Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[scagga]

Esteemed forum users,

As I am not one who can post on the EvE forums with the ideas that grace my humble mind, I would like to take this opportunity to pass it to this venue.

Idea: 'Powerlimiting', or 'Underloading'

Background:
As we are aware, it is possible to overload a module, allowing it to over-perform with the drawback of gradually taking damage.  At other times, your modules will function at 100% of their normal ability for 100% of their normal capacitor consumption.  In activities such as PVE or evasive action, one can often find themselves in a position where their capacitor is about to break.  This can be frustrating, but I also find it can be made more realistic in such a way that the problem could be solved.

Proposal: Introduce the ability to tweak the % performance you want from your modules.

How about being able to reduce the effectiveness of your X-L shieldbooster to 70% (with commensurate reduction in capacitor consumption) so you can remain cap stable with it running constantly when the damage doesn't merit full power?  How about being able to reduce the damage of your guns if you need to free up cap usage for an active tank or propulsion module?

It's the opposite of overloading, but it makes sense in my mind that one should be able to cut down the power consumption of a ship subsystem in order to facilitate optimal functioning of a priority subsystem.

I believe this kind of setting would make certain activities like ratting, mining, missions and even pvp (e.g. reduce mwd/ab/neut effectiveness to help maintain guns or tank when power is low, rather than switching it off all-together) easier and facilitate more complex teamworking...I can see it now, the logistics pilot who tunes down his reppers in mid-combat so he can pump in a burst of shield HP to the damage dealer while being heavily neuted, allowing the damage dealer to make a bigger difference.

This is the kind of tweaking that really would allow us to control the abilities of our ships to another level.

[Katrina Oniseki]

I like it, but I can already see where people would tell you to simply pulse your booster or MWD/AB as needed.

Also, you sorta cut off your second to last sentence after the parentheses.

[Ciarente]

It makes sense. Given that I often overheat by accident, it would also add another level of fail to my gameplay, but then, Eve is  a harsh world ...

[scagga]

I like it, but I can already see where people would tell you to simply pulse your booster or MWD/AB as needed.

Thank you. For the naysayers you reference, we need to appreciate the convenience that this change could make. 

Aware that we have auto-fitting?

Perhaps you read this thread, once.
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=845056

[Lyn Farel]

me likes

I also loved your idea to put ships on standby mode, turning off every system to gradualy become harder and harder to probe over time (until everything is shut down), that you presented when you were running for CSM 2.

[Victoria Stecker]

I really like the idea, it's essentially the same as getting the game to pulse the booster/guns/etc for you. Assuming that this 'underload' was something you could adjust on the fly, I can see this upsetting balance though. Currently, when active tanking a ship, you have to decide between cap stability and being able to handle a lot of incoming DPS for a short span. If your tank can handle a ton of DPS it's probably not cap stable and will therefor fare poorly if you disconnect in a room with scram rats. Being able to tone them down to cap stability would be a massive buff to non-cap stable tanks, unless you made the cap use drop slower than boost, so it wouldn't be as efficient as a dedicated cap stable tank.

tl;dr I like the idea, I think it would imbalance burst tanks unless it was tweaked a little.

[Saikoyu]

I can see this being useful, but the coding department might balk at making everything capable of percents of full power, and I know that I have enough math to keep track of without trying to calculate how much percent of something I need to reduce to be cap stable.

Maybe instead (and sorry if I am mis-understanding all of this) have the system compute the max usage levels any underrated modules so that the entire system is cap stable and permarunning.  So, if you only underrated the armor repper, only the armor repper would be downgraded to make the set up cap stable.  However, if you later underrated more modules, the armor repper would come up in performance as other modules took over part of the cap reduction.  And if all of the modules were underrated, then the overall performance drop would be spread over all active modules. 

And I don't think this would be a buff to burst tanks.  As I understand it, the more cap you have in reserve, the more a burst tank has to work with, however, most cap stable tanks usually don't have all the cap available, its usually down somewhere about 50 percent.  So when you switch from cap stable to burst, you would only have about half of your cap and therefore time there. 

[Lyn Farel]

I really like the idea, it's essentially the same as getting the game to pulse the booster/guns/etc for you. Assuming that this 'underload' was something you could adjust on the fly, I can see this upsetting balance though. Currently, when active tanking a ship, you have to decide between cap stability and being able to handle a lot of incoming DPS for a short span. If your tank can handle a ton of DPS it's probably not cap stable and will therefor fare poorly if you disconnect in a room with scram rats. Being able to tone them down to cap stability would be a massive buff to non-cap stable tanks, unless you made the cap use drop slower than boost, so it wouldn't be as efficient as a dedicated cap stable tank.

tl;dr I like the idea, I think it would imbalance burst tanks unless it was tweaked a little.

You can also limit this but making the system rigid enough to propose only a few degrees, like for example 66%, then 33%, etc. But not a lot of choices. After all overloading is always 10%, you can't choose between 1 and 10%.

[Raze Valadeus]

I think this is a neat idea and certainly seems to fit into the capabilities of starships (as it's been seen on certain sci-fi shows and movies before). Your previous idea to put ships in standby mode is pretty nifty too.

I could see some potential balance issues (but then again, nearly everything in EVE can be exploited to some degree), but I imagine some tweaking, testing and working with the concept could make it completely viable in the game.

[Akrasjel Lanate]

Interesting idea that got sense. 

[Graelyn]

me likes

I also loved your idea to put ships on standby mode, turning off every system to gradualy become harder and harder to probe over time (until everything is shut down), that you presented when you were running for CSM 2.

I've always RP'ed that this is what happens when you log off in space.

It can take up to 15 minutes for the reactor to enter a cold state of shutdown....

"Time to go black."

[tarunik]

me likes

I also loved your idea to put ships on standby mode, turning off every system to gradualy become harder and harder to probe over time (until everything is shut down), that you presented when you were running for CSM 2.

I've always RP'ed that this is what happens when you log off in space.

It can take up to 15 minutes for the reactor to enter a cold state of shutdown....

"Time to go black."

Or longer for some key systems (shields are notoriously problematic in this regard...)