Welcome to the eighth installment of the EVE Blog Banter , 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!
This month’s topic comes to us from Ga’len at The Wandering Druid of Tranquility. He asks: “What new game mechanic or mechanics would you like to see created and brought into the EVE Online universe and how would this be incorporated into the current game universe? Be specific and give details, this is not meant to be a ‘nerf this, boost my game play’ post like we see on the EVE forums.”
The best part of Eve for me is combat, preferably single combat between two ships. Even in a small ship such as my favoured Rifter there is quite a bit of scope for tactics within a fight. Do I use my speed to keep range and chip away at his defenses from distance where he can’t hurt me? Do I get in close and try and evade the tracking of his guns? Is he fast? Do I need to shut down his microwarp drive? Do I need to pick off his drones first? There is quite a lot of variation here and often a whole bunch of decisions have to be made quickly and possibly reassessed as the situation changes.
As a pirate I want slightly more than this. While blowing ships up is immensely satisfying so many of the modules are lost and the hull itself is destroyed. This seriously reduces the potential for profit and keeps me flying cheap, economical ships that I can insure to help reduce my losses. What would be brilliant would be if I could incapacitate a ship and then board the vessel. Being able to target a ships specific systems would allow for much more varied combat and more advanced piracy.
T3 ships have been split into five modules that you add to the base hull. In my vision strategic gunnery would allow me to target these specific systems. Disabling them would allow me to modify a ship’s behaviour by reducing its performance in the area affected. Taking out a ship’s propulsion would massively reduce its speed. Hitting its guns would reduce damage output. Taking out its defences would weaken the shield and armour. Hitting the electronic systems would make it harder for ships to acquire locks and defend themselves against electronic warfare. Damaging the ship’s engineering systems would reduce its capacitor. Of course, if you just want to make things explode you can shoot the hull as normal.
List of Participants
- CrazyKinux’s Musing, EVE Blog Banter #8: Care for a Little Game of SecWars?
- The Wandering Druid of Tranquility, Wow, That New Thing is so Shiny!!!
- I am Keith Nielson, EVE Blog Banter #8 – Return of the Top Gun
- Once More from the Beginning, 8th EVE Blog Banter May 2009 Edition
- A merry life and a short one, EVE Blog Banter #8: In the Year of Our Awesome
- Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah, Planets
- Helicity Boson, Bantering the Blog
- Achernar, Unique Adventures
- Ecliptic Rift, OOC: EVE Blog Banter 8: Standings and Secondary Factions
- The New Edener, EVE Blog Banter #8
- Journey to New Eden, Eve Blog Banter #8: What New Mechanic Should be Added to EVE?
- Life, The Universe and Everything, Blog Banter 8: Mentorship
- EVE Guru, EBB 8: Yarr! Prepare to be Boarded!
- The Ralpha Dogs, Greed Is Good, Greed Works
- Rifter Drifter, Blog Banter 8: Strategic Gunnery
- A Mule in EVE, Expanding EVE
- Letrange’s EvE Blog, 8th Blog Banter
- Roc’s Ramblings, Blog Banter #8
- The Nude Nerd, Blog Banter #8
- Scop’s Log, Blog Banter #8: “We’re Caught in a Tractor Beam! It’s Pulling us in!”
- Speed Fairy, EVE Blog Banter #8: Charisma Tanking
- Industrialist with Teeth, EVE Blog Banter #8: It’s Like Tetris for OCD People
- Diary of a Pod Pilot, EVE blog banter #8: Killing in the Name of
- Talk Unfraid, Physical Communications
- More to come…
Related posts:
May 26th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Hear hear, good idea! More targeting options, especially on larger ships!
May 26th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
I like the "flavor" of this possibility, it fits in with various science-fiction tropes we're all familiar with, e.g., "Mr. Worf, target that vessel, weapons and engines only." The only thing is, it might be difficult to specify this in the middle of a massive firefight.
May 27th, 2009 at 12:24 am
Hehe, the though of taking out a ships warpdrive, weapons and communications systems and then ransoming would be very easy to do, then again they got no warpdrive so how do they get away anyway?
Maybe temporary changes, like until the ship got the issue under control again or something…
May 27th, 2009 at 6:11 am
Oddly enough, I was just going to suggest something similar after I'd had a re-think on the blog banter idea originally. I keep on getting flashes back from old space combat sims (cant remember exactly which one it was, though for some reason 'warp to light speed' in SWG comes to mind, or maybe TIE fighter) where you could target specific areas of the ship, the usual tactic was to disable their engines and then just leave opponents drifting in space.
May 27th, 2009 at 9:08 am
I used to love TIE fighter. I'd forgotten about that option before. It was definitely a good one.
June 7th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
That's a great idea, that can't really be argued against! I mean with T3 ships the way they were designed, this sort of focused damage adds a lot more depth to the game; a lot more shades of grey!