Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Carriers and Dreadnoughts were the first ships with modes - Siege and Triage, complete with model animation (limited though it was). Manny's suggestion is to expand on this concept, though I'd go one further and remove siege and triage modules and related skills altogether and simply use the mode switches to activate them. A dreadnought without a siege module is pointless anyway, so fold the ability it into the hull itself. I'd limit it to three modes though, simply to use the interface developed for t3 destroyers.

Whatever the decisions are about what capitals become, a capital should be an asset to a sub-cap fleet, much like a a Carrier is to a navy fleet.,

I already supported in a previous thread the idea of making capitals able to target/bombard beyond the grid they are on through sub-cap "pointers" but unable to defend themselves on a given grid without sub-cap support.

This would truly bring the capital game to a whole new level. Like sov, cap warfare can be revisited from the ground up with the experience acquired in the past ten years!

I would think if you keep the damage bonus when sieged, then your counter fleet is instantly screwed when the dreads siege up as you can't damp/disrupt/jam them when sieged. Luckily your plan gives them super tanking abilities while in siege. They can come out to get reps/cap OR to be able to lock more targest faster.

You would be dipping dreads in awesome sauce twice with this proposal and adding no downsides. Just not good for the game.

Siege and triage are so good, fun and balanced not because of ~modes~
There is another reason.
"This also means that friendly remote effects will not work while in triage mode either." - a quote from description.
Capital-sized spidertank, that's where the issue is.

Everybody here seems to keep circling the same basic concept but are ignoring the overall condition they have put the playerbase in. Alliances have been bound to camping moons, repeatedly going over the same assets in order to assess as many supercapitals as possible. The gameplay for them has ground to a hault because of their power, because of their cost, because of their name. Trying to balance the supercarrier won't work. Modes, super switching, increased abilities and new projection does not fix the underlying base that they stagnate game play because they do too much, replace too much, have no roles and cost too much. We need to define and narrow their scope and make them worthwhile to fly for the masses, not just the top players that have the backing of a alliance. We want smaller scales and more active risk of the ships. We want to be able to not need two dozen accounts worth of supercarrier sitters in order to enjoy it, or a 20 billion isk bankroll just to afford one.

We need a way to keep the value of investment the player put into the ship, but make the ship affordable, useful, and fun to play... and not a series of crying sessions because you got bated, or need a slew of titans in order to slay it.

Here are my thoughts summarized. I wrote out more but I don't want to hijack the thread.

1. We rename the supercarrier and bring them in line with the Dread and Carrier capital class. No more super, just a capital. Lets name them Raiders.


2. We reduce the price by 90%. Raiders should cost between a dread and a carrier (1.5 to 2.2 billion isk per Raider).


3. Third, we give the players the value of that ship back, but not just in isk, but with hulls of the updated ship. If a supercarrier is worth 20 billion isk upon recycle, the person gains 10 Raiders, with full docking privileges. No build requirements or waiting. Instantly, turn in a decommissioned supercarrier, get 10 Raiders (of the racial ship type of the supercarrier being decommissioned).


4. We give the ship a definitive role. The Raider is an assault style craft that uses its racial weapon/guns and Fighters/Fighter Bombers. It has its own version of a triage/siege module, except that the module increases its natural defense (added resistance, similar to the Bastion Module) and increases its offense (added damage to fighters/bombers) while active.


5. Drop the raiders shield, armor and hull hit points down to Carrier and Dread levels. Its own defensive module will provided the extra tank in situations.


6. Drop the immunities off the Raider Class ships. It is no longer needed.


7. We remove all of the Raiders remote rep and cap transfer capabilities. This should stay solely in the realm of the Carrier.


8. We remove the fleet array off the Raider and we swap the SMA's of the Raider and the Carrier (let us let the carrier be a carrier, we also keep the need for Carriers for doing equipment swaps with Raiders).


9. We keep the models of the Nyx, Aeon, Hel and Wyvern the same for the raider. We increase the visual size of carriers by 50%, to account for its ability to carry large amounts of ships.


10. We decommission the supercarriers (give the players a time span to dock a super, and allow them to do a immediate swap of their decommissioned supercarrier into the Raider capital (which they would get 10 of, for each supercarrier they decommission). After a time span, keep the supers ability to dock, but disable its offensive and defensive capabilities. So if someone wants to whelp a decommissioned Nyx, they can, they just won't get anything in return.


