainly was primary fire, as HMS Defense, Black Prince, Dublin, Tipperary, and Spitfire attested to, as did SMS Pommeran
Its correct based in my experience In particular in the demise of YOUWHAT alliance which got huge and became ineffective just before getting crushed. Group cohesion is something harder to get the bigger the group. Also, you may take in account that the bigger group may or may not be people who haven’t actually spoken before.
But perhaps we are not understanding each other. When I mean bigger group I don’t mean bigger alliance/corp, but bigger “side” of the fight. For example 500 goons who are used to play together and employ cohesive tactics and have a clear chain of command may beat 1000 players of other 10 alliances that just happen to blue themselves to fight them.
Of course, the N+1 logic its hard to beat, and will probably always be there. Right now, in smaller WH fights where logis are capable of keeping alive the primary there is a small example of how this could work. Ask about, you will see its pretty interesting.
I’m sorry if I didn’t express myself well, but I didn’t mean that pre-dreadnought where involved in Jutland. (Where some of them on the German side?)
I tried to make 2 points.
1- Late pre-dreadnought design abandoned multi-caliber configuration in favor of mono-caliber for a number of reasons included shoot correction.
2- In Jutland fleets didn’t shoot the same ship until sunk, because it was better for them to split targets. This was due to 1 visibility, 2 Aspect of the enemy, 3 aspect of the firing ship, 4 range, and finally, ability to correct the fire. Its true that it was not the first among reasons, but well, it was still a reason.
Yes, there where other instances where they did “call a primary” but was mostly when all this factors where in favour of it. I mean that “primary calling” was not necessary the default behaviour.
P.D. I wish I could find the animation of the battle they did on 2016 to celebrate the centenary.
Yeah the Germans did have them, the Pommeran was one for example.
1 This is true
2 Yes, I think I was more saying that the intent was to concentrate fire. HMS Lion was certainly a primary but spotty accuracy and spotty intel played a part in her salvation (that and the Marine Major who ordered Q turret’s magazine flooded as he died)
I just wanted to say that intent and actual actions were not bedfellows that day.
Also Beattie never said “Chapfield, here’s something wrong with our bloody ships today” during the battle
I get the feeling that the OP is possibly a solution looking for a problem.
The first question to ask would be “why would a disorganized melee of people shooting everywhere be better than a target-focused environment”? It seems to me that any doofus can manage to shoot at random targets, whereas it takes coordinated groups, FCs, fleet doctrines etc. to make “attack the primary target” effective. Essentially you’re saying you would like combat to favor street thugs spraying and praying vs. trained troops taking out designated targets.
The second would be, assuming we can establish that ‘spray and pray’ was somehow a more entertaining combat system, is some sort of signature-altering/obscuring mechanic the best way to do it? I can think of several systems that would limit primary-target-damage that would be easier to implement and more controllable.
Probably a poor example but…
If you are a company of medium tanks attacking a platoon of heavy tanks, the only real solution is to coordinate and concentrate fire.
In the case of the Heavy Tanks, the plattoon leader will have an over all order but each tank will pick an individucal target that must be different from the others, but this is only because in this example, the heavies will one-shot the mediums.
If 30 people shooting one target get the same results as 10, they will rather divide themselves in 3 groups of 10 shooting 3 targets, this will make necesary 3 sub-FC calling targets, and the overall FC.
It may also give the chance to the primary to do something other than just die.
I also dont fear stalemates because they will be broken with ewar, capwar, or other mesures (for example frigate-sized will be less affected than battleships, so you can send squadrons of frig-size to kill the logistics, or bombers). For big battles this will probably add tactical depth. Some wh fights i have been where like this, at a small scale, of course.
So, if the 30 guys above fight 30 guys who are less organized for whatever reasons and that only have 1 FC, they will win, even with same fleet composition. In fact they could engage a fleet of 3 groops of 30 in equal footing. Of course, this is a lab-test, dont take the example too seriously.
