Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I hear the complaint all the time, that the only counter to supercapitals is more supercapitals.


What if there were a T2 Cruiser-class ship (non-covert ops) that could only fit Citadel Torpedo launchers as a weapon system, and had a specific set of bonuses to ensure that they would really only be effective against capitals and supercapitals?


Maybe something like


~Race~ Battlecruiser skill: 10% Increase to ~Racial damage type~ Missile damage
~Race~ Heavy Bomber Skill: 10% Increase to the Velocity and Explosion Speed of Citadel Torpedoes per level


Role Bonus: +100% to explosion radius of Citadel Torpedoes
Role Bonus: 99.5% reduction in powergrid rrequirements for Citadel Torpedo Launchers

Can Fit bomb launchers


4/5/4 on Caldari + Minmatar, 4/4/5 on Amarr + Gallente, 3 Launcher Hardpoints, one gun hardpoint.





Fundamentally, the idea is to have ships that are capable of being a hard counter to supercapital fleets, but die incredibly fast to a subcap support fleet.

This would, I hope, allow groups without supercapital forces to at least threaten supercapital fleets, and in response force those entities to utilize subcapital fleets to defend their supers from these ships. In turn, the side without supercapital projection would have to ensure that their subcap support fleet could prevent the heavy bombers from being slaughtered wholesale by the other support fleet.

capital size torps are terrible
edit
3 citadel torp launce with a +50% bonus will struggle to pass the 1000 dps, your bonus are kind of weird 1 increase the explosion velocity(better damage applicatio) and the role bonus increase the explosion radius of 100% (much worse damage application) and citadel torp already apply damage badly enough to moving caps

This. Plus, it's really hard to balance them so that they can't be speedtanked by caps/supers, but at the same time can't just plow through webbed and painted battleship fleets. At least without really major changes beyond the scope of just adding a new ship (e.g. a damage modifier specifically against caps).

I think in OP he proposed to apply those bonusses aswel.

Looking at the last six months, I've found three cases to support this. The first was Revs and Phoenixes shooting at an untanked Avatar, where it looks like damage types were a major factor. The second involved a bait Phoenix that was apparently sent in first. The third has a Phoenix in fifth place.

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20495318
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=17961714
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=18958131

Now admittedly, almost all of the Titan lossmails don't have Phoenixes on them so it's hard to draw conclusions from the absence of data, but am I missing something?

unless the "heavy bomber" do a stupid amount of damage, something like more than 10k dps, it will be very hard to break the rep chain of supercaps before they crush the node, supers can already mitigate some damage from torps just moving, making their application worse its not gonna help on that.

What really needs to happen is a straight reduction of supercap EHP and tanking capabilities across the board. Recent fights show that it's literally impossible to break cap/supercap reps - although in theory you can bring enough ships, in practice it kills the node before it kills the supers.

IMHO there are only a few ways to deal with overwhelming RR:
1. Alpha strike damage - destroy the ship before the RR has a chance to land
2. E-war - jam or dampen the opponent down so the reps cant land where they need to
3. AOE - deal damage to a ton of different ships and burn through some as the logi tries to catch up.

The problem is that none of these are really relevant to supercapitals. Sure a titan may be the ultimate alpha strike but you still need a dozen or more to burn down a supercapital. Also, if a titan is the only solution, then titan + supercarrier is the only counter to titan + supercarrier, and that's just no good for anyone.

What we need is a heavy bomb that does like a million damage with an explosion radius of 10,000 and an optimal range of 30km. The catch would be it would be fairly large, like 400 m^2 and would be able to be locked and destroyed, so if you had a sufficient subcap fleet defending you, it wouldnt be a problem, but youd get pwned if it was just cap ships.

Thoughts?

My hypothesis on the reason capitals are not destroyed as fast as they are built is that people are scared of being taken to bits by the existing hardware and thus don't fly them. Lone caps are juicy pinatas that can't survive without a huge support fleet, and once the support fleet is gone, its game over. Increasing this effect by adding an even greater need for subcap support would slow the destruction of capitals even more.
I want to try to make the capitals less hazardous to commit to battle. Lower the cap need to jump to another solar system by 90% and see what happens.

PS: If you can not bring enough hardware to kill the supercap, why are you trying instead of making more hardware? The supercap is supposed to be a huge investment that kicks ass, not a small investment that you can take out without any investment of your own.

PPS: Ever heard of neuts? That's the supercap Achilles heel isn't it? Fleet Command 101 when flying caps seem to be prime the neuts.

when you have this many archons on the field, neuts are no longer an effective counter.

Assuming that there are 200 archons in that blob, and negating any cap transfer or passive regen just to burn through that many archons worth of cap would take 11.4 bhaalgorn hours or 35 void bombs! Once you consider that those ships can then cap transfer each other neuts are no longer a viable option.