Player Features and Ideas Discussion

What is it?
Escort Carriers are essentially heavier battleships built with carrier like functions and uses the new fighter-interceptor drones which are decent in destroying enemy drones. Unlike her larger sister she lacks the multi-tasking and barely performs the any of the carrier's function. To help out are various mode engines she can equip to swing her twoards one role or another increasing specialization.

How will it work?
An escort carrier is able follow fleets into battle as an anti-drone screen. As they only need to target the 'mother ship' of the target to sick her fighter-interceptors to dogfight the target's drones. These speedy and accurate fighter-interceptors can be issued to other ships on guard duty, and they will engage any drone that engages the ship in their care. Despite fighter-interceptors drone abilities thier fast tracking and low damage makes her almost non threatening to most capsuller ships.

Bonuses?
Because shes technically a tech 1 oversized battleship she will only be allotted two bonuses that all tech 1 ships receive. There is room for more suggestions

Suggested Bonus1
Racial Drone EWAR Bonus
Control and Speed Bonus

Suggested Bonus 2
Drone/Fighter Damage
Tanking Bonus

Operational Engines
Engines are modules that allows the EC to perform some of the functions a real carrier can. Only one can be equipped at a time.

Carriage Engine - This mode grants a Corporate Bay, Maintenance Bay, Jump Drive Fitting, Additional Cargo bay, Eleminates Fighter Bay.

Control Engine - Allows the use of Warfare Links

Scaffold Engine - Improves RR performance, and Logistic Drone effectivness.

Shroud Mode - Halves Shields & Armor. Electronic signature reduced significantly to be hard to scan of either escort carrier or her fighters. Allows the use of covert jump drives does not grant covert ops cloak use.

Who would fly it?
Pilots need to qualify in the following skills in order to fly.

• Racial Battleship III
• Super Battleship I

Escort carreirs would be sought for a variety of people. A pilot would particularly enjoy this escort carrier as a step between carrier and battleship. A fleet would want them to provide a drone screen in cyno-jammed systems. Along with the ability to throw out standard carrier support whenever possible it’s a decent drone boat. It also serves as an extremely inexpensive option to try a hand at carrier culture and looking for an affordable means to get into it for curious pilots.

Pilots of all racial backgrounds can fly these ships:

Avenger - Minmatar
Albatross - Caldari
Prometheus - Gallente
Advent - Amarr

Where can it go?
Normally super battleships are not capitol ships so they have to rely on conventional battleship means of travel which include
Jump Gates, Portals & Wormholes.

How much would one cost?
Ballpark figures estimate this ship to be around 250-300 million Isk per mineral copy. Time to build is somewhat longer than a battleship but not as extensive as a carrier.

How does she handle?

• Agile and speedy as a heavy battleship
• Battleship sensor suite
• Battleship modules are easy to equip
• Exclusive use of Fighter-Interceptors
• Has a maintenance array
• Small but effective drone and fighter bay for her 5 deployable drones/fighters.
• DPS matches some battleships though use of drone bonsues
• Useful High slots
• Tank slots is impressive
• Off-tank slots is supportive

Strengths

• Easy to train for
• Easy to procure
• Easy to fit, uses battleship modules
• Gate, Portal & Wormhole Capable
• Can enter into a cyno-jammed system including hi-sec
• Excellent Anti-drone platform
• Can probably sink its tonnage in fighter-drones before going down in fleet engagements
• Various Modes for different role use.

Weaknesses

• Uses battleship modules, thus you can only go so far with such in performances
• Larger signature radius makes it potential carrier, super carrier, titan, and dreadnaught lunch, and one of the first ships shot in a non-capitol composition.
• This ship will be a potential "Shoot me first" or bullet magnet as it will threaten opposing dps efforts significantly
• Battleship like targeting which gives smaller ships the engagement envelope they need
• Inefficient against non drone ships
• Limited Fighter and Drone Bay

Potential Ship Role Stomping?
Destroyers

Feedback
Looking forward to it, would make major adjustments to make the ship fit better.

I have to agree drones need to be looked at again in general everything from AI to damage.

As for the roles and function that was the idea I had when I started making super battleships, they're not capitol ships so why give them all the benifits capitols ships have? I just basically stripped everything capitol ship does and left only the function of a carrier and dreadnaught left (superbattleship tier 2 btw).

Next goal was to make them affordable, by further not making them capitolships allowed me to shove them back down into the battleship class range this significantly reduces skill and isk costs.

