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Super / Dread / Carrier Balancing

Author
TazeV
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2013-06-25 03:40:35 UTC
There is current a problem with the balance of caps. Carriers are dirt cheap and are extremely versatile ships (logistics, sub caps fights with sentries, repping, ratting) while dreads are really only good for shooting towers or at best dropping on other caps if you want to lose a ton of ISK. Dreads were suppose to be a good counter for supers and other caps but really when you drop enough to kill a super and the support cap fleet that shows up in minutes you at best break even on isk and likely lose out. It's just not economically viable to do on a regular basis.

The solution is very simple and could easily be introduced in the next patch. Switch mineral requirements between carriers and dreads (as suggested by Elo and agreed upon by several other Null alliance leaders). This would make dreads cost effective enough to use in their intended role as an anti-cap ship and at the same time put some risk in defending everything in null with a ball of carriers. It would actually become viable to drop 20-30 dreads on a carrier swarm that doesn't have support and actually come out on top isk wise. it would also provide a much better counter for supers as people wouldn't be as afraid to commit their dreads to dropping on titans/supers that run without viable support fleets.


Discuss...
Omnathious Deninard
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#2 - 2013-06-25 04:10:37 UTC
Discuss, post with your main and you be taken seriously

If you don't follow the rules, neither will I.

Aliventi
Rattini Tribe
Minmatar Fleet Alliance
#3 - 2013-06-25 04:12:37 UTC
Your solution is terrible. Your clear lack of capital warfare knowledge is written all over your post. Learn to fly the the ships and fly them in combat. Once you have done that and understand just how balanced Capital ships are then come back with a real idea.
TazeV
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#4 - 2013-06-25 04:32:26 UTC
Aliventi wrote:
Your solution is terrible. Your clear lack of capital warfare knowledge is written all over your post. Learn to fly the the ships and fly them in combat. Once you have done that and understand just how balanced Capital ships are then come back with a real idea.



Thanks for the detailed feedback. Please elaborate on the point you disagree with. Looking at your null kill history I'm curious to hear feedback from a newer player with limited combat experience on this issue.
Aliventi
Rattini Tribe
Minmatar Fleet Alliance
#5 - 2013-06-25 05:22:59 UTC
TazeV wrote:

Thanks for the detailed feedback. Please elaborate on the point you disagree with. Looking at your null kill history I'm curious to hear feedback from a newer player with limited combat experience on this issue.

Post with your main and I would be glad to point out just how terrible this idea is.
GizzyBoy
I N E X T R E M I S
Tactical Narcotics Team
#6 - 2013-06-25 06:06:51 UTC
t2 rigs for your cap are now worth more than the bare cap hull now.

min requirements for caps are fine, whats making them expensive is the low ends being much higher in price.
add meta items for guns and faction for tank etc and the hull cost now makes up around 1/3 or less of the total price of the ship.

When it comes to damage carriers aren't primary dps ships.
a dread in siege will provide 5+ times the dps of a carrier.
Danika Princip
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#7 - 2013-06-25 12:49:54 UTC
Don't you only lose a couple of hundred mil on an insured dread?
Hopelesshobo
Hoboland
#8 - 2013-06-25 14:04:38 UTC
Danika Princip wrote:
Don't you only lose a couple of hundred mil on an insured dread?


He probably doesn't take his dread out more then once every 3 months, and thats just to undock it for the noobs in his corp to say how awesome he is.

Lowering the average to make you look better since 2012.

Alvatore DiMarco
Capricious Endeavours Ltd
#9 - 2013-06-25 14:09:36 UTC
Hopelesshobo wrote:
Danika Princip wrote:
Don't you only lose a couple of hundred mil on an insured dread?


He probably doesn't take his dread out more then once every 3 months, and thats just to undock it for the noobs in his corp to say how awesome he is.


Assuming he has a Naglfar, he could very plausibly say "Hey all you noobs, come undock and I'll show you my Big Brown Tower of Powerâ„¢". Would such a scenario be totally devoid of awesomeness?
Grandma Squirel
#10 - 2013-06-25 15:27:09 UTC
Even with Plat insurance, your still talking about 1.1b loss for a dread, after insurance premium and price markup over minerals. Then throw in cap mods, rigs and fittings, your talking ballpark 1.7b loss for a dread. Not to mention 200m+ a month to keep it insured. Carriers are fine, but dreads should probably have their cost lowered at least a bit.
De'Veldrin
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#11 - 2013-06-25 16:57:51 UTC
Grandma Squirel wrote:
Even with Plat insurance, your still talking about 1.1b loss for a dread, after insurance premium and price markup over minerals. Then throw in cap mods, rigs and fittings, your talking ballpark 1.7b loss for a dread. Not to mention 200m+ a month to keep it insured. Carriers are fine, but dreads should probably have their cost lowered at least a bit.


