Ships & Modules

The point is that when one ship can alpha another all by itself, logistics becomes useless. Would you feel any better about a single SB alpha'ing a BS instantly if the SB torp cycle rate was increased to 10 minutes? I wouldn't. The point is that when a single ship can make another instantly disappear with no room for a counter, strategy reduces down to merely "get the biggest stick and push F1".

PS: Your alliance could have 100 carriers, they will still all die to 10 titans (if they are bubble by a single interdictor every couple of minutes) because NO amount of RR can resurrect a carrier which was alpha'd by a single titan. My previous 1:1 example merely showed that if the numbers are equal, there is zero chance to fight back, hold for reinforcements, or apply any kind of counter strategy. But if 10 BS come in on 10 cruisers, there is very much a fighting chance and room for all kinds of strategy.

Read as 'you can fit to tank DD with shreds of armor remaining, or you can forget about your awesome personal active-tank to do that'. And oh, you're ****** up anyway if the tanked DD type is not matching the one you've been actually shot by.

'You have that loooong 10 seconds to get the heck out in a capital, what's your problem if you're aligned, not in bubbals, or have enough cap, or are in dockrange without aggro, or about 200 m away from a pos shield'.

Say that to siege/triage. If triage is not so... 'so' (you don't really need it to be awesome if you have pantheon blob), but the siege is obligatory for the dreadnought to be awesome.

Oh, and about the DD itself. The only ad hoc penalty for the ability to one-shot a capital is 30 seconds of staying in place. After that the titan can (technically) warp out to the pos and wait here for the 10 minute timer to jump out. Seriously so ridiculous penalty when the dreads are pinned down for 5 minutes to have their x9 DPS boost?

Red FC orders half the Titans to fire their DD. Hey look, the targets are deep in structure. FC orders the other half to finish them off.

So, are we going to continue promoting cap fleets with over 90% titans? If you want to see less titans and more T1 caps and more strategy, then you have to deal with the reason that people strongly prefer the titan over a T1 cap. The reason is that they do not want to find their pod sitting in the middle of a bubble because some Titan DD'd their carrier. Who cares about what the Titan was supposedly designed for when it forces everyone into only Titans?

Where is that anti-Titan DDD ship? The double doomsday device. Hey, while you are inventing I-win buttons, create an anti-BC ship with an IW (I win) weapon which kills the best fitted BC's with one shot.

Actually, since cost obviously justifies everything according to the Titan proponents, I want a 100 bil ISK weapon which alpha's any ship on the grid with a rate of fire of 1 million shots per second and 1 trillion damage to all damage types. Now, is that the kind of game we want, or will the lobbyists for the Titan/super I-win button reconsider the effects of the super "I win Eve" button and agree that Eve should favor strategy, diversity, and more than just the simplistic press F1, and ha ha, I win. I mean, how much money do I need to pay to have a ship which will pwn you all and ruin the game because you don't have a chance of winning? Buy Plex with money. Sell plex for ISK. Buy Titan and DD everything. Cherish the tears. Watch players only buy Titans, stay in HS/whs, or drop their subs. Scratch your head, justify the DD, and encourage everyone that Titan fixes are anywhere and anything except for the DD. Or CCP could fix the DD to be anti-structure only, and Eve can enjoy the diversity and large numbers of carriers and dreads in low and null sec.

Also, I highly recommend allowing eWar and RR to be applied to all ships, even when in siege/triage. Will that make carriers dominate the battlefield? Only until someone gets smart and says, lets ECM jam their carriers. Or comes up with other strategies. ECM is another mechanic which could use more love and smart balancing. Weakening a mechanic, like ECM, so that it is not OP, usually just relegates it to insignificance unless quality thought is put into making the mechanics work well with the Eve universe.

They would still counter caps without DDs, just saying.

What we're looking at right now as a complete package is:
- Sig res nerf to ~2000 (mathematically identical to the tracking nerf, but more intuitive)
- Max locked targets to 3
- Scaled damage reduction below ~2000-~2500 target sig radius, using the modified rather than unmodified sig. Not 100% sure if we're going to end up on linear or area-based scaling just yet.








Yeah, that's an improvement. It's still kinda hacky but it wouldn't make me actually cry.



I like this approach, yeah.

The 1400mm is 1.4meters (typo?).

It really doesn't make sense that the "apparent" size of the weapon's target at range makes it harder to hit.

A projectile isn't a conal projection. It's a straight line.

If I shoot a straight line at a wall 500 feet wide and 500 feet tall and 1000 feet away, the projectile is still the same size, the wall is still the same size.


