Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => CCP Public Library => Topic started by: Katrina Oniseki on 09 Mar 2012, 00:43
-
We all know that battleships in EVE have -only- large guns. For game balance reasons, we don't have any point defense systems. We must unfit a large gun to fit a smaller gun.
Realistically, this is ridiculous. All ships from Frigate to Titan would have weapon systems far in excess than what we see ingame, right? Why wouldn't a battleship also have a battery of medium and small turrets? Why would a carrier or supercarrier be COMPLETELY devoid of dedicated weapons?
Things like this seem very difficult to swallow for me, and it really screws with my suspension of disbelief. I just can't imagine any competent ship designer building a military vessel with such obvious flaws.
While this trend is used and followed in PF, has it ever been explained?
-
TBH, this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-IPZhoM664
-
I agree. This is why EVE isn't really much of a space simulator...more of a social/political/economic one. WW2 battleships had huge cannons but also an array of smaller caliber guns and so forth...modern frigates and destroyers (cruisers too if you're American, Russian or Peruvian) are equipped with anti-ship missiles, a primary close-in gun for land support, torpedos, GPMGs...
I think it was on the battleships article on the FP that mentioned they once had point defences but were stripped out when drones came along.
But yeah...EVE sux RP sux etc.
-
Yes, the maximum of eight weapon slot-rule is more counter-intuitive the bigger the ships get.
However, a ship focused on a sole purpose is more effective than a mixture. You don't take battleships into environments with loads of small targets, therefore you can focus on their large weapon systems to maximize their destructive potential.
A setup that sacrifices space ( I am not talking 'fitting slots' or game mechanic terms, I'm assuming that a ships maximum number of weapons equals their maximum potential ) reserved for their large weapons to add smaller batteries on top of it would fare better in a situation battleships aren't designed for, and worse in any situations battleships are used for.
Therefore using a mix of specialized vessels is superior to having 'one size fits them all', unless you already have decisively superior numbers or fighting strength. RTS's like Supreme Commander are a good way to illustrate that point.
Compare the stats of http://supcom.wikia.com/wiki/UEF_T2_Destroyer and one of the t2 submarines, like http://supcom.wikia.com/wiki/Aeon_T2_Submarine_Hunter , and a t2 cruiser for anti-air purposes. http://supcom.wikia.com/wiki/UEF_T2_Cruiser
A bunch of them can fend of lone submarines with ease, but when faced with a force of equal cost, they're going to have problems.
EVE's ships have drones as a point defense mechanism. And on top of that, the smallest target in EVE is a rather sizeable frigate, not asymetric threats modern navies face. On top of that, EVE's spaceships are more resilient and not so vulnerable to the metaphorical bomb on a rubber dinghy.
-
TBH, this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-IPZhoM664
*worships*
On a simmilar note, one thing that would be cool is if carriers and supercarriers launched squadrons as opposed to a single fighter/fighter bomber. I'm pretty sure a carrier could caryy more than just a handful of the buggers.
-
On a simmilar note, one thing that would be cool is if carriers and supercarriers launched squadrons as opposed to a single fighter/fighter bomber. I'm pretty sure a carrier could caryy more than just a handful of the buggers.
As far as I am aware, a fully skilled supercarrier pilot will be launching 20 fighter bombers, and with 5 Drone Control Units has the bandwith to have 25 out at once. Have I taken this the wrong way?
-
On a simmilar note, one thing that would be cool is if carriers and supercarriers launched squadrons as opposed to a single fighter/fighter bomber. I'm pretty sure a carrier could caryy more than just a handful of the buggers.
As far as I am aware, a fully skilled supercarrier pilot will be launching 20 fighter bombers, and with 5 Drone Control Units has the bandwith to have 25 out at once. Have I taken this the wrong way?
Kilometer-long, massive-scale warships designed to carry fighter-craft smaller than frigates can only maintain 25 at a time with heavy modification.
In case you did not get it, that's a problematic, if not out-right idiotic short-coming; ship that big should be able to carry hundreds if not thousands of them and send out at least a few dozen at a time.
