Yes, because you want some random in charge of 250 peoples expensive ships…
It just doesn’t work like that, people are not going to go out risking expensive stuff under some random they barely know.
Sure it might be grand if you are doing till you die frigate/T1 cruiser roams to go run around and if the FC dies someone else takes over till the fleet entirely perishes.
But for real warfare it’s just not going to happen, and headshotting does suck and ruin the game.
As I’ve said before though, Head shotting is a symptom of the fact you can instant alpha anyone, and while it ruins the fun more for the FC to be instantly alpha’ed since it impacts the rest of the fleets fun, it also sucks for anyone to be instantly alpha’ed, especially those guys who’s names start with A and hardly ever get to stay in the fight for long.
The better fix is to redesign the damage mechanics with some kind of damage cap, which also then makes it possible to bring in the logi cap people have always asked for as well so that logi can never save a ship simply by throwing more reps at it, but instead reps just buy you time to try and save it other ways.
Damage caps also make mods like the TSB actually functional as well, give local rep bonus ships more of a place in fleet fights, and mean that more variety in a fleet becomes less of a bad thing.
so you do care more about KB stats than actually having fun playing a game. Some of my best fights where when we said “screw it, lets do this”. Ships are cheap, have some fun with the game. Also, how will your group ever get better if you don’t let new people take the lead?
What’s the worst that can happen? you have a loss on your killboard and have to spend a bit ratting to make up the loss. Oh no!
You are confusing meaningless fights for fun over serious sov or fw system control fights.
Though yes they should be fun but it’s not fun for 10.secomds into the fight the fc who actually knows how to fight for a so objective gets taken off the grid.
People don’t learn by being thrust into the deep end normally. They learn by doing the fun meaningless roams that might all the horribly and that people also don’t bring the expensive shiny stuff on
Your constant attempt to demean the person rather than address these actual points in response to several of us really leaves me thinking you just want to troll here though. Rather than seriously discuss what is a real issue.
[quote=“Black_Pedro, post:71, topic:5045, full:true”]
There is already a module that provides complete invulnerability for the cost of an inability to affect other ships: the cloak. If an FC wants to stay on grid in near complete safety there are several options that can fit a CovOps cloak that will make head-shotting impossible. [/quote]
But then…my KB ratio! FC’s won’t get kills! Everyone knows some number on zkillboard is much more important than getting good fights and enjoying the game
Instead of a hard damage cap, perhaps scale the damage depending on how many fleet members you have on grid when you use the module. Each module cycle checks the numbers on grid.
That way if you have a lot on grid, you are sufficiently protected. As your fleet diminishes, so too will your tank.
I was thinking, maybe FC could equip cloak, and the rest would take voice orders from him? He could still mark targets for kill. There is button for marking targets with number. There is a little number that appears in the overview on target. This may be a target indicator.
Additionally, CCP could add more means of marking and make it easier to see in grand and little battles. Probably better idea than giving an invulnerable status to someone in a fleet, that could cause exploiting of the system. When we could have a nearly invulnerable officer fit titan that would be protected by invulnerable FAXes in different fleets. And we could have a 1-man invulnerable fleet too.
Well, good luck seeing if your primary is catching reps when you’re cloaked. And before you say “just have fleet members call it”, that would totally not ■■■■ up all the comms.
The use of a cloak in a mid to large scale fleet battle is a poor choice. Here is why. If an FC is leading the fleet and has the main line DPS ships “Anchored” around him. Then all the fleet members will in fact decloak him. Also, with the exception of “Black Ops” battleships. All ships fitted with an active cloak module move very VERY slowly. They can’t use afterburners or Microwarp drives. Speed and movement is a very big deal in fleet fights. Using a FC who is trying to hide with a cloak is in fact going to slow down all fleet members down and in the case of MWD centric doctrines, make them SIG bloom with no real speed to compensate for it (depending on anchored orbit range).
I will add again. I really don’t like damage caps. They just feel so wrong. I have no issue with ships exploding in one shot apher. Attrition is part of a battle. But removing the FC from a battle is and does ruin the fun for all involved.
