Ships & Modules

With the enormous rebalancing initiative underway, will this be hitting capital ships?

Now I know capitals don't have real tiers like cruisers do (did!), but if you ask most people, you will get a very clear hierarchy of capitals. Something like Archon>Thanatos>>Chimera>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Nidhoggur

And

Moros/Rev>>>Naglfar>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Phoenix

And

Aeon/Nyx>>Wyvern>>>>>>Hel>>lolRevenant(?)

And

Avatar/Erebus>Ragnarok>Leviathan (not as clear on this one, but still)


From what I've seen, this is due to a couple things.
(No particular order)

1. Lack of Shield version of Slave implants
2. Capital Missiles
3. Fitting (Chimera and Nidhoggur especially)
4. Tanking momentum (Always used armor caps, thus armor caps will always be used)
5. Large fleets (IE typical carrier fights) tend to involve armor ships, whereas shield subcaps tend to rely more on mobility (not capitals' strong spot once ongrid)


SO, are there plans to adress this? What should be done, in your opinion, if anything?

The shield supers are actually competetive it's just that the majority of supers built were all armored, so shield ones just don't fit doctrine.

All it would take to make shield titans balanced against armor ones is the removal of in-combat refitting. Currently an armor titan can sit with 3 magstabs or heatsinks, then quickly swap out to hardeners if he sees yellow boxes, gaining huge amount of EHP. Shield titan can't do this as effectively as their lowslot tank modules are fairly weak in comparison.

Even before Capitals and Slave implants, armor was the more popular fleet tank.

The Chimera is a better choice for pvp but the Thanatos sees more use due to various reasons like jewing. As for why armor caps see more use than shield caps, it's mostly due to this; Shield RR consumes more cap than armor RR for some weird reason that apparently CCP can't explain...maybe GOD ?
Ok, so CCP decided to make shield RR consume more cap then proceeded to give the Archon more cap and faster cap recharge than the Chimera hence, making the chimera the underdog from the get go. As if that wasn't enough, cap power relays ( very important stuff) were made to nerf the hell out of shield boosting while having no effect on armor tanking. HOW ******* DUMB CAN YOU BE This is why shield tanking sucks balls on the cap level.
The Archon and a few others are simply benefiting from decisions that were made to balance armor ships that use cap based turrets with their shield counterparts; mostly on the subcap level but it's really butt trucking capitals atm.

I think you would need Tiers to "cide" them.

While I'm compelled to point out there are no capital teirs to icide, I would love to see a balance pass on them. Most likely it won't be until after the Tech 2 sweep, which isn't until after all the tech 1 ships are done. Still, the newest blog is already talking about command ships, so maybe it isn't that far off.

Please oh please if you do do this CCP, get rid of the split weapons on the Nag. Split weapons only worked on the Typhoon (no I'm not counting drone ships), and now you're scrapping that, so please get rid of it everywhere.

there are no tiers in caps so no teiricide.
I really do hope they balance dreads at some point tho.

PS: **** off with shield slaves, do not want. shield and armour tanks are different, as they should be.

They will probably fix them up a bit next year. BUT aren't torps getting an applied damage boost. Maybe that Phoenix will be able to hit Capitals moving in the speeds of 0.0001 m/s to 5 m/s for near-full damage.

It's somewhat amusing...

I've spent a number of posts now speaking out against armor-shield complaints in other threads where attention is on the Caldari and Minmatar ships. What i've argued there is that popularity (in large, uniform, fleets using the ships in the most conventional way) should not be the only validation for a ship and it's performance. I've hinted about how it crosses over on larger ships and now this thread pop up complaining about that very thing. That puts a slight smirk on my face.

The thing with Capitals, similar to the Battlecruisers, is that the ships considered lesser or underperforming generally (note: not always) just perform in areas- or have physical advantages that the average player of today value less. They are not worse, they just don't do the things a certain player value.

Take the Hel for example. Once you begin to scale down fleet sizes it's one of the most popular SC, because to a smaller group utilizing SC for quick and heavy punches against a generally superior enemy, the agility is important. They know they can't tank a straight up show of force so they value the tank less.


Is it egoism?

The question you have to ask yourselves here when you plead for buffs based on the performance you value (because you don't want to train a new ship) is wether that serves the game or not. CCP's response to most of these issues they have touched so far have been to streamline the ships. The Hel is likely to get similar bonuses to the Wyvern and all of a sudden we have no "nano SC" that an undermanned force can use to punch holes in a larger, slower-churning, fleet amassing on a grid: You can't pop that triage Carrier and extract to even out a battlefield before hostile escalation is a go. That tactic disappear from the game, because most players didn't value the ability to do so (most players want a more simplistic approach with safety in numbers, reflecting the content or tradition they choose to play in).

We end up with less tactical options; fewer ways to play the game; where a straight up show of force with the numbers and resources for it become more and more exclusively important. Where even attempting to engage against odds become more and more pointless. It doesn't matter if ships become more and more affordable to match, if the likelyhood of succeeding (or the risk-reward balance for doing so) drop so low that attempting to interact go from risky to stupid.

It still baffles me why CCP can't see those effects in the game, where making more ships fitting into the illustruous "blob" just reinforce the "blob" in it's relation to other ways of playing the game (by "blob" i tend to refer to either my own definition of "bringing more numbers beyond meeting whatever strategic goal you have because more is always better and becomes a strategy in itself" or Marlona's definition of a gameplay scenario where "people don't attempt to fight unless they have full confidence of resource superiority - it's not about fighting with superiorty, it's about not fighting without it"). We're slowly running out of alternatives, in part, because the mechanics are outdated and CCP seem to fear touching them; but also in part because they keep re-balancing ships away from alternative use and making certain roles or performance scarce.

You should think about that just as much when it comes to Capitals as when discussing Battlecruisers.

If Myrms and Harbies get streamlined for the fleet use of Drakes, and...

If Hels get streamlined for the fleet use of Nyx and Aeon.

The winners in both scenarios are conventional fleet use, and the losers are out-of-box use at smaller scale.



Content for ships or ships for content?

Maybe you should diverse popular gameplay to match more ships rather than changing more diverse ships to fit the one most popular way to play the game.

If the ambition is to make the Hel appealing the best approach is to make smaller scale gameplay more useful, not turn it into the same ship as the Wyvern, Nyx or Aeon and having it do the very same things either of them do.

The shifting of goalposts currently going on, can be summarized like this: they are adding twice as many new classes but they are cutting the races down by half. The end result is the same amount of ships while making racial choices and training matter less to appease or avoid the amount of stupid players shallowly comparing race within class, expecting all ships of one class to perform the same roles (projecting damage in large fleets).

At the same time racial balance issues still persist, since if you're picky, the Nemesis is still the worst Bomber (because of fitting issues, slot allocation and damage type) despite all bombers being very similar in use. That apply to any streamlined class and will apply to all new classes CCP streamline. The Talos is generally better in smaller groups and the Naga favoured in larger gangs - somewhere down the road someone is going to start complaining about that in similar infant cries as now.

Meanwhile, actual gameplay is yet to be adressed. We still have long defensive timers that only respond to amassment of resources, we still have major economy faucet-sink balance issues, active-passive or player-alliance income; and amusingly enough the changes that have gone through so far have mostly made those issues worse. We get more ships that cost nothing so the lack of overarching sink is becomming a more severe problem.

looking forward to exploration caps.