@ Aldrith; you ass, now I recall all the nice stuff I'm missing because HW2 won't patch and let me install mods in Windows 7 :(
@ Main topic; The problems with EVE's ship-design is that it's made with game-mechanics and balance in mind. Yes, it's somewhat idiotic compared to designs and weapon loadouts in games like HW2, SOTS and many others, but those are not MMO's. IF CCP were to re-work their game-universe to account for a far more realistic weapon-setup on their ships, the whole game has to be modified into near unrecognizable levels with massive changes to ships, tactics, PF info, and much, much more. It would completely change the way the game works and how it's even played.
I can't say I would not mind such a change, but it's more realistic and likely we will see such a system in an entirely different MMO than as a modification to EVE. Again, I'm not sure I'd mind.
-
On a simmilar note, one thing that would be cool is if carriers and supercarriers launched squadrons as opposed to a single fighter/fighter bomber. I'm pretty sure a carrier could caryy more than just a handful of the buggers.
As far as I am aware, a fully skilled supercarrier pilot will be launching 20 fighter bombers, and with 5 Drone Control Units has the bandwith to have 25 out at once. Have I taken this the wrong way?
Kilometer-long, massive-scale warships designed to carry fighter-craft smaller than frigates can only maintain 25 at a time with heavy modification.
In case you did not get it, that's a problematic, if not out-right idiotic short-coming; ship that big should be able to carry hundreds if not thousands of them and send out at least a few dozen at a time.
Keep in mind, the fighter bombers are the size of cruisers. If you're using say, light, medium, heavy or sentry drones you can have hundreds or thousands of them. And you can still spit out 20 unmodified.
-
On a simmilar note, one thing that would be cool is if carriers and supercarriers launched squadrons as opposed to a single fighter/fighter bomber. I'm pretty sure a carrier could caryy more than just a handful of the buggers.
As far as I am aware, a fully skilled supercarrier pilot will be launching 20 fighter bombers, and with 5 Drone Control Units has the bandwith to have 25 out at once. Have I taken this the wrong way?
Kilometer-long, massive-scale warships designed to carry fighter-craft smaller than frigates can only maintain 25 at a time with heavy modification.
In case you did not get it, that's a problematic, if not out-right idiotic short-coming; ship that big should be able to carry hundreds if not thousands of them and send out at least a few dozen at a time.
Keep in mind, the fighter bombers are the size of cruisers. If you're using say, light, medium, heavy or sentry drones you can have hundreds or thousands of them. And you can still spit out 20 unmodified.
Frigates, not cruisers.
To everyone else:
If I wanted to RP, say, a battleship with sub-frigate size point defense systems.. would that be so bad? I don't see a pressing need for this because I don't particularly enjoy roleplaying space battles... but if I wanted to throw the reference in there would that be fine?
I'd have to agree with the posters above that capital ships are shockingly lacking in ability. For all their mass and volume, they really don't have much beyond EHP to show for it. You'd think these things would be bristling with weapons or fighter bays, yet they are not. Even so, there's so little PF about the workings of a capital ship, it wouldn't be so bad to slap on a battery of smaller turrets, right?
-
On a simmilar note, one thing that would be cool is if carriers and supercarriers launched squadrons as opposed to a single fighter/fighter bomber. I'm pretty sure a carrier could caryy more than just a handful of the buggers.
As far as I am aware, a fully skilled supercarrier pilot will be launching 20 fighter bombers, and with 5 Drone Control Units has the bandwith to have 25 out at once. Have I taken this the wrong way?
Kilometer-long, massive-scale warships designed to carry fighter-craft smaller than frigates can only maintain 25 at a time with heavy modification.
In case you did not get it, that's a problematic, if not out-right idiotic short-coming; ship that big should be able to carry hundreds if not thousands of them and send out at least a few dozen at a time.
Keep in mind, the fighter bombers are the size of cruisers. If you're using say, light, medium, heavy or sentry drones you can have hundreds or thousands of them. And you can still spit out 20 unmodified.
Frigates, not cruisers.
My mistake. I was remembering their EHP. Cyclops has 5k shields, 6k armour and 9k structure before skills. As that is actually better than a battlecruiser, I got a bit mixed up. Point being, even if they are not large, their toughness and damage dealing more than makes up for it.
