Assembly Hall

First of all, if this topic idea has already been discussed or mentioned before, feel free to move it or delete as appropriate.

I, myself, have not any experience with capital ships, so pardon me if I sound like a "know-it-all".

This is a rough idea for what I think could be a potential solution to the many aspects of the supercap problems.
The chief concerns are: Blobbing, Usefullness and Construction.

Blobbing

Many people find that big spaceship battles that take hours to complete, where you shoot and get shot hundreds of times and where you put most of your hard-trained skills to best use, to be some of the best experiences in their entire EvE career. For whatever reason, be it revenge, territorial gain or simple good fights, people love to do these things. Take a stroll through Null-sector with alot of friends and you won't be disappointed.

Of course, the numbers won't always favour you or your enemies. That's how a battle goes. Sometimes people make mistakes and sometimes the opposing force is just too much to handle and a desperate rear-guard action has to take place in order to get out safely.

However, one thing is to be outnumbered by regular ships. Even in a fight to the death, you could still take a few of the bastards with you in a blaze of glory. This hope is crushed when suddenly facing ships that would take your fleet several minutes just to put a dent in. Should you face a large number of supercapital ships that suddenly jump in on your action, the tide of battle will thus turn away from you like an unsatisfied girlfriend. Just saying.

In other words, supercap blobbing is an ever-present problem that has destoyed many a good fights.

In the spirit of this, I propose limiting the number of supercapitals the each Alliance can have at their disposal.
The numbers usually are the hardest part, so let me start off with a rough estimate:

1 Titan class super capital per 5-10 systems controlled.
1-3 Mothership class super capital per 1-5 systems controlled.

Think about it. With this, the rageing growth of supers wil be trimmed down in the future. It's not a perfect solution, as there still is the current number of supers active in EvE, not to mention all the pilots who trained for supers. Most of them will have wasted skillspoints if this idea were to be introduced.

Then again, no one says that the current supers are to be dismantled, it just means that when an excess super dies, it's down for good. This could also spark more warfare in Null-sector by trying to cull big Alliances who have too much space for their own good.

This bring us over to usefullness.

Usefullness

Currently, supers aren't what they used to be, and for good reason, as mentioned above. Supercarriers and Titans lost their regular drone bay last winter and the Titans have been nerfed recently to prevent them from being a threat to sup-capitals.

Somewhere along the line, this seems wrong. I once saw a Kill Mail/Report that showed an Erebus class Titan shoot down a Flycatcher Interdictor. To me, that seemed normal. Much dismay was had from all sides since people generally agreed upon that the Erebus Titan shouldn't be able to do that. It leaves me baffled honestly.

I mean, what good is such an expensive ship if it can't even defend against one little sub-cap ship? It SHOULD be able to kill the ship no-problem-hands-down-gone. It SHOULD NOT have the same chances against a fleet of little ships. Anyone whos ever seen Star Wars will suffer no illusion of this. What's the point of having that giant if all it takes is one lone hero tackler to stop it? Even Luke Skywalker would have been Luke Gonewalker if he had tried his luck against the Death Star alone.

I propose giving Supers back what they once had, albeit in a different way, whilst taking something else away.

- Remove the E-War immunity from Supers, but give them very high stats to counter lone heros. If you want a super tackled, you are gonna have to work for it. I would imagine that supers have supercomputers the size of several houses, so you would have to have a fleet of E-War ships to stop them from working. Makes sense as far as I can see.

- Divide their drone bay into a regular Drone Bay and a Capital Drone Bay. Give them a Dominix worth (or less, prehaps a Vexor sized bay) of drone capacity to help them counter small fleets of tackler ships whilst retaining their current amount of Fighters and/or Bombers. Titans don't get a Capital Drone Bay, since that would defeat the purpose of Supercarriers.

Now, these idea will spark no end of problems themselves, but as I said before, it's not a perfect solution. It will however, give supers a little chance of living to fight another day, instead of the now old "Oh oohh, there's a single neut in local. I better jump". Not too much and not too little.

