Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Part 1

My idea would be to revisit the capitals with a "terricide" approach. Give each ship a unique role to play in a fleet, and allow capital ships to enhance the capabilities of a sub-capital fleet without replacing them. This means that some capabilities would be excluded from capital class ships, or come at a cost of huge vulnerability.

To accomplish this, the first thing to deal with is Carriers. Carriers have long been the main ship of null fleet combat because not only are they the most flexible ships in eve, but they also are the best at many things too. Their application of damage, and ability to re-fit on the fly, and strength in the most adaptable weapon system in EVE (drones) made them masters of all. They where the only ship that could reliability deal with any threat, sub capital or otherwise.

Carriers will need to be refocused so they have difficulty effecting sub capital class ships offensively, but can make major contributions to a fight that includes capitals. Especially the first group of carriers, which are the most accessible of all capital ships in eve.

In order to accomplish this flexibility we will need to diversify the Fighters available and give them specialties that mirror real world roles.

Capital Class Drones
Fighter-Bomber (was Fighters) - Multi-role fighter that is designed both to assist in ship to ship combat, and to counter enemy capital class Drones. They are equiped with heavier weapons then fighters providing their advantage in dealing with larger targets then fighters, but place them at a disadvantage against fighters. These are strong vs enemy heavy bombers, weak against enemy fighters, and average against ship hulls. They are the primary defense of Supercarriers.

Heavy Bombers - Just as now, Bombers serve as the primary anti ship combat weapon system. These are tough, and slow. They are strong against enemy capital ship hulls, and weak against fighters, and very weak against fighter-bombers. This is the primary offensive weapon system for a Supercarrier.

Fighters (NEW) - This is a small, specialized weapon system that is designed for speed, and maneuverability. They specialize in combating capital class drones, and do not carry heavy weapons as they are un-necessary and add to weight. These generally act in squadrons to concentrate fire against individual drone targets, and have a large threat radius. They are intended to be used by carriers for fleet defense, and require little or no direction to use (you don't need to command them). Fighters are strong against fighter-bombers and heavy bombers, but weak against ship hulls. These are the primary weapon system of a carrier, and form the basic defense of a fleet against bomber types.

New Capital Ship Role Suggestions

Carrier - ROLE: Logistics / Anti-Bomber Fleet Defense/ Supply
Carriers are designed to protect the fleet, and keep it well supplied. They are slow and large, but can project their protective influence far within the battlefield. Their lack of offensive power makes them vulnerable, and they require the protection of the fleet that they wish to support in order to be effective. Their greatest contribution is that they can carry small replacement ships that are fitted for combat that allow pilots who have lost their ship to stay in the fight longer by accessing them.

• Uses Fighters (cannot use Fighter-Bombers or Heavy Bombers) to combat Super-carriers
• Designed to repair fleet using capital logistics, and triage
• Supply Ship - Can MOORE frigates and destroyer class ships (4) that can be accessed by fleet for pilots who have lost their ships
• CANNOT use regular drones
• CANNOT REFIT SHIPS

Mother Ship (renamed back from Supercarriers) - ROLE: Ship to Ship/Supply
Motherships are large sluggish behemoths that are designed to offer flexability to a fleet. They provide combat support through the use of fighter-bombers and heavy bombers to the fleet. They are the most flexible of capitals, and excel by being able to project their force anywhere on grid through the use of their fighters. Range is the Motherships greatest asset, and it has special electronic warfare to frustrate attempts to circumvent this. The Mothership is also great at keeping the fleet supplied, and can carry up to four fitted cruiser or battle cruiser hulls for pilots who have lost their ship to access during extended engagements.

• Uses Fighter-Bombers and Heavy Bombers (cannot use Fighters) to combat enemy capital ships, can hit some sub-caps with assistance (large ones) using Fighter-Bombers.
• SPECIAL MODULE - Anti-Warp Wall - When activated, it creates a 35KM radius spherical barrier around the ship. Ships warping to an area within this barrier will instead land at the edge of the warp wall. However unlike "bubbles" the warp wall doesn't prevent warping within the protective sphere. Its design is to protect the slower ships of the fleet from surprise attacks.
• Supply Ship - Can MOORE all ships up until Battlecruisers (4) that can be accessed by fleet for pilots who have lost their ships
• CANNOT use regular drones
• CANNOT REFIT SHIPS

That would be a good start, yes.

People that do not own supers or regularly use caps, shouldn't have any say in this...

Things like 'this idea will make most owners never login, but w/e' just shows how clueless some people are, and how little respect they have for other players.

If anyone seriously think that caps and supers are a problem because there's too many of them, need to realise that's how a popular game works. I could say the same thing for the dozens (probably a lot more than that) of interceptor gangs that fly through null insta-ganking and insta-leaving every single day.

