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I cede the Harb to you because BattleCruiser vs Cruiser should be this way. We are talking about Carrier vs Cruiser being better than BattleCruiser vs Cruiser and you want it to do even more dps?

How is that siege mode working out for you lol...

That's not really 'lightly tanked', that's a HIC with very high explosive resist sig/speed-tanking. Honestly I think it's kind of questionable if that's even a particularly valid use-case, but it does certainly show that Fighters won't insta-blap Cruisers anymore.

Whether you think this is a problem depends on where you feel the balance between caps and sub-caps should rest...



Shield also reps more, but costs more cap, ect. The differences go on. I'm aware of all of this, and pretty much everything you described is the same at the sub-cap level.

Also it's a bit ridiculous to say that you've lost the same amount of shield as an Armor boat that a Shield boat with resist mods has lost. Plus that shield boat immediately gets a big whack back because shield reps more and reps at the start of the cycle, so shield isn't at any kind of disadvantage here, unless their entire buffer gets nuked through in one hit, at which point the armor ship has a decent chance of dying before reps land anyway, since a similar amount of his total EHP is goign to be gone, but he has to wait after he's locked up for reps to hit. For the shield ship it doesn't matter if they're into armor or even structure, so long as they're still up and the reppers got them back up to full so they can take the next salvo with staggered reps mitigating it so they don't dip down into armor again. That's not significantly different from an armor boat losing his shield buffer.



I guarantee you the devs absolutely took it into consideration. CCP has, for as long as there have been Capital fights, had people on their staff who FC the things on their private accounts.

I keep trying to tell you, there is more to the use-case for capitals and the balance decisions that go into them and their modules than this one use-case of medium to large fleet PvP, and CCP have repeatedly shown that they're fine with Armor dominating at the large scale so long as Shield sees use and has its niche, because they don't want Shield or Armor to become completely dominant.

Wormholes, small cap engagements, cap-vs-subcap, and even PvE all need to be weighted and looked at when balancing these modules. It sucks when your corner of the game loses out, but it's *far* better for the game as a whole if CCP take a holistic approach instead of saying "those other areas don't matter at all".



I'm trying to keep this civil, since it's quite clear you're quite invested and a little worked up by this whole debate. I'm not being thin skinned, I'm trying to keep things civil and on topic. Attack the argument, not the person, and all that.

I break up long passages of text covering different topics so that it's absolutely clear what I'm referring to when I respond as I've had issues in the past with people assuming one thing I said was referring to another part of their post and from there things just get messy. Like I said, if you don't like it that's hardly my problem. If you think I'm taking anything you say out of context please feel free to call it out. If I agree I'll apologize, if I not then I'll try to clarify what I was talking about.

Also you may want to give the Forum Rules a once-over.

there are such things as low skilled pilots and folks who cant afford them you know. also, flying a carrier draws attention, enough that there will be lots of people who dont fly them so that they dont draw said attention.

and then there's the whole issue where you cant use them to run missions and high-sec incursions, which are by far the most heavily utilized methods of making isk in this game. so in the end does it really matter? not everyone will be flying it anyways, and those that do are taking the risk of being an easy killmail for any pvpers who manage to catch them, cause as it stands now with these changes, you have to have basically no tank to get a carrier to be able to apply it's dps across the whole line of ship classes.

Small correction here, the Carrier does 600 DPS to a fairly fast sig-tanking Cruiser. To the Battleships that make up most of Null-Sec belts and sites you'll do far more than the Ishtar.

Beyond that why do you feel that 600 DPS is too low for a ship that tanks far far better than your Ishtar does, and has way more EHP? Do you have some numbers to back this up or is it just "I feel this is too low"?

I would also point out you can boost this DPS number quite a bit just by bringing a single Rapier or a Loki.



Or bring a couple of Rapiers, Lokis, or a Vigilant/Vindicator or two...

