Assembly Hall

Situation
Supers are imbalanced to game breaking proportions. These ships can have EHP that rivals or surpasses a titan, the DPS of a dread and can be spider tanked beyond the levels of a triage carrier all while being e-war immune. Furthermore, they’re the sole ship that can fit the remote ECM burst module. This leads to groups whose sole modus operandi is the super fleet. If CCP truly wishes to make nullsec more vibrant and allow smaller entities to take space, it must be accompanied with a nerf to supers.

Background
In order to give smaller entities a chance at nullsec either the bar must be lowered or the effectiveness of these ships must be addressed. Lowering the bar and effectively giving everyone access to nukes, while fun on paper, would not solve the problem. The height of the problem can be illustrated when S2N was disbanded in July of 2013 and lost SOV in 209 systems. This was all retaken in 3 days by N3 and their allies with 300 supers. More recently, we watched Brave get evicted from their SOV in Catch by PL. A much large alliance had no recourse against a small to moderate force of supers.

Assessment
CCP has recognized the imbalance of supers and has made numerous passes at correcting the issue. They’ve nerfed the HP of supers, they’ve removed regular drones, and most recently they’ve nerfed jump range across the board for all capitals. Coming this summer, they’re removing SOV grinding altogether.
CCP understands that a few select groups that hold all the ships that make inhabiting nullsec possible is not conducive with their goals for the game. Unfortunately, they’re dancing around the issue, rather than addressing it directly.

Recommendation
There’s an understood balance in the game that a big ship is ineffective against smaller ships. I’ve read numerous times where a battleship gets left behind in a fleet and gets torn to shreds by frigates. This theme of range of effectiveness has many forms in Eve but it’s a balance of power mechanic that gives Eve the rock-paper-scissors ecosystem we all enjoy. Supers do not adhere to this. The increased lock time of fighters and fighter bombers is another attempt at correcting this, but this does not fix the issue in fleet engagements. CCP should look into how they can best restore this balance of power so that supers are effective in their role but are not the I Win button that they are today.
For talking points one could imagine CCP removing the ability of fighter bombers to attack subcaps or a siege like module that would allow a super to deploy their fighter bombers and thus commit to the fight for an amount of time, this module would also remove remote assistance. But I really think this should be addressed by CCP and the community to decide which would be the most balanced way to address the issue.
Regardless, if CCP is truly working towards making a more vibrant nullsec community, then they must do so with a nerf to supers.

I think we're all quite sure large coalitions won't just melt the supers down because they don't necessarily have such a great usage anymore.

no, they'll just unsub the accounts...

Its coming

The obvious catch would be to find a means of making supers vulnerable without outright demanding large-scale fleets aka Blobbing.

I do however agree that super carriers are a detrimental element of gameplay as it stands and should be reformed or removed asap.

I don't think it's the Supers that should be nerfed, I think it should be it's ease of building one, which will put more risk for it to be lost. Supers can be destroyed, or else there would be no lossmails of supers. Because of this, increasing their cost to produce would even it out.

a lot of them do that anyways until a decent war comes along. So no real difference, eh?

m

i have not read the rest of this thread but your OP makes me so angry i just have to reply to it.



well that is partly the reason why they cost 20 times as much as a standard carrier, or 10 times as much as a dread, or whatever scale you want to apply. have you ever tried moving a sole super somewhere? good luck, with that. they are strong as a group and as a group only.



erm.. are you bitter cause you dont have one? you know, you can just buy them, theres a forum for that. if you and your friends can grind the isk together, what stops you from acquiring these supposed weapons of mass destruction and wrecking havoc to all those poor bastards that cannot afford them?

i really dont understand what your point is. if they are so overpowered why dont you/your corp just acquire a few?



have you ever actually tried fighting with supers? you have to drop all your tank and refit specifically for tracking to be able to hit battlecruisers or smaller. and thats with fighters then, forget about FBs, so you get a lot less DPS already. many people buy OFFICER items for several billion isk just to be able to max out their tracking. are you saying a 50b super carrier (with fit) is not allowed to hit a ******** sabre that isnt warping off?


please field half a dozen supers and fight actual people and then we'll see how much that "i win" button works out for you.



you obviously have no idea what it means to commit supers into a fight in 0.0. otherwise you wouldnt be saying this.

sorry but you are obviously ranting about something way above your experience, so i doubt people will take you seriously.