Blog Banter #8 - Return of the Top Gun

Its that time of the month again, time to get my banter on and join my fellow EVE bloggers in a discussion about our favourite game…

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 otherEVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month’s topic comes to us from me, 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.”

Ooh, this one is a doozy, I’m at a loss as to where to start. There are so many things I’d like to see in EVE (for example; this and this, and maybe even this) but I’ve written extensively about these things already. So I’m going to pick something which I’ve been holding in my head for a while, that being: Player Piloted Fighters.

I don’t mean piloted in the traditional EVE style of point-and-click either, but properly piloted, first (or third) person perspective, joystick controlled, twitch gameplay, honest-to-god Return of the Jedi, Top Gun, fighters.

Lets look at the current situation with fighters:

According to game lore, fighters already have a human pilot.
Fighters can be assigned to the control of fleet members (aka the controller) by the pilot of the home carrier (aka the source).
Fighters can follow their controller, their source, or their target, in warp, but not through jump gates or wormholes.

In all other particulars fighters are pretty much identical to drones.

Currently, with a fully drone equipped Nyx (Gallente Mothership) and the requisite skills, a pilot can deploy a maximum of 25 fighters, limited by their bandwidth of 625Mbit/sec. and their drone bay can hold 50 fighters. (Details from Evelopedia)

Here is where we get into the realms of the hypothetical.

Here’s what I propose:

A carrier could be equipped with a specialised clone bay which would allow players to jump into a fighter pilot clone when needed. This would take up the same type of slot as the current clone bay and both could not be fitted at once. Fighter Pilot clones would not be pre-installed and therefore would not have any implants plugged into them, the risk of piloting a fighter in battle would make it a bit daft to do it with implants fitted anyway.
Fighters piloted by players would not take up bandwidth, but will instead be limited by a new Fighter Command skill, which would allow the carrier to deploy 5 player piloted fighters per level and the use of the specialised fighter pilot clone bay.
The destruction of a fighter and its pilot (the fighter would be the pod for all intents and purposes) would result in the pilot being revived in another fighter pilot clone on the home carrier, as long as there are fighters in the bay to allow this. Otherwise the standard clone would be activated as normal.
Player controlled fighters could be assigned to other pilots in a fleet as normal but would rely on fleet or squad warps, or the ‘warp to…’ option in the right-click menu to follow them in warp.

This would allow the above example of the Nyx to feild all 50 of the fighters it can carry, with half piloted by players and half controlled normally, as long as the pilot has the skills to do so of course.

A few provisos:

Normally controlled fighters and drones cannot be assigned to the control of player controlled fighters.
Player controlled fighters can only warp to or with fleet members and cannot follow targets automatically in warp.
It should be made clear that a fighter’s best chance of survival is if it stays with the fleet it is supporting, as there are no module slots on a fighter it cannot repair itself and should remain close to the ships it is defending so that it can be repaired.
Player piloted fighters would not be identified as such to non-fleet members and would be displayed as being identical to other fighters on the overview.

There are probably alot of things to balance with this proposal, especially since a mothership pilot using this facility could feasibly deploy a massive swarm of fighters if fitted to do so. The biggest balancing factor would be the fact the the player piloted fighters would be just that; player piloted, and reliant on the skill and reactions of the player piloting them for their effectiveness and survival.

A possible balancing option is instead of PPFs using no bandwidth, they use a smaller amount of bandwidth possibly affected by the fighter command skill of the pilot of the source/controlling ship. Another option is to limit the number of PPFs assignable to a fleet member by a leadership skill of that fleet member, thus requiring the PPFs to stay assigned to the source ship if there are not enough skilled pilots in the fleet to allow them into their squads.

With games like Jumpgate: Evolution and Black Prophecy on the horizon, offering first/third person reaction based gameplay in massive space battles, one way EVE could adapt to compete with these games is to introduce a similar gameplay style, albeit limited in scope to fighters. It would also allow newer players to get in on some epic fleet battles as actually piloting a fighter would not require any in-game skills (apart from possibly Infomorph Psychology for the use of the specialised jump clones).

It is a sad fact that new players are often put off by the depth and complexity of EVE which they are plunged into without an awful lot in the way of guidance, this solution would allow them to take part in the wider universe of EVE in a more casual fashion with the added instant hit of adrenaline attained from games such as TF2, Halo and Gears of War. It may even allow for a separate subscription model, allowing the player to only partake in the game as a Fighter Pilot (or AvA cannon fodder) until they get enough of a taste for the universe to upgrade to full pod-pilot status.

Currently this is just a rough idea from a guy who isn’t all that familiar with the mechanics and balance issues associated with carrier and mothership combat so feel free to point out glaring mistakes and issues with it, how else is it going to be refined into something that could actually work?

Also don’t forget to check out the other participants in this months Blog Banter: