Ships & Modules

[
dude, the problem is not sig radius the way you've suggested.

The problem is that tracking gets better over range because of your formula. There is no penalty for a ship being further away and thus appearing smaller in reality.

So while I can always choose a smaller ship to counter sig, I cannot choose a smaller ship to counter tracking. There's only 2 ways to counter tracking, get closer, or get faster.


The issue is this. If I pull out my gun and try to hit a pumpkin from 2 feet away, I'm probably going to hit it because it's very large in my view. But if that same pumpkin is 100 yards away, it should appear a hell of a lot smaller. This does not happen in eve. The sig size always stays consistent. So there is no penalty for sig according to range, and tracking gets progressively better at range.

For a huge ship like a titan, this means that if you have 10+ on the field, their shear size (30km+ across each) is going to spread them and the enemy fleet out more... meaning more range and greater tracking. Sig matters a hell of a lot less in this case. And in addition, you can add webs to targets in addition to that range factor benefiting the titans and you get very high results.

The solution is to inflate weapon signiture over range for all ships. You should not decrease damage directly like falloff... that's a horrible solution. If you just inflate the signiture according to range for the weapons, this means that smaller targets get progressively harder to hit.

My solution in another thread a while back is to give every gun a base range for their signiture to apply at. So a 425 railgun might have a 50km signiture range where it's signiture is 400 like current. But for every % further from that 50km base, the signiture of the gun should increase.... IE at 100 km range, the sig of the gun is 800. This means it's harder for the gun to hit smaller ships as range increases. This would not hurt titan v capital, but would likely affect titan vs anything else and reduce the effects of that 60-100km zone of combat where webs can't reach, and titans still struggle to track.

In particular, it would hurt the close range high tracking titans because if their base sig range was low... (IE 15-20km for Giga Pulse as an example), at 60km range, they would have 3x the sig or 3000 sig compared to the BS they are trying to hit....

This makes sense because distant objects are supposed to be harder to hit. So please implement a mechanic that makes sense not just for titans, but for all ship class warfare. Because quite honestly, frigates should have a lot better survival rate vs bs according to their sig/speed advantage...and you just don't see it currently. I mean, smaller ships are already penalized enough for small defense and smaller offense and range.


***** As a side note, the above suggestion adds a huge new feature for gun balance where you can make proper mid range weapons, close range weapons, and long range weapon. This means that every solution to the artillery vs rail vs beam or the blaster vs auto vs pulse doesn't have to come down to direct damage and tracking... you actually have a mechanic to make each range and gun type specialize with it's signature in a certain zone.... So rails might have 3x further range than pulse for their signiture to remain normal, thus boosting their efficiency with mid range ammos and not forcing you to apply a **** patch where damage is boosted like the last one. Artilleries might have huge alpha, but a pretty small window for sig (30-40km), meaning more struggles hitting moving ships due to the sig inflation of the guns(which they need btw).[/quote]


this seems reasonable and helps the tracking problem with all turrets

Creat: wouldn't your change (I guess you were just describing the problem, not advocating a change, but whatever) only add to guns' ability to do damage? IE wouldn't they perform the same at range (limited by optimal/falloff), but do more DPS to small targets up close (where currently they usually miss entirely)?

It's not battleship tracking which is broken, it's ability of *any big gun or missile* to hit *any small ship* (and do it efficiently) which is broken. Be it capital titan turrets vs battleships or battleships vs frigates.

First major part of problem is already actively discussed - it's tracking mechanics. Ability of more or less scattered gang to hit almost any any target is notorous, and belongs here too imo (because it's turret-specific). You can't hit bs on your orbit? Hit the BS orbiting your neighbour, and neighbour will do the same.

Second major part is highlighted by gripen, it's 'navigation ewar' - webs, scramblers and target painters (and neuts to some extent). With its help titans hit 10mn ab t3s, even when they keep close to the max transversal, which is kind of weird. You will see subcaps raped by titans + ewar support (and frigates raped by battleships + ewar support too) if using ewar will make it possible to efficiently hit targets (much) smaller than you.

Overall, like there's no point in frigate gangs (besides fun) or using general combat frigates in regular gangs, because couple of rapiers + 3 zealots just evaporate frigates as they lock, titans with web support obsolete multiple combat subcap classes. AF boost shown that CCP thinks in wrong direction: they gave them mwd sig bonus, hoping that it will bring them to battlefield to some extent (and obviously it didn't work), while actually they need to revise interaction between ships of different sizes. If bigger ship size has efficient ways to combat smaller size w/o using smaller-sized vessels - this smaller class just won't appear on battlefield (unless it's specialist class which has unique role, like dictors/bombers/long-range webbers).

I really hope that when dealing with titans, CCP will take a look at inter-class interactions in general, because it isn't titan-specific issue.

You can solve this problem multiple ways. Relying *just* on tracking formula is just one of them. Relying just on navigation ewar modification (so it won't work with 100% efficiency on smaller/bigger ship classes, like s/m/l web classes with distinct characteristics, including 'optimal signature radius' and ranges) is another way to go.