11. The Revenant... stays a super-carrier with all of its stats and abilities. It does not get touched (Immunities included)

What you do is free a person from being solely reliant on a mega large corporation or alliance, and allow them to fly offensively, even very riskly, with a capital class ship that has a purpose and a role.



If you lose one Raider, you are not instantly broke, out 20 billion isk, and the alliance is under no obligation to front you 20 billion isk (because they are now 2 billion), and you have at least 9 more of them to whelp before you have to worry. So you want to fly a Nyx and not be completely terrified every single time you log on, you can now. If you lose it... no big deal, I have 9 more. No need for sitter accounts for my ships, because I can dock a Raider.
No modes, no odd skills or effects... just a whole new ship type to fly.

Moar ship, moar ship types!

Last thing this game will get is more ships/shiptypes. Not until the current mess is fixed, which it won't be.

But give this Raid3r a 25000% smartbombing range bonus... Yes, that'll be balanced, it's a Rank x14 skillbook - Must have ultimate power. Death to all frigates, cruisers and battleships. (ง ͠° ͟ل͜ ͡°)ง

The game is gyrating between Cruisers and Caps Online, wish it'd return back to being Eve. I'm hopeful, however, because this year's expansion(s) decide the fate of Eve: Please the minority and continue the stagnation, or revitalise New Eden with new and dynamic conflict generation system, which doesn't envision cap blobs as the meta-set-in-stone.

Oh, you guys are discussing how to scale down capitals down to realistic & reasonable levels to fit the new upcoming gameplay? Carry on.

It certainly is, and I'd love to see remote repping stacking-penalised as well (in an earlier post I suggested replacing the bonuses carriers get with fighter-sized logi drones too). I was simply pointing out that modes existed before t3 destroyers came along.

The thread you posted has some good ideas. It does remove all the game play beyond land on grid assign and wait. This is well and good if you just want to be an F1 monkey but letting the capital pilot personally choose what targets to attack sounds a bit more fun, be it through a cool new strategic view of the solar system letting fighters warp about kind of like an RTS. or by way of receiving all locked targets by its scout. This also shouldn't remove drones from capitals and stop them being used in missions, there is no reason for this nerf. It could potentially bring the ratting dreads some new options. I think the Titan could be a bit too abused in that situation though.

The post, and my previous posts should also strongly consider an Au or Km range limit on Dreads, perhaps something in the range of 500,000km or something to keep them well off grid but close enough to the fight so the don't sit on another gate and jump to safety. It might also require a scout for every dread so to stop all dreads getting alpha on everything a single scout targets. Providing subcaps the ability to destroy scouts to remove dps from each dread should help keep it slightly more balanced. But overall I'm less of a fan of off grid dreads than off grid carriers and supers. It just seems a far harder idea to balance well, but an idea worth kicking around nonetheless. Also instead of the ideas of introducing entirely new capitals I've seen here we could just consider adding bigger diversity in XL guns to diversify dread roles. Out of sight distance, subcap killers, capital wreckers, aoe drone swatters and so on.. You get the idea. A lot of room for imagination here.

This still comes back to the Titan. Apart from drive by doomsdays, escalating a fight, and fleet projection, there isn't a lot they do. An off grid doomsday out of the blue might seem cool to the Titan pilot, but to a super pilot it'll be the biggest buff the game has ever seen and never needed. Doing this not only requires a range limit but also a proper warning to give a tackled super some time to do something about it. I say tackled, because the pilot shouldn't have to be scared of every tackle in the game ending in 3 doomsdays out of nowhere. This also could apply to the dreads if balancing is too much in favour of subcaps getting wiped clean from the field without any chance to avoid it. This reason alone probably has the most players afraid of such an idea being implemented. Perhaps the area effect should be aimed just towards the titans. Off grid shooting can very easily fall into drive by alpha damage especially if it only needs one scout for a fleet and one cyno off grid.

Not to mention there is no way of the players knowing if such a big feature can realistically be added to the game without simply bringing us back to where we were with skynet and AoE doomsdays. From looking over the faults in my own suggestions and others on here you often end up with rule-creep where there are so many individual rules for each capital class that any player looking to train for one early on has no idea what they are really getting into. And again bringing up the naming convention for these ships should better reflect their roles whatever that may be. Carriers and super carriers should really be as similar as possible seeing as they are both "carriers".

