Player Features and Ideas Discussion

First of all I think we can all agree that supercapitals were a bad idea. Or at least a poorly implemented idea. I think however, the notion behind supercapitals is still one worth pursuing.

The problem with supercapitals is that they are in essence, balanced around the idea of being rare and uber. As soon as they are found in any number they become overwhelmingly game-breaking and if they're nerfed down to appropriate levels it becomes an exercise in whatisthepointofsupercapitalsdidireallyjustpay20billionforthisnyxfuckyoucpp etc.

I think the question CCP needs to be asking is how do you keep super-capitals from becoming so commonplace while still adhering to the sandbox? That's a pretty tough question and has spawned all sorts of bad ideas; limiting the number of supercaps allowed in one alliance, (lol) an additional hourly r128 ubermoongoo fuel, making them persistent etc.

In addition to limiting their number any change to supercaps would have to ensure that:

• They're worth something. People pay billions of isk for space-coffins; they should be able to kick some ass.


• Small alliances and corps should have at least the opportunity to acquire a supercapital without taking away the advantages of larger groups.


• It should not be a another mechanic that adds :work: to this game.


• It doesn't go against the sandbox nature of EVE

Taking all of that into consideration, here's my idea:

The premise lies in adding a mathematical equation to the game that can be tweaked by CCP to control the amount of supercapitals able to be operational at any one time while also creating a method that encourages a fair-ish distribution method but is still a conflict driver between nullsec entities. It also involves returning supers to the AoE doomsday death machines and fighterbombing rapists that they were intended to be. In this approach they would be actually balanced around small numbers.

Imagine that supercapitals, in their infinite super-ness, required a very rare isotope to power their super-things. This isotope occurs very infrequently inside asteroids.

[Percent-based chance of finding isotope while mining - eg: 0.0001% every cycle]

This isotope has a fairly short natural half-life, that, when left undisturbed, lasts for perhaps 3 months. When placed in the appropriate super-capital it becomes excited, lasting for a much shorter time, perhaps 1 month. A supercapital without an isotope is effectively offline.
This incentivizes the use of isotopes while still allowing them to be somewhat stockpiled and traded on the market.

Isotopes effectively become the nukes of EVE online, a nuke that doesn't last forever and that can theoretically be acquired by any group with an access to mining laserz. By tweaking the numbers, CCP can limit, at least approximately, the number of supercapitals online at any given time.

[Isotope chance x amount of mining activity = 'flow' of supers, while rate of decay of the topes are the 'outflow'. By balancing the flow at a rate estimated to be the upper limit of mining activity in EVE supers could be limited to eg ~75 Titans, ~200 supercarriers, assuming different topes for both types.]

Bump because I'd like for at least one person to tell me why this idea is/isn't bad.

Oh. hey, it's THIS idea again.

it puts supers out of reach of all but the richest of alliances, and thus makes the guys with decent amounts of tech pretty well invulnerable, as they have the means to fund much more super operation than someone who doesn't have a couple of dozen moneymoons behind them?

See This Thread for the last time it was brought up and trashed.

In short, people will just buy this stuff, and ISK is a notoriously poor way to balance things.

Hmmm.

While I would protest that my concept is much more elegant than the thread linked I do see your point. Even in an underdog alliance that might desperately need supers individual pilots of that alliance would still be tempted to sell the topes, not to mention the rest of the mining playerbase. The vast majority would indeed most likely end up on the market and the big spenders would have an advantage.


However, I can still see the principle in general working, with enough tweaking. For instance, what if every jump made by an isotope not inside a super had a chance of destabilizing (shortening the lifespan) and/or destroying the isotope? You'd then incentivize the local use of the topes, limit the ability of the market to access the them, and all the while drive a further integration between industrial and pvp players.

I just thought of that in a couple of minutes but I'm sure there is a mechanic out there that doesn't suck.

To be honest, if you are going to artificially remove all supers from the game and then reimburse the owners surely it would be easier just to tweak supercap production so they aren't so damn common/cheap?

