Make it so fully capped out ships would be unable to initiate warp.
This would make neutralizer bonused ships more powerful, so they may need slight rebalancing along with this update.
But basically it would make it so that all neutralizer focused ships wouldn’t have to fit a warp disruptor any more. Their neutralizers could act as a warp disruptor.
Let me know how pointless and game breaking this would be. But I think it would be very interesting for ships such as - Cruor, Sentinel, Dragoon, etc. as ships like these would have a viable alternative to warp disruptors. More variety of playstyles = more interesting fits and fights.
I feel like I’ve always been able to warp on an empty capacitor. When Aura says “the capacitor is empty” I’m pretty sure she is referring to when you try to activate a module like an MWD.
Warp takes cap, the longer the distance the more it takes, this is why in large enough systems in a ship with low cap storage you can run out of cap so only warp a certain amount but not the full length, having to warp again to reach the destination (I think the ship does this automatically).
So usually you can warp away even with a single tick of cap regeneration but technically (and depending on the circumstances factually) you can not warp when neuted dry, but your cap still regenerates every sec thus if it coincides with your warp attempt then you can warp away. This is why it is best to not run all neuts the same time but instead spread them out if you have more (on the same ship or several ships) as then you can potentially hit when the cap regen ticks in thus prevent even that to provide enough to warp out.
I’ve never seen anyone prevent another player from warping just by keeping them energy neutralized - never seen it in game or heard of it happening. You could be right but it doesn’t seem like a “thing” that actually happens in game or more people would be doing it. I’m talking about making it an actual game mechanic for ships that are capable of neuting other ships dry - making them capable of completely disabling your ability to warp by shutting down your capacitor.
Something simple like a minimum required capacitor threshold to initiate warp that makes it possible to do this - would work.
Yes this would make sense as currently as above described it is rare to actually happen.
Even if the warp takes ‘x’ amount of cap there should be a minimum amount of cap needed to initiate it even if the warp itself doesn’t consume it (thus below ‘x’).
Maybe something like at least 5% cap needed (or if it’s more than that then whatever the warp itself requires) or something along those lines.
I think that could be a fun change and nice little buff to capacitor warfare modules.
It’s not going to be very reliable though: unless you cycle often enough that the target ship cannot regenerate above that threshold they can still warp away. And a cap booster also easily gets away.
Nevertheless I think it’s a nice change that feels like it makes sense.
It would require some minor game mechanic tweaks. Let’s say for example - when you get fully energy neutralized by an enemy ship, you can’t just eat a cap booster and warp away - your warp drive is disabled and you need to have X amount of cap for X amount of time before it will come online again. Something along those lines. Could break the game IDK. But I think it would be cool. Ships like the Sentinel and Cruor would become a lot more interesting
If you need a certain amount of capacitor to be able to warp and being unable to warp because your capacitor was sucked down below that point is fine, but then, re-injecting enough capacitor to warp should logically be possible.
“No you cannot warp yet even though you have enough capacitor because 30 seconds ago your capacitor was sucked dry” sounds too much like space magic to me.
Yea, that time to get power back up is called ‘capacitor recharge rate’, which you can speed up with remote capacitor transmitters or capacitor boosters.
All systems in EVE that care about capacitor care about your current capacitor level. Having this one mechanic require your capacitor to be at a certain level for the past X seconds would be inconsistent with EVE’s mechanics and counterintuitive for all players.
Well truth be told the hard counter to warping is warp disruptors and scramblers (and such) so if you want to counter someone’s attempt to warp those are your primary options thus any alternative can (and should be?) less reliable by nature.
Well I can agree having a timer to bring the warp drive back online might not be the best way to do this, saying that it’s inconsistent with Eve’s mechanics is nonsense. Eve has plenty of mechanics/timers/modules and bonuses that were put into the game for specific reasons, either to make certain ships have a specific role, counterplay, or game balance. So the idea of tweaking game mechanics for a specific use case isn’t anything new or crazy
I’m a big fan of keeping things simple and consistent unless there is a good reason to make an exception.
I see no good reason for an exception here, your suggestion works well without it.
CCP only needs to add a minimum capacitor threshold necessary to initiate warp drive and we’ve got a new game mechanic, similar to the minimum capacitor threshold to initiate jump drives. Simple and consistent.
Yeah and thinking it over I agree with you. This concept would basically buff all drone boats that can fit a rack of neuts, thinking about all the possibilities actually gives me slight anxiety realizing that this wouldn’t just affect neut-bonused ships but basically any ship that fits a rack of neutralizers. Unless of course it was implemented as a specific ability for neut-bonused ships rather than a game-wide nerf to warp drives.
Theoretically if they have single neut and you have huge cap recharge it could be possible to warp away. Sadly, everytime I got caught by this they had more and despite the fight took 5+ minutes I could not warp nor activate any module, just watch. Fun gameplay.
There’s also bombers, which can drop anti-capacitor charges (void bomb munitions), which remove capacitor from every ship and drone within 15 km of their impact location, thereby disable a whole fleet from warping off w/o needing to warp disrupt them. If bombers don’t need to stay decloaked and within warp disruptor range themselves in order to keep their targets from warping away that would enable quite a few new gameplays.
Also, if jump portal generators can send friendly ships “somewhere”, why can’t they send hostile ships “somewhere else”?
