Ships & Modules

If by 'having another look at our optimal and falloff values (and the ways they can be affected)' Greyscale means "scale optimal/falloff according to sig radius/resolution ratio", it still has the potential for a full-damage shot - the frigate would have to be both close and moving slowly, rather than the current "far away OR moving slowly". So, it has tracking and range (against a small target, at least) naturally counterbalance each other much more so than they do now, by giving you a shorter effective optimal - but that optimal can be increased by target painters. It seems quite reasonable to me.

I agree that scaling actual weapon damage by sigrad/sigres ratio wouldn't really be an optimal solution.

I find I'm Down's arguments very compelling. Please don't dismiss his ideas as too hard to implement or too drastic. They would add a new level of realism to fleet fights and make it so you would need to bring a variety of ships to the field.

Start the change in XL guns first as a trial and see how it works then once you have a formula, put it on the test server that's what its there for. Do an actual test for once.

I'm not sure that you're talking about the thing I'm talking about. My above-quoted post isn't about "damage falloff based on sig", it's about the attribute called "falloff" that guns already have.

Yup, but that's not the concern I have with your above suggestion, hence the clarification of my meaning

Not a a bonus to WCS, but rather a built-in thing like Blockade Runners have, so they're more vulnerable to tackling but can't be tackled by a single rifter, because that would be too big a balance swing for us to be comfortable with right now, particularly on top of the mooted already-huge EW-immunity removal. The reason we're considering immunity-removal is that it allows you to tracking-disrupt or sensor-damp titans, rather than to make them hugely vulnerable to warp disruption. Even if we gave them a built-in strength of 50, it's still a pretty sizable numeric nerf as we go from needing infinity MWDing rifters to ~13 to tackle a titan, and the infinite-strength point from bubbles, dictors and hictor points still work as currently.

Also, most ships are special in some regard, and titans more than most. That's why ship selection is interesting.

Yep. He's balancing for 1 titan which is the same hole they dug for themselves the last time. This fix isn't realistic.

One of the two problems that make titans too good against subcap fleets is that it is so easy for them to target, blap, and clear tackle. That won't change if 13 Rifters all fitted with double points can now tackle a single titan, since one of the other titans 30km away from those Rifters will just lock and blap them, or the Rifters will be smartbombed by some huge-radius titan smartbomb somewhere in the blob, or something. Titans will still be able to clear tackle absurdly easily with this change.

That also goes for a group of 20 titans who are trying to kill a fleet of ships applying electronic warfare effects like tracking disruption or sensor dampening. While in theory these effects -- disruption/damping -- will make it harder for any given titan to lock and blap subcaps, in practice the answer will always still be "bring more titans". We are talking about a game where multiple single alliances can field 50 titans, and any balancing effort needs to take this into account or it will be a farce.

Please, please, please understand that we live in a universe where every titan locks targets of opportunity nearly at will and does 90%+ of their maximum damage to anything cruiser-size or larger. To correct this state of affairs to one where "bring more titans" is not always the correct choice, you are going to need to implement severe nerfs. Electronic warfare isn't enough. The original nerfs, while strong on the targeting-time angle, probably still weren't enough.

Little elegant changes like "make titans vulnerable to damps/disruptors" don't change the fundamental mechanic of a 40-million-EHP ship which can deal 65-75% of dreadnought DPS to subcaps and field a DD weapon against capitals in the meantime.

Get rid of off grid boosts.

Reinforce command ships presence and survivability by adding extra bonus between and from command ships only so they are extreme hard targets to kill and that you will not primary easily, plus will avoid solo/small gang powmobiles and a due reward to so much training dedication.

Make titans the ultimate Command ship, incapable to scratch a MWD'n straight line Battleship paint, only DD.
Make it impossible to target small targets under capital size and give it huge boosts to high slots for remote reps.
Making Titans, supers capitals in general fragile to sub cap ships.

Think about that titan trying to hit a MWD'n BS like you can obviously imagine a BS hit a frigate orbiting his large guns: impossible to hit/kill

When this day comes, capital fights will finally get interesting and the proliferation of those will stop to profit of a much larger interesting game play that is destroying cheaper ships for the fun of playing together and burn ships.

Also, further clarification:

This EW-immunity stuff is something we're *exploring*. This discussion is part of that exploration.

The specific benefits I'm hoping it might yield at this time aren't really to do with warp scrambling, they're to do specifically with tracking disruption. You can get four -62% TDs on an Arbitrator, each of which cancels out four Shadow Serpentis tracking computers. Even if you assign 2x TDs to each titan, this ought to let you significantly mitigate a 30-titan blapfleet with 15 T1 cruiser hulls, which is pretty decent scaling IMO.