600 dps seems to be pretty average for most cruiser and bc size vessels when fit for dmg, so yes, a ship that is exponentially more expensive in pretty much every way should be able to do more than that on it's own. am i the only one who sees it as a non-issue that larger ship hulls do more dps? they have higher fitting capabilities, higher skill requirements, and higher price tags; why on earth shouldn't they do more for all of that? that said there are always trade-offs in eve, and i have no problem with that. thus why i stated how you have to give up tanking ability to get proper dmg and application out of a carrier. yes the carrier can tank more than my ishtar, but at the same time i have to be super vigilant when ratting in a carrier cause i have a giant target on my back, not so much with an ishtar.

also, how often do you really see people farming null-sites in groups? almost never. folks rat to make isk, why share that when they can find a way to do it themselves?

you and i seem to be having a misunderstanding... i am not advocating that carriers should be solopwnmobiles, we had those years ago in the form of old motherships, they were far more cancerous for lowsec than the bloody svipul is these days. no ship should be able to do everything by itself, but they should be able to do some things very well. as well, base hull damage output and applied damage are two different things. yes a bs doesn't do much damage to a frigate without help, but with said help they wreck them. they can either have someone else bring a ship to provide that help or they can sacrifice something by fitting themselves to do it; why should it be any different with a carrier? there should always be the option to trade one ability for another by fitting your ship a specific way. give up tank and you gain dmg output or application, give up those to get tank, or mobility, or ewar; the list goes on. yes, if you want to have tank and full application, you need more people, but if you dont care about one or the other, then there is ZERO reason to require more than one person to play eve.

Where you're talking about Battleships sitting isn't significantly different from where Carriers are going to be sitting after these changes. Battleships, even with good fittings, are never going to be terribly good against small ships. That's one of the reasons that pure Battleship roams just don't happen much these days, because people have figured out how to use small mixed fleets or Cruiser and BC based fleets with other ships sprinkled in to take out pure BS roams and even good sized fleets.

As for the idea that you should be able to just play Eve solo... I kind of disagree. This is an MMO, so by definition there are other players involved. You can certainly play in a way that limits your interaction with others but you're going to close yourself off from some styles of play and personally I don't have a problem with Capitals being one of those areas that is, at the very least, much harder to execute solo than in a group. Capitals are big, expensive, and logistically difficult to move or field, what about that says "solo ship", irrespective of its actual capabilities?



Two words: Slowcat fleet.

That was the last time Carriers became an overwhelmingly dominant part of fleet warfare, and it shows that this absolutely can happen if a capital becomes dominant enough over sub-caps.

I'm not saying it's happening now, nor that it absolutely would happen without these changes, but we also haven't had a ton of time for that to happen since Citadel, with these changes coming pretty quickly after the initial release. If Carriers were left absolutely dominating sub-caps then I think we absolutely could see a return to Carrier doctrine fleets.

Personally I think there's plenty of math in this thread showing that Carriers are hardly useless against sub-caps right now, and with proper support they're absolutely devastating to small engagements. We'll really have to see this play out in the wild to know for sure though.

I think it's definitely possible that Carriers will need further tweaking, probable even, since even if these changes are fine in the short term the meta around Capitals has been pretty volatile historically, with people finding new ways to break things or just building up enough stuff to wreck face with them.

Personally, just on the face of it, I wouldn't be opposed to Carriers having the option to field a single tube of Heavy Fighters, but I'd both like to see how these changes play out and want to do a lot of math on what that would mean for the Capital meta, since Heavy Fighters are currently balanced around being exclusive to Super Carriers.

battleships have been given weapons specifically designed to allow them to combat small ****, and they work amazingly when used right. pure battleship roams dont happen because outside of a few very limited exceptions, they are slow as ****, not because of their ineffectiveness. roaming gangs by definition need to be mobile, and it's hard to do that in battleships, tanked or otherwise. on top of that, due to ccp's chosen game mechanics, larger ships have ****** sensors and cant lock small **** fast; this drawback allows a lot of potential targets to escape. to make up for this most people bring other ship classes, that allow you to fill in your short comings; yet at the same time i can take a tempest and just fit tracking mods and sebos and be able to quickly lock and blap a frigate. will it do tons of damage? no. will it be able to take a cruiser sneezing at it? no. but it is still an option, and that is what makes eve, eve. options.

