Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Problem:
Most new players will never get the joy of playing around with carriers or even see one for much of their first year of EVE life.
The solution - To field a new cruiser-sized "carrier".

I'll call it a "Mission Support Cruiser"

What is it?
- A new class of ship with most carrier features only scaled down to something roughly as tough as a cruiser
- Just carries regular drones, probably 50m3 worth.

What's the purpose?
- To give hi-sec, young players a sense of the carrier
- To support new, longer, L4 "special" missions
- Should be able to cause havoc with its drones.
- A trainer for logistics duties commonly associated with carriers / supercarriers

What it isn't.
- Not a cruiser, but cruiser-sized in terms of its DPS, tank
- Shouldn't be overly durable, it must rely on friend's for protection.
- Shouldn't be so flexible that it could work in null/ 0.0 space (T2 variant maybe someday?)

Features
- Cruiser-class DPS with Drones only
- Cruiser-class defensive capabilities
- Mini-Triage mode - perhaps only 10 minutes max
- Ship Maint Bay (2 ships max)
- Can fit previously mentioned 'Bubble Shield Module'
- Has fuel bay for Strontium (Triage Fuel)
- Perhaps 4000 m3 cargo/hangar space (loot storage, ammo, ect)
- Only 1, if any high turrets, limited to Drones for putting out DPS,
- Shouldn't be as good as a Logi ship at repping but maybe 80% as good
- Can field up to 8 or 10 drones like a Guardian-vexor when fully trained
- Balance: Only has enough room for 10 Light Drones
- Can delegate drones within control range.


Final thoughts:
- Think of it as the "Light pickup truck" of space. Handy, useful, modest, and not the toughest thing around.
- I would also look at adding some special "longer" L3 / L4 missions to EVE where having such a ship would very useful.
- It should require fairly high Cruiser skill. I would expect it to be L4 at a minimum.
- With limited fitting slots, it shouldn't be too powerful, even with 10 drones, but helluva lotta fun.

It's unfortunate that it is hard to suggest new ships that break specific rulesets (if one can call it that).
As Minty Moon just said, "a cruiser should not be able to do that".

There are also specific functions that would not help all too much either - or would make missions in general too easy perhaps.


I for one do like these type of ideas, breaking the ice and not always having the same dull function, so don't let this put you down. Personally, I'd be more for an industrial ship (yes) - because we're talking about something like the size of a some supercarrier (dramatized).

But that rest aside, a cruiser could also be "refitted", taking out all those special things for a special task. However, I'd have to say that the cruiser is simply too small to fulfill all functions. One would have to introduce a Heavy Cruiser variant, or even upscale them to something like a hulking battlecruiser (or even battleship).

Somewhere, a logistics ship could do most of the tasks minus the extensive cargo bay. In my humble opinion, L4, be it any sort of upcoming special mission or the standard ones, do not really require all too much of an attention. There are of course extensive missions at various times but with these L4s being commonly done in Highsec, Noctis is anybody's best friend.


If you want to have cruiser have that "nifty'ness" of a Noctis, then you'd might have to tune a few things.

It is however unfortunate in the end due to drones already being excessively used upon various ships, let alone gallente ships liek the aformentioned Dominix.

cruise-class? like disney or carnival cruise lines with the non stop buffet, gambling, drinking and slot machines?
SIgn me up!


gall and amarr are getting drone based destroyers in a week or so wait till after dec 4th.
the amarr one actually looks pretty sweet.

i actually like my domi(s), but id like it to look nicer more carrier esk, and less ball like, and like an actual area where drones come out. maybe when tiericide gets to bs's they might add a different shaped drone bs.

I think a few of you may have missed the point there with the suggestion.

Does EVE need this ship?
Of course not. It needs it about as much as it needs a Hookbill or 12 different sizes of cans, or 20 different ores instead of 19.

The question is this, would a new player enjoy a mini-carrier assuming it didn't break the game?
Probably... maybe... I don't know but I think I would have had some fun with it. I suspect there are others.