-
N'maro: According to the PF (somewhere, I looked around briefly and couldn't find it, but :work: so not as much time to look around), Fighters and Fighter Bombers are not very autonomous; they're designed as drones that were raised on steroids and growth hormones. The pilot(s) are just an organic component. In fact, the capsuleer piloting the (super)carrier is doing a very large part of the work. When their parent ship is destroyed, the fighters lose all of the telemetry and targeting information they had available to them - without this, they're useless.
-
On a simmilar note, one thing that would be cool is if carriers and supercarriers launched squadrons as opposed to a single fighter/fighter bomber. I'm pretty sure a carrier could caryy more than just a handful of the buggers.
As far as I am aware, a fully skilled supercarrier pilot will be launching 20 fighter bombers, and with 5 Drone Control Units has the bandwith to have 25 out at once. Have I taken this the wrong way?
Kilometer-long, massive-scale warships designed to carry fighter-craft smaller than frigates can only maintain 25 at a time with heavy modification.
In case you did not get it, that's a problematic, if not out-right idiotic short-coming; ship that big should be able to carry hundreds if not thousands of them and send out at least a few dozen at a time.
Keep in mind, the fighter bombers are the size of cruisers. If you're using say, light, medium, heavy or sentry drones you can have hundreds or thousands of them. And you can still spit out 20 unmodified.
Frigates, not cruisers.
To everyone else:
If I wanted to RP, say, a battleship with sub-frigate size point defense systems.. would that be so bad? I don't see a pressing need for this because I don't particularly enjoy roleplaying space battles... but if I wanted to throw the reference in there would that be fine?
I'd have to agree with the posters above that capital ships are shockingly lacking in ability. For all their mass and volume, they really don't have much beyond EHP to show for it. You'd think these things would be bristling with weapons or fighter bays, yet they are not. Even so, there's so little PF about the workings of a capital ship, it wouldn't be so bad to slap on a battery of smaller turrets, right?
Hrmmm...
As far I can see, the current precedent with player fiction based on PF is sort of that the PF "is", with no question and little room for interpretation. Anything not PF is left up to interpretation, BUT this doesnt extend to godmodding, as there still needs to be some kind of realistic in-game base to what you're writing.
For instance, some people claim they helped create the tech for the Dust 514 soldiers. We all know this to be BS. Some claim they are powerful spymasters with ears as far as the Inner Circle (or rather they shout this over the IGS, like all good intelligence operatives do...)
BUT this is not to say that creativity should be frowned upon. Their mistake was to do something publicly with no PF or in-game base and expect people to just roll with it. If say you were to IGS post about it or talk about it in summit, someone would probably clock that it doesnt really have an ingame base and the conversation would be downhill from there. But if you were just playing around with a concept, privately or with a few friends, or maybe writing some fiction, and not trying to pass it off publicly as "This totally happened yo" then theres no real problem with that as its your business and you're not trying to tell players something exists when they believe (and can back up with in-game reality) that it doesnt.
Like I said, theres no official rules, more of a social consensus and no-one will stop you. Feel free to play around with ideas, the best player fiction does. Just be warned that some players may object and cause unneccesary drama.
*EDIT* Of course, the in-game base rule only applies to in-game concepts. If its not directly related to anything actually in-game, huzzah! The only thing that can ruin you now is TonyG
-
Worth noting that originally many ships could carry and launch several times more drones than they do now; in an effort to deal with lag, numbers were cut to the five-maximum-per-pilot limit we have today, while the drones' stats were multiplied to make the fewer drones still the equal of a swarm of say, twenty. This was a decision based purely in game design, not fiction, and there is (as best I know) no PF to explain it.
That said - when you are talking about point defense, are you talking about antidrone/antifrigate guns, or antimissile/antiprojectile systems?
-
That said - when you are talking about point defense, are you talking about antidrone/antifrigate guns, or antimissile/antiprojectile systems?
Both, honestly. Take Battlestar Galactica for example, where the point defense systems of Galactica were able to provide a cover screen against both head on Raider attacks and missile fire from Basestars. You can clearly see the missiles from enemy Basestars being shot out of the sky before reaching Galactica. Even Viper pilots were warned to "stay out of Galactica's firing solution". I don't see why a similar system wouldn't work on a larger battleship in EVE.
