Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Someone made a great post on the Eve subreddit about why the jump changes will not have quite the expected effect of stopping rapid deployment of capitals. Unlike most complaints about this which focus on hypothetical things like caches and such, this one focuses on a much more tangible factor: warp speed bonuses from modules and implants. I suggest you read that post before mine.

Based on the devblog detailing the jump changes, they were balanced like this:


I was curious whether this paragraph was written with warp speed mods and most importantly implants (Ascendancy) in mind. I'm now quite convinced that CCP has not considered warp speed mods and Ascendancy implants when balancing these changes, and here's why:

• A distance of 20LY will take at least four Jump Drive jumps under the Phoebe system to travel. This means, that under the current numbers, it would take 2 hours and 47 minutes to jump (back-to-back, which is the fastest way of traversing it).
• Some quick experimenting on Dotlan suggests that 20LY is roughly 20 gate jumps of travel, depending on the exact route of course.
• Traveling 20 jumps in a capital with a 1.5AU/s warp speed and a 30-second align time will take about 30-60 minutes or so, depending a little on how long the warps between gates happen to be. In some regions with very long warps (coughvenalcough) it may take even longer than 60 minutes.
• Thus, the breakpoint for when gate travel is faster with this logic is indeed roughly 20LY or four Jump Drive jumps, which concurs with the "gate-to-gate travel take less time than jump travel over distances of more than ~20 LY" and "no less than 3 minutes per lightyear for travel over 20 LY" portions of the paragraph above.
• A three-jump route of 15LY would take about 32 minutes to do, which is about the same time as the same distance through gates would take

These points seem to confirm that the logic CCP used for balancing the numbers was indeed capitals warping at their base 1.5AU/s warp speed.

However, capitals don't always warp at 1.5AU/s, with some mods, rigs and implants they can easily warp 3-4 times as fast as that. Many people already use warp speed rigs, mods, and implants on their titans and supercaps. In fact, the price of Ascendancy implants has mostly been on a steady climb over the past 6 months, which probably means that people are buying more of them. Occam's razor time: are people buying the most expensive & gimmickest pirate implant set in the game to use on already fast subcapitals, or are they buying it for their (super)cap toons to make their capitals move faster than subcapitals?

Now, is this really an issue? I mean, what's the big deal if a 5.5-billion (or 0.6bn if you use the mid-grade ones, which "only" make your supercap warp 4.1AU/s as opposed to the 4.9AU/s of high-grades) pirate implant set lets capitals warp fast?

Answer: yes, it is a big goddamn issue. Let's estimate at what point gate travel becomes faster than jumping for the 4.89AU/s Hel with a 20-second align time (you can get a faster align time easily by fitting more istabs, peaking it out at about 15, but it doesn't make a big difference here).

• Let's ballpark the average distance between gates to be 50AU, and the average distance in LY a gate jumps you at 1LY. These both vary quite a bit region to region, but that's fairly irrelevant for this estimation.
• A 50AU warp takes roughly 30 seconds for this Hel to complete. Add to that the align time a bit shy of 20 seconds, and time spent in jump tunnels, and we'll have a travel speed of something like 50-60 seconds/jump. At 60 seconds/jump, conveniently get a roughly 1min/LY travel speed through gates, thrice as fast as the minimum speed CCP balanced this around.
• With the previous assumptions, a Jump Drive would take two jumps to travel the same distance, and two jumps take about five minutes to do, having a travel speed of about 0.5min/LY. A third jump would take 32 minutes to do, giving it a travel speed of roughly 2min/LY, which means that for all but the shortest of distances gate travel with implants would be vastly faster than jump drive travel, and thus vastly faster than what seems to be intended.

The main culprit here is the Ascendancy implant set combined with a Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II rig, which together more than double your warp speed (heavens forbid you use multiple rigs). This is especially impactful on caps, because they are normally very slow, make expensive implants and mods (HG Ascendancies are 5.5bn, warp speed lows cost like 250m each) justified, and also can refit off of each other even mid-warp and will benefit from warp speed mods even if they're fit mid warp, which lets them avoid gimping their lowslots.

For a solution I suggest simply disabling the effect of Ascendancies on capitals. This alone will almost halve their gate travel speed. It will still be commonplace for anyone moving capitals to refit into warp speed lows, though, which is basically "free" 0.9AU/s warpspeed with no gimped fits, which is "only" a 60% increase in travel speed.

TL;DR: Ascendancies will be (even more than now) OP on caps after Phoebe, please nerf.

Ok, ok. You say that you can make a capital warp faster. But what do you sacrifice for that mobility?

Lets take the ever so popular Archon and look through all the components that allow its faster move speed.

Warp accelerators - yeah, you can refit those. You should refit those as soon as you approach your destination.

Ascendancy set - You get that to fly your carrier and you don't have your Slave set, which is a good portion of your buffer. Les so important for shield carriers, but who uses those anyway.

Warp speed rigs - again, you are sacrificing your tank for warp seed. And this time, there isn't an option to refit without spending a good amount of ISK every time you do that (good enough to fatigue even the richest if they do what you suggest).