Hey guys, there's too many interceptor gangs, lets make them useless unless they are accompanied by a command ship... Doesn't make much sense...

What capital ships need, are fun roles, a possible way to protect themselves so they can be used.

Supers need the same thing, currently you log one in, you die if you aren't in a very large fleet. Simply because no one is scared of them, and everyone and their mom wants to get a super kill to pad their killboard. Supers are a joke.

Honestly, if this game stopped rewarding massive blobbing, it would be a lot more fun and you wouldn't get 500 supers/caps on grid every time someone sneezes. SOV 2.0 has some interesting game mechanics to stop blobbing, but caps/supers still need new roles and more flexibility.

While I agree with your statement - capitals not being rare - I would disagree with your understanding of my idea. If you forced capitals into a very narrow role, that is limited by fleet mechanics, they become rare in an operational sense...not "rare" as in numbers built in the cluster.

I would Like to suggest adding some of that same utility to dreadnoughts, in a limited fashion. A Ship Maintenance Hangar on a dread would give it a little more utility and less of a reason to own a carrier if you only wanted the asset movement capabilities. Now, I do not wish to see it on par or exceeding current SMH in other ships, but definitely enough space to make it a more viable option, rather than having to own multiple capitals at once or making the choice to leave the dread/other ships behind.

I propose the size of 600k-700k/m3 which makes it large enough to hold the largest battleships and possibly a few smaller ships.

A caveat to this: the SMH on a dread would not have the ability to allow in space fitting services.

I really enjoy having my dread on hand, and if I could leave the carrier behind instead I think I would definitely choose that option.

And what reason would that be?

Make all the cool (hateful) things that ships do require some kind of limiting resource.

Ewar immunity? Super-only module that is always in overheat mode when active.

The only place to repair it is in the current or new structures. Module is massive and cannot be applied to the ship in a station since it can't dock anyway. We'll know we've succeeded when alliances with cap fleets must mobilize to protect their support networks, or be forced to retreat. It's obnoxious to fight when the opposition can just logoffski their entire alliance with no repercussions because they no longer really need space for any tactical reason. We must have harbors and foward operating bases in order to force conditions or limitations on engagement options.

New evil nerf, most evil of all nerfs: refitting timer. Plz no terrible skill to reduce this timer. Only applies in space with depots and ship maintenance bays. Timer modifier scales with size of module (non-linear).

Couple that with triage and siege giving an overheat damage reduction effect, and we can start to see some viable options. If overheat boost stats on capital modules get boosted, this will start to matter even more, especially if we reduce the base stats like optimal range to offset the changes.

Hell, let's compromise all warfare links and have them reduce sensor strength whenever they are active. Make them use charges as well. Something profoundly annoying to source, transport and store. If you're gonna use them, might as well use them when they are most needed, and you might as well have the extra ship in the fight since it can't actually hide. We could even put a sphere around structures, like POS, which prevents links from being activated.

Probably the only way to turn capital ships into flagships is to change environments. That might mean new structures which make a particular type of capital ship useful in some areas, but not in others. Some might be defensive units, others offensive units. The kind of environments in which the structures themselves are located might have a lot of access rules. Or they might have condition-based vulnerability. A lot of structure content could be based around manipulating sensor strength on the structure itself through system-wide effects.

Carriers and dreads have to get better at killing BS/BC without significant support, while supers have to get worse. One QoL is to improve lock-time out of siege. Perhaps to compensate large ships, we start adding mild damage negation thresholds in non-percentage numbers after resistances are calculated in order to isolate the hull classes. That would allow thick armor or shields to shrug off small caliber weapons in an almost qualitative way, obliging much smaller ships to rely on damage support. Perhaps there could be an inversed relationship for remote repairers and sig or mass, thus making carriers more efficient at repping battleships, and perhaps supers at repping carriers.

Imagine, in a fleet fight. Your Ishtar (Ugh) explodes. You can warp your pod to your fleets supporting supercarrier (mothership) and pick up a new fitted Ishtar (Ugh) and return to the fight.

Why doesn't this ever happen? It should.

I'll also add that I like the idea of being able to jump without the need for a cyno at the other end, albeit at a random location in a system. I hate the idea that a horde of alts seem to be necessary or order to be able to operate a capital ship.

Actually we are not.

There's a LOT of people who clearly do NOT use caps and/or supers that think they know what they are talking about. That's a problem, because there's a lot more of those people than of players that actually use the damn things.

