Player Features and Ideas Discussion

So with t3 cruisers and capitals being slated for rebalance later on and the introduction of fozziesov, we're seeing a new era in null and quite a lot of questions about where capitals are going to fit in. With that in mind, I'd like to broach the topic of titan balance in the future.

As we are well aware, titans are essential to large-scale fleet deployment and perform a valuable, albeit slightly reduced role, to major alliances particularly in nullsec. Titans in general combine strong anti-capital combat roles in regards to their weapons and doomsdays with fleet support with their ability to bridge and give bonuses. What I'm proposing here is introducing Iapetan titans, which were the first titans built by the empires in the game lore. For those confused, here's a helpful link regarding what I'm talking about: https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Titans
The form this will take will be balancing titans along the lines of carriers to current supercarriers

What the balance will entail for current titans will be:
-Fleet bonuses will be removed
-Jump fatigue penalties will be removed
-XL guns will have their base damage modifiers increased to where titans are at lvl 5, all ttians will receive range bonuses, and dread siege mode will be adjusted accordingly
-Scan res for titans will be dramatically increased
-Reinstate the ability to hit below subcap with full effectiveness as before


With that in mind, the general outline for what the new Iapetan titans will be like will be this:
-As per game lore, they will be significantly larger even than current titans. Build costs will be around 10x current titans, and they will be larger than even most stations
-They have a much larger jump bridge-type tech, but it has a 24 hour cooldown period. The bridge range will be enormous and can reach across entire regions instead of constellations. The caveat will be that the ship HAS to jump along with the fleet it moves, so using it offensively means you have to risk a vessel the size of a small moon and worth around a trillion isk.
-other players can dock in it, and it has unlimited space in the same way stations do. It will be a mobile home.
-Instead of turrets, it fits multiple DDs with a decent firing rate bonus to them. It does not suffer the same penalties as normal titans with using them.
-HP pool will be gargantuan, but will have much more hp allocated into primary tanks than secondary. ex. caldari ttian will have most of its hp into shields, amarr will have most of it into armor, etc.
-it gains the fleet bonuses that the original player titans will lose, with them being modified to be even stronger than before.
-When it bridges and jumps into the target system, a 'gravity well' anom that's visible on the overview stays up for a few hours. While it can warp away from that site a half hour or so after it lands, the anom will stay in space for a few hours, indicating that one of these things landed in system.


EDIT: Invisible battle-stations are silly. I should have remembered that this is a multiplayer game and not a movie, lol. They will be visible on dscan, but for combat probes, they will be the hardest to scan item in the game, even though you will be able to do it with top skills (and possibly a virtue set). Also, added something at the end of this that would would assist with the concerns about finding them.

Thoughts? The Iapetan titans in the game lore are HUGE ships.

If the idea is to make them so expensive null blocks will only have a few, you should instead make their blueprints spawn as copies that have a chance to drop inversely proportional to the amount in use and existing BPC's in the game. Of course this will eventually lead to only one faction having them, but if we're gonna break the game, lets do it properly.

That said, how do we kill these things? They jump, then safe up and are untouchable, or log off for 24 hours so they can jump back to safety with their massive range.
Why is an un-probable mobile station and fleet booster not hilariously OP?

You forgot to ask for the reinstatement of the remote DD too.

(As in, you fire an AoE DD through a cyno and don't actually need to be in the target system)

The idea isn't balancing them with cost; most major alliances have assets well into the trillions so saying that it's going to be worth 10x the amount of a titan isn't saying it's expensive when the alliance in question has dozens of titans anyway, or CAN afford that much. The balance is usefulness vs interest; people will be using these more for their ability to MOVE lots of things since it basically is a station with engines, a jump drive, and a jump portal attached to it.

It's already in the game lore that these things exist though; it's canon. Conceptualizing them as something players could use would be fine as long as they're balanced properly; having current titans taking hits to things like hp, cooldown timers, etc. would be fine too if it means being able to offset the bonuses they'll be getting.

As for how do kill them, what would it take for YOUR alliance to build then use a massive military asset worth well in excess of a trillion isk? I'd be find with dropping the dscan immunity, but regardless of whether or not they're safed up or they're being used properly, they're still vulnerable to internal sabotage and clever scouting.

Besides, having the ability to move most of your alliance military assets cross-regionally not only would make them enormously tempting to field for invasions, but fantastically juicy targets. After giving it slightly more thought, I will remove the dscan immunity on them as that is a little over powered. That said, they should be the most difficult thing in the game to scan down with combat probes, even if it is possible.

I agree that titans and supers need a new coat of paint for a new era of spaceships, but this seems like a stealth, un-nerf my titan please thread and throw in a buff garnish because theres not enough on the plate already.