But personally, i think that relying on both (avoiding extreme changes in each area, needed otherwise) is better solution.

As well? The DD plan removes those giant ******* cannons.

Also insta-popping happens to every class of ships, so I don't see any reason to make an exception for super-caps. I can understand that even cap pilot don't want to be insta-popped by a single Titan, so CCP can just have the alpha of the DD reduced and the rate of fire boosted to make up for that.

Also DD can't shoot BS and lower, perfect for the Titan role. The principle and balancing would be simple, but a trick would have to be found for implementation. While on the other side we have the tracking and sig debate, which seems to go nowhere. And balancing the tracking and sig would be a nightmare, that CCP likely won't be able to do before the coming expansion.

Again, extend the analogy back to subcaps and see that it works for subcaps and therefore will work for caps. A cruiser logistics ship can spider tank and the next lowest tier of frigates will have as hard a time trying to kill them as BS would have killing carriers, unless they are smart about it. How do you break a basi spider tank? alpha, ECM, neut, SD. So, how do you break a carrier spider tank? alpha, ECM, neut, SD. While neuts only go up to "heavy" (should be called "large"), cap neuts would scale the neut option to be viable against carriers. ECM doesn't scale either to BS-sized and cap-sized modules, and I think they should, but it seems that EVERY time a cap strength module is proposed, someone just says OP as if anything over BS is OP and just too big for them to get their minds around .. seriously, a BS is OP to a cruiser pilot until he learns to play smart, and a cruiser is OP to a frig pilot until he stops doing 0 transversal, stays off ls gates, and also flies smart.

Spider tank in triage still leaves the carriers immobile .. hey look, nice targets for dreads and unable to jump away/dock/etc, and with enough of the right ships, any ship can be alpha'd regardless of spider tank, even if the OP one-shot DD is changed to be limited only to structures.

this seems reasonable and helps the tracking problem with all turrets[/quote]

You sir are full of win and I support this idea.
+10 internets

While I agree Titans should be change, it shouldn't be change in a way that it negatively affects regular Capital Ships: Carriers and Dreads.

Nerfing XL guns will hurt Dreads even more than it will hurt Titans, blowing up structures as its only role is lame. Who wants to spend 1.5 billion on a ship just to smash a structure? Dreads already have trouble tracking Moving Capital Ships, nerfing the way that XL guns track will hurt Dreads even more.

Making a Titan a super doomsday platform will make it pointless to field capitals on the field, infact its pretty much suicide to do so.

If you want to nerf titans give Titan Hulls a built in penalty, rather than apply it to the weapon system that is already used by another ship class.

As I repeat, Smashing structure is not a role worth wasting 2 billion on. Dreads needs something other than smashing structures and doing stuff other supercapitals can do.

Look, RR is irrelevant if you can get alpha. For a Nidhogger with 1.14 mil EHP against a fleet kin/therm dps Moros, alpha can be achieved with as few as 34 sieged Moros. So, I accept your "50 carrier blob" and raise you a 34 sieged Moros blob (don't even need a Titan DD) for alpha against a Nid (carrier). 1 carrier dies every 5.75 seconds, so long as alpha can be maintained, triage or not, so I say triage is fine, even if it were changed to allow RR/ET. The idea of RR/ET being blocked for triage is about as contrived and perplexing as no eWar against supers or single DD alpha of a carrier. [and then they pretend to fix the Titan problem by burying their heads in the optimal/falloff/tracking hole in the sand].

Now to address the concern for Triage briefly. Triage makes 2 cap RR modules act as 8 using the cap of 4 modules. Good luck generating much more cap than that on your own. Since every other carrier is fully powering their own RR, good luck finding anyone else with spare cap. How powerful are 8 cap RR modules? 9600 reps per sec. Moros puts out 5850 dps each and the Nyx does 10k dps. So, even a triaged carrier blob allowed to do RR is challenged by 2:1 from sieged Dread and 1:1 from SC.

Good point. Without Triage, the chimera nets 65 GJ/s per CET (+200, -135). With triage, the same chimera nets 584 GJ/s (+800, -216). If a chimera cap bounced (with friendly effects allowed for triage/siege) like a basilisk, it would fit 2 CST, 1 CET, and 1 triage. The 2 CST would be fully powered by the CET bouncing, and put out the reps of 8 CST. If a basi fit 5/1 and the chimera operated like an 8/1, we must conclude that the two, on their respective tiers, were similar as is. The advantage would be offset by the immobility ... hold still for my dread guns, perfect. Without triage, but following the same basi cap bouncing strategy, the chimera can hardly power a single (1) CST (19 min 47s). This puts the chimera in an unstable 1/1 configuration which is pitiful compared to the basi's stable 5/1 configuration.

I support changes to siege/triage to allow carriers to cap bounce and spider tank which mirrors established subcap logi practices and mechanics. Carriers and Dreads would have their place on the battlefield, and players would see their viability. Fixing the single DD alpha will allow people to choose the T1 cap over the super, and I believe, will also resolve most of our super balancing issues.

CST - cap shield transporter
CET - cap energy transfer array