Player Features and Ideas Discussion

After reading the two articles arguing about balancing the super capitals, One asked for reducing supers ehp and cost (and other ideas) with another asking for instead of changing supers, create sub cap ships able to damage the bigger ships, I felt like a simpler and potentially better solution which could be implemented quicker by CCP.

Idea:
Increase the role of the class Heavy Inderdictor by changing the focused warp disruption script or creating another script which prevents remote repairing onto the targeted super capital.

Honestly I would prefer the latter, with the new script disabling remote repair on the target super capital, but not preventing it from jumping/warping off. The HIC would either require a secondary Warp generator or an additional HIC to hold the target
down. This change would turn HICs from the only ship able to keep supers on the field, into a direct super counter in our wonderful world of rock paper scissors.

Thoughts?

Using sub caps to combat supers may be a decent idea to start with( as the supers have a hard time combating them alone). when supers are on the field so are caps and sub caps. Hictors don't really stand a chance... once primed.

I like the idea of targeted countermeasures but it also opens a whole new area of exploitation(there must be some balance/risk/reward).

You speak of targeting a ship to make it immune to remote rep but not stopping it from warping off or jumping... What of the pilots who risk tackle by trying to tackle that target... points will be somehow nullified once that target get's hit with the magic module that let's it not receive rep's? also Bubbles....

I personally like the idea of a super bomber.

It would be a BC hull (to mirror the BS vs bomber size difference) and it would shoot citadel torps and bonus them fairly heavily in damage however they should have a much much larger explosion radius. That way the full damage can only be applied to supers/titans.

XL missiles in general need a bit of love. They should get at least enough explo velo to hit caps consistantly.
Maybe there needs to be a big change in capital ship/weapon sig radius to further distinguis their size from Battleships so they don't do excess blap damage to smaller ships. Then you could distinguis supers from regular caps more easily for a bomber ship like this to work as intended.

So wait: if you commit an even larger amount of ISK in dreads AND hictors AND a support fleet to keep the hictors alive, THEN you are allowed the chance to kill a titan? sounds balanced...

What if there's 50 titans on grid that oneshot all your dreads?


To present a real solution, how about we limit the amount of new supercaps that can be produced? I remember reading it in another thread and I haven't found a flaw in this plan so far. If we make supercaps a limited item like tournament ships with a very low amount of BPCs available, we can make their overwhelming power justified and also less focused (as long as they keep exploding).

Supers need some serious work. Creating a ship that makes them easier to kill when they are already So stupidly expensive solves nothing, it only locks them even further into the James 315 'Super twilight zone.'

No, I don't have one, but if I were to acquire one in a game of chance(Read I will not buy one with them being in the sad condition they are) , I would never use it because they are in such a bad place. Too expensive to use, too much of a target, too risky.

While I agree with part of your idea, I don't agree with your implementation.

Anyone that has fought against dreads & carriers in PvP know why they are vulnerable to subcaps.... It's because they siege/triage.

A seiged/triage capital is vulnerable to nuets and can't receive RR, meaning even the most pimped out fits die to a well formed gang. They gain a bunch of benefits for this (quadruple repping power, etc), but this "characteristic" is essentially what balances regular capitals.

When carriers are brought out in RR circle jerks (thank's slowcats), they become extremely difficult to break, and simply overpowering to subcaps. This is an example of why the ability to receive RR (especially capital RR) is dangerous to game/fleet balance.

Supercaps should be treated the same way. Now, I'm not suggesting making them siege (as that is one of their major, major benefits). Instead, treat them as if they are always sieged. Maintain EWAR immunity, and mobility, perhaps even quadruple their self-tanking potential (or improve their obnoxious EHP), but flat out remove their ability to receive remote reps. This is what balances them, and what makes them vulnerable.