Are the roles it performs covered by other ships?
Yes, in parts and pieces but not all on the same one except the carrier (which does a bit more naturally)

Is this like a Domi?
If you read words and understand them, you might notice its a little different.
As tough as a cruiser, can docks small ships, has a mini triage, little corp hangar... I'll let the ones of sound mind figure that out.

And finally for those who needs it...
If you can't tell the difference in a typo and its English equivalent.... well.... I guess its a good thing the ships buttons have pretty pikchures for you....

:)

Ok, we get that you want a mini carrier and you don't want to compromise by using other ships.

Here's what you don't get: What you want is totally unfeasible on the scale you are asking for. You literally want a mini carrier; corp hanger, triage and all. It will not work!

To keep it balanced with its cruiser peers, it would have to do almost nothing with its myriad abilities. This scale of ship should only do one or maybe two things even remotely well. You want it to basically do the same job as two ships, as well as having a corp bay larger than any non industrial sub cap cargo hold! Are you serious???

On top of all this, the triage mode, making it immobile will make it a sitting duck. A sitting duck with minimal range and a cruiser tank. And I don't just mean in PvP. NPC rats are having their AI changed to a sleeper and incursion based version. Your immobile and defenceless mini carrier will pull agro faster than a chav at a disco.

So, if you want to give fresh pilots a taste of what it is that carriers do, I suggest you get them into drone boats and support ships and teach them the different aspects individually.

If a new player wants to aspire to a carrier or see what a carrier can do in subcap form, they should try either a drone boat or a logistics ship. This tries to do too much and it isn't actually better than either of those things. Having an SMA and the ability to field 10 light drones doesn't make it good. That won't give new players an idea of the scale of a carrier in terms of its power. Besides, if they want to fly a carrier for reps or drones, they should train the skills that would let them fly a drone boat or a logistics ship well. Further, going into triage would be instant death for a ship of this strength. Triage relies on being able to survive unassisted and immobile. Making it so that the ship must rely on a friend for protection means that triage is a death sentence.

I think this niche would be better filled by a T2 battleship with bonuses to remote repairs and drones. No, it's not something a noob could hop into immediately, but it's something shiny to aspire to that will have them train all the important skills and they could see it flying around in hisec. Perhaps it could store one frigate and have a small fleet hangar so that it could support a tiny noob following a higher-skilled player around in a L4. If the noob's ship explodes, they board the second and keep going on their merry way. Yes, it would be powerful enough that you'd see an outbreak of them in spaces other than hisec, but they would be far easier to cap out and kill during their triage cycle than a carrier, and if you deny them energy transfer bonuses in favor of drones and make their reps only superior to a logistics ship when in triage, they might not be ludicrous. Maybe.

I had blocked that from my mind. Good going, self.

There really isn't a good way to do a mini-carrier in sub-battleship form because they have to be so durable in order to triage. A cruiser-sized ship that can rep or droneboat, sure, but not one with an SMA and a triage module.

Thanks for the meaningful comments, I really appreciate those!

Perhaps bigger? Say a BS class then?

I worry its getting to close to a real carrier, but if you keep its tank fairly weak (whereby it almost always needs friends even in hi-sec), theres no reason it shouldn't work.

I agree, the proposed size doesn't make sense, a BS-ish sized platform might be better suited.

One of the goals of the idea is for this ship to be attainable fairly early-on in a player career. To do this and keep all the bells and whistles, I'm suggesting that its trade-off be that it is a weak tank and fairly small (in hangar/main bay).

As for limiting to hi-sec, Im not meaning that it be 'hard-limited' like current capitals are, but I wouldn't want it to be too "good" at null/low sec since that niche is really already covered by carriers, ect... (I think).
Granted, Im suggesting that tradeoff only because I've not spent the time to figure out how this ship will balance out when its out there. Oh-oh space is such a significantly different set of play dynamics, so much so that I wouldn't expect this to work in both places without some major 'buffing' which kinda unbalances it (since I figure it should be an easy ship to train into).

Thanks,
-HRC