Fleet Formations

How much gameplay this will add/break depends heavily on how many feature CCP gives and how versatile the tool is.

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Given what theyve announced so far, there seems very little practical application

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Thatā€™s exactly what I am worried about.
Without any thinking about possible tactics, the feature could be heavily exploited. It is better to warn them now and make them start thinking before everything is too late to change.

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Whilst there might be glitches with this feature and some FCs might have to have a serious look at their tactical playbook to see if there needs to be revisions, on the face of it, IMHO, this sounds like a brilliant addition to the mechanics of fighting in space.

When space warfare happens in humanityā€™s future, the physical reality of it will almost certainly reflect some of the techniques and tactics that are prevalent in air forces around the world.

Things like formation flying and the way that aggressive engagement currently occurs will almost certainly be the foundation for the ways that fighting will happen in space, with the obvious complexities of gravity and zero G added in, obviously.

On this basis, I really like the fact that the Devs have added in fleet formations into the game because, in my mind at least, itā€™s upping the degree of realism in EVE.

Well done!

:mouse:

Here are some extra links for people, who like me, are a bit geeky about this kind of stuff:
Basic Fighter Manoeuvres, Air Combat Manoeuvring, Beam Defense Position, Cobra Manoeuvre, Echelon Formation, Finger-Four Formation, Herbst Manoeuvre, Hineri-komi, Kulbit, Vic Formation.

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While I can appreciate the optimism, one canā€™t overlook some of the real world physics differences which require those things IRL that the Eve engine just isnā€™t capable of handling right now. Line of sight, collision damage, turret/projectile arcs, etc all have a bearing on those things IRL, but Eve just yeets rounds through other ships, or repairs, or even ships, or whatever. Itā€™s going to look good, but from a functional aspect, Iā€™m not convinced just yet.

Granted, I will also admit I never would have seen the snatch fleet getting anywhere near as prevalent as it did when MJFGā€™s first hit the game, either. IIRC most of us were just thinking ā€˜take ships away so logi canā€™t rep them.ā€™ So, maybe Iā€™m missing something.

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I love this update and canā€™t wait to see it go live.

I wonder if squads will be allowed to have their leaders within the 200km fc range mentioned on the stream and be able to accept fleet warps for their entire squad, as long as those squad members are within 200km for their squad leader.

I can see some interesting uses of formation so long as there were various tactical benefits/drawbacks otherwise itā€™s just a pretty flyby
LOS etc could also be a factor
Hiding ships the other side of objects, stations, scenery etc skirmish and guerrilla warfare style

Thatā€™s my 2 isk worth

This will be good for screenshots and thatā€™s about it.

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I think this will just end up being a major time sink, tbh. Too many variables to figure out, etc. I think the blob is just as fine as it always was.

Nevermind it is on the test server.
Nothing really to be excited.

Best change I have seen while playing EVE.

As far as I understand it, from a CCP video shared by the Talking in Stations team, the main reason behind this isnā€™t being picked up by most.

The main advantage is the way it simplifies large scale fleet warps and grid landings.

Ships currently have no orientation when they land and no line of sight. As such the calculations required when warping ships and determining their postition on grid and their orientation in regard to each other and everything else in range are off the chart.

This is a big contributing factor behind the huge problems that begin to show up in large scale fleet battles, most recently seen in M2 part 2.

We know CCP feel that even something as simple as bounty and kill right calculations could be causing big issues, so imagine the issues caused by trying to calculate which way up and where 5000 ships with no orientation or fixed position relative to each other are going to land on a grid.

Tying warping and landing on grid to fixed positions with fixed spacing and fixed orientation is intended to simplify these calculations, meaning the next M2 part 2 might actually succeed.

With a formation, youā€™re essentially warping one thing thats going to land in one place on the grid at pre-determined points with pre-determined spacing, meaning most of the calculating has already been done, rather than on the fly calculations as thousands of ships attempt to mass blob all over each other in random chaos.

If this helps, it could do wonders for really large scale conflict in EVE.

So perhaps ā€˜not just a pretty faceā€™ applies here.

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Orientation is fixed pre-change, as you will face towards the warp landing direction. your ship do not just suddenly stop with no speed, it decreases gradually and when you come out of warp you have a velocity vector.
Location is not going to be ā€œpre-determinedā€. As far as I know, at least the ā€œSphereā€ formation is still randomly placing people on the surface of that Sphere during warping. If you call that a ā€œPre-determinedā€ location then the pre-change landing is also ā€œPre-determinedā€

There will be even more chaos with bubble on field. Pre-change all the fleet will be intercepted by the same bubble and now the whole fleet formation could be half-intercepted by a bubble.

Really donā€™t think it would benefit the server a lot.

No. There is no up, down, front, back. Ships are currently considered as being multi-directional spheres. Ships can be upside down to each other and overlap and be all over each other in a random scatter like throwing a pile of pick-up-sticks onto the floor. Formations, in massive contrast, will place each stick in the pile in a specific place aligned and spaced. Considerably less messy.

How can it not be pre-determined when the position of the fleet and every ship in it, right down to how far from every other ship in the fleet in km (specified by the FC) each ship is, will have already been determined before warping / landing on grid?

Youā€™d have to see the video I saw, perhaps the CCP guy explained it better.

Nevermind.

Wondering if the new possibility to warp on target at 0 without jitter can create problems ā€¦

spelling out words?
More like: FC can chain-warp the whole fleet in any direction whilst keeping their relative positions so long as thereā€™s someone in that direction further than 150km but closer than 200kmā€¦
If only there could be a purpose for something like that :wink:
CCP were surprised by how people used boosh mechanics when ā€œthatā€ was released, this is going to be hilarious

Er ok. I doubt it will work like that and even if it actually does, the benefit of doing it this way over any other way will be marginal at best.

go see for yourself :slight_smile:

Ill take your word for it

Im sure theyll break it before its over here.