Give cynos (or the jump drive) a small delay to spool up

PvP Gameplay Center PvP Ships & Modules
1

I dont complain about cynos in general, BUT:

the fact that it has no time delay has reached a point now for me, where it is getting ridiculous.

For example, we were in a gang of 5ish battleships, finishing off a Phoenix, and we already knew that in some seconds a cyno proteus from a known F1-monkey crew will uncloak to whore in on our kill. (and kill us while doing so)

What happens is, that all you can do is align out. Give the aware fleet the chance to counter that, by letting cynos (or the jumpdrive) spool up. Hell even your MJD/MJFG needs to spool up, and thats to move a handful ships for 100km. But bringing a fleet of any size over several lightyears happens in an instant. You must be kidding. 30 seconds would have been enough. That proteus would have been blasted out of the sky before it could even say “cyno up, jump, press F-everything” to its fleet mates.

But way it is now, it uncloaks and brings in dozens of monkeys, you have no chance to prevent that.

With the timer, the effort to relocate a fleet for hotdrops would actually rise, but still be able to do it. You would have to have multiple cynos to make sure one comes thru, or pick a spot for the cyno that isnt 0m etc…

But like it is now, its really ridiculous. Instant cyno right on spot, you cant even boosh the cyno off because it instantly lights.

Now flame me with “this is eve” and whatnot, but its not. Eventually, sick or broken mechanics do get a buff / debuff in EVE.

Hell, they even changed the prop size of the Victorieux Luxury Yacht so that it cant be used for rolling whs, but this isnt an issue??

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2

Don’t be there when the cyno alt lights and you’ll be fine.

A delay is irrelevant, because you’re already pointed and not going anywhere anyway.

3

It is just too significant gameplay for group that has majority in CMS. Everyone knows it is overpowered, but this is not a new issue, it was always like that and nullsec players won’t allow that.

It is also a mechanic that cannot really be fixed. Either it is extremely overpowered or pretty much useless. With those 30 seconds they can never catch more than 1 guy at which point it won’t be “viable” for them.

Exactly. If the delay is irrelevant then why not add it? :smiley: Because it isn’t irrelevant and you know it.

2 Likes
4

Yeah, but it was never MEANT to catch a whole fleet.

5

  1. With that reasoning you can call off any balance corrections. Just don’t be there.

  2. We all know they are broken and were never meant to enable 40+ ppl F1-monkey fleets to hotdrop so.

  3. Don’t be ridiculous. The delay matters a LOT and you know it.

6

A 30 seconds delay may be a bit much.

No lone cruiser will survive focus fire that long against a medium sized fleet, nor would such an massive amount of time be needed to run away from a cyno in most cases.

But I see no problems with adding a cyno spool-up timer of 5 or 10 seconds to give players reaction time to start aligning out and/or use MJDs.

1 Like
7

Play test the timing for CCP please! They won’t make the effort.

8
  1. Congratulations, you’re finally starting to figure out this game. “Just don’t be there” is a hard counter to everything, and the one smart players use. Everyone else whines.
  2. How do you know this? Where’s the devblog stating this? Just because you made it up doesn’t make it true.
  3. A delay only helps those who aren’t paying attention to the game, thus want CCP to protect them from their own mistakes. Stop playing AFK, and you won’t need the extra time to realize you’re screwed.
9

This has been disproven over and over again.

First an absolutely obvious reason that defys all further argumentation by itself: It already did work for a decade, when the System-Change did take 30-40 seconds due to the old system-change animation and slower internet-connections and machines. So, a delay of 30+ seconds from cyno-up to the reinforcements entering the field is exactly how the mechanic was designed when it was implemented.

Your biggest misconception is that you see Cynos as a “Tool to kill enemies!”. But that shouldn’t be the case. Cynos should be tools to reinforce an area, ensure dominance over a battlefield by bringing in huge support numbers and making the opponent break up their attack and flee - or escalate himself if he choses to. There is absolutely no need to be able to tackle, hold and then kill multiple ships of the opponent with the bridged/jumped in forces. The goal is to control the situation and thwart the enemy attempt to destroy your station, supercap, miningfleet or whatever is was doing there.