When I say fitting smaller guns, I don't just mean fitting guns that are frigate sized, of course that is certainly an option. Instead of stopping at 125mm Autocannon, you might have point defense systems with even smaller caliber, like 75mm, or 50mm, or 25mm, or smaller. You could have flak screens, or anti-missile missile systems, or directional smartbombs, or anything really. Even stasis webifier technology can be used against incoming torpedoes.
There's any number of technologies we could apply to point-defense systems; but the goal is all the same: To combat sub-frigate threats.
For anything frigate sized and above, we'd be fitting equivalent guns. It's in that case that I can imagine having issues with PowerGrid or CPU, as those systems are fairly taxing. However, even that is negligible in the case of capital ships which should have PLENTY of PG/CPU to spare for frigate and cruiser sized weaponry, maybe even battleship weapons.
-
Gamedesign choice over realism. One of my biggest "meh" against eve combat, combined with a very, very poor, stiff and anti immersive combat animation (unlike homeworld, my reference of all). Eve has always done quite terribad in terms of immersion to my opinion, be it about sound, space animation, life in space, universe in movement, etc. In terms of screenplay, everything is dead, repeatitive and dull.
-
Well, the reason I asked is that the requirements for each are vastly different. While drones/fighters/frigates are solid targets that can be tracked, many of the weapons in EVE - Lasers, blasters, railguns - would be profoundly less receptive to any kind of anti-weapon fire. In theory it might be possible to arrange some sort of ablative/magnetic field to somewhat distort the blast, but given the fact that we're looking at weapons that slag through rolled Tungsten I have doubts about how effective that would be.
-
Maybe an individual boat is not intended to be the basic entity of combat. The problem of missing guns goes away when the supporting fleet is taken into account.
-
EVE's ships have highly efficient qualitites when it comes to taking damage. Therefore there is no pressing need for these point defense systems we see in other settings or the reality.
Anti-frigate weapons are hardly point defense anymore, but there are drones. And the mentioned support fleet.
-
@ Aldrith; you ass, now I recall all the nice stuff I'm missing because HW2 won't patch and let me install mods in Windows 7 :(
I am poking around the internet trying to find a fix for this (because fucking aldy had to link it and now I've got a craving). There are some forums where they've said the issue is with one of the files not updating properly, and supposedly the way to fix it is to install on a virtual machine, update, and then copy the update files over.
I've never done such a thing, curious if you'd tried it.
/derail
-
TBH, this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-IPZhoM664
You are to blame for this. I've been writing the ME log and listening to music, among it a very sticky song at 11:10 in this video;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXZSaCJq3Qk&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXZSaCJq3Qk&feature=related)
You will take responsibility and tell me what it's called, because it's stuck in my head sieging my sanity and won't get out xO
-
The thing is, Desi, even a moderation of incoming damage would be give you a VAST benefit over your enemies. If, for instance, the Gallente could learn to engage and destroy incoming missiles, they would seriously hamper the effectiveness of much of the Caldari Navy's lineup. If the Caldari Navy, meanwhile, could design a system to independently target and engage hostile drones within a certain distance of a ship, they would force the Gallente to retire or redesign many of their drone-centric designs.
I think the closest thing we've seen to "point defense" in the EVE universe is Firewall fleets that appeared briefly in 0.0 to counter Drake blobs; for those unfamiliar with the idea, the concept is that you have a number of battleships fit a couple smartbombs, and once the battle is joined they all continuously fire them, surrounding the fleet with a bubble of constant damage. Although the fleet takes damage from itself, of course, Smartbombs don't really do that much damage compared to the hundreds of missiles that are being neutralized as soon as they enter the radius of the multiple smartbombs.
Interestingly, I believe the idea didn't become more prevalent because it is extremely tricky to coordinate all the ships in a Firewall fleet - smartbombing battleships have to remain close together, logistics repairing battleships have to balance their reps across multiple targets, cap logis have to supply cap all around to keep the smartbombs running continuously - and it turned out to be simply easier to get more ships and return to the method of bludgeoning the enemy to death with numbers.
However, the reason it failed is not a flaw of point-defense systems - which would theoretically defend each ship independantly, not requiring fleet coordination - but of something more like a fleet defense net, which is a lot different than what we're talking about here.
