I’ve been having this random thought that it would be a cool idea that projectiles in EVE would behave like actual projectiles, and that includes having a trajectory and travel time. To me, one of the silliest things and actually detrimental to gameplay, is the logic that tiny, mega fast ■■■■■■■ ships are easier to hit the further away they are. That just doesn’t make any sense.
It annoys me, because I’m a creative person, and I think about fleet concepts to mess around with other people. I like having really fast, cheap disposable ships that are hard targets at the same time. The idea doesn’t really work, because projectile turrets work like a hitscan, and even though you are hundreds of km apart, you will get hit with a barrage as if you were parked right infront of their guns. And that’s lame. I really don’t like it.
So in terms of balance, the first problem that comes to mind is laser beams, because nothing is faster than light, so does that mean lasers are OP? The short answer: Yup, and I don’t know how we can implement a realistic reason why they wouldn’t track anything and everything. But as a mitigating factor, I’ve been thinking that laser turrets maybe would need to stay on the same precise spot to make full use of their DPS, and if you have a tiny fast ship, it becomes impossible to maintain perfect precision, making them similiar to missiles in terms of damage application.
Anyways, there’s probably a couple other things that I missed. I just want to get this idea out here, I’m sure someone agrees. I personally like it because it would shake things up and introduce complexity in tactics, as well as counterplay to large, lumbering battleships. If you have anything to add, leave a comment below, I’m reading all of them.
Because the turrets themselves have a “mass” so they cannot rotate and/or change direction without delay.
It does make sense, because you only need to manipulate the actual direction of your weapon turret just a tiny bit to adjust for a change in direction or speed of a ship that is far away. But the same turret would need half a rotation if the same ship would do the same maneuver very close.
About your idea making projectile guns “real projectiles”… fine in theory, in the game it would probably put more strain on the server than it would add benefits. Every single volley of any turret ship on the grid would have to be calculated like a missile volley. Sure, doable, but worth it? Not sure.
IF (!) the tiny mega fast ship continues to travel in a straight line without change in direction then yes. But if you add in a tiny dive, or rather just the smallest of changes in flight direction, it will miss by thouuuuusands of meters!
That’s why I see laser beams as uniquely strong in that regard. Yeah the turret itself can’t track things that are zipping by right infront of it, that’s clear, duh. But targets that are really far away, where that isn’t a factor, cannot hope to dodge the speed of light, so we need something else that balances them with every other turret.
You bring up a really good point with this killing the server. I imagine it would be hell for the already struggling hardware. But I have this faint hope that if the servers can survive missiles as they are, then projectiles could be fine as well.
If it was implemented though, I foresee radical changes in the way ships battle each other. Fleet compositions would have to be completely reworked. Combat would become immensely more fluid and unpredictable. I think there are a lot of good things that would come as a result of implementing trajectory and travel time for projectile weapons, and if done right, I am certain will make the game a lot more fun.
@Syzygium is right - it would probably break the engine. Cool idea, though. We can add it to actual collisions with environmental objects, etc. If we ever get EVE 2.0…
ships are not nimble, and cannot turn easily or quickly without killing the crew - although they may appear to do so, this is because time in eve online is simplified and sped up - one second in eve online is, for the crew, closer to 5 or 6 minutes, the ship is unable to turn fast enough to dodge incoming bullets
guns are not firing single shots, even if they appear to be doing so according to game mechanics, once again the game is representative and merely symbolic - note how many of these guns are described as “autocannons”, for example, a dual 425mm autocannon is not firing one shot at a time, it is firing a barrage of shells - the game simplifies this for calculation, but it is simulating something similar to anti-aircraft artillery, and the target will struggle to evade so many incoming shells regardless of whether it turns or not
the shells are not hitting directly, they are large explosive shells which affect an area with shrapnel, making it increasingly difficult to evade - since this is occurring in space, the shrapnel has a much larger area of effect than it would within atmospheric conditions.
I see, so you’re saying that time, from our perspective, is sped up and bullets would travel at such incredible speeds that dodging is impossible. Ok, sounds reasonable. But it isn’t congruent with how the rest of EVE behaves. Missiles for example have the expected travel time, and you can see their speed in the attributes tab, reaching multiple thousands of m/s usually. Similiarly, the speed of your ship is also clearly described in m/s, and can commonly reach multiple thousands as well. These two examples don’t fit the explanation that time is sped up to allow for bullets to hit instantly.
Also, the ship can totally turn like a leaf without killing the crew. You’re thinking of G-force that fighter pilots on earth experience when turning with their jets at high speeds. However, in space you don’t experience G-force the same way, because there is no gravity automatically pulling you into a specific direction. It is totally possible to shut down the engine and have small thrusters, on specific hardpoints of the ship, flip and spin the ship while maintaining velocity and direction. As long as you don’t directly accelerate into the opposite of your initial direction, you should experience minimal G-force. EVE’s physics for ships are not realistically implemented because it treats ships in space in a way that resembles submarines on earth, and that’s not accurate.
One bullet or a thousand bullets, they all need to travel to the target first. Your description of a killzone of bullets that a spaceship cannot escape or dodge sounds very similiar to what the british airforce assumed in the intial stages of world war 2, where they taught their pilots that aiming was not necessary, just unleashing a storm of bullets into the general direction of an enemy plane would make it mathematically impossible to dodge it.
They learned that it doesn’t work. These planes fielded many machineguns, capable of a rate of fire of multiple thousand bullets per minute.
If german pilots can EASILY (!) dodge a barrage of over 9600 bullets per minute, then experienced EVE capsuleers will have no trouble dodging a few high caliber shells. It is entirely possible to do, and depending on the distance, not even particularly difficult.
Ok, so you are saying projectiles don’t require direct impact, but explode in close proximity, similiar to certain anti-air missiles. That is however not documented anywhere in the attributes tab of the available projectiles. And it is VALID for me to point this out, because for missiles it IS documented, so it is only logical to assume that projectiles do require direct impact and do not in fact damage spaceships via close proximity explosions. But nice try!
Adding expected travel time to shells would change what exactly? A brief delay before the damage occurs? I don’t see how it would substantially change the game, and since time is already abstracted, it doesn’t really matter when it occurs. I wouldn’t object to this, but it wouldn’t really change anything or have meaningful impact. It’s easier to conclude that the damage is not truly instantaneous, but it appears instantaneously to the player due to abstraction and time dilation, although in the reality of the game there is some brief delay of a few seconds.
A Railgun I may well be firing at 10,000m/s!
Yes, that’s precisely what I mean.
Germany lost the war.
It is documented via such words as “artillery” and “explosive” and “thermal”.