yes eve is an mmo, yes there are other players involved, you cant escape that with our economy. that said, have you never heard of solo roaming? cause it feels like you haven't. there are lots of people who do things solo all the damn time, and the way you're talking it sounds like you think that they should always have another person with them. let people play how they want to play, how hard is that to understand? have i seen guys solo roam in carriers? yes i have, and i have murdered them. roaming solo in any cap is generally a bad idea, but it should still be an option for players. pretty much every person that i have ever encountered that was ratting with a carrier was doing it solo, yet it seems like that notion offends you and i for the life of me cant figure out why. yes caps are expensive and can be a pain in the ass to move and ****, i know this very very well having been flying my dread, carriers and supers for years now; but that doesn't mean that they HAVE to be used in groups or with support. one of the key elements that makes eve what it is is risk vs reward. if i want to solo fly a carrier for them dank ratting ticks, i'm taking the risk of getting murdered and loosing my multi-billion isk ship, and i and every other pilot should be free to make that same choice. doing the same activity in a group gives you more security but you have to split the rewards of doing it. it's all a balance of risk vs reward, and it should stay that way.

there should be nothing in this game that you cannot attempt to do solo. any success at that should be up to chance as with everything else in this game, but it should still be possible to try.

Sorry (don't get offended) but cost very much plays a part in more damage applied. A T2 fit battleship will do far less damage to a small ship than one that is fit with deadspace and faction mods designed to add and better apply damage.

You seem to miss that carriers are still getting killed every day by small to medium gangs, they aren't the OP killing machine your attempting to make them out. They will die to a prepared group, they will kill anything that is not right for the job, as it should be.

The ONLY change Devs needed to do initially to carriers was the NSA - That would have been a good fix for balancing carriers vs small ships being insta popped on gates. Instead they threw in a bunch of straight up nerfs as well.

Tell me, when these changes are implemented in a few days, if they are found to be too much nerf, how long do you think (remembering Devs history of changing things back because they got it wrong) it will take devs to take another look at Light Fighters and carriers in general?
Is it likely to be a month from now? A year maybe or two... If ever.

Your still going to see gate camping carriers because Omnis are still powerful and as much of pvp vs small ships is about damage application not DPS, many of these carriers (with a link alt in system) will still insta blap small ships on gates.

Devs missed a golden opportunity here. They had the chance to show players they could actually balance things using expertise and moderation, pity they don't care enough to do their job right.

Here's why I disagree with your reasoning here (now in convenient list format):

• The ability still does more absolute damage than the standard attack. This is pretty much indisputable.
• "The majority of situations" depends entirely on how you use the ability and what you use it on. Because this is such a subjective measure I personally feel it should be discarded in favor of simply looking at how the ability could be used in a practical setting to maximum effect. There are plenty of examples in this thread of how to get full or near-full damage out of the ability against smaller targets.
• The ability is on a (relatively) long cooldown and serves to spike damage with a single hit that is noteably stronger than the base attack against a target when used. To me this is the quintessential definition of a burst damage ability. The absolute value of the damage done doesn't significantly change that unless it gets close to the base attack's value. Target type doesn't factor in, if it did Thermal and you were shooting a Gallente T2 ship it would still be a burst damage ability.

As far as for or against nerfs in general or this specific nerf goes, I'm not in favor of nerfs or buffs or any particular ship class. What I said previously about my preferences on this particular nerf also holds, I have very little investment in the performance of Capitals specifically because while I can fly them I don't have any plans to spend any time doing so in the next several months at least. I also don't have any particular plans on interacting with them either, so this really doesn't affect me much in the immediate term where any major imbalances would become apparent.

What I am invested in is game balance in general. If that's best served through a buff then great, if it's a nerf then also great. After looking at the math and the evidence I'm inclined to think that CCP's changes won't be anywhere near as bad as the doom and gloom in this thread predicts and that they are very much necessary for the health of the game. Currently Carrier damage, especially alpha strike damage, against small targets is objectively ridiculous, and I don't find the argument that Carriers should be strong solo platforms to be a compelling one.

Also as to 3 painters/webs, I ran the numbers in EFT with a Minnie Recon projecting the effects, you will deal full damage or close to it, even with stacking penalties. I just threw the resulting Sig Radius and Speed into a spreadsheet and ran the missile damage equation on it. Three painters/webs is a perfectly reasonable number for a small gang or fleet to be able to apply to a single target. If it were more than that I might agree with you, with 4 being about the upper limit I would consider reasonable, however since that's also about the point stacking penalties start getting really prohibitive that makes it somewhat a moot point.