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For the love of god!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FIX DREADS and MINMATAR CAPS at the same time

HEL is getting NERFED even worse? And it already sucks vs the other supers?

Nidhoggur is effectively always primaried and yet has worst EHP, mediocre bonuses, what does it have for all that training??? few m/s extra i think? lol How about making it more nimble, jump with less cap, faster base speed, something for the love of god

Naglfar... Seriously how has this not been fixed, moros is getting even better, yet Naglfar one of the longest dreads to train for is still medicore at best? Split CAPITAL weapon systems, and now no drones.... oh for the love of god fix this

Also weren't carriers supposed to become more corp logistics, you know with a larger more useful ship maint bay???

Why the hell are dreads jump range not getting fixed, match dreads with carriers, so that together as a TEAM they can move and be an affective group weapon for attacking, and supers will fall into there defensive local roles...

Also why are dreads not getting a boost to tracking even a tiny boost so to hit supers "speed tanking" you dont need a full rack of tracking mods!

If a Capital is built around DPS (Dread, SC, Titan) it should NOT be able to apply that DPS to subcaps. If you want to get away from a lone dictor holding your for 23 hours then get friends.

I am really eager to see how this all shapes up and I hope CCP doesn't back off too much until these changes at least get some time to settle in.

Encourage? Nothing encouraging about it.

These changes do basically three things:
- kitchen sink roamings that accidentally stumble upon a ratting supercap have a better chance of killing it
- force subcapital deployment alongside supers by making subcaps as immune to supers as possible without using the word immune
- they fiddle with a few fleet-fight performance knobs to see what happens, reminiscent of the equipment tests run in chernobyl in 1986

Now if we look at it, what is actually the problem with supers? They are designed to be cap killers. And they are undeniably good at it. So good in fact, that fielding caps against them currently is ritual suicide. But that is not the fault of supers - that would be like blaming a vagabond for being fast.
So, now that we have ruled out engaging them with regular caps, lets look at subcaps. Titans take a special place here since their doomsday can take out key infrastructure ships like fleet commands in a very reliable way. The other thing at least for turret titans is basic tracking mechanics which guarantees them to at least have some effect if the fc sets them up correctly.

Going on to supercarriers, what about them? Their dps? No. Since the last round of fighterbomber changes a fighterbomber hits an abaddon for 8 to 15 damage per volley. That's not even enough to make your twitchy finger broadcast for reps - it adds up if you look at 250 scs, yes (75k), but you just got hit by a 30 million HP damage volley, there are bound to be scratches (0.25% effective damage!). Their best bet is somewhere in the fighters / sentries / heavies ballpark in which they deal a little above twice as much dps as fleet battleship inside 60km control range. So the subcapital damage output of 250 supercarriers is 550 battleships worth, hardly something the cluster has never seen before.

If you've ever engaged 550 battleships, you know there is simply no tanking that inside their engagement zone. There is not. Accept it. Embrace it. But (assuming even numbers which already means you failed in setting up an unfair fight) you get a steady decline of incoming dps as ships explode. With the EHP of supercaps, their dps decline over time is always shallower than any subcap forces'. The EHP in turn they received because they used to fold in 20 seconds to anything looking at them the wrong way and because they are actually needed in cap fights which are a lot more static than subcap fights once they are on.

All of this combined results in the "supers are the only counter to supers" mantra. So, what is CCP hoping to achieve with these changes? The -20% HP change makes the dps reduction steeper, without having them implode against 20 battleships like they used to. With the drone changes I assume they hope that supercarrier pilots will go for 10/10 or 15/15 splits between bombers and regular fighters. This reduces the damage output of them against both capital and subcapital targets and removing the titan's headshot aimbot. So, less dps output and steeper over time dps reduction.
Will this give subcapital fleets a better chance? Yes. Will the odds-improval be enough to stop the whining or fix eve? No. Will turning these screws even more fix eve? No, it will just break supers again. With their destructible dps without the endless-waves feature that saved the Dominix through the ages they will already be borderline.

The real core problem is not that supers are designed as cap killers. Giving subcaps better odds is all fine, but subcaps are not the designed weightclass in which to engage in. The problem is that no other capital is actually designed to fight capitals - short story short, fix broken dreads.
Siege weapons were fine in the days of RMR and served their purpose while sov was linked to POS. Newsflash, that's history. POS are engaged to annoy your enemy, force fights and flush a few isks into your wallet. They are an opportunity target now, not a tightly regulated core game mechanic.

So, dreads redux:
- remove the 2 target limit that was imposed on dreads because of station hugging moros pilots. supers take care of that problem all over new eden reliably and fast
- remove the remote rep restriction
- soften the tracking penalty in siege considerably
- switch the local rep boost in siege to +120/140/160/180/200% hull, armor and shield hp depending on dread level
- no warping / docking while in siege, but movement does not have to be restricted
- siege timer at 5 minutes is probably still a good idea

What do we achieve with this? We get an actual supportable, fully insured and comparatively easy to get into damage backbone for regular capital fleets that is not just breakfast any more. You will not come out of engaging a 250 supercapital fleet with a 175/75 dread/carrier fleet (again, failure to set up an unfair fight) scott free and you imho never should - but a considerable amount of supers will die, your losses will be easier to replace (isk, build time and build capcity wise) and you actually have - depending on actual fleet compositions and tactics - maybe even a shot at holding the field / forcing the retreat (wiping 250 supers with even numbers should for the time being be unrealistic I think). But this could actually generate nice combined forces fights.

