The idea of remote tracking computers always felt to me like a cool idea but nonetheless its sadly rather useless in general eve (cept maybe for some edge cases).
So tonight I was thinking of a remote dps enhancing ship. Thus the notorious hickups of my brain gave birth to the: "Impact Multiplicating Pulse-Linked Ordnance Deployment Emitter"
Basically a ship that uses a highslot module to enhance another ships dps output at the cost of taking damage itself in return.
The module unique to this ship would be a targeted beam that has to be locked onto another ship wich then in return gets a bonus to either damage or RoF or both. After a cycle of the module the ship emitting the beam would take damage itself (much like mining a gas cloud) the damage taken will relate to the strenght and type of bonus its giving to other ships (bonusing damage/alpha would in retun lead to a higher cycle time of the module with high damage at the end of its cycle, a RoF bonus given would result in taking smaller amounts of damage on shorter time spans. The strenght of the given bonus would relate to the damage the Ordnance Amplification Ship is taking, giving low bonuses means less incoming self-damage and high bonuses resulting in much self hurt. this could be realised with ammo or scripts. cycle times should be a somwhere between 6 and 12 seconds I think. also a small random factor to the actual damage taken could be a good thing (a bit like heat). The Module is meant to be able to actually kill the ship thats using it when not be operated with great care or remote reps.
The Shipclass stats would favor passive over active tanking and sporting only mediocre capacitor. Thinking about it, bonuses for active hull tanking would fit in pretty well too (both remote and local) to a point where its a viable niche but not too powerful.
That would be two cool things in one nice new ship. Hull tanking would make operating the Ordnance Amplification Ship a lot more exciting too.
The Shipclass can be capable of either sporting some mediocre dps in its left over highs or go for a full remote setup with remote hull reps and the remote dps enhancing module.
Why I think this is a good idea?
Another level of pvp and pve gameplay would be added giving cool new interactions with existing fleet and gang roles. instead of bringing +1 dps ship you can bring the damage multiplier wich gives you a variety of options and opens up totally new ways to make fleets work. Your logi wing will have more incoming damage to handle but for the nice benefit of added dps output of your fleet.
I’ve seen the idea before of an ewar module lowering a single resist type over time. That could effectively raise DPS application over time. Maybe the trade off is that ewar ships loses more type specific shield and armor resists than the ship it’s targeting.
the thing is one easily falls into thinking “why not just bring another dps ship?”
but having the flexibility to actually switch wich kind of dps you are enhancing is a totally different option. think about it. you could call for enhancement of the ship that has the best current application. you could switch the damage bonus to your anti support ships when being flooded by small ships. you could up the damage of a large fleets FC to incredible levels so that he can actually have a KM of his own
taking damage in return for the bonus opens up a vulnerability wich the opponent can chose to opt for. the edge to move on gets thinner but also sharper. look at it as reverse-logi of some sorts that could escalate a stalemate situation if needed.
I have no clue what you want to point me to but I am very confident you will love to explain with a slight sarcastic undertone. it seems to me that you understood what I was trying to transport on the informational level so thats fine with me, not here to get any grades in english.
merin said it would be impossible to balance. I dont think so actually. ofc there would have to be some caps, maybe even a hard cap on how many remote damage enhancers youd be able to receive, but I think if thought out well it could be used for all combat capable ships even capitals.
Cristl, my feeling is that eve and its ships have tad by tad slipped into a state where ships in all classes are too tanky. the idea above was born when speaking about cruiser 1on1s where it is obvious that achievable tanks are exceptionally higher than achievable dps. this seems like a theme in eve, where ships and fleet concepts are oftentimes so tanky that the game begins to stale and get unfun. Other than a game mechanic like tank corrosion what is your solution to this? do you feel the same?
