Logistics

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
1

In the battlefield, field medics as well as mechanics assist in the recovery/stability of their patient, this job is entirely handed over to the Logistics Pilot in EVE.
Logistics in eve has become a crutch, small groups that would want to engage a larger group if only to do some damage and take a few enemies with them will instead avoid contact with the enemy once they see enough logistic numbers to nullify anything they can dish out.

I propose logistics in eve be handled more as assistance to the pilots repair abilities, not as endless life support.

Logistics (T1 / T2 Hulls) would no longer use ‘Remote Repair’, instead they would deploy logistic drones that would provide a large boost to the local rep of their target.

Multiple logistic drones would stack their repair bonus, but would also have diminishing returns, as most mechanics will tell you, throwing more people at a problem does not speed up repairs. In doing this, you can set a damage base line, where more logistics will not always guarantee victory (instead of now using 250 pilot worth of alpha to break repairs, you can now assign wing commanders, or even squad commanders to assign their targets). Fleet commanders can choose to still focus the fire power of all 250 members on one target, but with a limit on how much repairs their targets can receive, that would be a waste of time.

Ship-Hull bonus would revolve around making the Logistic Drone ‘assist’ stronger. Frig hulls would be able to launch 5 small, Cruiser hull would be able to launch 5 Medium, Battleship hull 5 large, and Capital hull 5 Fighters (?). They would get an increase in Drone Bay to be able to hold more than one flight. The larger the drone the larger the repair amount, but the larger the time it takes for those drone effects to arrive (NO LONG DISTANCE) taking travel time into consideration, the logistic ships will need to stay close to its squad/wing in order to react quickly. Like their ECM bretheren, logistics would now be able to field weapons and be part of the dps action rather than sit idle when no repairs are needed.

F1 monkey will need to do more than just Anchor+Orbit+F1, they will need to keep an eye on the enemy fleet and activate repair module when needed. Activating the repair module while in a fleet would notify (broadcast) automatically. These notifications could be programmed to go to you Squad logistic members, your Wing logistic members, or a fleet wide broadcast.

Tactical Retreat – with a cap on how much you can repair, you will need to decide (as an individual) when to warp away to implement full repairs or stick around and deal as much damage as possible to your enemy.

Alpha is still very real, but now commanders will need to decide if they want one guaranteed kill or 2+ kills (depending on numbers) in the same amount of time.

Structures – much like Citadels, add a self repair timer. Logistic drones would help speed up the process.

2

No ty

3

Yes, because watching the enemy fleet, your position, anchoring, targets, modules and so on and so forth is so much fun in a laggy tidi fight of, let’s say, 100 vs 100. Not to mention bigger fights. Sounds like a very great idea to ruin fleet fights and return the battles back to 10 vs 10 max, where actual piloting shines without mechanics stunts like your idea.

1 Like
4

Blockquote

You’re right… god forbid fleets use drones in large fights.

5

Actually yes, god forbid. Drones and fighters are among the worst things that can happen in a fight because they cause lag, low fps and tidi and augment existing tidi. And I sure as hell don’t want even more lag, lower fps and tidi in a fleet fight. This would also make your suggestion all the more worse because it is so much fun watching your modules cycle for 10 minutes or see them ignore clicks/key strokes under tidi.

1 Like
6

I can see that wen’t right over your head, Fly safe man.

7

My thoughts on logistics here.

8

Stacking penalties on logi wouldn’t be a bad thing. Don’t like the drones only thing though…

9

Another one of these eh?

Hmm how to start? Okay, let’s start with this. For armor vs shield, most decent armor tanks require 2 reps to a shield tank’s booster + amp to be near equivalent. Putting any rep on means you are reducing your overall buffer making you more susceptible to the already popular alpha doctrines. Building upon this it also gives your own reps less time to cycle (for armor) and your idea of slow repair drones reaching you in time to boost your local rep to save your bacon. In case you’re curious 1-2 tank slots amounts to a heck of a lot of buffer, depending on what you’re flying you’re can be looking at 30k+ ehp loss for standard mach and scaling down as you go. This is ignoring cap stability which you’re ideas overlook the remote cap transfers. I assume you want that to be solely drones as well, maybe boosting a cap booster effectiveness? You can have your cap, or you can have your boosts, but not both.

Even if you simply made the remote reps apply these bonuses, it doesn’t change the problems pointed at above it just alleviates the horrible idea of having it attached to slow moving drones which could possibly be outran by the people you’re trying to have them help save.

Next problem, and by far the most detrimental to fleet warfare, would spring up by adding a DR to reps at all. That is, you will effectively put an upper bound on how many logi you can even bring to a fleet, which is actually increasing your level of F1 monkeys brought to a fleet. But worse yet, in large brawls you effectively make it worthless to bring logi at all and ultimately reduce all large fights into full dps slug fests and remove any need of tactics outside of bring more bodies. Gone are the tactics of bring picking off the softer logi until you can break the reps on their dps while maintaining a safe distance. Gone are the tactics for logi pilots and fleets coordinating positions to keep a safe distance away. Replaced simply with: bring more dps such that their logi can never save them. Alpha no longer even matters as that is how you get around high number of logistics. Range no longer matters as much since fights have been reduced to slugfests where whoever can apply their damage the fastest and in higher number wins.

So while your ideas may open up more kills for smaller alliances, it actually damns your position of ever standing a chance in a fight as those alliances who could already field more logi than you can just as easily field more ships than you and simply out brawl you 10-1. So while it sounds great, your idea solves nothing and hurts the health and diversity of the entire game in the long run.