-
TBH, this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-IPZhoM664
You are to blame for this. I've been writing the ME log and listening to music, among it a very sticky song at 11:10 in this video;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXZSaCJq3Qk&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXZSaCJq3Qk&feature=related)
You will take responsibility and tell me what it's called, because it's stuck in my head sieging my sanity and won't get out xO
Oh deary me, I must correct this injustice I have done upon you, good sir! Mmm, let's take a listen. Oh that's a toughie, let's have a think...
Hmmmmm, you must mean this song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ns-MAji3yY
Oh, and before you ask, why yes, yes indeed:
(http://i.qkme.me/3563he.jpg)
Now here is moar PDS glory that we will never have in EVE for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3ylZrrmyuI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wd_1Hcea6js&feature=related
Now, just so no one can -_- at this post being completely off-topic, I'll put in my two cents about this whole thing.
I've always wished we could have fights in EVE that looked more like what's reflected in these vids, just on a purely aesthetic basis. Simply put, they'd look amazing with bolts of plasma, whizzing lead and laser-light show zaps going in every direction. And in all honesty, I believe it's completely doable in the game if the balancing could just be worked out. On a technical level, all of these effects are not all that intensive on a system, plus they could be easily turned on or off according to system performance. HW2 is a very old game, and even back then the makers of the game and this particular mod managed to make the weapon effects (not the ships, mind you) look movie-cinematic quality. The game also had neat things like visible damage on ships, and varied ship destruction, which adds quite a lot to the atmosphere of epic spaceship battles. It might be possible that CCP could add this in an expansion, though it does seem like a lot of work just to make fights more pretty. For balancing, what might be nice would instead of all larger ships having PDS systems, we could instead get specialized PDS ships, like Ageis cruisers in modern fleets. These ships would specialize in shooting down missiles and drones and providing other creative defenses for other ships. Deploying chaff against incoming projectile shells, veering hybrid shots off course or disrupting laser shots with magnetic shields, ect. Think of them like RR support ships, but they increase ship survivability by increasing resistances and pewing the little shit. This way a lone BS still won't be able to take down a swarm of frigates, but we still get our pretty flashy shooty boats that fill the skies with plasma flak as they try to swat flies.
Oh, forgot a vid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwJkdcYp0po&feature=endscreen&NR=1
/me trolldad's out window.
-
No Aldrith. NOT the fucking COD ost shit. The one at 11:10 to 13:17.
I specifically pointed out the time; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXZSaCJq3Qk&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXZSaCJq3Qk&feature=related)
Btw, your sarcasm is not as entertaining as you think ;)
... nor is mine, come to think of it... :oops:
-
The thing is, Desi, even a moderation of incoming damage would be give you a VAST benefit over your enemies. If, for instance, the Gallente could learn to engage and destroy incoming missiles, they would seriously hamper the effectiveness of much of the Caldari Navy's lineup. If the Caldari Navy, meanwhile, could design a system to independently target and engage hostile drones within a certain distance of a ship, they would force the Gallente to retire or redesign many of their drone-centric designs.
I see your point.
However you can either:
1) Devise a system that neutralizes a percentage of incoming fire through active countermeasures, such as point defenses.
or
2) Devise a system that neutralizes a percentage of incoming fire through passive countermeasures, such as a decreased susceptability to damage.
If we rightly, in my opinion, assume that EVE's ships are crammed to the brink with their equipment any noticeable addition would make it necessary to drop something to free resources. That means either lowering their efficiency in their specialized role, such as dropping a turret, or decreasing their passive defenses.
Since we have absolutely no idea how the numeric values of such a trade-off would be, we can not judge if it would be a good or a bad move.
We can, however, provide an in-world conclusion based on observations such as no navy using non-drone point defense ( actually, NPC's don't even use drones ) but employing highly specialized ships that are 100% effective until they literally disintegrate.
I don't want to sound cheesy by going "That's how it is ingame, durr", but I think you can actually wrestle some believable reasoning out of the situation.
