Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I like it. And I don't think it would have too much effect on those who do hot drops a lot. It would in fact make it easier for those without titans to get into the fun. If you seriously wanted a lot of numbers on grid it would almost force you to invest capitals to a certain degree. Maybe changing tactics to dropping fleet next door instead of right in the action. It adds a degree of difficulty and asset dedication that bridging seems to lack.

My only concern is the range that carriers have. Would that be too much to move, say, a squad of battleships? Thoughts on that?

It would need to be balanced for sure, there would be a number of concerns with the whole system, this being one of them. Carriers have pretty long jump range (and therefore tether range), but wouldn't be able to tether-jump as many things as a titan would.

Effectively a full sub-capital fleet could still be tethered by a single Titan, and doing that twice to get the same range as a carrier might be worth the tradeoff compared to the numerous carriers it would take to transport a whole sub-capital fleet its maximum range.



This is also a fair point that I hadn't really considered. I think we can both agree the capabilities of carriers to carry and tether ships at the same time should be considered when balancing the mechanic. I don't want to presume to know whether changing it is required or not, and that's primarily up to the lead designers.

I would not call the required exposure of billion ISK ships necessarily a buff.

If anything, hot drops are more successful than they might be otherwise, simply because there is too little to gain by baiting them.

Now, if you change that into: Kill the drop, and win a capital kill mail.... I see hot drops becoming the meal of the day....

Sure, this is up to the game designers, not us. They've already made it pretty clear they aren't really happy with the supercapital meta.



I don't own a titan, no. And I'm usually on the side doing the hotdropping, and I've been playing eve long enough to not be butthurt by losing internet spaceships.



Instead? This works with other capitals too. If you're only moving less than a billion in ships, use tethering with a carrier or two instead. As for the portal remaining its only useful role, that sounds terrible. Such that I think we should split up the portalling role and give Titan's something else they can do well. Let's split up the portalling role and give it to the other capitals in the form of jump tethering!




I'm not trying to prevent hotdrops. I'm trying to make the game more engaging. Hotdrops will still be possible, but it's a little more risky depending on how many forces you're committing to it. I don't think more risk involved in shuttling billions of isk around the galaxy really quick is too much of a problem.

I'm not expecting this single mechanic idea to solve all of eve's capital problems. But I agree Titans have some serious problems. Right now 99% of owning a Titan is sitting in a POS or Safe waiting for it to be called on for bridging. I want this to change. By removing its unique ability to shuttle other ships around quickly, it'll force the Titan to get something else that might actually be fun.

oh, come on, carriers are a dime a dozen; theyre everywhere!

Sure, ill grant you that theres more risk involved in hot dropping because now your risking about 10 battleships worth of isk in one ship, but youre also increasing the number of people who can perform hot drops by an order of magnitude!

Also, think of what this would do to large alliance scale combat. Instead of needing to correctly position their limited titan fleet to get ships into battle quickly, all they have to do is sacrifice a carrier. No more spies or recon finding where their titans are deployed and extrapolating where they'll strike next; unlimited force projection everywhere.

Carriers would not have the mass capability to jump an entire fleet, you'd need many carriers to jump an entire fleet.

Sounds like it would need to limit both mass and total number of ships. Say for a carrier make that about 3 battleships worth of mass or 10 ships.

On a semi-related note I would like to have the ability to tow unpiloted ships. Any battleship with the towing module fitted would be able to bring a single cruiser, industrial or smaller ship with it. Possibly make an Orca or freighter able to tow a battleship. The only purpose of this would be to migrate with fewer trips. The ships would be clearly visible and clearly attached to the towing ship and always drop if the towing ship is destroyed.
Towing would have to significantly drop speed. Half warp speed and double inertial modifier.