Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Very valid points, a cheetah should not be able to probe down that carrier in 30 seconds. It's been discussed else where recently that probing players down is becoming far too easy. Also pointing out how safe you can be just by sitting next to the gate will only be relevant to on gate encounters, though sitting at range and warping off is a good equivalent anywhere. What you're really saying is the carrier needs to feel safer than that, or apply enough dps to warrant the higher risk than that to have players use them instead of whatever new cheap throw away doctrine is used.

What about hiding your carrier in a different system altogether a few jumps out in an unknown direction? Would that be worth it? Also it'd have the added bonus not entering a TiDi system at all. If someone finds you, all you'd have to do is jump to another system. Then the hunt would go on, this time with the jump cool down and fatigue. You could jump and escape but you'd be removing your dps from the fight, and if you are unfortunate enough to get caught the fight could easily spread to the system you are in to try and save you. Also forcing the carrier into remaining in one spot is silly, they should be able to move and try to stay hidden. This way carriers would act more like an artillery in that you try to keep them away from the fight and on the move.

Don't get me wrong i really wish a carrier could jump with docked ships but the time and resources CCP seems to hint it would take I doubt would be worth it.

it wasn't just the code for ship x is docked in ship y and when ship y jumps carry player in ship x with it

but also what happens when player Y logs off or when player x logs off and Y moves around

and i'm sure there were more

I will say that I'm a lowsec PvPer. I am overjoyed that 0.0 is getting the attention it deserves after all this time. The reason I left null was for all of the frustration with problems that CCP is now turning their gaze to fix. However, as a lowsec pilot, I get a front-row seat to how balance changes meant to target one use case of a ship can affect another. So, I'm not trying to detract from the 0.0 updates, but given that there are 9 of 14 CSM X members that ran on a nullsec platform, I would like to stress that the uses and meta surrounding capitals in lowsec are different from those in null, and that it still needs to be taken into consideration when performing game balance.

As for Modes, I have mixed feelings. The modular nature this provides seems something that has been reserved for Tech 3 ships, either with modes or swappable subsystems. Capitals have this in a reduced form, with a "Pop-Eye the Sailor Man" button in which they consume a can of space spinach and go super saiyan for five minutes. Supercapitals and titans do not get this, but instead get weapon systems that are unique only to them (DD, Jump bridge, Remote ECCM, Fighter Bombers, etc.). Furthermore, there is distinct imbalance between the classes, some of which are in very niche scenarios, such as the performance of dreadnought guns vs. titans DDs in heavy TiDi situations that are still rather fresh in everyone's memory. As someone who owns both carriers and dreadnoughts, I want them to be fun, complex, engaging, and worth the while. By the same token, though, I personally don't want a capital fleet to be a stand-alone entity. When subcaps aren't required to conduct warfare, I feel as if the game will suffer a mortal wound, from which healing will be a long, painful process. So, the multi-mode system provides not only bonuses, but penalties, to ensure that capitalss can operate in a variety of ways, but not simultaneously. This also provides a unique small-gang aspect where capitals are used in small numbers of ways to mix and match, chain and alternate different modes. So, +1 for the idea. I am still very interested in other ideas, however.

The issue that sticks out the most to me in regards to capitals in a sov 5.0 world is the fluid nature of the battlefield, whereas capitals are relatively stagnant assets. Committing a sizable amount of capital firepower to a grid where an ELS capture needs to take place, only to have the objective completed by either side means that the capitals are now stuck not only in one position, but in a position that is not contributing to the destruction or capture of the structure in question. Even if that particular control point is won by this capital group, and the opposition is completely annihilated from grid, it only takes a few dictors to hold those ships in place, preventing them from being used in other parts of the engagement across other systems in the constellation.

So, I'm not exactly qualified to make specific balance suggestions with hard numbers and figures, as I do not have the background in 0.0 capital warfare that many others reading this may have. I do think, however, that the situation I outlined above is the main problem, and not the jump fatigue or "well now I have to go gate to gate" things I've heard. Jump reactivation timers when jumping to systems within such close proximity will likely be negligible compared to the length of 0.0 fights, especially those of these new constellation-wide fights. 40 minutes base time for a capital to ELS something makes a 4LY jump (50m of fatigue minus the last 10 minutes in which fatigue is not added but re-calculated) not a big deal, and if a subcapital force is present to provide ELS that don't take as long, the capitals can more easily be jumped to new points of interest around the constellation, given that being perma-dictored will be much easier to defend against. At first glance, this sounds like actually a good thing. Subcapitals required to support capitals, and without subcap ssupport, the capitals are ham-stringed in their influence over the rest of the fighting. However, losing a supcapital fight over an ELS target, but still holding the field should not be a crippling los for that particular capture point, given the capitals are stuck without outside intervention. The other thing is, being one of those capital pilots would be absolutely awful. Therefore, I think that there needs to be some mechanic that allows for extraction after a capture point. Whether this is a temporary disruption to bubbles on grid with the CP, or a reduction to the current fatigue timers of caps on grid, or whatever. If caps being committed in this new sov 5.0 world can be forced out of the fight after their objective has been completed by a few dictors, then it won't really matter what sort of fancy modes your Archon has, you'll only get to use them for one fight of potentially dozens.

This all ma be a non-issue, though. Again, I'm not a 0.0 warfare aficionado.

An idea to make Dreads usefull post fozziesov would be adjusting the siege module to act like the bastion. Basically take the damage bonus away from the siege and add it to the hull bonus...