Second, you can open Cynos with HICs now, that can get beyond 200k eHP, which is more than a Battleship had in old times. I was able to create a Devoter fit with 250k eHP on Armor alone within 5 minutes of playing around in PyFa. This is way more than the usual Cyno-Domis or Armageddons had from 2003-2010 (hint: we didn’t have Navy 1600er plates or Reactive Hardeners back then nor would anyone afford T2 Trimark Rigs on a T1 battleship…).

Third, absolutely nobody forces you to open your Cyno within the optimal weapon range of the enemy fleet. You nullseccers have just totally forgotten how to fight. “Cyno Up, JumpJump, SpreadTackle!!!” is the only fighting style you know these days, because the game has pampered exactly this brainless blobbing for years.
Nobody forces you to jump in at 0m. Open the Cyno at 100km, bring in your fleet of properly fitted ships and MJD/MJFG on top of the hostiles. Bring enough RR or EWAR in the first wave, open another Cyno in the middle of the battle once you have disabled lots of the enemy firepower with EWAR or can place lots of RR on your second cynoship. Or keep using the first one for more reinforcements and ping via the next closes celestial or a mobile Interceptor warpin from the first wave.

Nobody even forces you to open your first Cyno even in Lockrange. Open it at 500km, bring in your fleet and warp down to the hostiles. This even opens up huge tactical gameplay options. The opponents can throw bubbles to delay you. You can throw defensive bubbles to protect your Cynoship. Your forces would have to make the right decisions which ping spots to use to arrive on the battlefield. You would be forced to use SmartbombCruisers to quickly remove Interdiction Probes or MJDs/MJFGs to move your ships out of delaying bubbles… and so on. FCs could really shine here. Personal skill would matter.

Nobody even forces you to open your first Cyno even on Grid. Bring in your fleet at the other end of the system, warp in from an angle they won’t expect.

Nobody even forces you to open your first Cyno even in the System itself. Open it next-system right on the gate, jump and warp to the battlefield.

All those tactics were viable and worked in the decades before hotdropping became a common curbstomping tool. It did work and it made it totally unviable to hotdrop roaming gangs to eradicate them on the fly, which was great, because small groups could actually go roaming in a bunch of cheap Cruisers, BCs and maybe a BS or two and just “brawl it out” when they found another gang that looked fightable. Without the threat of being hotdropped and totally obliterated without even having a chance to react.

So please Gerard, don’t argue with “that isn’t possible!” - It is. The only thing that needs to be done is to re-set the evolving of system-jump-speed that has naturally occured over the years due to better code, better connections and better machines. It wouldn’t even be a nerf, it would just be a reset to the intended mechanic like it was once implemented.

10
  1. I figured out the game quite okay, thank you.
  2. Read the patch note introducing them so.
  3. Did you even read the original posting? How is this about not paying attention. Its about having no counter.

Look, its okay for some people to have a playstyle like, be tethered, jump, press f1, tether, and I understand that adding some risk to that playstyle brings them out of their comfort zone, but that doesnt make me wrong.

It would replace the stupid “cyno up, jump, press f-everything” with actual tactical considerations.

Sometimes, you must take the lolly from the fat kid.

11

The aggressors could spool up just prior to the cyno being lit, ok takes a little more coordination but not enough to be a game changer.

12

Well, if the cyno or the jump drive has an activation delay, there would be no way to “prespool” it.

Other option would be that the jump actually takes some s per ly

13

I think a more practical option would be to limit the amount of ships that could jump to a single cyno, say a limit to the amount of hulls up to a certain mass so for example a single cyno could accept 20 bombers or 5 BLOPS BS (just throwing numbers out there)

14

Could work, but: Its too complicated to play out and to implement.

A single timer, easy. A complex formula. Difficult

15

It wouldn’t be logical though.

A cyno is just a beacon in space for jump drives to lock on to. It makes no sense for a beacon to be mass-limited. The mass and number limits already exist, but for the ships that are doing the work with jump drives and jump portals.

It also would be messy as implementation. People already need to calculate how many others can jump with them when it comes to conduit jumping or with jump bridges and fuel. But that’s on the jumping side where you can count how many others are with you.

On the cyno side people can jump in from many places, coordinating that to stay below number limits is going to be a mess. And for example move-ops where a single cyno in each system on a route stays burning for hours while all other ships jump along the beacons would be impossible.

No, if there’s going to be a limitation to cynos I think a delay is a much better approach than some mass or number limit.

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16

Just thinking out loud bud, I agree with OP it needs a bit of a nerf imo