BB76 – The FC’s new chariot

Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 76th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are please visit the Blog Banter page.

Blog Banter 76 – Tanky McTankFace

At fanfest CCP Fozzie proposed a potential new ship class. Let’s call it the fleet commander’s flagship for now. This is to try and prevent “FC Headshotting” where the opposing fleet knows who the FC is and alpha’s them off the field leaving the rest of the fleet in confusion and disarray. Fozzie mentioned a ship with a great tank but no offensive abilities. Is this a good idea? Is FC head-shotting a legitimate tactic? If CCP do go down the route of a “flagship” how might this work? Also is a new ship the answer or is there another way of giving an FC the ability not to be assassinated 12 seconds into the fight without letting players exploit it?

Banter on…

Ok,
Umm, PvP – I am just rubbish at it, but I have been in fights where each side was controlled by a Fleet Commander and I have acted in the role so I guess I can add my thoughts to the pile. Before you shower me with stones, I no longer actively participate in that aspect of the game so probably don’t understand the fine nuances of todays fast paced fleet battle. What is written here is an outsiders view.

The more I thought about the banter topic the more questions it raised. I found it hard to craft a reply because so much depended on what a Fleet Commander was and what role they played in Eve today. Has it changed much over years?

The fights I was involved in were not huge capital filled fur balls that resulted in TiDi but small well disciplined sub cap fights of a few hundred ships. My first true fleet fight was in Aeschee against Mercenary Collation about 8 years ago and before they had a Titan. Needless to say that it didn’t go so well and I don’t think headshotting our FC would have made any difference what so ever.
We were out gunned and outclassed and outplayed. Even if we had known who their FC was I doubt we could have brought enough firepower to bear to make a difference.

We learned from our mistakes, practiced and slowly got better to the point where we actually had some wins. I distinctly remember that if we knew who the opposing FC was then they would targeted immediately.

So in answer to the second question, I believe headshotting the opposing FC is a valid and legitimate tactic. I see no reason why it wouldn’t be, unless the pilot was so bad it was actually an advantage to keep them alive.
Cut off the serpents head and the body will die. To me it makes sense to take the primary tactician out of the battle as soon as possible and hope that the pilots you are fighting don’t have a good depth of command.  It is that point that makes me wonder why this is even an issue?

If CCP Fozzie thinks it warrants discussion then either the FC of today has no redundancy built into the fleet structure or there just aren’t enough good FC’s to go around. Possibly the latter but back to the first question, is it a good idea to introduce a new ship class?
I don’t think so, someone will come up with a way to neutralize it within days of its arrival or worse still the ship will go on to be misused outside of fleet fights to the extent that it requires patching or nerfing altogether.

I think the game has more problems than the ability of one side to identify, and remove, an opposing FC.
Build depth into the command structure or become anonymous. My 2 cents.

As Always,
Fly Safe
Yad