As I have said before. Not everybody is part of the 3 big major powers of Eve. And so do not have the means to have 200 plus FCs within it’s ranks. Sure in an ideal corp. That would be the case. And as soon as one FC was dead a new one takes over. But that is a pipe dream.
Also, if you are playing this game for killboard stats. You really are doing it wrong.
Anyway. I hope folks can see that fun for all is better than no fun at all.
The idea that you need 200 FCs is nonsensical. 2-3 people in a fleet capable of taking over and broadcasting a target is more than adequate. Christ, we manage this in NPSI pickup fleets just fine.
Your basic premise seems flawed here. FC headshotting is more of a problem the bigger a fight gets, and large fights almost invariably involve larger ships, so there’s no reason any sort of anti-headshot ship needs to be a Frigate.
In a pure Frigate fight you already have enough options to brick-tank an FC ship to the point that anyone going for a headshot will be wasting their time and DPS to the extent that they’ll likely lose the fight anyway if they try it.
With respect. NPSI fleets are not by the very nature a WAR or strategic fleet meant to deal with a particular objective. Don’t get me wrong. I like NPSI fleets. Been in many of them. But a very good example is to go watch bjornbee on twitch. When he does his NPSI fleets. More often than not. He gets headshotted as soon as a response fleet comes along to engage him where ever they are.
Having a DPS and repair cap might prevent instant death, but not prevent inevitable death. It would just take a bit longer, that’s all, resulting in people warping out and back in a lot. There is also a risk for side effects on other parts of the game. Would suicide ganking still work? Will incursion logistics have enough rep to handle a pre-loaded TCRC?
One problem that all space and air combat have is the lack of cover. Combine that with long range weapons and focusing fire become an obvious tactic. Sure, logistics make alpha strike tactics even more important, but people would still use focused fire for quick kills even if logistics were nerfed into the ground.
Just to try to contribute something, lets try the idea of passive cover in space. It’s already kind of a thing against missiles, with the existance of firewalling smartbomb ships, so lets expand on that. Suppose there was a way to project a flat force field into space that stopped damage from either direction, but ships can fly through it and outflank it. It would make it harder but not impossible to headshot the FC. Flanking tactics would probably be developed and cavalry charges could become a thing. I’m not sure this would lead to better fights though, it might just complicate things.
Do some changes to industrials and give suicide ganking a way longer timer. I’ve been calling for suicide ganking timers to be massively extended for years now alongside an industrial rework because longer timers actually increase uncertainty.
Of course incursion logistics would have enough rep because none of them could be alpha’ed off the grid like they can currently (or close enough to alpha’ed). Now might some people in incursions need to fit a touch more tank rather than rolling with one ‘tank’ first into a TCRC, but that’s not a terrible thing.
It would totally be a big shift in the game I’ll admit, and it certainly would have other side effects that would need addressing over time.
As for your idea of passive cover, it’s outright server melting. That’s why you can shoot through other people currently, because calculating actual lines of effect would be a nightmare. Missiles & Smartbombs are already server melting but not as bad because missiles are an actual object in space that is travelling. All other weapons are instant so would need to calculate the exact vector and intersections. ‘Terrain’ would be by far a better solution than damage caps but it’s just not viable unless we want to drop back to 50 v 50 fights being in tidi.
It only increases uncertainty if a third party interferes, and that’s fairly rare in ganks, so mostly you just end up giving the ganker more time to work with and make the gank require fewer ships to execute. The net benefit lies squarely on the side of the gankers with a change like this which is why it’s highly unlikely to happen unless CCP finds something significantly wrong with the current balance of high sec ganking.
I think you’ve missed the point a little on this one.
The point isn’t that Logi can’t be repped enough it’s that Logi can’t rep enough to keep the other ships up. Generally speaking Logi are very very easy to keep up in any fight because they’re small and rarely take full damage, in addition to having a T2 resist profile.
What this means for Incursions, or any other group PvE, is that if the Sansha are dealing X damage and you can only rep Y then you just die.
