Fleet Formations

Please enjoy a nice discussion on the subject.

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Looks great, Fluff is always nice.

Please do a blog on your plans to add a counter to cloaky camping next.

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Hi there, I am curious will it still be possible to have fleets warp in as a ball / clump as they currently do or will formations be the norm going forward? Many thanks.

Awesome! Now all they need is a purpose other than looking pretty.

Waaaaitt… Custom Formations? Like… spelling out words?

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“Commander! Enemy forces arriving on grid. They appear to be using…the Katamari Damacy formation!”

“May God have mercy on us all…”

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Nice!

Blob, should be a default formation.

Also “Arrow” should be called “Feeding” formation.

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Can we design our own formations?

Yes we know where this goes :smirk:

Having only presets makes it easy to predict the landing spot and counter

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Dill-dozer formation.

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If the Fleet Formation can have some buff and debuff it would be great.
Just like other strategy games, like Total War, different formations with respective buffs/bonuses can provide tactical advantages on the battlefield.
Otherwise, it just looks cooler. When real fleet fight engaged, still a “line formation”. There are always people in behind.
To keep the formation. We could have some items for the commander to engage so that player can auto-pilot and follow the commander and keep the formation. The commander is in charge of the whole fleet movement.

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Oh well, another meme take off the meme list CCP has been working down since Blackout. How many more memes are left on the list?

And it’s even just pointless fluff because, judging by yet another bloglette devoid of information, you can’t even give individual ships individual positions in for formation.

weapon to wield on the battlefield!

Soon, fleets will be able to arrive at a location from warp

What is it now? Can you use them on the battlefield or only in warp? Could CCP be clear in at least one thing in this bloglette?

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“There will be an additional Relative (custom) formation option”
Plane formation of 256 Battleships, all 100KM appart.

I remember the hardest formation of enemy fleet in the Homeworld for me to defeat was actually a sphere.
The shape of it made it so dangerous, as the ships were really close to each other and could deal damage a lot more efficient in all directions.

With current blob in EVE is the same situation I think. Same ships dealing damage on the same optimal and moving together with logis, so they can all rep eachother.

A sphere is really a flacid cube, so borg cube is best formation, perhaps a hypercube for overpowering, even cube the movie was deadly

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Have not watched the live stream by CCP Rise but was excited by the idea. It would open up more options for commanders.
Here are some thoughts and personal worries:

  1. In the News post the “Custom” formation was achieved with recording the relative position of feet members. I would suggest using a 3D tactical UI similar to the scan probe, which allows the fleet commander to allocate each wing and squad on the grid. At the same time, for each layer (Fleet, Wing, Squad) there should be an option to choose from the given formation (point, wall, plane etc. etc.) or custom. This has the following benefits: First, it saves time, especially for slower and heavier fleets like battleships. Then, it allows later joined members, people who refit to other roles, or combined fleets to form up much easier by just getting in to the correct wing/squad of your ship role. Finally, it is easier for the fleet commander to assign the direction of “forward”, and avoid some of the issues below about should we allow certain tactics.

  2. We should probably think very carefully about how much “Forward” can the most front member of the fleet can be, relative to the “Original warp exit point”. It would be very amusing if a bomber squad can land around the warp exit point with a radius of 30 km, but it also means the fleet could use the same tactic to get tacklers 30km head of the initial position of a scanned downed kiting ship. The distance of how much forward can it be should therefore carefully judged.

  3. Similarly, how much backward of the most backward ship can land should also be carefully determined. As the current max warp landing distance is 100km, is it going to be possible with the customized fleet landing to allow landing 150km+ from the warp exit?

Really looking forward to this new feature and see how it will be achieved!

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Thanks for the reply. I think I pretty much agree with you, but I’m on the bit optimistic side XD.

Yes I am 100% sure there will be. So that’s why I wrote this post just to point out a few things that comes to my mind and worries me.

I think the old warping style would still work and more dedicated and creative FC would benefit from the new tools. That being said, serious exploit should be avoided and there have to be inputs from real world FCs in this. We need to warn CCP about obvious exploits. Again a reason why I started this thread.

Agree, serious problem. That’s typical change logic of CCP for many years.
However I see potential and embrace this feature, as this is pretty much the only new thing that have the potential to change the fleet fight for quite some time. A so-called “new game play element” that wasn’t there for a long time.

Although CCP does not have a history of fixing stuff before implementing, for such a big change I would strongly suggest that anyone who see obvious exploits to state them here or on reddit. Should help.

Thanks, critics are equally valuable, if not even more valuable when it comes to significant changes :slight_smile:

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It’s a fun gimmick, and might be good for warping logi in 20km behind the front line, but other than that, mostly useless. Except spreading out to avoid that bomb warp-in trap.

Now if CCP were to finally tackle line of sight…

I dont think it adds any actual gameplay options. I expect:

Within 30 seconds of arrival, blob will occur

Bombers landing in formation probably wont be any more on point that before. For some, it may be worse.

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But redoing your doctrines is like the sole job of a commander to adapt and change? If an FC burning out in a fleet then I guess its not for him/her.