Ships & Modules

The ship concept in history was to create something that was not as good as the real thing, but could sort of do it for a cheap price tag and in quick fashion. Usually old warship or transport ship hulls.

Therefore it should be
1. Racial specific
2. Not as good as a carrier by any strech.
3. Better than a BS, because BS were susceptible to them in conflict.
4. Cheap price tag, say about 30% more than a tier 3 BS?

Forget the orca... use the freighters as mentioned earlier in the post.

They have the hitpoints he recommends, strip the cargo bay for drone bay, and add visible openings to the models on their cargo bays to identify as fighter bays. If all five fighters are fit, then only about 150-250m3 should remain for other drones.

Like the flavor of limited fitting, but go 4/4/4 +2 appropriate for race(can be split). Prevents overtaking BS, and ensures role fitting.

Add maintenance bay, fuel bay for triage, and small corp bay.

Role Bonus: Able to launch five fighters or ten drones. (allows limited offensive role). Capital remote repair and local repair systems are PG/CPU reduced to fit two appropriate for race, can fit triage (if triage is active can run two capital remote/ local repair mods stable [run the role bonus numbers to apply to cap usage of mods only during triage] otherwise Cap use of capital mod with cap of BS).

Racial Battleship skill: Same as racial carrier bonuses

Scan res of ship equivalent of racial carrier.

Targeting range equivalent of racial battleship.

HP about 2x BS.

Capacitor equivalent of battleship (forces triage to utilize capital remote repair role).

Maybe this: Cannot be rigged due to extensive modification of hull

-DT

I wonder if any devs have read this thread :(

-DT

Rather than a bonus to a racial fighter, you could add a role bonus of "+100% Fighter bandwith needs" limiting a player to 5 fighters or 10 drones

yep we all know how much super carriers and titans are fail

Well a fair trade for a mini carrier could be...
Only one high slot or none.(the external ports are hard wired to allow fighters)
Almost no structure, and only 50% or less of primary tank in off tank.(as most of the internal structure is need for "space" for the fighters)
Only 5 fighters(or less), and no ability to use Drone Control Units.

This should look like how an Orca is to a Rorqual. The one being better the other offering convenience.

CCP does want to look into more variety in the capital class of ships (see last CSM minutes) so this is a valuable discussion to be having at this time.

I'm coming from the POV of wormhole dwellers here, so bear with.

An Escort Carrier is needed in w-space (as is a mini-dread, lets call it a Monitor) for several reasons, not least of which is that in low-end wormhole space it is prohibitively difficult to evict a well entrenched organisation, for several reasons. Firstly, you cannot easily get capital support to assault a POS, which means you see C1's with a dozen deathstarred large towers running massive lab operations, gas refining operations, etcetera. They do this because they know they are basically immune from eviction under normal circumstances.

Secondly, without a capital you rely on subcap fleets and this requires social engineering beyond the bounds of most corps - and then the residents will likely have the ISK resources from their rent-seeking to hire the appropriate coalition to defend themselves. This IS fun, mind you, and nothing wrong with that, but the hurdle of C1 mass restrictions presents barriers to assaulting POSs in them which are very steep indeed.

An ossified wormhole space is stagnant, stale, lame. So there's a role for a capital class ship which can enter low-end w-space (including C1's, mind you!) to throw the door open to conflict. This is where an escort carrier/monitor concept could come in.

As to the ship and its capabilities and restrictions, I think it should be similar to regular capitals regarding a restriction from entering highsec. The idea of an orca sized carrier with 5 fighters doesn't sit well for me in a hisec missioning context, because of the assigned fighters helping people pwn missions. Similarly, the metagame will see these ships proliferate and station humping mongoloids would camp Amarr EFA undock in a dramiel or Cynabal with 20 alts in escort carriers 30 AU away with 100 fighters assigned to them, and this would become riitard. No, no, no.

So, they must have a jump drive, and be restricted to lowsec, nullsec, and w-space. Or the CONCORD jammer effect should work similar to the bomb launcher on a SB, neutralising all your abilities and allowing you to transit without altering the state of play in hisec.

