Here’s a wacky idea: remove space combat abilities from BGs

This is an extension of an OOC chat we had a few nights ago. I’d like to throw some ideas out there and see how people feel about it.

Problem:
Space combat is difficult to learn for a number of reasons. Clans don’t trust ‘inexperienced’ people with their entire fleets, and there is no practical reason for taking out a single capital ship (unless you’re a baller like me).

Solution:
Remove combat capabilities from battlegroup. Ships will still be able to be used for patrol/scouting and the like, but capital ships will have to be manned in order to engage in combat.

I like this idea because it would give a reason for there to be more pilots in the game, and in the clans, instead of one guy running the entire show and the majority of the rest doing cargo.

I say go for it. I don’t really care too much. One ship or four, it’s going to play out pretty well the same. It’ll just make clan fleets fall apart slower, which is a good thing.

Battlegroup will still provide defense?

Also, a concern: When battlegroup is gone, frigates will become way more popular than regular capships. In a 1v1, a frigate would probably beat an ISD.

It’s so crazy it just… might… work. o_o

REMOVE ALL THE THINGS! SUPPORT ALL THE WALLDO!

I’m in total agreement. Won’t make a huge difference and encourages RP between clan mates.

I fear that just removing combat abilities from Battlegroup will not remove the problem, players will still just use 1 ship and use 3 other caps as ‘fodder’ then to take the fire while they fire safely from 1 single vessel, not to mention the use of squadrons. No, just removing combat abilities won’t work.
What it realy needs, I think, is more like the following:

Batllegroup will still work as now, except:
-A ship in the battlegroup will only be ‘part’ of it during combat when someone is aboard it. When the ship in question has 0 people aboard, and is placed as ‘outer’ for example, it will NOT protect midguard ships from harm(If 1 person is aboard who is afk/LD should also count as 0 people I think) This will effectively force them to be manned in combat.
Add Waldo’s idea of not being able to make other caps fire through battlegroup commands will also enforce the players to actualy fight and fire, although the flagship can still move the other caps around

Exception will ofcourse be squadrons,as they can’t be manned, but with each cap manned it also means 4 ships launching squadrons, most likely, which will turn naval battles in an epic fighter kill fest, so then you have a new problem to take care of that I don’t have a solution for now

the fodder idea wouldn’t work when my idea of not making caps count when unammed is implented aswell.
But currently you cannot ignore the ships that don’t fire when they are all set as midguard for exmaple.
1 central flagship firing weapons, 3 midguard/outer caps that are essentialy idle, the oposing fleet would have to destroy those before being able to touch the central flagship if walldos idea would be implented as it is.

Further, I think we need some rules concerning escape pods. As it is now everyone simply shoots them down anyways because they don’t want to take the risk of capturing a player that may be carrying enough grenades to blow up the ship,or that may be so strong that he/she can decimate the capturing ships crew without a problem. I would much rather see pilots being captured and imprisoned then simply blown up for a quick kill. and with each cap manned, there will likely be a lot more escape pods.

I don’t really play much any more but I do pop on to read up on how things are going. I have to agree that I’ve always been annoyed with the ability of one excellent battlegroup pilot being able to basically dominate an entire era+ without really any support at all from the rest of a clan. I like the idea, but I’d be curious as to how…err…boring? the battles would then be? Or at least how much of a dropoff (or possible rise?) in action there would be since people no longer have that shield of 10 capital ships keeping them alive no matter what.

No, I don’t agree with this at all.

The problem is with the clan leaders.. nearly every era I get admiral and I am EXTREMELY trusting and I always teach people to battlegroup, effectively. I don’t mind if people judge or critisize me on my piloting skills but the fact of the matter is the problem isn’t with how extensive battlegroups are.. it’s the amount of time that clan leaders or admirals spend with their lower subordinates.

Don’t fix what isn’t broken, we’ve all ALL said that so many times.

This would also bring abuse to where a clan would find out when less people are online in the enemies clan and take 4 trained pilots and take on a SINGLE PILOT and that clan would get utterly obliterated in a second.

Wars are often won in space, with battlegroup combat abilities it levels the playing field. If we took this out then like I said it would just be complete obliteration when clan a learns when less people in clan b are online.

