Whenever I see a comment that say “Would make things more interesting” or “Make things more fun”, it usually just means “I’m bad at the game and want it to cover for my lack of skills.” This is one of those ideas.
I would object. There is no reason why there should be a DPS cap on ships.
I can understand structures due to the important they have in holding the assets of entire corporations and alliances. I cannot understand why ships would have a DPS cap.
Time to kill.
A critical part of all games that involve PvP.
The short version is that there is an ideal time to kill for players which doesn’t feel like an epic bullet sponge, while making the target who dies feel able to respond to the situation and take some actions to fight back.
Because EVE doesn’t have limited player numbers, it has very very bad ttk systems, most things are either bullet sponges or dead before they know it.
Damage caps are one mechanic by which you can make ttk controllable as fleet size scales.
And also act as a break on N+1 mechanics while not removing the advantage of having more people entirely, you just have to actually control the larger number effectively and split fire appropriately.
As for any ‘why would you split fire in RL’ arguments, 1. You do actually, it’s called supression. 2. RL has LOS/LOE/LOF mechanics. 3. You can make a new lore argument for it, given we already have existing things with damage caps (for exactly that TTK reason), it’s in universe and could just be adapted to ships.
Does this mean it ‘has’ to happen, no of course not. There are other solutions, but burying our head in the sand and pretending that the current alpha blob mechanics are great is silly.
You can fix this by properly fitting your ships with tanking modules.
The game demands that you use your brain to proper fit ships to defend itself with tank, in the same way it demands that gankers properly fit their ships to do as much damage as possible.
I don’t know why Damage caps would be necessary to cover for people’s inability to improve their gameplay by learning how to fit their ships properly.
Your point was about “TTK”, (which is confusing, because I’m not sure where discussion of TTK comes in a game like EVE Online, I’m only really familiar with it respect to FPS games.)
I told you there’s a way to increase your “TTK”, and that is by properly fitting your ships. This is a current mechanic that is part of the game that does what you are looking for.
So the issue here is “what about your idea is so good, that it should replace the current system we have right now?” Claiming that I’ve “utterly missed the point” itself misses the point, and you have simply dodged the question without addressing it.
Now imagine you fly an Abaddon with2 or 3 armor plates on with a bunch of buddies, also in Abaddons and logi to keep you from exploding and for the purpose of having an example, let’s assume that Abaddon has around 150.000 ehp.
Now you run into a goon™ “response” of machariels or whatever they chose to “respond” to it at the time.
For goons™ this goes as follows:
Abaddon has 150.000 ehp. Bring 200 ships with 10.000 alpha and all press FONE at the same ship at the same time.
What then happens is, your boat explodes in a fire before you manage to wave your arms around to kindly ask your logi buddies to rep you up.