Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I get what you are saying. But effectively you are asking CCP to say " Hey I have two good feet , I can make my feet better if I just shoot one of them". Instantly alienating part of your customer base doesn't sound like the best of business models.

Carriers - remove fighters. They are good in logistics role and lets keep them focused at this role.
SuperCarrier - remove logi bonuses, add fleet boosting bonuses. Only supers could use fighters and f.bombers

Remove friendly effects from supers. Institute immunity to non targeted interdiction (focused HIC still works).

Watch the fireworks

In terms of mechanics on the actual battlefields, capital ships are not flawed to the point of making the game unplayable, even less so come summer. Making them able to do what they already do every five minutes won't really make much difference. If anything, it will just be countered by further blobbing as supers specialize themselves into specific fleet roles as subcaps do already.

If changes were limited to the proposal, you would still need supers carriers to counter super carriers, and even then, stalemates would remain a likely outcome. There's a reason super blobs rarely fight one another, and a big part of that is lack of incentive. Many if not most EVE players consider a fair fight to be an unfortunate consequence of a lack of intel.

This proposal really doesn't address the problems of super blobbing and logi abilities without ewar susceptibility, the ecologies of capital ships, nor their lack of dependence on anchored infrastructure.

At present there is no way to hit back at anything logistically connected to capital fleets that are logged off, or based out of npc stations, and that is really a bigger problem that excludes player organization from the equation.

At present, only jump freighters are actually made out of moon rock. Why even tie capital ships to moon warfare? How does CCP tie capital ships to the landscape of EVE come fozzysov?




Titans could be rehabilitated by improving the use of doomsday versus blobs. They could serve as a direct counter to remote repairs. Dreads will need a role in the future, and that role should reflect entosis-based sov. Perhaps ewar immunity could be a function of anchorable structures for capital ships, and be dependent upon sov level.

I would propose linking entosis to sov levels. It would be an improvement if entosis modules also used charges. There should also be a capital version of entosis that has expanded functionality but doesn't reward capital blobbing. To that end, I would propose combining dread siege mode and entosis functionality. They have similar user limitations already. A single capital ship in a flagship role would have the same effect as a blob does on an hp barrier. The time for available player engagement in space could thus never be shortened artificially.

Tying entosis to sov levels helps give a sense of geography. Adding some new sov rules to enforce the existence of a periphery in sov constellations allows us to make some systems vulnerable, and some systems invulnerable. It would be sufficient to require that a sov level three system must be surrounded by sov level two or higher systems. With this condition, we could safely restrict entosis modules to the lowest level sov system as well as unclaimed systems. Capital level entosis effects could expand on this by have an additional layer of privilege in expanding a battlefield by being able to destablize a system one sov level higher than is available to subcap entosis. One capital level entosis modules should also count for at least two subcap entosis modules across the whole constellation, encouraging escalation.

A feasible limitation to entosis could be that the claim be attributed to an anchorable structure in already claimed space within a few lightyears. This will limit third party groups to those with regional presence. Obviously, the ability to claim uncontested space should be preserved. The need for the anchorable structure allows for the defending entity to retaliate. It's like SBUs, but it requires that anyone putting down an SBU own space somewhere, and it works with vastly reduced numbers of players.

If capital ships are to become flagships primarily, it would be smart to make their abilities and roles reflect this. All large ships need to have modest fleet hangars. Access range to capital fleet features needs to be extended to a minimum of ten kilometers. Dependence could be increased by reversing the ammo volume changes from 2006. Dreads will need to have improved tracking or explosion velocity/radii to fight battleships more effectively.

That is the nature of MMO's. There are none that ever have been in perfect balance. MMOs are more like a balanced scale. When one side gets to heavy and starts to tip you put weight on the other. I think you are correct the next balance pass on capitals and supers won't be the last. That would be horribly boring if it were. Sometimes when playing in a sandbox the wind blows or the rain falls and changes the terrain.

Definitely the conversation we need to be having. Some background thoughts and fundamental questions --

• Capitals are expensive, slow, and extremely vulnerable - particularly to other capitals (dreads, DDs and fighter bombers melt them). This triggers rational risk averse behavior, leading to horrible blobs, hangar queens, etc. How do you get people to risk their capitals while keeping them expensive and strong? In a meta increasingly dedicated by speed and the ability to extract from inevitable blobs, how do you balance slow and sturdy ships?
• People like big toys, so everyone will want to train for, buy, and use capitals. How do you balance them so that they are powerful, but not optimal to use compared to anything else?
• Capital remote reps are a huge problem, making capital fleets scale at an absurd rate with each additional RR carrier/super.
• Marauders present an interesting example of acceptable imbalance. Bastion mode is ridiculous, but by disabling remote reps and immobilizing the ship they don't overwhelm the meta. Having said that, their expense, sluggishness and vulnerability also dramatically limits their use - the vast majority are only brought out for safe PVE.
• Without structures to shoot, fleet compositions will look much different. How can capitals support mobility and grid control without being necessary to stand a chance?

Some good suggestions, but the warp speed penalties feel like arbitrary obstacles. On the same page +50% warpspeed bonus on mobility would lead to ceptorlike warpspeeds for L5s.

In that proposal, Carriers would still have access to regular sized drones. Wouls dare say the ability to carry an unlimited supply of sentries is still part of the issue. Would really appreciate if fighters were capital sized weapons aswell (meaning 3km sig res instead of BS 400m) and would stop doing silly things to hictors.Bombers work fine, just regular fighters got some silly abilities since tracking revamp.

Yes give even more rewarding stuff in highsec

I think the roles capitals hold is fine as is. They're slow and risky, but they're unrivaled at holding the field. If the main issue here is that the wrecking ball is only countered by a larger wrecking ball, then you just need to introduce some form of counter-play to the system.

Why not replace the existing e-war immunity with a "soft immunity" where the ship absorbs the first n attempts, but the n+1 attempt and all past that affect the ship normally? We have a similar set up with how warp stability works now, so why not add this as a role bonus to capitals and supercapitals?

You'd end up with fleet compositions that counter the huge amount of reps that supercarriers can provide without nerfing the supers into the ground. It would also require contingents of subcapitals be fielded with any supercapital fleet to pick off the opposing e-war pilots.

we dont need to have modes on every ship. just keep that to t3 destroyers.