Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I'm all for removing fighter assist. While the basis behind Skynetting has been "a thing" for a long time, Skynet carriers coupled with revamped fighters I think is a bit much. Valid? Yes. Still risky? Somewhat. But still a bit much.

I think fighters should keep their ability to warp. It sets them apart from other drones and gives carriers a unique capability, and without fighter assist they will already be losing some of their warp utility (i.e. no longer need to warp to their designated ship).

• Fighter assist was clearly broken. It's a cool/interesting/fun mechanic, so sad to see it go from the reasonable use cases, but there is no doubt something drastic needed to change.
• Please keep fighter warping, at least for following the carrier in warp. Fighters are expensive and slow, removing warp will make them even less likely to be used.

Having said that, I'd love it if there were a way to nerf the most broken use cases of fighter assist while keeping it in the game. The two worst offenders being assigning tracking-bonused fighters from a POS to a small ship (usually for PVP) and assigning super carrier fighters from a POS to a regular carrier, allowing all of the super carrier fitting to improve damage and application while the carrier fitting improves tank/cap/rep/align (often for PVE). If you can find a way to stop those, the remaining uses of fighter assign aren't nearly as broken.

Some good ideas have already been presented here, although I imagine there are significant coding challenges to them all.

My biggest concern: what use case do (non-super) carriers and fighters have after this change?

Hey,
plz don't remove the follow in warp function for fighters and escpecially fighter Bombers.

If you lose your FB's on a supercap you lose your primary weapon and you are not able to replace them thanks to the "small" dronebay.
Please think about this again CCP

I just liked the post from that guy in NC. above me. MUST BE A SIGN THAT REMOVING WARPING FIGHTERS IS **** :p
#capslock

On what Fozzie said on the o7 show....

For the purposes of this post, carrier is used to refer to carrier and mothership/super.

@Fozzie

I think, you sir, have not considered all of the consequences of making this change, or if you have, you have decided to ignore those of us who use the cap/fighter platform for other purposes than to attach said fighters to shuttles and interceptors.

Look, I was not happy with the jump changes made to capitals, but I could see how the loss of capability versus the reward to stopping hot drops anywhere anytime was a positive. This crazy idea though is not and I for one am shocked you guys did not publicly ask for feedback from players before you decided to kill something that has been in use since the beginning of the game for other methods besides 'skynet'.

What you should have done sir, is place limits on how they are used. Examples might be:

A) No ability to assign fighters in low sec.
B) Fighters cannot be attached to ship sizes below say a cruiser.
C) Fighters cannot approach a gate within X km. They automatically return and orbit the carrier if its attempted.

Look in the real world larger civilized countries purchase and use air craft carriers for air superiority. By definition (just looking at Iraq as an example), they were used to send fighters to the region they were needed in with no harm to the air craft carrier. The ocean was its POS.

Anyways, back to the point. I think you are making a terrible mistake. When I started playing this game, I was largely enticed by capitals in general. How special and versatile they were. It seems you are taking away all of its beauty every other patch at this point. I mean seriously it is starting to shape up to capitals being nothing better than a subcap with a bit better DPS. Literally it is better to fly them gate to gate now. You are also taking away any other true advantage the platform has and basically pushing its single purpose for large fleet support roles.

You are also pissing on older players many of whom retain well skilled alts simply that can fly carriers/supers for various reasons. I for one will divest myself away from the carrier platform if this change is made and my vote will be felt in CCPs pocket book directly as I will not renew my capital pilot subscription (which I pay for in dollars) after this change goes into effect. I am guessing many others will follow suit.

Are you guys really that adverse to keeping accounts open and therefore keeping CCP financially strong? You are really screwing everyone who has invested a year or more of training into this game because some people complained about a tactic that could be dealt with in so many other ways?

Hey if you make the change fine. I will live with it and adapt.
But I want my *GD* wasted skillpoints back buddy.

Xena

You have two variables you are looking at. Do not make the same mistake you made with jump fatigue and modify both at once. Start with removing the fighter assist if the problem persists, then remove the fighter warping.

Honestly, I do not see how the two are related. As a carrier pilot who use to use their own drones for themselves, being able to let the fighters warp with you is a nice insurance policy for the cap ship and the very expensive fighters.

We were going to start trying out skynet ratting in 2 days :(

I don't see the problem with it really. It's pvp, and alot should be possible. Yes, it's annoying when a frig kills a BS, but they don't always need fighters for that.

I feel a much more appropriate option would be to make it so that they can still fighter assist, however, there is a maximum range to it. Ideally this would be like 1 AU. The advantage of doing this is that it severely limits where they can have the carrier to assist things in system. If it is in a moon that is right next to a station, I feel that raises the value of both the moon and the station, it would lead towards more conflict over that system (assuming holding alliances aren't massive). However, it doesn't give a blank check on any engages within the system.

Since the range is only 1 AU, say the enemy fleet/individual comes into system, he can quickly figure out the "range bubble" of the assist, and then engage stuff outside of it. This raises the tactics of the carrier, while still maintaining its "carrier-ness". With that said, it may be more reasonable to do it at a shorter range, such as 1000km, so that there can be fleet mechanics wherein you park your carriers just barely off grid, and then you will be able to assist the people that are in combat.

I personally just feel that outright removing a feature is never the way to go, as it removes diversity of play, however, it is appropriate, or more accurately demanded that said features should be balanced.

I'm going to put this here so I'm sure you'll read it.

You gave us an UNDER DEVELOPED LINE of singular capital and super capital hulls and told us to go forth and be gods if we could afford to.
You nerfed them and AoE doomsdays because the poor rifter hobos who couldn't afford to be gods got blapped in the first few years.
You nerfed carriers again because fighters did too much damage to small gangs thinking they can take on something 10 times their size and cost.
Then you nerfed them some more because you wanted sub capitals to play a role in whoring on capital killmails with NO RISK from the caps (invalid targeting mechanic, crap scan res for a ship that should by all means have more targeting capabilities than the cheap budget frigates on offer).
Recently you nerfed them again because they traveled across the galaxy, bypassing stargates at insane speeds (LIKE YOU INTENDED from the offset).
Now your relegating carriers to the world of triaging on stargates or the role of dust collectors.

You promised me Incarna. You gave me a prolonged abortion with an eventual dismissal of the concept because some people blew up space statues and unsubbed their cyno alts.

You promised me PI. You gave me connect the dots and forgot about it.


I'm not even going to waste my breath trying to fight you on this, because its just going to get ignored anyway.


SO there's not much for it.

Nerf my capitals with this, and I'll nerf your income by unsubbing whats left of my accounts and hoping for the days that your nigh-wow clone game failscades with headlines of job cuts at CCP or scandalous transfers of disgruntled former Devs to competitor studios.



I did not invest 10 years into this game hoping to fill the Freelancer hole in my heart, for Capital ships in general, Incarna and PI promises to sit back and watch you turn this game into rifters online with no content I like or want, week in, week out... all because of lesser ships and your inability to have fixed all of these design oversights that have cost us the much loved Jesus feature expansions in the first decade.

And i'll be keeping my stuffs thnx

So a unique and interesting feature that’s been around for numerous years is being removed because of an undesirable side effect that has reared its head more often of late due to changes that came in Phoebe. So instead of correcting the side affect you are just going to axe the whole feature.

That’s like having a blemish on your hand and chopping off the whole hand to get rid of it.

*Golf clap* I guess we should be happy you guys are in game design and are not doctors, why not put forth some effort and prevent the undesirable behavior directly instead of taking an easy and sloppy way out?

And give us fighter and fighter bomber kill mails.