The only thing that changes isn't your chance to hit the target, but how likely it is for the shooter to miss the target. This sounds like the same thing, but it's really not.


Tracking speed and signature resolution are essentially TECHNICAL restrictions of the weapons. Tracking speed represents how the guns can not move fast enough to keep up with a fast moving target (this accounts for range, things that are closer are harder to hit, things farther easier). Signature resolution represents how accurate the weapon can be due to simply being able to hit within a certain region technically.


If I take a rifle and a dime. I put the dime at 2 feet from me, and I point the gun at the dime point blank with the barrel pointing at the dime. I can STILL MISS the dime. It's just highly unlikely because it's easier for me (the rifleman) to point the barrel there and shoot it, but even an inch off will miss the dime.

If I put the same dime at 100 feet, and go to shoot it, it depends on me as the rifleman to shoot it. I'm still as likely to "hit it" in a technical fashion because the bullet and the dime are the same. It just depends on the human being to not miss it.

When you get to the size of a huge wall. Sure, it's going to be pretty hard to miss the wall. But technically, the weapon can still miss if I point it the wrong way. It depends on me as the rifleman to shoot at it correctly, not a technical change in the rifle.

The equation does not take into a pilots "skill" specifically. You are always assumed to have perfect "aim", but the weapons are the main restriction in acquiring a solid shot. Basically, in real life you can always roll a "critical failure", which is something that can not happen in EVE. You either hit, you miss, or you critically hit.

You can argue this is because EVE weapons are so "advanced" that the equations to hit are perfect based on the ability for the weapons to aim "perfectly" within technical limitations. IF that 1400mm cannon had enough tracking on the "gyrostabilizers" it would hit that Rifter. Guaranteed. We know this to be true. And that relies on no "miss" factor.


In other words, I don't think this should apply as you get farther, I think this should apply to capital ships as small ships get closer. As smaller ships get closer it should be really impossible for small ships to "miss" them even if they're out speeding their tracking. They should always do really good shots to the capital ships because they're HUGE ships!


To deal with the issue with range sniping, I think signature resolution should just play a bigger role in determining misses (without identifying with how close a ships perceptual targetable surface area is). Signature resolution makes a difference, but not a big enough difference is what we're getting at here. It really relies heavily on tracking. But the technical limitation of "putting the needle through the hole" that sig radius represents should play a really important part of this. So I do agree with the others on the sig radius in my own way.

I'm on the fence with damage reduction to smaller targets applying to "all" ships. However, I do think that it'd be a good idea to move somewhat in that direction. Smaller ships need to keep getting some love. More than anything, it's the neut-web-scram trio of death that kills smaller ships as a whole. I think more than anything neuts and webs need to have some way of being balanced when applied to small ships that doesn't make them instant fodder in tight engagements.

That's another topic though >.>

1. Then shoot or jam the Huginn.

2. Shoot the tackle and warp out instead of MWDing. I wouldn't really mind excluding the MWD sig bloom from the sig based damage reduction though.

However, please give dreads a role bonus reducing their gun sig back to 1000 though. They don't need a nerf, they're under-utilized enough as it is.

Er ... if you're MWDing at no transversal while covered in target painters you kinda deserve to get blapped by XL guns. I'd have thought that much would be a little obvious.

But you're right about one thing, the proposed changes are not enough.

If he uses a cutoff of closer to 2500, you'd still see a significant damage reduction for titans against the largest sig radius subcap in the game painted by an optimal subcap support fleet.

Then if the target either uses lower sig ships, skirmish bonuses, or just shoots the huginns it gets better for them from there.

I assume that apart from the locked targets reduction, all of these will still apply to dreadnaughts as well? Earlier in this process, you seemed very content to leave dreadnaughts as they were; I'm still somewhat surprised at the reversal. I am concerned that while the original intent of this thread was ostensibly titan balance changes, you're proposing a nerf to dreads that you haven't really justified at all to the community.

I mean, In your opinion, are dreadnaughts too strong in an anti-subcap role, despite the penalties and limitations of siege mode? Do they deserve to have the exact same reductions applied to them as is being applied to a ship that doesn't have those penalties or limitations? How are these changes going to affect wormhole space, in various environments?

I have no real objection to these changes for titans, really. What I would propose is giving them some role penalty that modifies their gun values along the lines of what you're proposing, and leave dread performance roughly as it is for the time being. If dread balance becomes a concern, or something you'd like to revisit, it would be easy enough to do so; and it could be done in its own thread with its own justifications, instead of slipped in like this on the side (if i wasn't paying close attention to the devfeeds, it'd be entirely possible to miss it at this stage).

-Amp