1 Like
10

I would really appreciate if you guys would stop trying to nerf ships to fit a meta that doesn’t exist. Logistics would be CRIPPLED if they were capped on their repairs. You want them to be functionally useless, and that’s not a good way of rebalancing anything.

11

A lot of people, me as a logi pilot included, feel the infinite scalability of logi sucks.

I’d be interested in something where logi has a much shorter range, or depends on the tank of one ship like a fax, or has a limit/stacking penalties.

1 Like
12

Would rather we not?

13

There was a time when logi kinda sucked. I’m trying to remember what the buffs were to make it matter. I guess the question is if PVP was better when logi sucked, and if so, maybe there’s a middle point.

14

If I bring 50 basilisks, you have exactly 1 option for fighting me. Alpha fleets. You have to volley ships off before logistics can land reps. Barring that, even a HAW dread fleet (again, assuming you aren’t volleying things before logistics can react) lacks the DPS to actually take a subcap off the grid.

On the flip side, we don’t want to knee-jerk and make logistics useless.

Which is why I want diminishing returns.

Logistics in small-gang remains obscenely powerful, a massive force multiplier. 50% of a ship’s buffer over 10 seconds is a LOT.

In large fights, those 50 basi I mentioned can still rep up 50% of a ship’s buffer, but the diminishing returns kick in and it provides a hard limit for how much repping they can do. Ships will die if they rely solely on logistics in this scenario.

“But wait”, you say, “I don’t want certain death!” Ewar. Right now it’s a gimmick. You have painting and webbing ships to help with your gank, but in a large fight how often are you using ECM and RSD?

EDIT:
I should probably mention that this was in conjunction with a rolling DPS cap as well. In the thread I linked, the fastest any ship would die without logistics support would be 12.5 seconds, even with a fleet of supercarriers attacking a T1 cruiser. By doing this, you completely invalidate the tactic of “just bring enough DPS to melt them first”.

TLDR, a critical mass of logistics necessitates an alpha fleet. By using diminishing returns on logi reps, a good old fashioned brawl becomes an option again.

15

And replace it with “Bring enough DPS to outlast the enemy” as both side trade certain death numbers?

1 Like
16

If both sides choose to follow the current meta and bring dps/logistics, yes. We’re so heavily set into the current tract of “dps primaries” that it would require players to start working in smaller groups.

Consider though that it’s never that simple. There are a huge number of dynamics involved. DPS Application, mobility, ewar, and logistics.

If there were DPS and logistics impedance of some kind (a DPS cap and Diminishing Logistics) then a fleet wouldn’t benefit from focus fire. It would benefit from applying the “right” amount of damage to as many targets as possible, while logistics would benefit from applying the “right” amount of remote reps to as many of those targets as possible.

Meanwhile, ewar on both sides is trying to interfere with that mixture. Inevitably with the above, logistics is a bandaid - sustained DPS will inevitably win. So when logistics can say “we’re breaking on Pilot1” the ewar FC can divert some form of ewar to reduce/eliminate the incoming damage or peel tackle, allowing Pilot1 to either warp off or not die.

EDIT:
Felt the need to build on this a bit more.
The whole time, ewar would be offensively used to help break logistics and also to help friendly dps application.

17

This would be impractical when facing large number of enemies. Just a single fleet of 255 splitting in 2 of ~120 and running 2 primary will case the fleet being shot to have so much ■■■■ on comms at he same time it will be un-usable.

18

No, hell no. ■■■■ no. What the actual ■■■■?! Get out. Just go.

This is game does not even hold a majority for those in small gang warfare. Stop trying to change mechanics to fit your niche! Holy ■■■■■■■ ■■■■ man!

1 Like
19

That’s because people on comms are all in one channel. At least, they are on your comms perhaps.

On our comms, logistics have their own channel, non-logi subcaps have their own channel, caps have their own channel, and supers/titans have their own channel. The FC bluelips out to them from a channel that only the FCs can be in, so that they can discuss among themselves without talking over the usual comms sperg.

Or people could, you know, exercise a little comms discipline and not sperg up comms?

I would assume that you would be saying this as a bad thing - and I agree. F1 monkeys are retarded and need to die in a fire.

And yet you seem to prefer the current alpha fleet mechanics (the epitome of F1 monkey mechanics) over something that would literally force players to start using their brains a bit.

This does not make sense, try again?

Oh. Sorry. I thought this was the Player Features and Ideas thread, where such changes were intended to go. My mistake, I’ll keep looking for the right thread… oh wait…

20

Changes to improve the game yes. But you’re so short sighted that you cant see how this change would effect many different facets outside of your own.

The number of players solely interested in small gang warfare are in the minority. Look at the bigger picture please.

I prefer the divergent strategies that appear over time to combat the old metas. Alpha doctrines are a counter to logistics. Bombs are a counter to most alpha doctrines. Jackdaws/fast tackle/command dessies are an attempt to counter to bombs. I’ve been playing this game long enough that this whole thing is a large came of cat and mouse and will come full circle again. You don’t need to make drastic changes to induce change when they already occur naturally in game. I’m guessing your either too new or too absorbed in your sphere to notice that fact.

I’m in TEST, even with different channels it can be autistic as all hell. This just tells us that smaller groups are typically more disciplined which is already known since you have far more control over who you fly with. Regardless, I fail to see how this has anything to do with why your idea a good one and will improve the health of the game.