Lastly, this brings us to construction

Construction

Making the construction of supers more difficult will prevent them being spawned like fleas from a dog. This will make losing a super more telling than before as it cannot be replaced as easily and will also reinforce the aformentioned ideas above.
I don't have any knowledge of how long it takes to build these giants, but it seems the current rate it too much for anyones liking, as far as I can tell. Of course, I might be wrong.

I propose that the time it takes to make a super is doubled (or increased by 1.5x) and prehaps a 25-30% increase in production costs. This may or may not have any effect on some Alliances at present, but hopefully it will leave an effect on the future.

That's it. Let me know what you think. Is any of this viable? Or should we just forget that I ever wrote anything?

Over to you guys.

Limiting super capitals the way you suggest will just stagnate nullsec. The biggest sov holders will have the most supers, and so they will take space the easiest. And will accrue more space, and so on and so forth.

You would end up with one alliance owning almost all sov space, and then no other alliance could ever fly a super capital and therefore could never take space from them.

For those reasons alone (as well as many other reasons I can't be bothered to write walls of text on), I will support this idea.

Also, people have repeatedly brought up the idea of increasing mineral requirement for supers. The problem is supers dont die fast enough, not that people make them too quickly. People will find the resources no matter how difficult you make them to build. If you make them too difficult to build you end up with the same situation I detailed above. It only becomes possible for the biggest and already strongest alliances to build them.

As for your ideas about usefulness, they're neither here nor there really.

Yes, but if that were to happen, what difference will these bombers make other than making the already existing weapons against supercaps less effecient?



I disagree with some of your points. Mainly because even if these ideas never take flight, null-sec will still stagnate just like you described. Supercaps will spawn more and more. There will be more supercap pilots as time progresses. If what you say is true, then with or without any new ideas, the status que will remain as it is.

But let me ask you then: What is preventing one of the big Alliances from taking over null-sec right now?

Let's for fun say that this supercap system limit is the way things are. With around 7500 systems, 2500 of them are Wormholes and not sov related, by the 5000 remaining systems around 50% is NPC controlled. So, an estimate is then 2500 systems which can be controlled. Let's say you get one Titan per 10 system and 3 Moms per 5. That'll be 250 Titans and 1500 SCs. If you then take a look at this partial list of "known" supercap from eve24news Link there should be around 471 Titans and 1414 SCs around. Numbers may vary of course, since things blow up and get rebuild, not to mention that not every single supercap has been identified. Would it not be better with just a little control that could be managed instead of limitless numbers that will eventually drown out everything?



I shouldn't, but I did it anyway. What does that make me, other than ignorant? It makes me curious and helpful. I see people suffer, so I offer them a suggestion. That's what this is. These ideas are suggestions, but they are not demands. I do not claim any deeper knowledge of supers, thus I do not demand any changes to them. I simply offer helpful suggestions that other, more proficient and knowing people, can take, turn and toss around and perhaps use to come to a new solution.

In short, must I be a Meteorologists in order to look up upon a dark sky and say "I think it's going to rain"?

Besides, it's not like these "reversals" will doom you to eternal agony. Unless you're a hero tackler. Just saying.

No, I've never fought supers, but I presume that you have, right? If yes, then why not try to make something constructive of this?
So far, the only thing you have done is take one look at one part of my usefullness section and ignored the rest. So much for useful posts from someone who seems to know alot.
And please, don't presume to know all about my intentions. What I'd like to see is multi-billion ISK Warbeasts not getting cornered and captured by one or two lone people in some random system and then it's offically game over. From my view, I don't really see that as fun or an awe-inspiring moment.

Basicly, if you look at it, what exactly can supers do today that a regular strong sub-cap fleet can't? My point is, why ever bring supers if they are good for nothing? As far as I can see, the only use they have is destroying Carriers and Dreads, which is quite the Freudian prospect, paying upwards around 20-70 billion just to stop two kinds of ships.

Do be a dear and tell me exactly where I mentioned the "Vulnerabillity to all sub-cap fleets must disappear now!" in my first post.
As far as I know, I only mentioned hero tacklers as a target.

After you, dear friend. The forums might actually attract more people willing to discuss differences once comedians like yourself leave.