Welcome to the ninth installment of the EVE Blog Banter and its first contest, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!
“Last month Ga’len asked us which game mechanic we would most like to see added to EVE. This month Keith “WebMandrill” Nielson proposes to reverse the question and ask what may be a controversial question: Which game mechanic would you most like to see removed completely from EVE and why? I can see this getting quite heated so lets keep it civil eh?”
I wasn’t sure what to propose for this banter, but Roc’s post on scramming and webbing reminded me of one my my pet peEves – maximum speed in space. The physics of space don’t limit an object’s maximum speed unless acted on by some other force (eg, gravity, collision). So an Eve spaceship should be able to fire up it’s engines and accelerate as long as it wants to.
So any ship could go at any speed, you ask? Yes, sub-warp, in a straight line, until it hits something.
Now this would break the game mechanic for smaller ships being faster than bigger ships. Well, there’s a way to keep this balance that’s more consistent with space physics. Each ship would be given a “maximum safe speed”, which would be higher for smaller, lighter ships. At or below this speed your ship can perform all maneuvers safely – in particular change direction. Above this safe speed there is strain put on your ship to change direction, which is harmful to some degree depending on the speed and the amount of direction change. The harm translates as strain on the ship structure, and structure damage.
The UI would change a bit. You’d have similar speed controls up to the safe limit, so you can set “max speed” and your ship will accelerate up to that speed just like now. And no change to the direction controls.
If you want to go faster than your max safe speed, you can. The UI would show you two bars – one for your speed beyond your maximum, and one for the strain on your structure. If you’re going straight, the strain gauge would be 0 (zero). But if you execute a maneuver, then the strain gauge would go up depending on the extent of the maneuver and the amount over max safe speed, and the duration of the maneuver. If the gauge goes beyond a certain point, damage to structure occurs – the farther beyond the point the faster the damage occurs.
So, when over the max safe by “not too much”, a small course correction would put brief strain on the ship and then end, resulting in no damage. The strain gauge would go up briefly, then back down. A big course correction would put high strain on the ship, and if going too fast, result in structure damage. The strain gauge would go up rapidly and into the red and some structure damage would occur (depending on speed – if you’re only 1% above max safe speed, you’re likely not taking much damage, if any). An orbit above max safe speed would also put strain on the ship. The strain gauge would climb up and up as the orbit continued. The tighter the orbit, the faster the gauge goes up, eventually leading to structure damage unless speed is reduced or orbit is stopped or lessened.
Afterburners and MWDs give your ship more engine power, and you accelerate/decelerate faster. They enhance ship systems such that the max safe speed is increased when the module is active. Speed implants, boosters, etc. enhance the pilot’s ability to manage ship systems and can also increase the max safe speed.
Webbers don’t slow you down, but reduce your ability to accelerate. Webbers versus ABs also reduce the ABs max safe speed bonus, so if you’re going in a fast (above normal safe speed) AB orbit and get webbed, suddenly you’re going above your max safe speed and you’re strain gauge starts climbing. Webbers reduce the MWD acceleration, but not the MWD max safe speed bonus. Scrams shut down the MWD, eliminating it’s acceleration and safe speed bonus.
If you shut off your AB or MWD, your ship will decelerate safely to the normal max safe speed. If your AB or MWD gets disabled by a webber or scram, you have to reduce your speed yourself.
If you’re going above max safe speed, and you get too close to something, your ship’s collision avoidance will kick in, but since you are going above max safe speed, there’ll be strain on the structure and likely some damage.
These changes would enhance tactics on the battlefield. A targeted ship would have more options to escape. It could align for a planet and hit the gas and run, and not have a max speed limit. If webbed, it would take a while to accelerate but it could still get above it’s max safe speed. Eventually attacking ships might have to break off orbits to avoid structure strain If not webbed, the target could web it’s pursuer and maybe escape scram range and warp off. The target could escape larger attackers that can’t match it’s acceleration curve. Smaller, faster attackers would still be able to keep up, though.
Exceeding the max safe speed would assist with getting into the fray from a distance. If you warp in too far out, you can burn it in a straight line to the battle with no strain on structure. Once there, drop back to normal speed.