Frankly, every capital in the game should have its cost raised by about 50%, and I say that as a capital pilot. Capital proliferation is ridiculous - when corporations drop caps (or supers FFS) to kill a lone battlecruiser, it says a lot about the state of the game.

By the same token, they need to be balanced in relation each other, something which hasn't happened (to my knowledge) since they were introduced. They have been through several OMGWTF nerf passes, and the results are pretty plain, especially with Titans.

De'Veldrin's Corollary (to Malcanis' Law): Any idea that seeks to limit the ability of a large nullsec bloc to do something in the name of allowing more small groups into sov null will inevitably make it that much harder for small groups to enter sov null.

Astroniomix
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#12 - 2013-06-25 17:06:17 UTC
De'Veldrin wrote:
Grandma Squirel wrote:
Even with Plat insurance, your still talking about 1.1b loss for a dread, after insurance premium and price markup over minerals. Then throw in cap mods, rigs and fittings, your talking ballpark 1.7b loss for a dread. Not to mention 200m+ a month to keep it insured. Carriers are fine, but dreads should probably have their cost lowered at least a bit.


Frankly, every capital in the game should have its cost raised by about 50%, and I say that as a capital pilot. Capital proliferation is ridiculous - when corporations drop caps (or supers FFS) to kill a lone battlecruiser, it says a lot about the state of the game.

By the same token, they need to be balanced in relation each other, something which hasn't happened (to my knowledge) since they were introduced. They have been through several OMGWTF nerf passes, and the results are pretty plain, especially with Titans.

Your logic is flawed. Cost cannot be used to prevent people from dropping them on lone battlecruisers. (see: titans)
Nariya Kentaya
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#13 - 2013-06-25 19:43:14 UTC  |  Edited by: Nariya Kentaya
TazeV wrote:
There is current a problem with the balance of caps. Carriers are dirt cheap and are extremely versatile ships (logistics, sub caps fights with sentries, repping, ratting) while dreads are really only good for shooting towers or at best dropping on other caps if you want to lose a ton of ISK. Dreads were suppose to be a good counter for supers and other caps but really when you drop enough to kill a super and the support cap fleet that shows up in minutes you at best break even on isk and likely lose out. It's just not economically viable to do on a regular basis.

The solution is very simple and could easily be introduced in the next patch. Switch mineral requirements between carriers and dreads (as suggested by Elo and agreed upon by several other Null alliance leaders). This would make dreads cost effective enough to use in their intended role as an anti-cap ship and at the same time put some risk in defending everything in null with a ball of carriers. It would actually become viable to drop 20-30 dreads on a carrier swarm that doesn't have support and actually come out on top isk wise. it would also provide a much better counter for supers as people wouldn't be as afraid to commit their dreads to dropping on titans/supers that run without viable support fleets.


Discuss...

What was that? Dropping legions of capitals to fight capitals isnt economically efficient?

No, who'd imagine dropping giant spacedicks to fight an even larger space-wang would wind up not working out too well?

Hint, you dont drop a hundred dreads or so to be "economically efficient", you drop 10 dreads because you really want that capital to die in a fire, you weigh your risks.

In another way, if you enough control of the field to actually WIN the fight, you wouldnt ahve had to drop the dreads in the first place, battleships would have been fine, the fact that a subcapital fleet was on its way sizable enough to incur severe losses on your capital fleet that you RISKED dropping, is justified.

You make a tactical error to ensure a kill, by commiting more to the field than the target was worth, of course youll come out in the negative, you would have been better off disengaging, not bringing out your capitals, and let the opponents capitals live, that way they may not have incurred huge losses, but at least you didnt either.

Im tired so i probably didnt explain **** well, but it basically comes down to, you shouldnt commit caps to a fight unless you know you have otherwise secured the field and at least a justifiable "victory", commiting a large capital fleet without reinforcements to a figth where you are not sure of the enemiy's reinforcements, is a tactical error that should be punished.