I honestly have always hated the battlegroup idea. Yes, wars are won by battleships and piloting ability. The battlegroup either gave someone ultimate power or ultimate failure (If they didn’t know what they were doing or had a shitty connection, blah blah blah). Before battlegroups were introduced, you needed someone to pilot each capital ship. It sucked if someone got together a bunch of good pilots because they would just roll over the opposing fleet. But so be it. Shit got done. The in-game economy was continued and characters were changing around (There were none of these immortal pilot types that hide behind a battlegroup and live forever. And capital ships had to actually be constantly made instead of just amassing a BIGGER fleet).

I like Henk’s idea of making battlegroups work when someone is actively "piloting" a capital ship, but that was what a battlegroup was BEFORE battlegroups. Someone had to pilot the damn ship. Maybe if you could do something like a pilot command, but for capital ships so they "log in" to the battlegroup, then that would fix the problem? When you go LD or AFK, you’re no longer logged in and the battlegroup suffers. The only thing battlegroup should be for is organized movement. That’s it. Or better yet, logging in will activate protective autopilot for the battlegroups now. You want to use full combat capabilities, you need to target and fire yourself.

The only downside I see to this is lets say Admiral A takes a battlegroup into combat with Pilots B, C, and D. Well, Admiral A is good, but Pilots B and D go LD or AFK. Suddenly, Admiral A and Pilot C get blown up. Normally, Pilots B and D would have gotten the hell out of there. But now no one is piloting their ships and they’re left stranded in enemy space. That would be a potential problem (Not really any change from current battlegroups because if the main battlegroup ship dies, obviously the rest do as well. So maybe not a big problem?) that I can see.

I don’t know if I mentioned this as being off-topic in the Corvettes thread, but one of my ideas was to make satellites the only thing that would auto-hunt pirates in systems. And ships in a battlegroup with autopilot engaged would only attack if they’re physically attacked. That would take away from one half of battlegroup combat nonsense.

Oh, and NERF TURBOS!

Part of me wants to say NO.. I was just starting to get the hang of battlegroups this TL! However, I’m all for anything that improves the game and makes it alluring to more players. I can definitely see how making the battleships more accessible to inexperienced pilots might do that. I’m still not completely convinced that changing the system as it is would have that result. Operating a battlegroup effectively already requires a team effort for refueling or even having someone on board to help share responsibilities with you. I would also like to point out that having more pilots available to fly the ships individually does give you an advantage. Squadrons can only be launched from a capital ship if someone is on board, so having additional pilots brings that much more firepower to a naval conflict. I also think Sarac brought up an interesting point when he talked about one team waiting til they have more pilots awake than the other team to go naval gank squad style.

I’m trying to envision how this would actually pan out, but it’s difficult to know. I don’t think the system is entirely flawed the way it is. I believe it’s the players’ responsibility to ask for help and offer it when needed. Part of naval RP is training those under you and teaching them how to operate and work together with your clan. I’ve had plenty of help from other people teaching me in game how to operate battlegroups and they actually let me get my feet wet when they felt like I knew enough. I think the option is always there for a novice pilot to jump in one of the ships in the battlegroup and use those squadrons! That’s a very low risk way to help someone learn how naval combat works without putting them at the helm of ALL your assets. I do see how it becomes a problem when 2 entire fleets get decimated in one day, which we all saw happen pretty recently. Once one team has naval superiority it is hard for the other team to fight back. There were a couple huge blunders in this particular situation and it wasn’t exactly typical.

Its all definately a great idea Walldo. Back before I knew how to use battlegroups, ship losses on my end, personally, were far less in number as long as Direz stayed off my frigates. I think things would be far more effecient for those of us with some skill in space, and just as an example, just last timeline Zawn would have done far, far better if he only had to worry about ships with pilots in them directly, shooting at him as opposed to everyones 900000 unmanned vessels. It would certainly put things back to a more skill based system as opposed to Who so ever has the best resources and numbers gets the win.

So I just want to say this. The having to man all your ships in a battlegroup will never work, How often can we have 200 ships in one sector spamm fighting? Or did anyone forget the mud likes to implode during to large of space battles? Also Walldo I accept your "Be a baller challenge" I say Frigate CG game, squadrons on them to. Lets do some real one cappie on one cappie. SEE WHO COMES OUT ON TOP