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considering that the complaint never was too high carrier dps, and that they announced an application/alpha nerf (which coincidentally was what most of the complaining was about), but not a dps nerf, it seems that they really don't know what they have done.

Light fighters were too effective against small targets against frigs and light cruisers due to the alpha and good application, but not against battleships, and definitlely not against capitals. But still their already crappy anti-capital abilities took a strong nerf.

I understood the goals (perhaps mistakenly) to reduce alpha, particularly to small things. DPS was never listed as a concern that I saw (certainly not that it was too high). It's all been around the spike damage and how much applies to smaller craft.

I think I've said already but maybe it was slack, my choice would be reduced alpha/more charges analogous to the current changes. Application dropping certainly but I'd not have nerfed it so hard battleships mitigate that much. No one was upset about the alpha at that tier. I'd also have slightly increased turret dps whilst reducing rather than improving application so that support was needed to nail small things but larger ships/fights they present a greater threat.

Tl;Dr: smooth alpha (done), make smaller things need support to kill (application buff to turrets is fearsome so this isn't what people hoped for), increase threat level at fleet fights (it's decreased now).



Ed: with regard to the whole carriers vs subcapital thing, we should remember that they're hopeless vs amother capital. They're effectively in the same boat as HAW dreads. It may not be explicitly stated however but to most the intention is clear: good subcapital threat and clearing supers fibos is their role.

Honestly I'm baffled at the DPS nerf combined with the application changes. In my experience, carriers have never had enough DPS against large targets, but were a bit too strong against small stuff with the volley. Now they're even worse against large targets and it remains to be seen how the application changes affect damage to small stuff.

I'd personally keep most of these changes but make the following tweaks:
Main gun explosion radius 210 instead of 160.
Main gun explosion velocity 130 instead of 150.
Main gun damage +25%.
Salvo explosion radius 300 instead of 350.
Salvo explosion velocity 110 instead of 100.
Salvo damage -30% instead of -40%.

these changes certainly feel like they came from that thing...

So you leaving the fighters easy to kill and ewar to hell and back even with this nerf is not an oversight?

Does this mean we finally get the impotent carriers we all thought we were getting the first time round?

You know, provided my math isn't off, a better outcome would probably have been altering the salvos drf. As I understand it (prior caveat remains) that a larger value causes smaller targets to mitigate more damage whilst larger ones still take high damage. This would have helped the small things and kept greater effectiveness against "big" things.

Yes, I meant in conjunction with sig/velo changes but those would have to be much less severe if the drf was altered along with it - i.e. the aim being to still apply to big things well whilst shielding smaller craft at the same time. Keeping the existing drf results in what we have today: needing to nerf the sig/velo so hard battleships need support to take full damage.

I get there's a view that we should need support to apply and I don't disagree in principle, however I feel that a cooldown type ability should be hitting battleships properly.

That was in reference to clearly being dedicated subcap killers. Yes, dreads have fitting options open carrers do not. They (carriers) have a harder time applying burst, even to battleship. Basic DPS is still going to wreck stuff.

I think the idea that nerf is ok because there is no conclusive proof that no one is complaining is flawed. Even in this thread I can see no one actually argueing that Carrier are too strong against bs or capital, the defense of this nerf seems to consist entirely on "well but you did not proof that it is not too strong".

Why not nerf (*dice roll*) raven, golem, punisher, tormentor, hecate and osprey? I can neither see a proof that no one is complaining about them, nor hard numbers that proof that they are not op.

Every nerf should have a good explanation. This is simply not the case here.
If you want a nerf (this goes for ccp as well as for the players) give us an explanation WHY you want that nerf. Then we can argue against that. Or maybe agree with that if its a good argument. But demanding "here is a random nerf without any explanation of the why, proof that it is not op", is stupid.

How about, "I have a full time job and no time or desire to do your work for you"?

Either you've already done the math and failed to post it, or you haven't and are running off of incomplete and likely flawed analysis. Either way you're trying to put the fault for your incomplete argument on the people reading it, which is as hilarious as it is unlikely to convince anyone, especially the devs.

Also your "real world" test is kind of suffering from the same thing all your other arguments have been. Lack of useful context or other data and a seeming assumption that simply throwing numbers up will cause others to magically see the direction of your train of thought and bring them to the same conclusions you've come to. That's now how *any* of this works and personally I'm not seeing it.



You almost never see people arguing in favor of what CCP has already decided to do, up until they change it.

Realistically though they don't have to, that's why number of complaints is pretty meaningless as a statistic on any forum anywhere. CCP have decided to do a thing, and it's up to the players who oppose the change to come up with logical fact-based arguments for why it's a bad change.

Generally speaking, after about 8 years or so of hanging around the change discussion forums, I can say with some confidence that if your argument for a balance change isn't backed up by at least some pretty good math you're probably not going to get anywhere just by saying "But it's too much!". I've seen that fly *maybe* once, and that thread got up to over 100 pages in less than a week.

The point here is that CCP have sufficient evidence and proof for their purposes that this should be changed and that that change will be good for the game. If you or others disagree the burden is on you to show why this is not the case. Would you accept the nerf any more if CCP said "we have internal data showing this is a problem"? They really *can't* post that internal data because it just allows people to exploit it, and every time anything internal like this has gotten out there's been problems caused by it. If they have math then they have math, and at best you're going to have people arguing over the underlying hypotheses, not about whether or not the math is right, so why post it?

They've said why they're making the change, they want to lower Carrier DPS and Application. It then follows that the issue being solved here is that Carriers are doing a bit too much damage and applying it too well to small targets. Past that point, and a large part of *why* these threads are posted*, it's up to the players to point out why this might be a major problem. (to head off the inevitable, this does not mean CCP aren't doing their jobs, but they also don't need to show all their work for every change, that's unreasonable for reasons already stated)

This idea that these nerfs are somehow random and arbitrary is, at best, amusing and at worst probably a little insulting to the devs at CCP, not to mention grounded in nothing but baseless speculation, rumor and no small amount of paranoia, rather than any sort of hard evidence.