That, coupled with giving supers points that can hold other supers (meaning more dead supers, yaaaay) and also extending the self destruct timers of supercaps (so people actually have an incentive to attack them) would probably lessen their number in game quite effectively.

Although I still disagree with the idea of just artificially removing them from the game, let alone just reimbursing the owners with an arbitrary amount of ISK. And I can't really imagine CCP doing it, it would probably be a PR nightmare.


This, IMHO, is the biggest issue with this idea. This resource will always just end up on the market, another issue is that again the hordes of russian mining bots will now have an even larger advantage.


That makes moving them a bit of a pain for small alliances/groups in NPC null to be honest. Anyone else would just JF the stuff around.

Plus, think of the renters. They don't have supers, yet they mine one hell of a lot, now they might be nice and sell it to the people they're renting from but there's no guarantee. Chances are they'd jump it as close as they could to jita, and sacrifice however much they had to to get it that 6-7j.

Either that or specific low sec trade hubs would emerge just with large amounts of this stuff on sale, in the same way you currently have large numbers of dreads/carriers for sale in specific systems.

I know, the guy was suggesting removing all supers from the game as a starting point for fixing them. My point was that if you're going to remove them all from the game, you may as well just tweak the build requirements so they remain rare once reintroduced.

I also disagree with arbitrarily removing all supers and reimbursing players with an arbitrary amount of ISK. Or anything else for that matter.


Actually I didn't think of that, that's a pretty good point. I think in the CSM minutes CCPs reason for considering such a point was due to the fragility of the tacklers in these kind of fleets, and the need for more super cap deaths.

To be honest, I can't really see a way to address those issues without creating a new sub-cap ship specifically for the role, which probably isn't going to happen. It'd have to have a high tank, the ability to point supers and it would have to be relatively useless outside of tackling supers or the tank would just make it lolwtf pwnsauce for lowsec gate camps.

Meh, anyway I don't think the idea of supercap points for supers is entirely without merit. Maybe introduce some pretty heavy downsides to using a super cap point on the supers? Such as very heavy cap usage, meaning you have to either heavily nerf your fit to perma-run it or split pointing the target between multiple supers?

Whatever CCP decide to do, I don't think you'll ever negate the effectiveness of a super cap blob. The best you can hope for is to make using the supers a little more risky, and that's going to effect those with limited resources more than the larger alliances no matter what you do.


Some of us just want that loot What can I say, we're greedy? I don't really care if someone I don't know loses a super or not, but if I'm going to drop something on a group of them I'd like to be able to loot the field for all that x-type shizzle. Being given two minutes to kill any number of supers just isn't realistic.

Also, faking KMs is a bit lame.

I was just thinking that myself, I think it could be safe to say that they have a pretty decent tank.

This seems like it would just get exploited by alliances with infinite money and alts to grind everyone out of competition. The solution to supercapital abuse is to severely nerf their direct-combat abilities and drastically enhance their fleet support role, so it becomes a ship you want your side to have on the field of a major battle--or resupplying from a distance, whatever--but not something that it makes sense to put together a 50-strong gank fleet.

As long as carriers and moms function as uber-dominixes, any attempt to tweak availability will give one group or playstyle an advantage over another.

I think alliances should be able to build shipyards to produce capitals ships(instead of a POS). All the ships docked to the shipyard would be supercapital. Smaller player owned ships and be docked inside and act as a normal station.

The super capital would become an alliance asset, when they wish to deploy one a certified deploy-er or a certified pilot can get in it, wait 5 minutes for it to "power-up", after the ship is in total control of the pilot. When the pilot wishes to exit the vessel, 5 minutes, and then the ship automated systems returns it to the dock where it came from and docks it back up for later use.

implementing with your idea: the isotopes would be stored in the dock, and a maximum number is allowed per station, say like 20 for example? Therefore limiting the ships and making the ships more balanced?