To throw C1's open to mini-capital assault, a module could be created which would allow them (and only them) to shave 80% off their mass to allow them to jump a C1 mass restriction - similar to the warp disruption generator's effect upon the HICtor. Lets call it a Graviton Flux Coil.

This of course then places an upper limit on the ship's mass to allow them to fit in a C1 (N110, J244, Z060 - but not the transient Z-class).

As for the capabilities, I think they need roughly BS sized tanks and active rep bonuses...though in the case of the Caldari and Amarr escort carriers you would have to provide for a significant passive tank. 250-350K EHP is fine, as is a 1100-1500DPS active tank without crazy faction gear - allowing them to survive a significant amount of punishment but still be vulnerable to a BS once they cap out. Or a small gang of cruiser/BC's/T3's.

I agree with their aility to have a fitting service, a ship maintenance bay and corporate hangar array. Size thereof? Well, not big enough to pack a BS, maybe 2-3 BC's and that's it. This will allow them to work as cloaky logistic bases inside w-space and k-space, and allow people to store a limited selection of PVP ships to swap out of scanning frigates. This is the role played by the Orca currently, so its nothing new - you'd just get a handful of fighters to deploy.

As for what they should fit...no capital RRs. To suggest that they should fit capital RRs would see them be able to spider tank inordinate amounts of damage, just like cap ships, or tank 40K DPS like a carrier can do in Triage. This would be broken, even if you could neut them to death faster.

They should, however, be able to fit at least two large smartbombs, or 3 large remote reps, or 3 heavy neut/NOS, plus drone links, to give them the flexibility to defend themselves. So, 4 high slots.

Tank wise, you need a 5 or 6 slot tank. This would see, for instance, a 6 mid, 3 low Caldari slot layout, a 5/4 Minnie, a 3/6 Amarr and a 4/5 Gallente. You will of course see the mids filled with prop mods, ECCM's, heavy cap boosters, perhaps even webs/points. eg,
a 3 midslot Amarr ship would have ECCM, cap booster, TP or MWD // 2 x EANM's, Explo Hardener, 2 x LAR, DCU
5 midslot minnie would have 2 Invul, XL booster, Cap booster, ECCM or MWD // DCU, CPRs, nano (lol)
4 Midslot Gallente would have cap booster, ECCM, web, MWD // DCU, EANM, Explo Hardener, 2 LARs
6 midslot Caldari would have: 3 x LSE, 2 x Invul, MWD // DCU, 2 SPR's

Remember with 5 fighters you'll only be pushing 500DPS, so either a fighter DPS bonus would be needed or you'd need to envisage doing 1000DPS with heavy drones or sentries - which means a 100% drone DPS bonus. Which is fine - a ship of this size should dish out more DPS than a HAC or a destroyer, but not eclipse a BS.

I'm torn on whether they should be able to Triage. I wouldn't want to see them muscle in on the territory of Logistic ships, because then you'd have a situation where people would deploy these for logistics operations because they'd be impossible to alpha. Thus, triage rep bonuses and logistic ship rep range would be dangerous things to give a ship with +100K EHP. Three normal RR's, however, would be fine. You'd have to form a mini-carrier ball similar to a domiblob, and they can be taken out pretty easily these days.

Just my 2c

I'd love a logistics battleship.

Na make them orca sized and use gates so us not WH people can have a ship that moves with gang and "escorts".
No need to frett about fighters, can't assign them in .4's and up so the only way to use it would be to take it in the mission or have it on the station, putting it at risk. Also you can only have your drone level - the number of drones your curently control out at any time. So max 5.

No thats already how it IS now! You can't assign fighters in .4 and up. So the ship itself would have to agress to use fighters in hi sec.

also face palm*

it would for like a day cause a huge spike in alts ....then the forums would light on fire as people in he-sec that have never used a carrier find out that you cant asign fighters in .4's and up and assinged fighters count twards your drone control cap.
Then I would feast apon there pain and buy all the hulls at 1/2 price.

so to recap-can't asign in hi sec, can only have 5 on you and no drones, they do slightly more than oger II's

The REAL power would be in having that ship in fleets and moving with them through gates. If you make it jump only you just get a bad wanna be carrier.