This brings back the conversations of more modes or on grid boosts and effects. My problem with both of these is that the pvp involved is much the same as it already is with subcaps and also has no real connection to the name carrier. While this I'm sure is far easier to add and then balance than the more grandiose ideas out there, it leaves much to be desired. Also the trouble with the two is that either you still get capital blobs or you reduce the required number of them to 1. 1 or a blob doesn't seem like great option to me, so further thinking is required. Breaking the fights into more grids seems preferable and into more solar systems seems optimal to me. So ideas that allow this while retaining a sense of vulnerability can be the only answer. Maybe that is possible through adding modes or on grid effects, but I find it difficult to see how. If you think keeping n+1 capitals on grid or reducing the usefulness to just 1 per side is a better idea please explain to me why.

Going back to further the discussion for off grid/out of system capitals, a thought should be given to adding fake signatures to help capitals remain harder to find, better hunter and hunted gameplay could go a long way, especially if a huge battle hinges on a scout finding the right signature or the super remaining hidden long enough to direct the battle for command nodes in their favor. Having subcaps on grid could defend you, but could also give your position away. Clearly fighters and fighter bombers should be re-balanced to take down subcaps, as without this they will have no impact on the entosis link fight.

How can you get more capitals into more deadspace pockets across more systems while making them useful in the future sov system and not breaking them for lowsec all the while adding more strategy and tactical gameplay? Carrot /stick / both?

So you want to take capital ships, that can already refit on the fly to achieve more damage or more tank, a mode swap that does the same thing without the need to be in range of a carrier to refit modules. I mean because that is exactly what you are asking. Just taking an already current meta and coding it directly into the ship. And to top it off you want to eliminate the need for capitals to rely on support ships such as interdictors and hics. Even talk of dreads that can track sub-capitals.

I'm not sure what you are thinking. You say capitals should need support ships to survive, yet your entire proposal is taking powerful ships that scale out of control and although changing them - effectively making them stay in their current position at the top of the hill as king.

Who gives a **** if a capital has -25% EHP for a couple minutes if it can swap into ULTRA FORTRESS! You even have the modes that do not involve offensive, still sporting fighters. Why bother going out of defensive mode if you can still reach critical mass in alpha'ing enemy ships? Why bother bringing support ships to tackle things if your carriers/capitals can do the job just as well without worrying about dying? Why bother with specialized electronic warfare ships that are sub-capitals when bringing a capital can do the job?

Let me give you an example: Why do fleets bring Proteus as tackle specialized ships instead of the Arazu/Lachesis that has better tackle range? You know why. Because the EHP of the Proteus allows it to survive on the battlefield of N+1 far better than the Arazu/Lachesis.

Null battles is a game of numbers. Each side has a combined total EHP and alpha strength versus the other side who is EHP and alpha. If you do not bring enough alpha to kill an enemy ship before reps land - YOU LOSE. Sans a lucky bomber run or picking up the Batphone - YOU HAVE LOST in the first couple seconds. Why bother sticking around if you can't break any tanks? Meanwhile the other side is picking off your ships left and right further compounding the issue.

As long as the targeting system in EVE stays as it is with no form of line of sight, not much will change when it comes to EHP and Alpha meta. There most certainly won't be some arbitrary limit on how many people each side should bring, nor should there be.

Sure modes on capitals where it transforms and has different pretty colors sounds appealing, but it does little for the goal of making capitals interesting, cool to fly and a force multiplier for sub-capitals. I mean ****. Looking at your new version of the Archon, why in the hell would I bother bringing anything else? It can do everything still, just like the ones we have now.

I know not blindly rallying behind you is kinda unpopular because your Manny, everyone loves Manny. But... so be it. Sure you know a lot about how to use and abuse capitals, but you fall colossally short on trying to accomplish any of the goals you cited that CCP Seagull and CCP Fozzie stated.

I pray that you and others are able to read this long post and see it more than, "Oh it's some Brave scrub who is mad PL helicopter caps all over them" because it is far from it. I'm just really struggling to understand how you think this proposal will solve any of the current issues or fulfill anything that CCP has stated. Another thing, you keep bringing up Phoebe and a thread you made prior to it with ideas and wave it around like you inspired the entire thing. I read it and did a lot of digging and the only thing in your list of ideas that I see with Phoebe is capitals being able to take gates. Hardly a new and revolutionary idea as it has been mentioned many, many times over the years. So tell me, why do you keep bringing up Phoebe as a personal accomplishment? Please don't hate me, just trying to understand what I missed.

TL;DR: Your proposal does nothing to fix any of the current capital issues or any goals stated by CCP. In fact it has a high chance to make things worse.

I still think that logistics repair and cap transfer has become true cancer.

Used to be times, when tanks were local - Much more dynamic fights developed with often unpredictable outcomes.