Does the warp disrupt/scramble mechanic need re-imagining?

Where it up to me, the tracking mechanics would have prevented it.
For example, a frigate can only be locked up by so many other frigates because of signal crosstalk and noise. A bunch of frigates have more surface area to lock up on a larger ship without stepping on each other. Larger ships in plurality locking up a smaller one would be even bigger trouble.
This would have been the mechanic to ensure actual fleet fights actually used wings and real tactics, instead of hordes of brainless F1 monkeys. It would have also made ganks and gate raep impossible.
But no.
Gee space surely is empty these days…

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So my fleet prelocks each other at just the right size of fleet, now you can’t touch us because there aren’t any open lock slots. We can now kill anything we want all day on this grid and you can’t stop us.
Any kind of lock limit is abusable.

The only thing you can address is the instant alpha via DPS caps like citadels have (be they semi soft or hard caps or a mix of both). But you can’t limit locking people.

Nor would either the aforementioned things do a thing to stop the ‘Either you are 100% stuck unless your opponent lets you go, or utterly free to walk away’ which this thread is actually about.

You know the better counter to ECM would have been to be able to just fire directly in front, like the way a bomber launches a bomb.
But we did’t get that, did we?

Possibly because the game doesn’t actually have a ‘front’ tracked for our ships, only a velocity. Not to mention that still would not have been any kind of viable counter.

I thought the reason for that is the extreme power of the Cyno and not tackle modules. It’s the Cyno that teleports any number of opponents on grid with you, without any delay or averse effects for them and the only real counterplay to that (besides not undocking or having a Cyno as well) is to fly kitey. And then there is also the risk aversion of most attackers or let’s call it the wish to have a green killboard, which leads to most fights being realistically un-winnable for the one who’s attacked and since it seems most people don’t enjoy being easy killboard food for others, they avoid fights whenever and however they can (including not logging in). No honor amongst thieves I guess.

Personally I still think that we need a reasonable counter-play against Cynos. How about an Anti-Cyno-Module maybe? Same fitting as Cyno, same skillset, same immobilzation effect, same fuel requirements, very short effective range (e.g. being directly on top of the Cyno-ship), maybe a tad shorter cycle time or whatnot.
Yes/Yes?

there is these.

http://games.chruker.dk/eve_online/item.php?type_id=33476

I know, but a Cyno works immediately and these take ages to anchor if you compare it to the immediate effect of the Cyno. I’d rather see a similarily “surprising” and immediate counterplay that comes as a module of some sort. Maybe not necessarily something that completely counters the Cyno, although that would be nice. It could also be just a delay or mass limitation of the field or something like that.

Basically I imagine a scenario like this. You are in a fight, your opponent suddenly turns out to open up a magical wormhole and you’re like “ok fcker, this is not gonna happen, I’m going to hug you real tight and lets fight it out 1v1”. Let’s face it, in too many situations the uncounterable Cyno is the 1-click-win-button and it deters fights more than it enables. It’s not bad by itself, but it needs some sort of counter that fits its nature.

kill the cyno pilot.

scan for new sigs all the time.

infact, act like you live in a WH and you should be good.

fit a cyno yourself so you can call in support also.

you’ll notice the enemy will use the mobile cyno inhib to stop you bringing mates in to help ya.

cyno jam the system.

plenty of ways to counter them

I’m not sure if a module to stop them would be a good idea or not, it would kill off cynos completely, don’t you think that’s a bad idea? as much as they are a pain if a hard counter came out like this it would just kill the use of them off. not a good thing i think.

True, acting as if you’re in J-space is always a good idea, while also realizing you aren’t and that the others can in fact see you in local and there are cynos.

There are ways to counter cynos in regards to capital escalations or home defense and such, yeah. For smaller roams the most viable option is to not get scrammed, meaning to fly kitey stuff or fly T1 frigates, so they’re at a net loss if dropping you.

I think a hard counter would be okay, if it came with negative effects that inherently allowed a counter to the counter, like a 2nd cyno 20km off the first or the anti-cyno-ship being stuck in space for 5 minutes like a regular cyno and maybe anti-cyno not being able to be used within 10km off stations or citadels. I don’t think it would shut off the usage of cynos then, just gives you a better option to commit to a brawl, more variety in playstyle.

p.s. or as I’ve said, maybe not shutting off the cyno completely, but having negative effects on it, such as a longer jump-in time or reducing what mass of ship could possibly jump through.

If that were the case our game clients would never know in which direction the other ships were pointed in order to properly rotate the models. Ever notice how sometimes ships come out of warp sideways? But then the system updates. All the graphics system needs to know is direction it’s pointing and rate of speed.

They don’t know which way other ships are pointing. They infer it based purely on the velocity and the average inertia of the ship to simulate a facing.
This can be tested with stationary ships on a grid, different clients will see them facing different ways sometimes.
The server does not track a facing.
Also it would never work because of how exact firing angles would have to be.

I think that changing the warp scram and disruption could really help with botting…

This sounds like a massive nerf to solo and (very) small gang PVP while doing absolutely nothing against another bigger. Please no.

^^

Put an mjd on your battleship. Jump through gate. Wait for cloak to disappear. Activate mjd.

Doesn’t matter which way your ship looks like its facing, you always mjd towards the sun.

Remove disrupt/scram completely and make it so if you are aggressed you cannot warp. You have to wait out the timer.

I’ll be ducking out now because I know that the ■■■■ will be flying now. LOL

Insert angry replies here ----->

Someone went suspect/criminal for whatever reason or is a viable war/FW target and you cant pin them down because they are technically not aggressed and if you dont kill them before they warp out - you cant follow because You have the timer.

10/10 nice suggestion… not.

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I think it would be better if there was active counterplay other then kiting and getting out of range since not all ships / fits have the option of doing so, and I do not consider fitting (such as using stabs etc.) as active counterplay, there is nothing active about that.

As to the specifics, I’m not sure because it is tough to make it good without unbalancing and / or breaking some of the key aspects of the game. From what I see people posting, I could take every one of those suggestions and tear them apart as too unbalancing and leading to very negative consequences.

To start off with, if there was an active way or module for example that counters scrams etc. then how would you prevent bots from activating it once a bot detects its being scrammed ?

So while I would love to see more active gameplay in general and counterplay to the current scram mechanics is a good part of that, I do not know what would be a good way to accomplish this without breaking some game aspects.

Neuts and ecm drones work fine.

You mean like blowing them up?

I think pvp in this game in unfair and I want it removed

Can we quit thinking up terrible ideas now

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