Player Features and Ideas Discussion

He is saying that they need not be pidgeonholed into their role, but can have variance without being so dynamic as to take away player choice in the matter, and always have a right choice for every operation. I agree with that, but I do not agree with giving all of them a resist bonus.

See my post a few posts back for more on what I think would be good changes for carriers. My suggestion would make them less pidgeonholed and open up more choice variety while still leaving them very different and full of racial flavor.

No one has an obligation to let a bunch of 0.0 noobs push for ratting carrier improvements either. I'll get right to the punch line. I fly all the carriers. All of them. They all have different uses at different times. I don't think they need to be the same. They need to be different. The game is based on racial ship variety.

Recons aren't even close to the same. They are totally divided by race. For you to just say "they all apply some form of ewar" and imply they are equivialent because they all do ewar is absurd and totally highlights the slanderous lengths you will go to to promote yoru bad idea. Carriers need thier racial identities. Making all the carriers equal is against this and just plain bad. Reading through this, it's just a poorly disguised ploy to make carriers better at ratting. That's a dumb idea. Please let it go. Carriers aren't in eve to be awesome ratting ships - that isn't their purpose.

If you want to rat - train up a thanny.
If you want to rep armor fleets - train up an archon.
If you want to rep shield fleets - train up a chimera.
If you want to fly the little carrier that could - train up the nid (it's my personal favorite).

If you want to blob up w/ 100 other carriers, drop sentries and lag out the server for some elite pvp - they all do THAT equally well.

The only change to carriers that will actually improve game play would be to take sentries away from them, but someone somewhere waaaaaaay high up in CCPville just can't seem to take sentries away from ships (carriers/ishtar/etc) that shouldn't have them.

Because the game has been nibbling at the whole sentry drone mess for over a year. Why not just fix all of it.

What function do sentry drones serve to help the carrier in it's role on the field?

I'd like to follow the precedent of fighter bombers and make carriers a fighter only platform, and they don't need a fighter buff to go with that change.


Post drone assist and drone modules, sentry drones have been abused and problematic in a lot of places. From this forum sections standpoint, the problem is that the groups that do most of the abuse are large, organized and have CCP's ear.

What really sux is that CCP seems to have a habbit of catering to these large groups at the expense of the game. The creep of null mechanics to the current boring and unmeaning full garbage play.

Personally what I think needs to happen is that deep down at the development level of the game CCP needs to have a little faith in themselves and their game. When the leaderships of large entities in the game tell CCP that if change X occurs then 1000s of players will unsub, CCP has to get better at discerning what alliance leaders say and what players will actually do. Sentries on carriers and ishtars are a prime example. A few crap metas would be ruined, but folks won't flee the game. Ratting will adapt and a few crap FCs will have to come up with actual tactics.

CCP needs meaningful interesting game play a hell of a lot more than they need 10000 carrier rat bot subscriptions. As far as the leaders of the big mega alliances - if they quit because no more carrier botting then the game will generate new leaders. Players will keep playing and a few 'leadership' players can easily be replaced.


It's clever you say without DCU's the fighter damage goes down 25%. How much does it go up for a thanny with max DCU? That's the real number we need to see, because that's what would be using your proposed change. Give us that number.

You obviously have no knowledge of Recons. It shows ignorance on your behalf to say they all apply Ewar and so they are the same. I could say the same thing about carrier; they all apply fighter DPS and so they are the same.

Each type of Ewar is completely different and has a different purpose within the game. If I am using your logic I could QQ on the forums that I want a rapier to get a point and sensor damping bonus on top of the web and target painting bonuses.

And all carriers can use fighter drones. So that is just one common trait they all have in common. I think you need to go away and rethink your position after listening to what experienced people have told you on here.

Carriers can launch 5 drones like the rest of us, plus 5 more at skill level 5 from the ship skill, plus fitting up to 5 drone control units, for a maximum of 15 drones/fighters. Removing the ship skill bonus to drones launched reduces the max number to 10, so with a 50% damage bonus the end result is that the max damage is the same. That was the idea. I offered no buff to carriers, only a nerf. The nerf is that the carriers rely more strongly on DCUs to have heavy drone damage, such that when fitting capital remote reps instead, they make a more significant sacrifice to their DPS.

Really what slowcats are doing is capitalizing on their ability to spider tank at max efficiency while dealing 2/3rds their maximum sentry drone DPS. Neither their sentry DPS nor their spider tanking capacity are the issue, rather it is their ability to do both at the same time.



Why do sentry drones need to serve toward some predetermined "role" for carriers? One of the best things about this game is how the players find new ways to use ships. If players want to bring their DPS way down in order to eliminate drone travel time, let them. That's what sentries are for on any ship. Carriers are the last ship you should take that away from.

They just need to sacrifice enough DPS when they gain that advantage.



