EVE General Discussion

I want to talk about the balance of capitals today. Throughout my Eve career on several different characters I've always loved carriers. I started out in a Chimera and had a chance (before the buff) to fly a Wyvern. Now I know a lot of the super pilots today will disagree with me now, but if my ideas are looked at with an open mind they might make sense.

The way ships progress in eve right now is very basic, and understandable. You start out with a frigate, go to cruiser or assault frigate, to battle cruisers to commands... ect... ect... But where you get the confusing leaps and bounds is capitals.

Carriers- These are fairly well balanced. The work horse of the alliance. These are fine as they are, and perfectly counterable. They aren't un-killable by the average group.

Dreads- I haven't flown one of these in ages, they used to be fairly well balanced until they were give the leaps and bounds treatment. This is where carriers got left behind, to compete with the very poorly thought out super buff these were given a knee jerk treatment. They need to be toned down in a complete rework. I feel drone bays need to be reinstated.

Super carriers (motherships)- One of my main focus points. The greatest leap in capitals starts here, where a dread or carrier is in the 1-2 million hp range and require active tanks, super carriers do the leaps and bounds in HP alone by millions and do not require active tanking to be effective. The large standard hp gives the percentage modules dominance in this fitting class. The nyx alone starts out at just over 4,000,000 HP. A moros starts at 900,000 hp and a thanatos starts at almost 600,000. The compounding leaps and bounds portion is the required building cost.

What I suggest for super carriers is a simple rework into being a tier two carrier. Give these carriers a small generalized drone bay, reduce the fighter bay to allow either fighters -or- bombers (still something a tier 1 carrier wont have), allow them to dock, remove the 'super module' capability, reduce HP to a base of 900,000 and reduce the cost to roughly twice of a carriers. This makes it a tier two heavy carrier. Now before you light the fires and grab your pitch forks ask yourself what does this do? I'll tell you! It opens the super carrier slot for a new, purpose designed super carrier class. With the new technology CCP has added to the engine, and the fact mother ships were not meant to be as wide spread as they are, this would be a natural evolution of the class. This would also remove any knee jerking that was done to the capital scene. So just imagine what new class of ship would be added?

Titans- These got the same treatment of super carriers. A horribly thought out buff with an even worse knee jerk nerf. The leaps and bounds ideals. The huge jump between dreads and titans are almost ******** in scope.

My suggestion for titans is this- Reduce HP to 980-1m hp, make the cost about twice what tier one dreads are. Allow fitting of siege modules, make them heavy dreads. Remove the doomsday, remove the jump portal.( Removal of the jump portal is a must in my opinion to remove the 'shrink feeling' eve has received with jump bridges, and the titans jump portal. This would force fleets to move naturally and would reduce half of new eden showing up for fights and possibly shrink power blocs. ) Other things that should be added to titans are a normal drone bay and even maybe a 5 max capacity fighter bay. This gives titans a more 'defined' role and also opens the gap of titan for a new ship.

For those who disagree I ask you this question- why?
If its for the cost of the ship I've thought of that :)
Every existing and building super gets put into station, the extra material removed from the BPO is then returned to the player in the form of finalized product. This ensures that everything that is currently existing in eve stays, but nothing is added.

If its the power you feel solo killing a couple carriers-
You would have the skills needed to fly the new supers that CCP would have to make to fill the missing roles. You as an collective group (alliance/power bloc/corp) could save those returned material to put towards building those new ships.


CCP instead of horribly screwing null sec with these changes you have made. Instead of alienating the normal ( Normal as in those who can't live and breath Eve ) group of players from how much fun capital warfare is ( how often are carriers and dreads really formed into a fleet now days? really think about it! its always supers! ) look at these changes. Look at who gets screwed by the current super capital conglomerates. It's time to bring back the massive fights of dreads and carriers, time to bring back the multiple layers of combat.

I remember the huge fight we were having as a carrier pilot. Focused purely on killing enemy capitals and repairing our own. I was completely oblivious to the many other fights going on around us. When the fight was over and I clicked my overview over to my normal one, I was in awe on how many sub cap wrecks were around us. The sub cap fleets trying to keep enemy sub cap fleets from attacking the capitals, where tactics came into play and not just blobs! Now days the only people who experience that feeling are super capital pilots. If you don't have a super you're really not an asset capital wise to an alliance. And that aspect really needs to change!


For those who think this is a whine, it is not. It is simply a unbiased look into something that needs addressed.

In addition:
Titan hulls look too exotic to be 'tier 2' dreads. It would be fine to introduce new hulls and names but replacing those ships currently in game with a new model.

OP seems well thought out, I cannot comment on the Supers as I have never been in one.

I agree that carriers took a bit of a punch in the face recently, Dread buff combined with the fact that Sub Caps cant be DDed means they now have the shortest life-span of all caps, a small buff to tanking abilities might be in order there, I am unsure (Maybe just the Non-Archon carriers need a buff).

Interesting thoughts.

I do not agree with nerfing supers even more. I do however support the idea of tech 2 normal capitals. My thoughts have always been provide 2 versions of tech 2 capitals (Dreads, Carriers) to specialize them in the two fields that they are meant for. One would be focused on anti subcap fleets and suck against other capitals and super capitals, and the other would be much stronger against super capitals and maybe even capitals. This would shorten the gap between the two classes of ships and provide more training for capital pilots and more diversity on the battlefield.

I have to agree with you man. Maybe the Op forgot once you get into one there is no place to dock the ship. one of its biggest down falls of owning a Nyx. Must get a holding toon finished for it

For Caps, seems the gaping holes should be filled in, not bringing the top tiers down like an implosion.

regular carrier can do triage, has remote repair bonus' as where the tier 2 carrier is mostly for combat. So for a fleet to really be effective you need tier ones.

Problem with buffing HP to counter a knee jerked problem is you compound leaps and bounds. Instead of having an almost linear increase in hp/dps/capability you get leaps and bounds in those things.

Problem with caps now is the current roles filled by supers have replaced the roles of carriers and dreads. 'Imploding' them down (making a new hull model for the titans, so those can be reused as titans) with a better role in mind is a great idea. It removes the compounded screw up of the super buff then fix.

Tier 2, not tech 2 and yes. The super 'buff' they implemented made a very VERY VEERRRYYY large leaps and bounds issue.
What is leaps and bounds? Well lets say you have a geddon, the geddons HP is roughly 80,000 base (just a number here for numbers sake). Now the next step in battleship Amarr is the Apoc, the Apoc takes around the same skill requirement but instead of costing about 40 mil more and maybe around 100,000 hp, its 2 billion isk, and has 1,000,000 hp. So the leaps and bounds of HP and cost are HUGE. Then you add in the fact the geddon does lets say 800 dps. The apoc then does 2,500 dps, thats what we have with carriers->super carriers and dread->titan.

And titans now would be nerfed down, and a new hull made for them. The current hulls would be then used for an updated better thought out titan. The current incarnation of supers is a 20x the cost, 20x the effectiveness.

Hope that clears up things :)

the normal carriers would have support in mind, being able to triage, and use remote repair with bonus'. The supers role would be more damage and would rely on the smaller carriers to help keep them alive. So both ships have roles, both ships have something the other isn't good at.