Player Features and Ideas Discussion

First two caveats:

1. I have checked the frequent suggestions thread and didn't see anything of this nature there. If this is a common idea please feel free to comment as such.

2. Every idea sounds awesome when you are on 50 micrograms/hr of morphine.

Without further ado...

The main issue with carriers as I see it is not their ability to field so many drones or that they can get better dps from sentries or whatever, it is their versatility. No other ship in EVE can do what a carrier is capable of doing all at once. They can spidertank while dpsing while refitting off each other to switch to suicide triage. Compare that to a dread which can do not very much outside of siege mode and at best hope not to die before their cycle ends when siege green. Similar class type, similar roles, vastly different degrees of survivability and utility.

What I propose is to split the carriers down into two seperate types - Fleet carriers and Escort carriers. Escort carriers would be similar to the current Archon in that they can allow other ships to refit, do logisitics, tank quite well, fit a few gang links and still field a maximum of 5 unbonused drones or fighters. Fleet carriers would be more like the Thanatos, they can field the current maximum 5+5 drones/fighters, don't get the logistics bonus which is instead with a drone damage bonus and another utility bonus.

For example Thanatos would look something like this as a Fleet carrier:

10% bonus to deployed fighters damage and hitpoints per level, 5% bonus to deployed drone damage and hitpoints per level.
7.5% increase in fighter tracking per level.
7.5% increase in armour repair amount per level (to replace the triage module, Amarr and Caldari would probably get resists while Matari gets armour rep bonus).
Can deploy one additional fighter or drone per level.

Whereas an Escort carrier Archon might look like this:
50% bonus to Capital Energy and Armour transfer range per level.
10% increase in Capital Armour transfer amount per level.
4% increase in armour resistances per level.
Can fit warfare link modules.
Can fit 1 tactical logistics reconfiguration module.
Can use Capital Remote Armour Repair and Energy Transfer modules on dreadnoughts in siege mode while under the effects of a tactical logistics reconfiguration module.

I'm not 100% sure about that last bonus on the Escort carriers, could be awesome and lead to dreads and carriers working together, could overpower them completely versus small targets using blap dreads. However by splitting the carriers into two distinct roles I feel that they would work better than they currently do. The Fleet carriers could us their now bonused fighters to deal more damage whiles the Escorts support the other carriers and dreads from the back while still adding their own weight to the fight, just not as heavily as they do now. I was also playing with giving the Fleet carriers something like 50% bonus to energy neutraliser amount and range per level for example on the amarr carrier to replace the loss of links but again I don't know how overpowered that would be.

With regards to fighters currently being regarded by most military experts as 'terrible' they could do with a look at too but that probably deserves another thread. I do think that by creating fleet carriers that give them a bonus to damage and survivability would go some way towards improving the situation though. Perhaps giving them MJDs so they can get to and from targets quicker would be another option?

Anyways, additional ideas, ciriticisms and questioning of my sanity, intelligence and/or sexuality please.

By too versatile I meant they can do three different things at once then refit off each other and go do something else. No other ship in the game can do logistics, tank and do dps at the same time as effectively as carriers. With regards to the drone nerf, I don't think that will do much to the current carrier meta, you'll just have 5 dronebunnies to distinguish among 250 homogenous Archons. If anything, it makes it a bit more effective as you only lose 20% of your drones instead of all of them if he gets bopped. Might be different for small gangs though, I haven't done any of that since I got back so I can't really say.The drone change will hopefully affect the subcap meta so that we'll see less space potato and Ishtar fleets and more of the Megathron master race again.

With regards to the ewar, perhaps it would be possible to give one of the Escort types a bonus to remote ECCM to counter it?

About the bonus thing, I thought I'd start off with weakish ones and then see what else people would add to them, like I said I was gonna do an Amarr version that was basically a Curse on steroids.