It's the same thing as the carrier nerfs. Anyone with a bit of knowledge and brains knew how to deal with skynet, which is why you never saw those players complain about it. Just noobs that got their precious t3 cruiser (or faction cruiser) popped when they jumped a gate with a small gate camp defending their SOV/space and they had carrier support...

CCP bends over backward to listen to them, its always been like that, and now the game is a washed down version of what it was before.

Yes caps and supers are strong... that's the point of them (they are far from OP... they used to be 5-6 years ago, not anymore). With the way things are going, a LOT of us are worried mooring will be a death trap to supers (and yes caps).

Personally, i use a POS to log into my super and safe log off. Without that bubble, its a LOT more work simply to log in and out (and logging always require me to log my alt in system first). Without that safety 'mechanism', some (maybe a lot) of us would have to abandon this part of EVE (personally i really like flying supers, i do wish they were more useful though).

If you want to make capitals on grid with other sub caps there needs to be a reason that is only applicable when this situation is present. As well as address several issues associated.

This will focus on the carriers/supers.

Issues
1. Nobody flys carriers to use drones..... we've used drones for every subcap ship leading up to it. Its pretty ridiculous that when a person gets a carrier t2 drones cost1/25 of a fighter yet are more effective in almost every situation other than fighting other capitals. This has also rendered the thanatos relatively irrelevant now.
2. Aside from the triage super reps, there is very little incentive to have carriers on the same field as sub cap ships over just a capital blob.
3. Capitals should not be automatic solo drop 'i win' ships. given how powerful they can be

Here are some changes which I propose. Obviously this is a first shot and there could be modifications.

1. Make fighters worth while to use
CCP didn't like the ability of carriers to scoop fighters and rerelease them to avoid damage. To combat this they severely nerfed the lock time of fighters and fighter bombers. I think this was the wrong direction entirely. Instead what needs to be focused on is the instantaneous pulling and releasing of fighters. real carriers in direct combat keep some aircraft flying at almost all times for a simple reason. it takes time to prep and launch. so instead add a "landing" and "launching" mode to fighters. this mode would take 5-10 seconds (or longer if deemed necessary) for each mode. during which the fighter is traveling at a slower speed (easier to hit) and incapable of shooting. then revert the changes made to their locking speed back to previous so that fighters in space are still viable to use while flying but take legitimate amount of time to recall and launch. This could be 10-15 seconds then for fighter bombers meaning a full recall and relaunch of fighters would take as much as 30 seconds (or more) to complete.

2. Make it worth while to have on grid with fleet. (applies to carrier and super)
The next part will be controversial but hold on and follow through. I would propose (and this is just for discussion) a 20-30% increase to fighter (bomber) damage BUT at the cost that a carrier can only launch 5 fighters while solo. This would still give the carriers substantial solo dps putting them close to the current dps with t2 drones and utility highs (nobody fly full DCU's in the high while solo) while not making them OP. With a fleet is when things get interesting. Keep the +1 fighter (bomber) per level BUT the additional fighters can ONLY been assigned to fleet members on grid. More specifically make them assignable to "squad" rather than individual members. The fighters will then fly like "wingmen" to individual pilots in the squad so long as fighters <= squad members. this makes it so carriers can't assign all their fighters to 1 person and have the same effectiveness as a fleet. With this setting without drone control units a carrier (carrier V) can have 5 fighters + 5 assigned fighters. With drone control units + carrier 5 this could be increased to 5 + 10 assigned fighter (one per squad member in max squad). If fighters > squad members additional fighters would return to orbit and can be recalled, or kept in orbit as back up but would not be available to do dps unless it had a member to be assigned to. This would prevent smaller gangs (<10) from being ridiculously OP while still giving a reason to bring a carrier. also fighters can only "wingman" sub caps to prevent the current cap blobs with no reason for sub capital support.

First thing I know someone will ask is "what about when I loose squad members? and i can't assign fighters we just loose all that DPS?" Yup, you didn't expect to just assign them all to easily disposable frigates did u?

With these changes i see some very interesting compositions. for example larger fleets might have "attack" thanatos/nyx with no remote reps/ to fully take advantage of the additional dps since they would be outputting significantly more DPS than other carrier/supers if in a fleet with assignable subcaps. It would also make supers more viable to use with sub caps as regular fighters could deal more damage to another fleet while keeping the bombers for specifically against other capitals.

edit: as another thought the minmatar hel/nidhogger should have their bonus changed to rep cycle time/ cap usage rather than amount so that they hp/min repair rate and energy consumption remains the same per level as current. However this would make them immensely more useful in combating capitals getting alpha'ed between rep cycles.

I'm sure this idea is going to get the meta discussion going so lets open it up how will this get "eve'ed" to hell?

Maybe it's time to unleash them upon the battleship hordes?