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Titan interstellar role expansion
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Tryaz
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2013-12-21 18:33:35 UTC
TLDR Titans as the cornerstones for the interstellar staging and sustaining of fleets

The lore surrounding Titans says that they are "as much a mobile space station as a ship". In my opinion this is not yet borne out by the current role of the Titan in-game and I would see that changed.

How?
  • Jump Drives become able to be aimed interstellar and activated without the need for a cynosural field, the destination will be subject to a significant degree of error.
  • Titans gain the ability to manufacture (through a new module or hull bonus)
  • Bring back Deep Space Probes and give them the ability to be deployed for long intervals (several days) to provide advanced warning and location of interstellar capitals


A snapshot of my vision
Accompanied by a brace of Supercarriers a Titan sits in the cold depths of space surrounded by dozens of anchored cans from which it is busily manufacturing. A convoy of Industrials arrives, after a long warp from a far away cyno to avoid detection, bringing much needed supplies and fuel. An order comes in from the FC to online the Clone Vat Bay, he will be needed after all! Dozens of pilots begin Clone Jumping out to the interstellar Titan and boarding their ships from the attending Supercarriers. Anticipation builds as the fleet forms up around the Titan ready to bridge straight back on to the battlefield they left only minutes ago: will the enemy be prepared for us to re-ship this fast?

Disclaimer
This idea is far from finished and from the limited understanding that I have of the technical set-up of EVE and it's systems on CCP's servers I appreciate that what I am proposing might be difficult to execute. As a non-supercap pilot I am hugely underwhelmed by the barren wasteland that Supercapital game-play outwardly appears to be and in posting this I am trying to move towards a supercap that I really can aspire to fly.

I welcome your suggestions and criticisms and will develop this idea over the coming weeks

Narrator of Chronicles of New Eden, the EVE audiobook series. Listen at www.soundcloud.com/chroniclesofneweden
Tryaz
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#2 - 2013-12-21 18:33:49 UTC  |  Edited by: Tryaz
[reserved for expansion]

The wider implications: pure blue sky thinking here, don't hit me too hard Smile
For this to make any sense in my head the ability to jump to interstellar space had to be granted to all ships with a Jump Drive. This creates some interesting opportunities for additions to existing ships:

  • Jump Freighters able to buy/sell (via an interface similar to the Market) direct from their cargo-holds. These guys could be EVE's black market, turning up just when you need them (or don't) to sell you hard to get goods at whatever price they like
  • Black Ops Battleships could take the lead role in interstellar scouting using their own jump drives and deep space probes to cover more ground.
  • more to come ...

Narrator of Chronicles of New Eden, the EVE audiobook series. Listen at www.soundcloud.com/chroniclesofneweden
Swiftstrike1
Swiftstrike Incorporated
#3 - 2013-12-21 19:13:23 UTC
It sounds very exciting, but quite honestly I don't see any advantage in deploying a "station titan" when one can simply use a regular station. The risks would outweigh the reward by so much that it would never happen.

Casual Incursion runner & Faction Warfare grunt, ex-Wormholer, ex-Nullbear.
Rendiff
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#4 - 2013-12-21 19:13:33 UTC
That sounds awesome.

Another idea... since most Titans spend their days inside a POS bubble....
What if the Titan could go into some kind of triage mode and create it's own bubble that ships in the fleet could enter? So the titan could use the new interstellar drive to jump into a system then set itself up as a sort of mobile operations base.
Alvatore DiMarco
Capricious Endeavours Ltd
#5 - 2013-12-21 19:13:42 UTC  |  Edited by: Alvatore DiMarco
Titan bridging desperately needs a nerf more than literally anything else in EVE. More fuel cost, less range and requiring the Titan to jump through the bridge as well.
Tryaz
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#6 - 2013-12-21 21:15:48 UTC
Rendiff wrote:
That sounds awesome.

Another idea... since most Titans spend their days inside a POS bubble....
What if the Titan could go into some kind of triage mode and create it's own bubble that ships in the fleet could enter? So the titan could use the new interstellar drive to jump into a system then set itself up as a sort of mobile operations base.


That sounds nice. I had hoped that if you balanced the mechanic for probing down ships that are interstellar then the titans would be pretty difficult to catch. I'm keen to make people more willing to be undocked in a titan. I envisage that you'd be more likely to catch and destroy all the cans the titan was manufacturing from and disrupt his supply chain than actually catch the titan

Narrator of Chronicles of New Eden, the EVE audiobook series. Listen at www.soundcloud.com/chroniclesofneweden
Danika Princip
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#7 - 2013-12-21 22:29:23 UTC
A titan is the size of Manhattan, isn't it? Given that we can probe down frigs that are a fraction of a percent of the size, why on earth would it be hard to probe down a titan?