You’ll have some tactical options when orbiting. You can play speed and orbit distance to keep the strain gauge just below the point of damage. This is analogous to overloading a module – you have to manage the module’s heat. Here you overload the speed, and manage the structure strain.
Making speed in Eve more consistent with space physics by eliminating the maximum speed limitation while adding realistic consequences to exploiting the option to go real fast would add interesting tactical options for ship navigation.
Here’s the list of Blog Banter participants (at the time of this post):
- Diary of a Space Jockey, Blog Banter: BE GONE!
- EVE Newb, (EVE) Remove You
- Miner With Fangs, Blog Banter – It’s the Scotch
- The Eden Explorer, Blog Banter: The Map! The Map!
- The Wandering Druid of Tranquility, “Beacons, beacons, beacons, beacons, beacons, mushroom, MUSHROOM!!!”
- Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah, Kill the Rats
- Mercspector @ EVE, Scotty
- EVE’s Weekend Warrior, EVE Blog Banter #9
- Miner with Fangs, Blog Banter – It’s the Scotch
- A Merry Life and a Short One, Eve Blog Banter #9: Why Won’t You Die?
- Into the unknown with gun and camera, Blog Banter – The Hokey Cokey
- The Flightless Geek, EVE Blog Banter #9: Remove a Game Mechanic
- Sweet Little Bad Girl, Blog Banter 9: Who is Nibbling at My House?
- One Man and His Spaceship, Blog Banter 9: What could you do without?
- Life in Low Sec, EVE Blog Banter #9: Stop Tarnishing My Halo
- Cle Demaari: Citizen, Blog Banter #9: Training for all my men!
- A Mule in EVE, He who giveth, also taketh away?
- Dense Veldspar, Blog Banter 9
- Morphisat’s Blog, Blog Banter #9 – Randomness Be Gone !
- Facepalm’s Blog, EVE Blog Banter #9: What a new pilot could do without
- Memoires of New Eden, You’re Fired
- Kyle Langdon’s Journeys in EVE, EVE Blog Banter #9 Titans? What’s a Titan?
- Achernar, The gates! The gates are down!
- Speed Fairy, EVE Blog Banter #9: Down with Downtime!
- I am Keith Neilson, EVE Blog Banter #9-F**K Da Police
- Ripe Lacunae, The UI… Where do I begin… (Eve Blog Banter #9)
- Clown Punchers, EvE Blogs: What game mechanic would you get rid of?
- Estel Arador Corp Services, You’ve got mail
- Epic Slant, Let Mom and Pop Play: EVE Blog Banter #9
- Deaf Plasma’s EVE Musings, Blog Banter #9 – Removal of Anchoring Delay of POS modules
- Podded Once Again, Blog Banter #9 – Do we really need to go AFK?
- Postcards from EVE, 2009.07.02.00.29.06
- More articles as they are posted!
July 2nd, 2009 at 15:52
Heh, I just had a mental picture – I was wondering what it would look like if you started at one end of a system, accelerated all the way to the other side, and then pounded the invisible wall at the other edge of the solar system at some ridiculously high speed.
More seriously though, I believe this mechanic is present in the Starfleet Command games, and added an interesting component to the battles.
July 2nd, 2009 at 17:51
@Harbinger: I wonder how long it would take. You’d not get to warp speed, and I expect that it would take days to do it, or maybe only hours.
Is there a fixed edge to the solar systems? I know the grid can grow as you move, so perhaps the grid just goes with you indefinitely?
It’s good to learn such a mechanic is working in another game – I was nervous about the post in case there was some glaring hole it the logic that I was missing.
July 2nd, 2009 at 20:12
Interesting idea, but maybe the strain should also depend from the acceleration speed rather than from the actual speed? That is, a ship trying to get out of range of hostiles in a short timeframe would suffer heavy structural damage (I like the idea on direct damage to structure, as it opens options for tactics and fittings), while any ship could end up going tremendously fast without damage, just by accelerating slowly? It might make chases more tactical. I would disagree with the web change you are suggesting though as I feel it would effectively nerf the module.
July 2nd, 2009 at 21:57
@Achernar: Your web point is good – it shows one nerf that I’d missed – if you are being orbited by a small fast ship, that ship won’t have to worry about your web range, because your webifier won’t slow it down, only block it’s acceleration.