Specifics:
- Long range 24hr bridge - The point of stage 1 with reducing the range on titans and all caps across the board was to impact power projection and make alliances ( with the upcoming implementation of Fozziesov ) carve out small fortresses that will be difficult to take, while un used space becomes the next generation of FFA Sov war. we do this and were back to square one, alliances will just position titans to go from east to west in minutes, jump fatigue or not this makes it way to quick and brings the fear of the wreckingball batphone alliances back. -10

- Guns - These were nerfed for a good reason, we dont need to take that step in the wrong direction, more damage for titans across the board? sure! they should be the pinnacle of anti cap warfare with staying power and self defense, but tracking cruisers and battleships easily and insta blapping them again? No thanks, we already saw how well that went

- 2nd gen - sounds prestigious and awesome in theory but it could be a server nightmare to set up, not to mention this would just lead to additional titan stockpiling before the update so every major block has as many super titans as possible.

- docking - actually an interesting idea, but i would rather just dock in my stations where i dont have to worry if they guy carrying my ships accidently jumped rather than bridged, my station has a perfect track record for not doing that. and with jump networks, ceptors, and stations/outposts becoming more popular whats the real reason to dock in a titan instead?

- scan res buff - Pointless as the titan should only be focusing on caps and supers as is, lock times are pretty decent as is without a sebo or a buff

- multiple DD's - No, just no.

-Tanks - this is already the case a leviathans tank is 75-80% in its shield and 10-15% in its structure with a DCU running, the armor is gone in a flash unless your catching constant reps. and for armor ships this is also the case, hence why we rarely see shield tanking erebus

- size adjustments - this just seems too busy, maybe just give them a unique non-tradeable skin, no need to make these things so big their junk compartment starts hanging out of the POS and you have to devote more sensors to not backing up into a moon by mistake.

- scan proof with no D-scan signature?????? - does this need words? No no no no no. if you want that fit a cloak or swap to one, they gave us depots and carriers for a reason. or scan inhibitors even!

- Increased fleet boosts - ehhhh theyre pretty strong as is, no need to give the cake four feet of icing. maybe add a second smaller bonus

Why not? You're asking for every other titan nerf to be undone, so why not that one? You have to go all out with your shitposting.

Realtalk though, do you think anyone besides us, PL and NC. would ever actually field these things?

Quoting OP Quoting Me:

-I fixed the scan proof no dscan thing, not to worry.

-For the other stuff, the balance would be that you'd have to move the whole thing WITH you, rather than just having it bridge other things. So you'd have to have a safe place WHERE you're going to jump it into with everything inside/around it. That ensures that the power projected is committed to the campaign, and is used properly as a mobile battlestation.

-What's wrong with multiple DDs if it can't use any guns? I didn't say it was going to have a full rack of them; at MOST it could use 4 or something.

-2nd gen titans are actually what you're currently flying. In the article I linked about their history, the Iapetan titans were actually the first titans made by the empires before the current, much smaller Promethean ones were developed. The NPC empires have these; we've just never seen them, only heard of them in the lore.
(/Quotes)

- The idea of being able to easily bring a spot that can be 100% safe when logged off that can store billions in assets or more with you on a campaign makes sov wars 3 times as unbearable, why risk losing assets when a system gets rolled when you can just schlep everything into a titan then jump to the otherside of the region? Sov war is slated to be dynamic as key systems and assets are lost to invading alliances, this just gives you a failsafe way to save all the things masquerading as a mobile battlestation, plus if your titan has 100b or more in it plus its cost, plus med clones with implants docked why would you even consider dropping it? THis just isolates them to jump freighters with guns rather than super capitals

- even 4 doomsdays is a bad idea

Scenario:
Small gang of battleships and mixed support encounters similar fleet-
Fleet A starts to lose ships and drops 4 triage archons
Fleet B drops 1 avatar and kills all 4 archons in the span of a few seconds and then fleet A crumbles, fleet b harvests tears and the titan jumps off again.

This means titans become the "Oh look they dropped a few caps, lets nuke them card" you just figure out how many caps, load DD's, then jump in 1 or 2 more titans than needed and instantly annihilate their capital support as opposed to the current meta of dropping a few with additional cap support if any titans would even be committed in the first place. And with your gun idea these titans now proceed to also mop the spacelanes with the wreckage of the cruisers they can now track.

all and all sounds like a fun scenario, but only for Fleet B and a few members of fleet A who either have never seen a DD before outside SISI or got out alive by some miracle.


- Lore -
If its in the lore that we've only ever heard of them lets just keep it that way rather than adding to the already very confusing game we all love and simply rebalance them all equally.