I decided that I was hijacking the OP’s thread, and that it was snowballing WAY away from the OP’s topic in the linked thread. Better to start one for this particular topic.
TLDR Idea:
Implement a DPS cap of 40% of a ship’s buffer over 5 seconds
Implement diminishing returns on remote assistance of 50% of a ship’s buffer over 10 seconds (with each breach lowering effective repairs by 33%)
TLDR Reasons:
An overabundance of logistics necessitates an Alpha fleet doctrine.
Alpha doctrines are boring. If DPS is capped, alpha fleets don’t work.
Headshotting FCs is boring. If DPS is capped, you can’t headshot an FC.
Mechanics would favour large fleets breaking into smaller squads to diverge, resulting in more players “playing” rather than just just being F1 monkeys
EWAR would become exceptionally more valuable in fleet fights (logistics alone would fail miserably)
Presently EWAR is only of particular value in small gang. It would remain so, but also become invaluable in large fleet as well.
Thus concludes the TLDR.
The general reason for this thread is to address the ability for logistics to prevent ships from dying. It’s excessive, and the only counter for such is to bring an alpha fleet. With both groups bringing alpha fleets, battles devolve into trading kills until one side loses critical mass.
This gameplay is not ideal because:
The only viable counter-tactic is a bigger fleet. N+1 should never be regarded as the best option in a game with so much strategic potential
The player getting alpha’d doesn’t get to have fun
The players who are supposed to be supporting the alpha’d player don’t get to have fun
I expect that if this change were implemented, there would be a HUGE shift in player tactics. “Primary DPS Targets” would no longer become a fleet-wide thing.
Instead, squads of players would break off and take individual targets. Individual squads would be comprised of DPS ships, EWAR ships, and Logistics ships. Since the impact of a logistics ship diminishes over time, it makes sense for them to operate in smaller groups rather than just balling up. The smaller groups are able to act as a cohesive unit to support each other.
DPS ships can take broadcasts from their squad leader, while offensive ewar is used to maximize their impact. Friendly ships taking damage can get defensive ewar support to help them mitigate incoming damage while logistics tries to keep them from dying.
Overall, I expect more ships will die. And this is good. But in exchange for more ships dying, we will have a far more engaging fight.
I hate the idea of limiting my ships potential to make it easier for logistics to do this job, at least that’s what I’m reading. It’s an unfair handicap on the bigger force to be held back for totally arbitrary reasons.
Adapt or die. If you don’t like alpha fleets then fly a hard counter to them…
There isn’t anymore combat refitting with aggro timers so countering things like arty machs is alot easier since they can’t hot swap out to AC’s if you get too close. Using this you then use your brain you can easily think of a counter
I agree, but I don’t think anything should change to achieve it. If players are having problems with these fleets, it’s up to FC’s to figure out a counter rather than nerf the bigger fleets abilities.
It’s actually limiting the potential of logistics, with a tradeoff to DPS to prevent logistics from getting too heavily nerfed. The extra benefits (of which the value is subjective to the reader) are listed.
My problem is that there’s no reason to not fly in one. It’s basically the trump card, the default where your fleet ends up when you reach a certain size. “Do we have critical mass?” is really the only deciding factor, after which it simply makes sense to fly alpha doctrines.
The best hard counter to an alpha fleet is another alpha fleet. You can certainly try and fly under the guns, but at that point their logistics has the capacity to out-rep your damage. One counter that was noted that I agree would have the potential to fubar their logistics would be spear fishing, but that’s quite a challenge against a mobile fleet.
Under the quoted numbers, yes a cepter would be safe from smartbombs. I’d like to avoid that, and there are certainly ways of doing so (for example bombs, smartbombs, DDs, and other “special” stuff don’t count against the cap). As for HS ganks, while I personally don’t care about them, they’re still totally possible - the dps caps would make it take a LOT longer for your catalyst to get concordened.
It’s not a problem of “how can I beat this?”… that’s easy. It’s a problem of being funneled into certain doctrines. I seek to drastically increase the strategic choices of larger fleets.
I hope by now with the feedback you’re getting you’re starting to understand what I told you in the other dude’s thread.
The best counter to any BB doctrine is one of two things. Ship down and out maneuver them, or ship up into carriers. It is on them to have thought of this have have support ships ready to handle your fighters (which are small and agile - and used to be more so) or nano comp to defend their BB fleet. The option also remains to further escalate to dreads/supers and make quick work of your carriers as well as bring a proper comp this time which would include their own air superiority carriers to handle your fighters. This is one of the best features of the game! Which by limited logi and introducing damage caps also removes all purpose of escalating a fight!
Read above.
As I said in the other guy’s post, this reeks of lack of foresight and experience in only a few facets of the game available to understand the ripple effects changes like these would cause at all. The other guy also got mad because I bashed down his idea, but I went after you for the same reason there. Ideas like these are dangerous if ever considered for implementation so it’s always best to point out there flaws and inform those making them why that is.
I’m still horribly bitter that it actually went through with citadels in conjunction with self repairing structures. One of the things that used to spur fights was catching the logi cruisers/carriers of the time repairing them or one trying to out rep/damage the other and leaving the structure vulnerable until this was done. Rather than this whole fail one timer and your back to start. Now while most of the time this did not produce a fight the same can be said 10 fold for the new mechanics except now the defender isn’t even punished with the necessity of taking the time to repair their own structures after a failed first/second defense. But I digress, that has little to do with this. Just my bittervet seeping out a little more every passing day.
I came to the same conclusions on the current state of the game but I would not be disappointed if they did break up the alpha blob gameplay.
While I personally haven’t participated in much and those which I did just were not much fun. They’re essentially an extension of the pack pvp mentality and while acceptable for pirates should be managed for corps to a more strategic end. I think it needs to be discussed by the developer CCP.