As Titan proliferation increases, the doomsday will probably have to be looked at again. Then again, engaging 250 titans feels like it should hurt by sound alone, yet how much remains the question.

PS: by the way, what is it with all that 'no remote rep' nonsense. Are you all imprisoned in motsu or a 2005 timebubble? active tank stockholm syndrome?

PPS: and fix capital shield reload mechanics by making it like armor
Not even a sandbox needs passive (super)capital shield tanks

These engagments are exactly what I experienced. During the push on Geminate we had a few battles with you and the DRF forces where the Super fleet was able to remote ECM our BS fleet so no DPS was even being applied in the engagment zone. All this while the Titans were DD'ng command ships, FC's, alt FC's, alts of FC's, blapping the battleships with the turrets etc untinterrupted.

Hopefully the Timedilation will help somewhat, but if you look back over the scenario quoted in my post, it seems awful familiar.

I was wondering if any of these changes will really have an impact on the capability of the Super Fleets to decimate the sub cap fleets without the need for anything else but a cyno and some HICS / DICS?

EDIT: I don't really mind whatever is decided, as i'm a long way off from any cap ship involvment outside of support roles. I'm more curious if there will be any support roles in the large fleet battles moving forward. The changes seem to nerf the small Super Fleet but doesn't seem to change the 0.0 SOV warefare tactical possibilites much from my perspective. Was hoping someone with a better grasp would correct me.

EDIT 2:

Why wouldn't a dramatic increase in the cap neuts of Void bombs be on the table for this? Bomber Wings would be able to neut out cap fleets if coordinated enough? Or are void bombs already viable in enough numbers? Any experienced bomber pilots / FC's who could enlighten me? Or are the bombs still untrustworthy still in the large fleet fights?

Void bombs really do need to be buffed to neut 1000 cap or 2000 cap (maybe based on sig radius or something, 5000 tops?), currently any ship that they cause problems for can easily get out of range. (If I recall, it neuts 250 cap atm, could be wrong though...)

Quoting a good Evoke post.

What does it matter if it does? Even unpiloted, a supercap has enough natural shield recharge to permatank a rookie ship.

I saw someone post something about the void bomb. This is by far a good idea, and it needs a big buff. Currently the void bomb is kinda stupid and not all that good. If it were changed to remove 50% of current cap level this bomb alone would become quite useful against supers and anything else. 3 or 4 SB's hitting a super fleet with those bombs would just about cap them out, and if they were doing any repping....well there will be no more cap. Meaning a few neauting ships could now keep supers caps drained, couple that with the drone bay nerf that I posted a few pages back (and has been quoted) and right there is your fix.
Just those two changes to supers would fix everything, not only to SC's but to Titans as well (void would wreak havoc on there guns and DD's). No EHP nerf, there fine as is with these changes, add in a buff to dreads EHP and allow RR while sieged (maybe reduced by -50%?) and there is you cap ship re-balance. No changing there 3 drones per crap or anything of that magnitude, supers just really needed a small tweak and dreads another small tweak and bingo you have a working game again. Anything outside of these changes here would be too much and would NOT address the issue that super caps pose.

A great way to balance capitals without destroying any of their current capabilities.

Lets use a covert ops for a case example.

You are in a super, I am in a buzzard.
I happen to know that your safe is close to planet 4 and you are cloaked (I saw you on directional while you were in warp, and narrowed the band down etc.)
I cloak up and wait. I have my probes out, and off grid of you, but tuned into, say 1AU. With good skills, the moment you log, i can move the probes over to Planet 4, and scan. Then I warp to you from my SS close to Planet 4. I can get to you in far less then the 1 min before your ship goes away. I then hit you with one gun, or a nuet. Now all i have to do, is love tap you every 10 mins to insure that you do not despawn. I now wait until my corp members come home from work, my alliance form's up, everyone takes a leak, goes out for a smoke, checks Reddit, etc. Then they come in, and we kill your ship.
Or, you bump outside the POS shields, same thing, I just wait until you are outside of gun range of the POS, and give you a poke every 10mins. Hell, I could even cloak up for 9 of those 10mins (or 14 of the 15mins if i for some reason wanted to risk it)

It doesnt matter that I can not tackle you, but it does prevent you logging, and staying right where you are for as long as I'd like you to. Until downtime.
People will soon meta downtime a WHOLE lot more then they already do. Huge fleet fights timed perfectly where the target goes into reinforced, or dies moments before DT.

There are a lot of reasons why this is bad, and a lot of ways it can still be fixed. A 30min timer vs a 15 min timer would work for instance.