Friday 8 August 2014

Power Projection - The Elephant in the Living Room

I don't know why everyone keeps coming up with all these convoluted, unnecessarily complex ideas about how to "fix null" while completely ignoring the elephant in the living room.

Power Projection - A term used in military and political science to refer to the capacity of a power bloc to conduct war. IE, to intimidate other powers and implement policy by means of force, or the threat thereof, in an area distant from its own territory.

Power projection in Eve is insanely overpowered. It's completely ridiculous how massive fleets of the largest most powerful ships in the game can also travel across the entire map faster than anything else.

This leads to sov war being a game of RISK in Space with unlimited airdrop rules. All that really matters is who has the biggest teleporting blob because that blob can be anywhere you want it very quickly. More quickly than much smaller, far closer, but purely local forces can respond.

If you really want to fix null, the one thing that must be done is to nerf power projection so the big blobs can't just attack anyone, anywhere, anytime with total impunity and overwhelming numbers for easy, guaranteed wins anymore.

Jump drives on capital ships and Jump Bridges should be removed from the game.

That would make capitals the core of the home defense fleet rather than the fast reaction teleporting IWin blobs they are now. As it should be.

In reality the disadvantages of large, extremely powerful forces are that they're slow, difficult to move, maneuver, support and supply over long distances. They are by no means a quick reaction force. Jump mechanics turn reality upside down and give a massive, unsurmountable advantage to gigantic fleets of the largest ships in the game.

Leaving jump capability on Black Ops should be ok. As a plus they're actually extremely well suited to smaller fleets fighting geurrilla warfare *against* the big blocs and their giant blobs.

Edit: heh, fixed a silly typo, it's "big blobs" not "big blogs".

12 comments:

  1. "Edit: heh, fixed a silly typo, it's "big blobs" not "big blogs"."

    Well, at least you didn't subconsciously write big boo.... oh you know what i mean.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'd suggest if you're going to remove jump drives, then you'll need to let them jump through gates. Do do otherwise locks them totally in system. You'd end up neither being able to respond to a close by emergency, nor would you be able to be bluffed into committing your forces while your enemies with a fast fleet hit somewhere else.

    Would also imagine that there would suddenly be a requirement for people to have carriers/dreads in multiple stations and a clone jump timing doctrine put into place.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think they would have to open gates for capitals then. but yeah, it might be interesting to see jump clones + strategic capital location as a power projection strategy vs the overpoweredness of what we have now.

      Delete
    2. Yes of course they'd have to be able to use gates.

      I didn't realize they *can't use gates now. I assumed the pilots simply chose not to use gates because jump drives have huge advantages over gates.

      Delete
  3. I reckon significantly reduce the base jump distances capable to maybe a couple of systems, making capital projection capable of local defence or full strikes but only through significant logistical work.

    Black Ops should then have an added racial to improve projection back up to current levels. And maybe somewhere inbetween for jump freughters to keep to the null sec needs to be more self sufficient ethos.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If null is supposed to be more self sufficient then jump freighters are a problem since they make null LESS self sufficient, not more.

      Delete
    2. Yep, so as above, reduce their range. Cant get rid of them now but can prevent them from getting to jita in one hop.

      Delete
  4. Mind you I wish gates in Eve worked more like wormholes in David Weber's "Honorverse", complete with the hyper limit and all.

    http://honorverse.wikia.com/wiki/Wormhole
    http://honorverse.wikia.com/wiki/Hyper_limit

    For that matter I wish a lot of things in Eve worked more like they do in that universe.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Could you please expand on that honorverse notion. I went to the wiki, but the definitions provided weren't very descriptive.

      Delete
    2. In the honorverse there are 2 methods of travelling faster than light.

      The slow way is through hyperspace. The star's gravity well prevents entering hyperspace within a distance that varies depending on the star's mass. This is called the hyper limit. The star's planetary bodies are within the hyper limit so travel within the system is limited to sub light speeds.

      The second, much faster way is through wormholes. Wormholes are more or less static, they don't move, they function much like Eve gates, moving you nearly instantaneously across long distances.

      Then there are wormhole junctions, where 2 or more wormoles have termini in the same system. That's pretty much like Eve gates, there might be some exceptions but for the most part every system has at least 2 gates.

      The key points are:

      1. Faster than light travel is not possible in system.

      2. Long distance travel times mostly depend on the time it takes to travel between wormholes, or at either end of the trip a wormhole and a station, planet or w/e.

      In a game like Eve transit times of weeks and months (hyperspace between systems) wouldn't go over well with players, nor would sublight in system transit times of hours or days between gates and planets.

      Obviously the exact same system wouldn't work but that doesn't mean something similar couldn't. I particularly like how a hyper limit affects in system travel and large scale conflict. I could say a lot more but I'd rather just leave the basic idea out there for now.

      Delete
  5. http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/long-distance-travel-changes-inbound/

    Looks like your prayer has been answered.

    ReplyDelete