What if XL structures had a minimum threshold that any single attack must surpass in order to deal damage at all? Maybe there is a value so that e.g. only torps, bombs and XL turrets can hurt structures. This would completely eliminate the boring tactic of swarming keepstars with fighters (excluding heavy fighters, I guess). It would force attackers to bring dreads or large bomber wings to the party, which from a lore perspective sounds wayyyy cooler than carriers hacking away at the structure with tiny fighters. It would also probably lead to less fighters being deployed and therefore less stress on the server nodes. Attacking ships would be vulnerable to defenders because they would actually have to be in range.
This would of course need some kind of rebalance, but maybe it’s worth it?
Also, maybe the same thing on a smaller scale for L structures
Edit: I don’t really care about this proposition making it easier for the nodes. It is a nice byproduct, but for me, not more. So yes, there might be other ways to make structure bashing easier for the server, but in my imagination, my proposition solves the following:
CItadel bashing is just plain boring. It is the second boring thing to do after sov warfare. Even if the server works perfectly, it is just a mundane task to do and has no real actual fighting. Make it so that if one side attacks a structure, there is a real danger for that side to lose a big chunk of ISK, and that the defender has a big enough incentive to meet the attacker head on.
If the server did not stall under 9-4, what we would have seen would be big ships well out of range of each other, looking at tiny, comparatively fighters swarming the keepstar. Not much at risk. You can’t blame any of the sides, because why should you risk trillions of ISK and at the same time lower your chances of success? This is on the game developers to create an environment that promotes/necessitates risking a big amount of ISK.
the problem with this is it would rule out carriers unless you fly a super carrier while dreads would be used over titans, while im for the increased use of ammo and less afk you cant rule out a whole sheep class.
Were carriers really the problem though? Yes they caused the significant server drain, but that doesn’t sound like the carriers were the problem it sounds like the game needs to be better optimized (I’m not saying they haven’t optimized their single stack python as much as they can… but… single stack python…).
Just how committed do you think they are? They were constantly above jump cap, and their scram timer of course goes down same as normal.
And if the â– â– â– â– did hit the fan, the 400 or so other carriers ready to engage anything that decided to actually fight them would have rapidly dealt with the situation.
Carriers in structure bashing are a big problem as I see it, because this is about as boring as entosis operations. About zero interaction with the target at hand.
If the attacking team even brought a full titan fleet into the target system, this would be finally some amazing fight, not the current stare down over multiple gates that we are “enjoying” at the time.
Even if 9-4 didn’t fail hardware-wise, it would still have been some of the most lackluster and utterly boring experiences I ever have witnessed. The whole Player-shoots-Player-part of PvP was totally proxied by on Player side bringing remote fighters, the other side only shooting the fighters.
Just imagine the carnage if there was a fleet of titans shooting at the Keepstar. Dictors trying to maintain a grid of defensive bubbles around the titans, while hictors trying to hold the titans down. Waves of bombers raining down on them while instalockers try to shoot down bombers and launch defender missile against the bombs, all the while the titans fire their slugs into the citadel. And the keepstar actually making use of its defensive modules in a meaningful manner. Both sides actually having to commit the resources they krabbed up for the last few month/years. And afterwards an abundance of expensive wrecks, salvagers zipping through the system, being hunted by salvager hunters.
THAT is what I want to see in a Keepstar siege, not some "hurr durr I am sitting next to my friendly citadel in safety while my expendable pixel warriors are chipping away at that target, and afterwards, the only thing that was killed will be some suicide boson titans"
It would at least be way closer to that citadel promo trailer from years ago
See it this way,
players are upset. Players make bots. Bots make everything for them while the player does other stuff.
Bot makes launch drones and shoot. Now the bot lets the server versus server “fight” begin.
It’s 2018, no player does pvp anymore but a few exceptions. All is done by bot. Bot make farm isk and make fight.
CCPleased.
Its not the fighters, or the ships, or the guns…
Its the assholiness of the player base…quit trying to cram eveything in at once…be more strategic, fun gameplay, and stop the blob stuff.
just because the server limit might be greater…doesnt mean you should bring more people into a single system…and honestly…maybe people, the leadership, using the upper limit on nodes to try and crash a server on purpose should be temp banned.
I repeat, I don’t really care about the server load, it will just be a nice byproduct. You also can’t really blame for the sides of a battle to bring as many pilots as possible.
The thing annoys me the most (I will repeat it gladly) is:
CItadel bashing is just plain boring. It is boring. Even if the server works perfectly, it is just a mundane task to do and has no real actual fighting. Make it so that if one side attacks a structure, there is a real danger for that side to lose a big chunk of ISK, and that the defender has a big enough incentive to meet the attacker head on.
When they are ready to truly attack a keepstar and commit to it, you will see other ships as well. The Upwell 2.0 was partly to open up other valid attacking fleets as well due to how oppressive people felt the void-bombs were.
I’d rather just see a blanketed restriction placed on fighters that they cannot attack structures. Return them to the anti-cap/anti-subcap platforms they were originally and leave the structure bashing itself to subcaps and siege capitals.
They’ve already fixed the problem. Carrier swarm sending fighters to a keepstar 1000km or more away? wait until the fighters are a substantial distance away and light a cyno on the ■■■■■■■carriers. They cannot tether until they abandon all of their fighters. Drop a dreadbomb or something right on top of them.
That’s not solving this particular problem. That is being done to solve the problem of them being nearly invulnerable while attacking an enemy fleet/structure (skynet v2.0). Just like the upcoming jump/tether changes are addressing garage door cynos v2.0.
This problem is related to the fact that carriers/fighter’s ability to [efficiently] attack structures has removed a role from ships that prior to citadels, and simultaneous capital patch, existed largely for the purpose of laying siege to structures. Therefore making them obsolete in what is effectively their only role aside from the occasional dropping on unsupported or under-supported capitals.
HAWs can absolutely shred BC+ fleets in reasonably common circumstances (the exact role of a carrier, ironically)
Dreads with their big boy guns aren’t restricted to dropping on un(der)-supported capitals even if structure bashing is entirely removed from their niche; Dread bombs are remarkably effective at destroying even supported capitals. Especially if they’re used as a piece of a greater strategy.
Dreads have active tanks. Carriers will never have (good) active tanks. This means they can be used for things like entosis. Ideally with HAWs fit.
Dreads can be thrown against citadels and deal obscenely higher amounts of damage than carriers. Fewer are needed to reach damage cap, and in tidi that is insanely important to keep the timer paused while they’re tidi-tanking it.
Exactly! But noone ever does that. Because it would be stupid to risk dreads, when all you have to do is spam fighters or even drones.
The only time you see dreads next to a citadel is because two sides who were fighting over that citadel escalated into dreads. And with the way things are at the moment, dread will never be deployed just to attack a structure, instead we will aways have either drones for medium and large structrures and fighters for XL structures. This is just bad gameplay
That is just the old strategy. It got a bit more complicated with the recent changes, but the trebuchet strategy is still pretty much risk free. All the changes that happened so far are only trying to patch the most glaring problems up, while it would be better to change to underlying mechanic imho.
CCP doesn’t like forcing players to use or not use something, unless it’s totally game-breaking. They just fixed the tethering, so that the carriers are at risk again. The meta will change again. I wouldn’t be too worried about it.