And...honestly, what good would this do? Unless it manufactures stuff significantly better than an outpost, much, much faster too, it's not going to build anything that makes a difference to, well, anything.
Tryaz
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#8 - 2013-12-21 23:36:11 UTC
Danika Princip wrote:
A titan is the size of Manhattan, isn't it? Given that we can probe down frigs that are a fraction of a percent of the size, why on earth would it be hard to probe down a titan?

And...honestly, what good would this do? Unless it manufactures stuff significantly better than an outpost, much, much faster too, it's not going to build anything that makes a difference to, well, anything.


Right, it wouldn't make sense for it to be difficult once you were within range of combat probes but that's not the part I imagined being hard. You need to get your combat probing ship within a reasonable range (say 500 AU) of the Titan. To do this you'd need to establish its approximate location with Deep Space probes (which would be hard given the volume of empty space) and then get a ship with combat probes near-ish to the Titan without spooking it.

I don't know that I imagine the Titan building an enormous amount, perhaps mostly ammo, general modules and some of the smaller subcaps. I also don't think it would be reasonable to make it faster than any of the static structures like outposts. The usefulness of it I hope would come from being able to stage a fleet without the enemy knowing necessarily when or in what numbers/exact composition you're going to attack

Narrator of Chronicles of New Eden, the EVE audiobook series. Listen at www.soundcloud.com/chroniclesofneweden
Rowells
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#9 - 2013-12-21 23:45:20 UTC
I think titans really killed the opportunity to implement battle stations into eve.
Tryaz
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#10 - 2013-12-21 23:46:09 UTC
Rowells wrote:
I think titans really killed the opportunity to implement battle stations into eve.

Could you elaborate?

Narrator of Chronicles of New Eden, the EVE audiobook series. Listen at www.soundcloud.com/chroniclesofneweden
Viki Katana
Kusari Navy
Kusari State
#11 - 2013-12-21 23:56:37 UTC
I would like to see titans perform like they are described, mobile stations. It would be cool if you could dock with them and have a personal hangar, albeit limited to the 750mill m3 range. Should be enough room for a battleship and some modules. And they could have small construction and research facilities. Would make them pretty dumb in fleet fights, every body would be playing station games instead of conking out other ships. Subsystems could be added to titan hulls so that one could mod the way the titan works. More hangar space, or better industry etc.

Or people can continue to do what they have always done, build an Outpost.

Mabey they could add a mobility system for upgrading player stations...
James Amril-Kesh
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#12 - 2013-12-22 00:01:02 UTC  |  Edited by: James Amril-Kesh
Alvatore DiMarco wrote:
Titan bridging desperately needs a nerf more than literally anything else in EVE. More fuel cost, less range and requiring the Titan to jump through the bridge as well.

And you base this assertion on what?
This is a pretty terrible suggestion, even for GD.

Enjoying the rain today? ;)
Tryaz
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#13 - 2013-12-22 00:03:30 UTC
Viki Katana wrote:
I would like to see titans perform like they are described, mobile stations. It would be cool if you could dock with them and have a personal hangar, albeit limited to the 750mill m3 range. Should be enough room for a battleship and some modules. And they could have small construction and research facilities. Would make them pretty dumb in fleet fights, every body would be playing station games instead of conking out other ships. Subsystems could be added to titan hulls so that one could mod the way the titan works. More hangar space, or better industry etc.

Or people can continue to do what they have always done, build an Outpost.

Mabey they could add a mobility system for upgrading player stations...


All good ideas, I think I've some of these things have even come up at past fanfests. My problem with personal hangars of that size inside a Titan is that the structure of the Titan itself could not believably hold even a few battleships without surely massively compromising itself.

Narrator of Chronicles of New Eden, the EVE audiobook series. Listen at www.soundcloud.com/chroniclesofneweden
Danika Princip
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#14 - 2013-12-22 00:14:37 UTC
Tryaz wrote:
Danika Princip wrote:
A titan is the size of Manhattan, isn't it? Given that we can probe down frigs that are a fraction of a percent of the size, why on earth would it be hard to probe down a titan?

And...honestly, what good would this do? Unless it manufactures stuff significantly better than an outpost, much, much faster too, it's not going to build anything that makes a difference to, well, anything.


Right, it wouldn't make sense for it to be difficult once you were within range of combat probes but that's not the part I imagined being hard. You need to get your combat probing ship within a reasonable range (say 500 AU) of the Titan. To do this you'd need to establish its approximate location with Deep Space probes (which would be hard given the volume of empty space) and then get a ship with combat probes near-ish to the Titan without spooking it.