I am not sure if disallowing Nos or neuts would be a good idea or not, considering these ships are slightly slower than a battleship anything that flies up to them can and should easily get away.

I wouldnt mind seeing hardpoints being used on these ships but it with no bonuses going twoards the guns they're just almost self defense modules but its main role is to fling out fighters and direct them into intercpeting drone swarms.

Then again specifics can kill a ship idea I was being quite vague on slot layout and use, I do intend to have a bit more on the tankish side allowing for pvp fits that would hopefully be survivable long enough to get use out of it before going down but i dont want something so invincible that the hostile fleet wastes too much effort on killing a ship incapable of really killing them back I think its rather unfair but few things in eve are fair.

So currently Im not going to disallow anything the grid and cpu allows for but Ill make it hard for them to fit everything.

If that was the case then eve would never get a new ship out.

I remember the technical limitation of having a drone repair bay in teh discussion on the old fourums and I have to agree the drone repair bay may not be a good idea.

Yeah top rack is mostly utilitarian, you wouldnt be able to fit everything you could want out of it it and will have to make a sacrifice in something in order to do so. If you use weapons its going to cut into your own tank a bit ect ect. Having a finkle cap can help out with forcing fits to lean one way or the other isntead of all directions. But I am going have to factor there are cretaive or rich players out there that can overcome the disadvantages.

I should have listed that as a another weakeness, limited drone/fighter bays. She really is a stripped down carrier and nothing more than a floating platform in space for fighters to land on and a telemetry link to them.

IE picture of one I got done
Caldari Escort Carrier Albatross.

And you are right, you strip her fighters out of her and shes damned near useless, then again its specifically her job to do that to super carriers and carriers and other escort carriers. We may just start seeing battlebadgers deployed just to keep the drone bays full or stocked or a capitol fleet with escorts mixed in it hanging off the carriers bow taking on offloaded interceptors from the coorproate bay of the larger ships.

Targeting.
Targeting on the escort carrier is very reminiscent of a battleships targeting weaknesses. It locks other battleships and bigger just fine, anything smaller starts becomming problematic, but use of a remote sensor boosters or sensor boosts would help alieviate the trageting stress abit if she wants to repair her own.

Repair of Deploys.
As for repairing one's own drones its a problem I tried to tackle in the past and the two best solutions I came up with was:

A 'repair smartbomb' called Nano-mist (armor/hull). Which washes the local area in nanites that repair all nearby objects.
No where near as effective or efficent as a remote repairs (you may have to get a full rack of 8 to match peformance of one remote with max skills and implants ect) but its aoe effect negates the need to target. Eats up own self repair ability though as a possible balance means. There can be a shield version as well because I know players would want to use this to use this to help fellow shield tankers. It also has a D'oh factor as it repairs ALL targets in range, including enemies so players will have to be smart about its use.

The other solution would be remote diagnostics computers. which slowly repairs linked objects that are deployed. This is the lazy man solution as it require no thinking at all to operate. I'd pefer option 1 but its abusable as heck in pvp quantivie situations. Making fleets too hard to kill if layered right. Where as option 2 cannot be abused as the limtiations are on the ship itself.

Affordability.
Well what I meant by affordable is that a super battleship is nothing more than the BC or destroyer equivalent for the battleship size. The price range would be around 250m-300m price range hopefully for the escort carrier the arsenel ship may be closer to your estimate at 300-350 range. It may be possible to shove capitol components around to equate that but well have to see what would be a better way to build one of these things, making it a 1 step or 2 step process. The ship also uses battleship modules, not capitol ship ones which are quite more expensive. The skills required to fly a super battleship are no where near intensive. Also they donot require the more expensive capitol operation skill books to operate, like capitol shield, amror or engineering and jump portaling. however the fighter interceptors requires drone navigation to be capped. Also the skill Superbattleship itself is nonracial just like destroyer and battlecruiser skills are only requiring battleship to III with some spaceship command. The fighter interceptors are also cheaper than regular fighters as they're drone only combatants and not anti-frigate so weapons and the sort are designed against other drones and not capsuleers giving them a distict price drop.

Point Defense Systems.
I have brought up the idea before.

Ring Lasers, Flack Cannons, Cluster Shells (laser, projectile, hybrid) Basically guns with FOF and Defender AI. and it would act as a light deterrence against piloted ships unless the ship is fully monstered out with all tops having them instead of spare slots it would be strong enough to bring down lighter missiles and damage drones that a negilent drone operatore would lose them all if he didnt pull them out or sic them on a target without the defense system. However may also cause problems as they can accidetnally hit friendlies, and it was a cool idea back then but now with fleets as dense as they are its a bad idea now in this confusing target rich envrionment. Unless they improve FoF target selection to be able to target all hostile actions instead of just targeting then it may be useful then.