[Titans were never meant to be "cost effective", its a huge ****. - CCP Oveur, 2006]
TazeV
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#14 - 2013-06-26 03:19:56 UTC
And that is exactly the current problem. If your subcap fleet start to get owned you can drop a ball of 40+ carriers and you can control the field without any addition subcap reinforcements. The same can't be true for dreads which are basically useless for any sub-cap engagement. They can be setup for blap fit to fight BS but that is very easy to counter with non-battleship subcaps. Carrier blobs have no effective sub-cap counter which is the problem. Assign all the sentries to a single player and they can alpha most sub ships off the field while cap reps make their tanks unbreakable. Make dreads disposable cap killers like they should be by making them more cost effective and it would go a long way to help reduce capital domination in the game.
TazeV
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#15 - 2013-06-26 03:23:04 UTC
Danika Princip wrote:
Don't you only lose a couple of hundred mil on an insured dread?



As noted above, a fit dread loss costs around 1.5B out of pocket after insurance.

2.5B for the hull
~500M mods
600M plat insurance

3.6B Cost for a standard Dread

2.1B current platinun insurance payout
Kirkwood Ross
Golden Profession
#16 - 2013-06-26 03:39:48 UTC
Dreads shouldn't need to siege to deal their damage.
Supercaps should need to siege to deal their damage.

=D

lololol
Alvatore DiMarco
Capricious Endeavours Ltd
#17 - 2013-06-26 03:51:04 UTC
De'Veldrin wrote:

Frankly, every capital in the game should have its cost raised by about 50%, and I say that as a capital pilot. Capital proliferation is ridiculous - when corporations drop caps (or supers FFS) to kill a lone battlecruiser, it says a lot about the state of the game.

By the same token, they need to be balanced in relation each other, something which hasn't happened (to my knowledge) since they were introduced. They have been through several OMGWTF nerf passes, and the results are pretty plain, especially with Titans.


I have this sort of feeling that the construction requirements for motherships and titans haven't been reviewed ever. I might be mistaken, of course. The economy now compared to the economy back then are two entirely different things, with minerals (and thus cap parts) being much easier to acquire. I'd be willing to bet that CCP only ever figured there would be five or six titans in the whole game at any given time; that would explain why they had the kinds of powers they did in the beginning. I suspect motherships were intended to be the flagship/centerpiece of the fleet instead, although probably still being reserved only for particularly wealthy corporations/alliances. The fact that individuals can now have their own personal motherships probably says something about super-capitals being too easy to acquire in the modern economy. It's why Motherships have been nerfed to the point of being bigger carriers - and renamed as such - as well as Titans being scaled back to the point where people start comparing them to being bigger dreads. That's a terrible place for these sorts of ships to end up, but a necessary one given how damned many there are.

I'd go further and say that when a lone subcap will be hotdropped as a first response instead of the hotdrop coming after both sides have called reinforcements, the population of carriers and dreads is a bit high as well.

Equalize the cost between dreads and carriers a bit, with the mineral cost for both being higher. For motherships I'm not sure 50% is high enough. Titans should easily cost at least 100% more to manufacture. Once the proliferation is in check and their numbers start to decline, it will be easier to consider the notion of balancing them around each other by intended role instead of balancing them around how many of them there are.

Not that I'm sure anyone at CCP knows what a Titan's or Mothership's role should be.
supernova ranger
The End of Eternity
#18 - 2013-06-26 04:39:06 UTC
I didn't see my post appear and i've refreshed/ moved around the form quite a few times, sorry if there is a double post...

I think the only sub-cap capable of taking on capitals is the balghorn... A cheaper verion of this with bonuses to capital neutering and none to sub capital (as to not replace the current balghorn) would make it possible for most sub capitals to engage the carriers if in addition carriers couldn't assist their drones to a non-capital, were not allowed to reassign their drones before a cool down and to be limited to targeting a maximum of 2/3 sub-capitals at one time... enough ands?... the sub caps would stand a chance.

Well regardless of weather you should increase their value or not is a mute point because you wouldn't be able to do it without breaking the economy... It's a huge huge, did I say huge?, isk pump action that would suddenly generate trillions in free minerals over night and in the players hands... It wouldn't be shared either going straight into major alliance that maintain and build the majority of these

Bring out ring mining and let us START to chip at their profits first before you give them more...

My overall opinion though is to let capitals fight only capitals and subs fight only subs with a huge hurdle to overcome if you want to engage ships across this gap, they are two different games now
TazeV
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#19 - 2013-06-28 03:53:13 UTC
A capital fleet should be at a distinct disadvantage against an equal size sub-cap fleet. They need to have support to be effective.
ExAstra
Echoes of Silence
#20 - 2013-06-28 04:23:01 UTC
TazeV wrote:
A capital fleet should be at a distinct disadvantage against an equal size sub-cap fleet. They need to have support to be effective.

You're telling me that 100 Battleships should beat 100 Carriers by default?

Hah.

Save the drones!

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