Now, having said that, I think it would be a nice touch for capital ships. But since an addition like this is likely about 80% fluff, 20% usefulness ( unless it's going against game balance ) I don't see CCP fiddling with it. A second layer of turret hardpoints might be a huge task. I love eye candy like that, though. :s
-
I've always wished we could have fights in EVE that looked more like what's reflected in these vids, just on a purely aesthetic basis. Simply put, they'd look amazing with bolts of plasma, whizzing lead and laser-light show zaps going in every direction. And in all honesty, I believe it's completely doable in the game if the balancing could just be worked out. On a technical level, all of these effects are not all that intensive on a system, plus they could be easily turned on or off according to system performance. HW2 is a very old game, and even back then the makers of the game and this particular mod managed to make the weapon effects (not the ships, mind you) look movie-cinematic quality. The game also had neat things like visible damage on ships, and varied ship destruction, which adds quite a lot to the atmosphere of epic spaceship battles. It might be possible that CCP could add this in an expansion, though it does seem like a lot of work just to make fights more pretty. For balancing, what might be nice would instead of all larger ships having PDS systems, we could instead get specialized PDS ships, like Ageis cruisers in modern fleets. These ships would specialize in shooting down missiles and drones and providing other creative defenses for other ships. Deploying chaff against incoming projectile shells, veering hybrid shots off course or disrupting laser shots with magnetic shields, ect. Think of them like RR support ships, but they increase ship survivability by increasing resistances and pewing the little shit. This way a lone BS still won't be able to take down a swarm of frigates, but we still get our pretty flashy shooty boats that fill the skies with plasma flak as they try to swat flies.
Oh, forgot a vid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwJkdcYp0po&feature=endscreen&NR=1
/me trolldad's out window.
At last I find someone thinking the exact same way I do.
Marry me.
-
@ Ald - yeah, at this point I'm pretty much talking from a purely theoretical fictional standpoint. In terms of game mechanics, I well understand the reasoning for not including point defense on larger vessels and instead looking to try to force fleets to coordinate their action to provide local defense against smaller craft.
I see your point.
However you can either:
1) Devise a system that neutralizes a percentage of incoming fire through active countermeasures, such as point defenses.
or
2) Devise a system that neutralizes a percentage of incoming fire through passive countermeasures, such as a decreased susceptability to damage.
If we rightly, in my opinion, assume that EVE's ships are crammed to the brink with their equipment any noticeable addition would make it necessary to drop something to free resources. That means either lowering their efficiency in their specialized role, such as dropping a turret, or decreasing their passive defenses.
Since we have absolutely no idea how the numeric values of such a trade-off would be, we can not judge if it would be a good or a bad move.
We can, however, provide an in-world conclusion based on observations such as no navy using non-drone point defense ( actually, NPC's don't even use drones ) but employing highly specialized ships that are 100% effective until they literally disintegrate.
I don't want to sound cheesy by going "That's how it is ingame, durr", but I think you can actually wrestle some believable reasoning out of the situation.
Fair enough reasoning, and yes - if a ship could be said to loose some of its effectiveness due to the addition of another set of systems, I could see why it would be avoided, particularly in some of the less flexible hulls.
I'll make an arguement here that some limited CIWS should still be present. Here's why.
At current in real life - and yes, I know I'm throwing in a massive red herring by explicitely bringing up the "but IRL" arguement; it seems to me that something that works now should work 20,000 years in the future, though - there are two general types of point defense systems.
The first are "ship-integrated systems", which refer to systems which are linked to the ships' main fire control systems and require significant modification of the hull in order to fit a mount, ammunition hold, and any additional fire control equipment; in return, these systems have considerably greater stopping capability and are more likely to form the main portion of an antimissile shield. Examples are the US SM-2 missiles and Dutch 'Goalkeeper' system. Systems like these, I could understand the designers of ships in New Eden not wishing to add to ships at random, as they would likely reduce the abilities of some more focused designs.
The second class, however, are what I think of as "plug-and-play" systems - largely self-contained, not requiring major modifications to the hull, they can essentially be bolted onto the hull in any fortuitous location, plugged into the ship's main power supply, and allowed to operate autonomously. The downside is that they tend to have far more limited effectiveness than the first type. As has been pointed out, however, because of EVE's ships' spectacular ability to absorb damage, even a minor reduction in incoming damage - say, 5 to 10% - would be a not insignificant tactical advantage.
-
I always figured that every fighter was representing a squadron of them.
*shrugs*
-
No Aldrith. NOT the fucking COD ost shit. The one at 11:10 to 13:17.