Support
Technically all the Fighter-Interceptors are 'focus fire' on the 'target' because thier real target is the host ship, but thier attack routine tells them "attack that ship's drones" at this point they break thier focus and try to even out thier fire against all the drones that ship as deployed.

I did have another idea back in the day for corvettes a subfrigate podpiloted class unable to use gates that leads fighter squadrons granting them the carrier bonuses normally lost upon assigning of fighters while inherinting the sqaudrons role (ie a fighter inceptor squadron assigned to a corvette would improve the corvette's speed and tracking, while bombers would improve its overall oumph against larger ships). So... it may be possible to shove a repair role on the corvette instead/including.

Added a picture of an escort carrier to the first post and yes I made the picutre.

I also added some list functions into the post for even easier reading.

If anyone else has a complaint issue or concern I would love to hear it.

Yes I know drones dps alone is pertty absymal these days but I dont want to address is as its something ccp could nerf/buff in the future FiS patches.

This ship should be able to outtank any battleship if flown by a compitent pilot, however it cannot match a carrier. These ships offer some of the heaviest on average tank slots and the capacitor to support it as well requiring less power modules than any similar ship which its marked tanking advantage for active tanking purposes. Its grid and cpu should be high enough to allot much more of the buffer tank as well. Despite above statements passive tanks akin to drakes wont be possible due to the class's overal recharge speed being amazingly abysmal. Otherwise the ship isnt going to be able to do both buffer and active tank at the same time all too well even though it requires lesser power modules to comparable ships it still needs them to fully monster out in either direction whenever its powergrid cpu or cap recharge.

Overall hp is about 3x-4x of a battleship and resistances mark them a slightly bit more to equate battlecruisers bonus. The rest of the resistances and effective HP will have be moduled for.

Escort carriers I envisioned being able to hold 2 fighter wings and a flight of each smaller one plus + more flight of mediums for use of utlitilartian drones in exchange for most of her cargo bay she wont be using much of. Her own cargo bay is alot smaller than the average battleship probably around 200m3.

The ship has merit, but my point is the current situation of supercarriers needs to be toned down; they are severely overpowered.

This needs to happen before any new ship counter. Point is, the current state shouldn't need to be countered, it needs to be fixed. Then diversity can flourish again.

I disagree with almost everything in your proposal, I'm sorry nova.

Firstly, I'll just state that rock=paper=scissors combat is incredibly boring. If fighterbombers are too powerful, nerf them or buff everything else, but don't add a niche ship whose justification for existence is countering another very specific ship.

Secondly, I feel that the purpose of an escort carrier is twofold:

1. Give people a way to play with capital ship mechanics in an AFFORDABLE situation.

2. Create a platform that gives small corporations a launching point into 0.0

As such, I feel there are a few key requirements for an escort carrier:

1. It has a jump drive, and is restricted to lowsec and below
2. It can fit a covert ops portal OR a clone bay
3. It has a decent sized ship maintenance bay and corporate hangar.

The problem with capitals is that they are expensive. 800mil is too much to ask of your average eve citizen as a per-shot learning cost. Odds are, you are going to lose at least one capital while you learn the special mechanics that relate just to them, primarily the jump drive.

Something in the order of 100-200mil is needed. It has to be restricted to low sec like other capitals, or you aren't learning as much as you could be, and its justification for existence is partly negated.

The ship maintenance bay, corp hangar and portal/clonebay functionality are there to allow a small corporation to be fairly mobile and station independent in NPC and conquerable 0.0

Its the sort of thing that should make a good learning and staging tool, and with respect to its combat ability, it should be balanced relative to its price and standing among other ships. It should hit harder then a battleship against battleships and other escort carriers, but lose effectiveness against battle-cruisers and below. Its defenses should be sufficient for it to stand a chance in a 1v2 against some battleships if fit correctly, in the same way that a correctly fit battleship stands a chance in a 1v2 vs some battle-cruisers, but no more then that.

If we can have only one lower cost capital, let it be that IMO

It's too specialised, and there are better, more efficient ways to do what it does.

By flying stealth bombers?

There not perfect, but a pilot would get more use out of it in a number of different situations than what you've proposed.

The niche you've created for this ship is too small for it to be worth being implemented.