Don’t be daft, how you gonna gank without highsec?
Hmm…methinks that is hyperbole. The number of players is not as important as what they are flying. I’ve been in outnumbered fleets where the enemy decided to attack with Catalysts…and got massacred. Largely because they kept not warping in close enough to do any damage, whilst they were easily picked off with long range weapons. Of course I’ve no doubt that in many situations sheer numbers do win the day…but it sure as hell is not 100%.
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Other factors remaining equal, obviously. A gang of 20 deadspace-fitted battleships backed by high-grade implants could likely beat a gang of 35 battleships with standard T2 gear and no implants. That’s not the point of my argument though. The point is that there are few (if any) asymmetric tactics/strategies available for smaller groups to put up any sort of resistance against large ones.
Other games don’t have this problem. In survival FPS games, for example, if I’m alone and faced with a 10-player group, I have other options aside from taking them head-on in a firefight that I’d likely lose. For example, I could bait them with explosive traps hidden within the geometry of a loot stash or a player’s body. And even if I were forced into a direct firefight, I could at least take down a player or two before being taken out myself, which is impossible in EVE due to remote repair stacking.
Compounded by the fact that most battles in EVE take place on top of structures, which effectively forces a direct firefight on all involved parties, EVE PvP devolves strictly into a numbers game with little capacity for creative battlefield tactics and maneuvering.
But that would not resolve the N+1 problem anyway. If you gave one ship an enhanced asymmetric ability to take on 4 ships…that would simply end up being used in fleets and countered by more of the same from the enemy and you’d be right back to square one. You’d have to give some advantage that only a solo player could have. Perhaps the advantage could be ‘reduced’ if the ship was in a fleet…with the amount of reduction depending on size of fleet. That would work !
Point-defense weapons are a good example. In fact, EVE already has something like this (albeit very badly implemented): smartbombs. They’re great when you’re alone and need to even up against frigate/drone swarms, but bad in fleets because then you damage your own allies. But smartbombs are just really, really badly implemented, not least because they take up weapon slots and you need a lot of them to be effective.
Other mechanics could exist. For example, overloading your reactor and exploding to do heavy AoE damage would deter groups to gang up on single targets or small groups, but wouldn’t be much of an issue is more even fights because of friendly fire.
Loot drop scaling, while not being a “strategy” per se, would also result in more even fights on average.
The problem isn’t that we can’t create new game mechanics to address this issue, it’s that CCP intentionally doesn’t want to.
Well, a lot of the time ( in fact probably all the time ) the enemy already know your doctrine and send out their own fleet accordingly. Thus the battle is predictable. Personally I’d like fleets to have some totally unpredictable component.
I don’t know how to link my kill mail or i would. Im still playing i havent quit althou it gave me second thoughts about the game. Someone listed my fit in hopes to make shame on me so they must know how to find it and mind you i was doing a mission not out to pvp… my Corp. and alliance have helped me recoup my losses plus I’ve sold off items from doing missions… I don’t care if people make fun of me I was just sharing my experience ive ben playing for 4 months not 4 years maybe somebody else out there will remember their name and it won’t happen to them. Thank you for your offers to help my ingame name is puffalot any donations can be sent there 
but thats not why i posted. Thanks
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410m isk sent to your pilot @ puffalot
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Grats, you just comped a miner-griefing sociopath.
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You still don’t get it, tripple tanking is for noobs , nomatter if pve or pvp. You either tank shield or armor or for rare occasions, hull…
Frosty, I give up
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Your the best thank you for the help !
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OK thank you for the advice and I am a new by the way sorry although I am trying to learn as fast as I can I’m gallente and try to stay with those ships, fits and builds. Ive learnd the only true way to make a ship stronger is thru resistances and more hitpoints. I solo play most of the time.
I won Eve?
No you didn’t you daft penguin, Aiko did !!
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I disagree with this. Mildly, if you’re talking about fleet engagements, severely if you’re talking about solo stuff.
Just because you believe there’s nothing to learn, does not mean there is factually nothing to learn.
Over the years of me doing exactly what you describe – blowing up “T1 in a T3” or similar – there are rookies that Eve Mail me afterwards along the lines of “Damn, that stings! But I want to do better, do you mind telling me how you beat me? What I did wrong? How is my ship fit?” and you know what, I tell them. There’s a lot of other dudes out there who will do the same.
The burden of learning is not on the attacker. They are not a mentor-for-hire. They do not have a duty for each killmail to go “Hi! Let me unpack what just happened for you”. A new player goes into this social based game intellectually humble, and so better be using social connections (aka asking their attacker, using their corp, etc) to help learn proactively.
If the rookie’s reaction to a ship loss is instead to be silent, or rage, and not talk to anyone, and not unpack what just happened – and just be disappointed and mad – no amount of “well let me tell you what went wrong” will get through to them. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink.
No amount of “CCP game mechanic changes” will change their bad attitude.
Yes, I share the same gripes with you about N+1-ing. And CCP’s whole attitude to the “meta” level of the way groups of people play this game.
I still manage to find smaller scale fights I do enjoy but know they are relegated to obscure corners of the universe. And they do require an attitude that is willing to buck the trend, take risks, and do more than just “when can I login and get instant content” line member attitudes.
But I’m not entirely convinced the learning part of it is gone. When I started in 2010ish there used to be many smaller type corporations in high sec that told ineffectual and factually incorrect information just as often as other small corporations told real information. Many of these little corporations were rumor mills, and today they happen to be under an umbrella of mega-alliance. Eve Uni is still going as far as I’m aware (with all its flaws as well).
In my mind, the two differences I do see are: A) nullsec no longer has numerous active PvP hardened FCs willing to mentor, and B) many people seeking games today no longer want to put in the work to learn the game – they want phone-like games where you follow notification icons to upgrade your gatcha characters and press unchallenging buttons to generate more notification icons. These are attitude problems both on the supply side (teachers) and demand side (gamers).
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Those corporations are still there. Except instead of getting disbanded through some random wardec within their first 4 months like in the past, they get to stick around for years because nothing presents an existential threat to them since CCP “took care of the problem.” So the dumb CEOs/directors who demand to be called “admiral” whatever get to feed their garbage to new players in perpetuity, which no longer gets checked and balanced by the need to survive. Today, the knowledge gap between the good and the bad is the highest it’s ever been.
I thought about cataloging an infiltration of a random high-sec carebear group to illustrate this point, but it’s a lot of effort these days just to have no one believe me or tell me that “it’s their choice how they play so who am I to tell them that they’re wrong.”
Y’all have no idea.
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I’m all ears
Can you be less creepy? Thanks