I specifically pointed out the time; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXZSaCJq3Qk&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXZSaCJq3Qk&feature=related)
Btw, your sarcasm is not as entertaining as you think ;)
... nor is mine, come to think of it... :oops:
/me scratches head.
That's... exactly the one I linked though.
Wait a sec, are you counter-trolling me?! Because if you are... ooooh boy you're gonna git it boooooooi...
Edit 5 mins later: WAIT A SECOND YOU ARE ARRRGGGGGGG-*explodes in a ball of flame*
-
The second class, however, are what I think of as "plug-and-play" systems - largely self-contained, not requiring major modifications to the hull, they can essentially be bolted onto the hull in any fortuitous location, plugged into the ship's main power supply, and allowed to operate autonomously. The downside is that they tend to have far more limited effectiveness than the first type. As has been pointed out, however, because of EVE's ships' spectacular ability to absorb damage, even a minor reduction in incoming damage - say, 5 to 10% - would be a not insignificant tactical advantage.
This is the point where the CPU/Powergrid foundations reveal themselves as being mainly a game mechanic. Coming up with a reasoning behind the strict modularisation of various systems is on the path down to madness. The ingame answer would be: "There are no fitting slots left", which obviously doesn't make much sense.
I still think the ship's resilience is the main reason for not using them. A missile hitting an IRL vessel is a huge problem, a missile hitting something in EVE is a minor incident. We're now talking mainly about missile defense, but when reverting to 'active countermeasures' we have some in our EWAR arsenals, just not against missiles unless we're using the defender missiles, not every ship can and basically no pilot will use (NPC's aside).
-
I always figured that every fighter was representing a squadron of them.
*shrugs*
This, basically. The way I think about it is that something like fighters, drones, etc have a certain level of abstraction.
I recall reading in a players guide - maybe for D&D? - that hitpoints aren't directly representative of 'health' - they also include things like injuries that are not as bad as they otherwise might have been due to dodging, or armor, or what have you. Luck and increased skill.
Similarly, maybe you could think of the vastly increased damage that a BS can soak up as in part owing to point defenses we can't see mitigating some of that damage.
Obviously it is imperfect, but it can help with immersion, at least for me. :D
-
When I first started playing in 2004, the large guns on battleships could track frigates fairly well. Everyone trained the skills and did everything they could to get in a battleship as soon as they possibly could, because it was the only way to be competitive in the game. Cruisers were just something you put up with until you could fly a battleship. It made sense from a gameplay perspective to stop battleships being the 'I win' button of their day.
At the time, I liked frigates and I liked the 'new' interceptors, so I welcomed the change. Ultimately, though, the basic premise of Eve combat has always been a bit flawed, I suppose. It has always devolved to people attempting to apply the maximum amount of damage on a target in the shortest time possible and none of the additions over the years have materially changed that.
-
(Eve Combat) has always devolved to people attempting to apply the maximum amount of damage on a target in the shortest time possible and none of the additions over the years have materially changed that.
This could be applied to the real world to a large extent. We tend to only develop more nuanced capabilities when the desired effects are themselves more nuanced. If the goal is only ever to destroy/kill the other guys' ships/stuff/people faster than they can do the same to yours, it makes sense to pursue maximum damage in the shortest amount of time and to maximize your defensive capabilities.
-
Which is the same in every game, PvP or not. Focus fire, then try to minimize overkill.
-
I think a game might be more interesting if you design in ways of mitigating the overriding power of DPS. It's relatively easy in a single player game, of course. In MMOs? The players will always try and bring the numbers to ensure victory.
In Eve, to make battleships (and larger ships) 'make sense' you would probably need to completely rethink the weaponry. I imagine you'd have to drop the racial differences in favour of a 'horses for courses' approach. For example: rail guns and projectiles would be for pounding static targets, missiles would be for ship-to-ship fighting and lasers / blasters would be for point defence vs missiles. A battleship might fit a mix of launchers and point defence weaponry, or you might go with certain ship classes having a screening role and being point defence type ships. There's plenty of ways you could reimagine combat in Eve, and just because the current system has been around for the best part of a decade, it doesn't mean that it was ever right or the best available. You'd probably be looking at Eve 2 for anything to change radically though.