Actually, there’s another problem with my proposal – if you can’t accelerate when webbed, the gate campers have an “I win” button. Your ship can be held at a standstill if webbed by campers when you decloak, post jump. A ship still needs to be able to get moving from a stopped state, especially after jumping.
So I think the solution is that the webifier will interfere with a target’s systems such that the max safe speed is reduced, as well as reducing acceleration beyond that max speed. So if you web an orbiting ship and it’s speed is now over the max safe speed forced by the webifier, then the ship’s structure will take on more strain than it can handle and if it doesn’t slow down, or stop/change the orbit, structure damage will follow. If you’re in a straight-line chase, then you have reduced ability to accelerate beyond the web-reduced maximum, but you still can.
So the webifier will reduce a target’s maximum safe speed, and inhibit acceleration beyond that max speed. For a ship with an AB, the webifier reduces the max safe speed and inhibits acceleration down from the enhanced levels given by the AB. For a ship with a MWD, its the same: the webifier reduces the max safe speed and inhibits acceleration down from the enhanced levels given by the MWD. If you scram the ship too, you knock out the MWD, and the webifier acts on the target’s base max safe speed and acceleration attributes, which is in line with a scram+web vs MWD target today.
That better? I think so.
About the acceleration strain idea: I see the point, but you’d need to be able to set the acceleration. Presently, the UI lets you set the speed you want to be at, and the ship accelerates/decelerates to that speed (I assume the ship calculates the optimum acceleration). So that would be a radical shift in the UI controls – from 1 target speed setting, to effectively a gas-pedal/brake-pedal control where how hard you press on the control is a factor. Might not be ideal for a mouse-driven interface.
July 2nd, 2009 at 23:05
Is there a fixed edge to the solar systems? I know the grid can grow as you move, so perhaps the grid just goes with you indefinitely?
Some people tried to cross into Jovian space by flying their spaceships for a very long time. In the end the made it there .. according to the map. (the map has many problems, this being one of them)
However each solarsystems in EVE is run by a single node on Tranquility. It will only transfer you from one node to another when you go through a stargate.
So yes, you can fly in any direction for a long long time, you will however not end up anywhere.
July 4th, 2009 at 20:27
One thing…
Start way off target point in, say, a Stealth Bomber and accelerate in. Would dropping the cloak cause completely massive strain such that you would pop, and would you be able to drop a bomb or torps at that speed…?
Could make for some very interesting tactics if it did work
Just a thought.
July 4th, 2009 at 22:46
@H: For ships that can warp cloaked, like Cov Ops, Force Recon, and SB, I don’t see any difference in navigation. So you could get up to a very fast speed (over the safe speed)coming straight at your target, drop your cloak and fire bombs or torps. If you change direction too hard at too fast a speed, you could pop a ship, but that would happen cloaked or not.
Now your regular ships that fit a cloak are speed restricted, currently. I’d change that such that their cloak would fail once they crossed a certain speed (well below their normal safe speed), not like today when you just can go any faster until you drop the cloak.
This could apply to the SBs too, and other cloakers, if allowing them to charge around at very high speeds while cloaked is too much of an advantage. If they exceed their normal safe speed (or some other set limit), their cloak would fail. Or if they exceed some amount of structure strain. There are several options.
July 5th, 2009 at 20:42
You realize that EVE is based on fluid dynamics not zero gravity right?…way back when it was created that was the model they chose. Therefore it stands to reasons that the EVE version of space is not the Newtonian version
July 6th, 2009 at 11:08
Great post!
July 6th, 2009 at 15:35
@Manasi: I didn’t know they specifically used fluid dynamics, but I knew they weren’t using normal 0G physics. (But the Trajectory Analysis skill has the description “Advanced understanding of zero-G physics” – doh!) However, with respect to the blog banter, I find the speed limitations in the game bothersome, so I proposed a way to do without them. I realize that CCP is highly unlikely to make that kind of a change, but I enjoyed the mental exercise of trying to propose a way to do it with a fairly simple change to the UI, a consequence for too much speed, and without breaking other game mechanics.
@Flash: Thanks man!