And finally, CCP absolutely does not cater to large nullsec groups. Usually when I hear people whining about that, what they are actually referring to is how broken certain game mechanics are, and how the folks down in nullsec take the best advantage of these broken mechanics. So actually given how broken capitals are, that shows more neglect than anything. The big nullsec blocs aren't begging CCP for help. They get "helped" when other folks are tired of being at the receiving end of their capital ship shenanigans, when people actually figure out what's wrong with them and why the nullsec blocs are able to use them to such great effect.

Of course, large blobs of them isn't abuse of game mechanics, yet that's what most of the whining focuses on anyway.



So back to my original point: nerf carrier drone/fighter damage when they haven't fit DCUs, while leaving their damage the same as before if they have.
(Players below carrier skill 5 will gain a bit of DPS)

It's never too late. They were already rolling out changes to recons years ago but they gave them a major balance pass just a few months back.

My idea reduces lag by reducing the number of drones.

What would your lag reduction accomplish? I'd pop 20 min before loading grid instead of an hour?

This is just a variant of cutting the assigned drones down to a smaller number. Instead of 30 ishtards assigning sentries to 1 ares you now have 30 ishtards asigning sentries to 6 ares. What really changed? I'm going to say overall - the compromise changed nothing.

Your answer is a true fact that doesn't make the game any different.

Back to the OP carriers SHOULD all be different - on a really basic level you are asking to just train one carrier and get the benefits of all races (conversly your making them all the same so only one need be trained). Are you OK with me and many others getting full SP reimbursements for training the other 3 races of carriers? Following this through, I can see where I'll end up with 60 mil SP in my bank and nothing useful to train once you get done equalizing all the ships and all the ship classes. I can just max out 1 race of everything and call it a day.

Continued training needed - rebalance NOT needed.

Some interesting statements have been thrown around, such as:

Thanny is the best DPS carrier.
Yes, for solo. But in larger groups (Slowcat / Pantheon) the Archon wins because of the resist bonus, which synergises the huge RR on the field (even out of triage) and makes it more efficient.

Triage carrier = dead carrier / drop a Geddon
This line can only ever be used by someone who has misused carriers without proper subcap support, or fits terribly.

Nidhoggurs do well in wormholes because they don't face the same things as in k-space
u wot m8? Clearly you've not seen a Swaglfar.

The reality why Archon is king of the heap (and therefore defines armour meta for cap brawling) is purely the capacitor advantage it has.

Whether in or out of triage, carriers live or die by their capacitor. Triage just locks it into being a closed system with bonused outbound reps (+/- capacitor). You can tank hugely, but you can't receive capacitor, so if you get capped before you coast from triage, you're dead.

This is why the silly statements like "you can triage fit a Thanny, honest" expose the author as having a shallow and erroneous grasp of reality. If an carrier enters Triage, it seals itself up into the system with whatever capacitor it has and whatever it can generate internally. Thannies have lower capacitor and lower resists, so they have to run their reps more often to achieve the same tank as an Archon. This means they burn out of capacitor about 30-60s earlier, and then they blow up. Nidhoggurs, armour fit, actually do better, and due to the more punchy RR can run that less. After all, there's little use in a carrier being on field if it's not repping its gang.

The decisions made whether to fly Archon, Thanny or Nidhoggur come down to capacitor alone. The Archon has the best of both worlds because it has the best capacitor and a resist bonus.

There are niches for Nidhoggurs. Shield fit, with enough pimp (about 4.5B++) they begin pushing into very strange territory as solo triage carriers. As I said above, the niche is being able to fight on a grid where there's no Swaglfar, when you have shield subcaps in your fleet and can neutralise enemy Bhaalgorns effectively. If you don't meet those criteria, it gets sketchy, fast.

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The idea of giving the Thanny and nid an active tank bonus is interesting, but will have to be carefully balanced against capacitor. Burst tanking can get a little egregious with pimp - just look at Swaglfars capable of tanking 40K for bursts, etc.

The key in balancing triage and local reps is to force a tradeoff between outbound RR and local tanking; the Archon barely has to worry about this, especially with links and drugs, but the others do. Buffs to local tank for the nid and Thanny might seems fine, but could throw this wide open if you can use 2/3rds as much to tank locally as before, which leaves the Nid especially open to massive outbound RR. This, particularily, would be liable to exploitation.

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I think the problems with carriers at the moment revolve as much around the actual presence of triage (and siege for Dreads, too) as an immobilising and isolating factor. the dynamic of Triage is interesting as a choice to become turbo Spacepriest, but it always boils down to onboard capacitor and self-generation over the 5 minute cycle. Thus, if the isolating nature of Triage is continued, capacitor is the only thing that needs to be balanced.

There needs to be a discussion around mobility, too. The relative immobility of capitals causes some of the incentives towards Slowcat blobbing, aggregation of larger blocs which can hotdrop larger forces onto immobile enemy capitals (locked into place with triage or siege), etcetera. Why cannot capitals be at least moderately maneuverable? Why can they not scatter out of bubbles, gain transversal on one another, move about the field?