In fact this kind of group PvE content would pretty much just stop working under any sort of damage cap system that doesn’t allow you to fully counter incoming damage with reps. In other worse, where the rep amount cap is equal to or greater than the incoming damage cap, which would create stalemates in PvP.
Uh no, the problem in a preloaded TCRC is that by the time you land and get lock on the first targetted ship, they are 3/4’s dead already or worse and have been neuted dry, because they can take so much damage. It’s not that the logi don’t have the reps to keep up, it’s that the logi can’t lock fast enough to save the first ship on grid. Which is why it’s normally a heavier tanked ship that goes into TCRC’s a second ahead as a designated tank ship.
In other words exactly the sort of thing a DPS cap would prevent.
Also you totally misread what I was saying, but this is a better explanation anyway of why it would still work.
Also you don’t need to have enough remote reps to fully counter incoming DPS for group PVE content.
For alternatives that let you still do it, Local reps, Killing some of the incoming DPS before you reach critical points, using ECM/TD/SD to decrease incoming DPS, Increasing angular to the ships doing you damage so you take less, pulling range so you take less, breaking tackle and warping clear if you absolutely have to.
And with more time on grid doing a gank, more chance exists of passers by interfering, especially if done alongside changes to industrial ships that actually give them real fitting options, however that’s a totally different thread at this point for that discussion.
The TLDR of all this, it’s totally possible to do group PvE still, and I do know what the preloaded TCRC issues are.
The number one reason ships die in TCRC preloads is neuts, which have nothing to do with damage cap and if your damage cap prevents neuting someone out and shutting off their tank from killing them faster then it’s a bad system.
Also I’ve seen the stats kept by at least one Incursion community and the vast majority of losses aren’t the anchor on a TCRC, preload or otherwise.
The real problem here though is you’ve completely missed the rep-caps half of this problem and the potential impact, which is what the original comment you originally replied to was talking about.
Local reps are weak compared to remote reps and take up slots that would be better used for resist mods.
Any incoming DPS removed before you hit the DPS cap doesn’t matter, so the site would have to be very close to the DPS cap for this to have any impact. Same issue applies to EWar as damage mitigation, unless you’re going to jam out most of the site, which isn’t actually feasible I’ve looked at the numbers.
You literally can not speed tank a Battleship well enough to make a difference in 90% of PvE sites unless you want all PvE to become the sole provenance of Machariels. The same problem applies to pulling range on anything like an Incursion site unless you’re going to fit for sniping only and give everyone MJDs, in which case congrats the tank problem is solved but the sites are really boring.
Most ganks these days happen after bumping the target off the gate, which means that for some random bystander to interfere they need to not only decide to do so but be fitted with a prop mod in a combat ship.
On top of that if you’re increasing time you’re also decreasing the number of people required, which means for larger ships they can gank with fewer people, have an overall excess of DPS on the field, and thus create enough of a buffer that even if someone runs over and kills a few ships they’ll still pull off the gank.
Any idea that comes with the caveat of “this would totally work if we changed all these other things too” is a poor idea that has too much uncertainty itself to be practical. At that point you may as well be designing a different game to compete with Eve rather than a change to Eve itself for all the practical application your idea has to the existing game.
Sure… you spend your entire post talking about how TCRC preloads mean group PvE would be impossible if Reps are lower than the DPS cap…
Then when I actually correct your flawed knowledge of TCRC’s you go and move the goalposts. Have fun.
I mentioned TCRCs exactly zero times in my original post, preloads or otherwise. Please feel free to go back and read again if you’re confused as to that point. To quote me:
What this means is that for any site if there’s a DPS cap and a rep cap and you hit both then unless the rep cap is the same or higher than the DPS cap then the ship will die.
In fact in the example of a TCRC entrance, because the target is starting already down on tank, they’re actually in a worse position in your system because even once reps land they’re going to keep dropping, and because TCRCs have points on grid they can’t warp off either.
Nothing in here is in any way moving the goal posts. You just appear to have grievously misinterpreted my original post as applying to one specific situation when nothing like that was in any way said or implied.