That way dreads can act like carriers and be front line ships that get RR but can be countered by ewar or they can go into siege and gain the bonus of the bastion... i.e range internal repair resistance bonus and ewar immunity.

Bastion blocks RR. Just like Siege.

Yeah and one celestis will shut that blap dread down.

Dreads could keep mostly the same role that they have now, just dialed towards capital and Battleship engagements. Give them slightly better tracking, perhaps a capital combat mode and a sub-capital combat mode. Give them more agility to be able to maneuver on field, but keep carriers as slow cumbersome things.

If you boost up the Battleship EHP and dps by 2x, then the counter to battleship fleets instead of fast cruisers (that have equivalent tank and dps right now, but are smaller and faster) would be either another battleship fleet, or dreads. It would be a basic escalation tactic, but in smaller numbers theoretically. If Battleships were boosted up to be something like 15-20% of a dread as far as EHP and DPS, then they would still have issues with cruisers as far as dps projection using large guns, but their tanks would be able to hold unless you had BS/Dread gang fall on them.

Right now, it seems that there is a more or less linear projection of ship power from frigate to cruiser, but then it stops.

This is what I see in fleets and videos:
Frigate < T2 Frigate < Destroyer < T3 Destroyer < Cruiser < T2 Cruiser = T3 cruiser = Battlecruiser = Battleship
and then WAAAAY up above and beyond, you have Dread > Carrier > Supercarrier > Titan

There's a huge gap between Battleships and capitals that could be filled if you simply made battlecruisers and battleships more resilient and harder hitting, and brought dreads down a bit (especially in price)

Cruisers (T2 mostly), battlecruisers and battleships are all basically identical as far as DPS and tank, except obviously smaller, faster, cheaper ships are better. If they re-balanced the curve more linearly from frigate to dread, possibly reducing the cost of dreads to be closer to 1.5-2 bil fully fitted, then you would see them as a viable option on field against battleships.

The modes you could give dreads could make them fun and specialized
Anti-Capital Mode

• Increase weapon damage by 200%
• Decrease Tracking speed of weapons by 50%
• Decrease max velocity by 80%
• Increase armor/shield resists by 2%/lvl

Sub-Capital mode

1. Increase Tracking Speed of weapons by 100%
2. Increase Scan Resolution by 50%
3. Increase Ship Agility and Velocity by 100%
4. Decrease Shield/Armor boosting by 20%

And then you could have EWAR Mode, a Tank Mode, and some other ones that could be cool.. perhaps AOE Neuts, or Targeted AOE Neuts so that fleets wouldn't be able to just anchor up on 1 pilot, they would need to spread out a bit. Lots of options. Right now dreads are just too expensive and fragile to plop on the field with an enemy fleet unless you have lots and lots of them and you are either fighting capitals, or like.. dominixes.

I came up with that targeted aoe neuts idea while I was typing, and I think I should elaborate on how awesome that would be. Dread-only modules of different EWAR types that hit a ship and all ships within, say, 3k - 5k of that ship. This would make dreads suuuper important in large fleet engagements, and make pilots actually have to... pilot while in larger fleet fights. You could just keep at range ~10k or whatever, but then you could just web the leader and the rest come to a standstill, or target the following blob.. or perhaps dreads could even have a ship tractor beam module that would simply drag ships forcefully towards them. Having AOE modules that do ECM, Neut, Sensor Dampening or some others but only allowing say 2 modules per dread.. maybe just keep it at 1 so more dreads will drop, would kill the blob fleets and spread out the combat much more. Logistics would still be okay because there are usually few of them and they can orbit the fleet or whatever, but combat pilots will need to be significantly more spatially aware.

Anyway, went on a tangent there, but yeah, if you evened out the EHP and DPS of battlecruisers-dreads and gave dreads a bit more maneuverability and some unique ewar modules, they would get used frequently. Oh, and make dreads cheaper!

Increasing scan res on both carriers and dreads and putting them in a support/combat role against fleets and not specific targets like structures or capitals would also be a perfect platform for fleet commanders to sit in the middle of a battle and direct the troops. Like someone said before, the ships are so huge, it doesn't make sense that they wouldn't have fantastic computer and scanning equipment on-board.

Can you folks please for the sake of all that is pure and just... STOP TRYING TO GIVE EVERY SHIP IN THE GAME T3 DESTROYER MODE SWAPPING ABILITIES.

ahem.

please??

what if fighters had fittings like tanks in dust 514? that might make them worth using...

you could assign fighters to work in formations where some are fitted to be e-war some for RR and some for damage... they could act in tandum with each other working to take out targets and keep each other alive...

I understand the idea that more simple logic if 1 dread can kill a tower in 1 our 60 dreads should kill it in 1 minute. Though game play has to take hold and the developers have to take into consideration blobbing.

I built my dreads for structure grinding. I am a miner by natures. I would love to have dreads still be kept for that role. The I want to be special when I field it. I wish that damage applied to a structure will have a cap so the destruction of a structure will have a minimum time to be taken to be destroyed. This way the defenders have an opportunity to react to a conflict. The same should go for repairing.

Remember it is a SciFi universe so some techno-babble can be used to explain the reasoning behind it.

Structures should be a conflict driver exposing expensive assets to attack to accomplish a goal.

Titans and Super Carriers.

For combat ability should be there to make a fleet stronger at the end destination. A force multiplier, not an adder. Restricting the effectiveness of multiples of these in play will mean they will be used as an expensive tactical deployment and not a Blob I win button. Ensuring the owners of these ships promote the use of smaller ship to accompany them.

If the clone bay could be re worked to allow re-reinforcements to arrive through it would go a long way.