I don't know that I imagine the Titan building an enormous amount, perhaps mostly ammo, general modules and some of the smaller subcaps. I also don't think it would be reasonable to make it faster than any of the static structures like outposts. The usefulness of it I hope would come from being able to stage a fleet without the enemy knowing necessarily when or in what numbers/exact composition you're going to attack



Oh, so you want deep safes back. And buffed to a laughable degree.

And honestly, when has anyone who wasn't an idiot actually run out of ammo in a fleet? No way the titan would be able to build enough ammo to actually resupply a lfeet mind you, not if it's going to be worse than an outpost.

And why build ships there? The thing wouldn't be able to build enough modules in enough time to outfit enough ships to actually be worth bothering with over just stuffing the SMB. And, you can ALREADY stage a fleet without getting spotted. Considering that spies exist and you're bringing in a way to probe the thing down, you'd actually be better off living out of a POS or an NPC station too.
Tryaz
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#15 - 2013-12-22 01:16:26 UTC
Danika Princip wrote:
Oh, so you want deep safes back. And buffed to a laughable degree.

And honestly, when has anyone who wasn't an idiot actually run out of ammo in a fleet? No way the titan would be able to build enough ammo to actually resupply a lfeet mind you, not if it's going to be worse than an outpost.

And why build ships there? The thing wouldn't be able to build enough modules in enough time to outfit enough ships to actually be worth bothering with over just stuffing the SMB. And, you can ALREADY stage a fleet without getting spotted. Considering that spies exist and you're bringing in a way to probe the thing down, you'd actually be better off living out of a POS or an NPC station too.


You're right I see the danger of crazy deep safes again in my suggestion. So what if you have to make a jump to interstellar space before you can start warping to faraway targets and creating crazy deep safes?

As to why: if a Titan can persist in interstellar space within one bridge of your home and, not resupply an entire fleet but maybe, build enough ships and mods to sustain a 10-20 man gang indefinitely as well as allowing them to clone jump out to the titan then that's surely going to put pressure on the defenders to either stay docked up or form up their own interstellar force to respond?
In my suggestion the interstellar titan and other capitals become like sov-holding alliance level AFK cloakers.

Narrator of Chronicles of New Eden, the EVE audiobook series. Listen at www.soundcloud.com/chroniclesofneweden
hmskrecik
TransMine Group
Gluten Free Cartel
#16 - 2013-12-22 09:05:31 UTC
There's quick mental check:

Assume it's done precisely as you wanted. Now imagine someone else with deep pockets decided to ruin your day, had thrown a dozen of such Titans to every system you are in and is using them to their full extent to harass you and your friends.

Do you still think your idea is okay?
Seranova Farreach
Biomass Negative
#17 - 2013-12-22 12:11:21 UTC  |  Edited by: Seranova Farreach
if it means more titans die then im in favour of this as there are far too few going POP cause all they are used for is jump bridges mainly.

edit. the deep space probes idea is a great one.

[u]___________________ http://i.imgur.com/d9Ee2ik.jpg[/u]
Tryaz
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#18 - 2013-12-22 12:22:00 UTC
hmskrecik wrote:
There's quick mental check:

Assume it's done precisely as you wanted. Now imagine someone else with deep pockets decided to ruin your day, had thrown a dozen of such Titans to every system you are in and is using them to their full extent to harass you and your friends.

Do you still think your idea is okay?


Hmmm supercap proliferation might be a problem you're right. I don't really have an answer for that

Narrator of Chronicles of New Eden, the EVE audiobook series. Listen at www.soundcloud.com/chroniclesofneweden
Tryaz
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#19 - 2013-12-22 12:30:22 UTC
Seranova Farreach wrote:
if it means more titans die then im in favour of this as there are far too few going POP cause all they are used for is jump bridges mainly.

edit. the deep space probes idea is a great one.


Thanks for the support, my sentiments entirely. I just think it's so underwhelming that the biggest ship in game has such a narrow and dull role.

Narrator of Chronicles of New Eden, the EVE audiobook series. Listen at www.soundcloud.com/chroniclesofneweden
Clansworth
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#20 - 2013-12-22 15:39:40 UTC
I really like the idea of titans (and Rorquals) taking on more space-station type properties - the problem is what happens when the pilot logs off. Essentially, what I'm saying is that, when in 'station mode', it would make sense for the pilot to be ejected to board an actual ship, and the new mobile tower becomes an anchored structure (complete with POS fuel usage)

Now, for this to make sense, there also has to be a lot of changes to the cheaper stationary starbases. For starters, the requirement to be tied to a moon needs to go away - the new scanning mechanics make it less of a requirement.

Check out my recent thread on the future of anchorable structures, and I sort of spell out some ways to make all of this work (I don't talk about the rorqual/titan in there, but the same mechanics could apply to them when in starbase mode. https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4010436
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