On the topic of bubbles - OK, i didn't knew how those work precisely until a week ago. The thing you see on the screenshot is called a drag bubble. As long as a bubble intersects your warp trajectory and is on the grid your landing, it will suck you out form your expected landing spot. Leaving several drag bubbles like this one, means you'll have to burn 50-60 km to the gate. In a carrier. Or your opponent might be smart enough to catch your travel-fit fleet in transit and trash them.

What i see actually happening is capital ships being built up in strategical locations and cap pilots either jumping clones or flying in interceptors to them. Think of it - a carrier isn't all that expensive. Not in the eyes of large empires. Even supers are affordable.

The cited calculation uses a hypothetical "clean" situation with no obstructions of any sort and full dedication towards a certain goal... Yes, i guess you can drag race in a truck. And people do it. But is that ruck still able to perform its main purpose? I wouldn't worry about the potentials of freight trucks speeding on the highway, when their drivers can just take the plane all the way over the country and drive their second truck stationed over there.

I thought those warp speed low slots can only go on freighter?

Either way, CCP will change the exact details of the jump changes. If the implemented what they proposed exactly, people would break it intentionally so CCP would have to reiterate it again.

Just a question since I am not a cap ship pilot. How long would it take to make a 20ly jump with the system currently in place?

Just a thought, maybe it is not the overall time required to move a fleet 20ly that CCP wants to change, maybe it is how that fleet actually arrives at the destination that they want to change.

OP suggests using rigs to travel quickly... Sure, sir.
Warpspeed mods are limited to 3 a ship.
Suggesting ascendancy implants, will totally be done, amirite?
Mentioning the remaining warpspeed once those two got taken out of equation, capitals are **** slow again. Even 20j at 2.5AU/s with a double inertia setup will still take significant time.

Else, please show us the huge pile of cap pilots that refit rigs or uses hg ascendencies. Also admirable how you're trying to convince people that cynoing onto the grid is slower than entering via gate...

If you're using the caps for a raiding party, you shouldnt need the EHP you lose for the speed trade. Also, you'll probably outrun just about anything which presents a material threat.

However, that is STILL a gamble and more importantly a neat little tactical choice as if you get caught with your pants down by a non-travel fit cap fleet, you're going to pop like bubble wrap.


Bring it on I say

This is true, and would be the driving factor in making this dangerous/unfeasible if CCPs long-term vision of fragmented nullsec was instantly fulfilled.

However, what worries me is that for now nullsec is still stagnant. As long as the two or three big blocs exist, with mechanics like this they can almost completely safely and reasonably quickly move their fleets inside of their borders, which would at least not help when it comes to reducing nullsec stagnation.

As an example of what I mean is, let's assume that Phoebe is live. There are some ruffians running about in Delve, and Papa Goon needs to yet again bring the hammer down from Deklein on the other side of the cluster to show them. Since this is Phoebe and they can no longer just cynochain there, they need to take some gates in their travelfit capitals which move faster than cruisers. They can do this without ever leaving friendly sov and staying well over an arms length away from anyone who could really threaten them.

The estimated time for completing this route: easily less than an hour even without implants (1 rig + 3 lows), about half an hour with implants. Can be further cut down by making some strategic jumps from one region gate to another. Not exactly the most exciting grunt experience out there, but it could still be considered a "home in time for dinner" type of op if you use implants, even if just mid-grade Ascendancies.

(grr goons)

No, we don't need to start arbitrarily deciding which implants apply or no longer apply to capitals just because we don't like the creative mechanisms players have come up with for utilizing them. Anything larger than a cruiser already got nerfed with the adjusted warp speed mechanics (and not just the speed, but the acceleration and deceleration), so implants, Hyperspacial rigs and accelerators merely claw some of this back (and Hyperspacial rigs were recently stacking penalized).

Gate travel is not always going to be as direct as a jump, it's still going to use capacitor and all these scenarios assume ideal travel conditions, ie: no gate camps, never warping faster than the slowest ship in a fleet, etc. If you want to limit power projection through gate travel simply increase the capacitor cost (exponentially) for warp drive.

It's no different from Crystals, really. It also doesn't matter whether it's creative or not (it really is not, though, it just happens to be more impactful after the jump changes when all capitals end up warping more), broken is broken.


The key here is that warp speed rigs are damn near worthless on anything that's not a capital, because other classes of ships depend too much on getting actually useful combat stats out of their rigs. The same goes for warp speed lows, the difference being that capitals can refit practically everywhere. The same goes for implants -- if you're going to spend lots of ISK on implants and fly a subcap there are much better things you can invest in, whereas for capitals (especially them shield capitals) there are very few implant sets that are in any manner useful in the first place.


Supercaps can cap back up to jump cap in less than ten seconds, so the minuscule capacitor cost of warping is completely meaningless. As for increasing the capacitor cost of warping, I really shouldn't have to tell you why that's a horrible idea.

There are few gatecamps that can contest the fabled apex force. A gatecamp able to in any tangible manner delay capital forces of the size we currently have would no longer be just a gatecamp, but a capital blob of its own. Slow ships in fleet limiting warp speed is purely an organizational issue, and organizational issues have been time and time again proven by the Eve playerbase to be quite surmountable.