Fleet formations looked interesting when they were introduced. But are they actually used ? After experiencing the usual “anchor up on FC” since the introduction is it fair to assume that they are rarely, if ever, used ?
Does the concept of Fleet Formations need adjustments ?
They’re niche, but I think they’re very powerful in that niche. The issue with this discussion is that they’re not used much, so the fine details of using them are naturally going to be priviledged information.
I’ve got one fleet strategy that is entirely built around them that I’ve used already to great effect. It opened opportunities that were completely impossible before. Sadly it’s designed for large-scale TIDI fights which doesn’t present many opportunities for practice.
From my experience I see a few significant barriers to entry to using them:
They’re completely new tech, and eve players seem to be learning slow on this.
Skill training them is a pain. Particularly the most OP formation, relative position warping.
Training FCs to use them can be complex. It’s taken a solid 90mins to explain my fleet concept that uses them to other (experienced) FCs.
If you want to warp different parts of your fleet in different formations that adds an extra layer of multiboxing and effort to FCing.
They rely on fleet members properly using the additional positional opportunities given to them.
They naturally give advantages to larger fleets, but the larger the fleet the harder it is to find and coordinate skilled pilots to take advantage of the techniques.
IMO leave them as they are, they’re criminally underused and can be balanced when people eventually git gud
Fleet formations aren’t often used, as it requires some skills that not every fc will have, but they can be nice when used.
I’ve seen plane formations used succesfully for structure bashes, as it puts the entire fleet in weapon range but also spreads the fleet out so that the structure bombs have less effect.
I’ve seen relative warp formations used to warp fleets of cloaked bombers multiple times in directions of targets that would otherwise have required bookmarks if it weren’t for a well positioned alt that the fc could relative warp to in order to land our fleet right on top of our target. And that’s just one application of the relative fleet warp, I can think of more applications which will require some good positioning but allow players to accomplish many tricks that were impossible before.
And I’ve seen the arrow formation used for some really pretty screenshots.
I think fleet formations have been a fun and useful addition to the game.
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