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(Preface: Having attended EVE Vegas and the Cap ships roundtable and read/skimmed the 20 plus pages of this thread....)

I have one major concern on capital ships...

...Price of ownership.


To me, if cap ships are going to have much less EHP and thus go boom more, their overall total cost of ownership should go down to come in line with that. Let me first clarify and say that I REALLY like the cap ship changes and how CCP has thought out this new "TIER" of ship warfare; I think myself and all the other players agree on this. (Cap ships seem to have a good balanced role versus risk and they seem to have just the right amount of interaction with all the other ships in game as to not make them OP.)

However, the impression I got from CCP was that these would be going boom more accordingly and I have not seen many people talk about this. I don't mind cap ships going Boom more, what I mind is that the price reflects this.

IF regular capitals (Dreads, carriers and force aux) were only a few billions fitted say...

and super caps (Super carriers and Titans) say 10b-15b fitted...

THEN, I think it would make more sense. This is my suggestion. CCP is lowering their EHP so the price should match. This would make them a more affordable group to match their more common loss. More accessible game play to match their more balanced level of gameplay. More losses is good for CCP, good for players (EVE Economy overall) and good for fair/balanced fights which are really what all these changes are about.

I just think price needs to be talked about more here as part of the planning process and not left out to dry. Let me be clear, The cap ship PLAN (and higher planning) taking place right now will NOT work without said discussion and I challenge the devs to look at this idea I present as a microtransaction that is good for the game instead of trying to hold on to huge prices for capital ships that aren't reflective in their survivability / EHP anymore post changes.

Thank you.

Aliath

P.S. Thanks to all the devs for an awesome EVE Vegas.

P.P.S. To all the players asking about the RORQ, we tried to push on the devs for answers and they were extremely tight lipped. Mine (and others) personal two cents was for a mining doomsday that would pop those rocks at a record rate in exchange for the RORQ's risky gameplay (Industrial mode) and over total cost of ownership; the devs wanted nothing to do talking about it imho.

Some more feedback;

Carriers
- will they need to lock targets? if so, they will need to get targeting ranges of up to 500km to utilise these new 'drive by wire' fighters. if not, then....uh. Weird to think of carriers just driving fighters into the vicinity of enemies and the fighters auto aggress. I dunno.
- you do realise that carriers will have damage projection of over 500km? OK. just making sure.

Capital scrams
- I do hope you make these....rather longer-range. Like, 100km range. Otherwise the laughable situation of Carriers kiting away from dreads, and sicking fighters from edge of grid (250? 300km?) and killing the sieged up dread before it can siege red and move/warp, will be in effect. And if the carrier gets attacked, it just warps out because the dread has 24km point range.

- I don't have any problems with capitals pointing capitals. But you should do it in a progression so that the maths require capitals to work with at least some subcaps to point other capitals.

For example, if you give capitals 20 warp strength and suercapitals 40 warp strength, you either need a HICtor or a bunch of Rifters, or a capital warp disruptor.

Then you can give capital disruptors +18 strength and 100km range (see above for reason) and +36 for scrams and 50km range, so that long-pointing caps with caps requires support fleets, and you need 2 carriers plus 2-4 subs to point a super.

This would prevent capitals from pointing each other, true, which would prevent people say, hotdropping a carrier at 90km from a dread and blapping it. They'd have to drop it at 50km and use a capital scram.

It would also by default give supers immunity from 2 capital dissy's, or 1 capital scram. This would allow a supercap to do what it does now, which is driveby, but as usual a single HIC or DIC, or a counter-drop with capital scram fit dreads and you'd be toast.

This would be a rather sensible kind of setup, IMO.

Dread range
If carriers are going to be able to stand off and lay waste with drive-by-wire fighters, Dreads need to have capabilities to threaten the carriers at range.As said above, you need long-range dissy's and scrams, and we'd hope some support fleet, to achieve this. But you also need guns capable of projecting damage to threaten Carriers at the edge of a stretched grid (350km?).

Of course, you run into targeting range issues as well. So you'll want to think about whether 250km is a reasonable limit and whether caps get to break this, or you'll have to limit yourself to 250km for carriers. Which might be most reasonable.

And, by the by, our C4 Black Hole cruise Phoenixes hit to 250km. But torp phoenix outside a BH is 70km. Maybe that's fine, maybe it's not. But the capital turrets are in a worse place for LR weapons at the moment, and targeting range is woeful.

And, again, scan res! Scan res!

Fighters
I also believe fighters should be way cheaper than they are now, given each squadron is composed of many fighters. It should cost a hundred or two hundred million to load up a carrier, not 3 billion.

While many people cry out that capitals are not intended for PvE, it is what many pilots use them for. I would guess, after years of being a cap pilot and knowing hundreds of them living all over the north and south, that at least 50% of all cap pilots spend at least 80% of their time flying caps in PvE usage. That doesn't even begin to describe capital alts, which are dedicated to PvE activities.

I honestly feel that if carriers fail to have auto engaging squadrons, or can't assist squadrons, then there will be a huge decline in active accounts. You will see a major amount of skills being ripped from these alts, and then those accounts will be unsubed. Some might be reskilled into industry or mining, but most will just be lost.

The Maulus Navy Issue has +1 strength on scramblers - I understand you said basic hulls - so it has the potential to be a powerful tool for small gangs. I like the idea of larger ships have higher warp core strengths and I would like to see that mechanic trickle down to smaller ships.

I don't fly capitals so I don't have any experience to speak from but it looks like these changes would encourage diversity in fleets and might even cause more good fights. They may be hard to swallow but if they are tweaked some they don't seem to be game breaking.

I would change the purposed Dread guns. Dread guns should have a select-able mode (normal - HAW) that worked more like the T3D does now or just use ammo as the deciding factor. The reload time from cap to subcap ammo would make it where they couldn't be insta-swapped. I think having a binary choice isn't a good idea.

CCP, would you consider reimbursing CCC rigs on my Archon once they become useless?

1 question I have as a c5 Wormhole resident
Currently Escalations are run as 2x carrier, 2x Dreadnaught
my question is where do force auxiliaries fit into the equation

Will Aux's count as a Carrier for the purposes of whats what ?
or will the structuring of an escalation be reworked with the addition of a new capital

or worst case - is this the long promised end to capital escelations

Unless somewhere in this Capital overhaul you fix the fighter support, jump range and timers, Capitals are worthless and will continue to be worthless.

They don't doh there is no value in bringing a knife to a gun fight and that is what the new dread guns are a knife a blunt knife. Why would you field a ship that costs 3b can not be repped won't be able to refit [If they go though with weapon timer for siege] can be jammed can be damped can be tracking disrupted. And in exchange for all these disadvantages you do a stragering 2k dps. You're better off putting your dread alt into an extra rattlesnake.

Damn that's expensive. Carriers would be the only ship in the game whose weapon system was more expensive than the platform they're on. Those values definately need looking at.

Anti-Subcap guns for Dreads are - imho - a horrible idea.

For large parts, ISK play little to no role in Combat any more, so why in hell should anyone bring a BS when he could simply bring a Dread? Same abilities to shoot subcaps but way more EHP and DPS per pilot, plus the option to refit if larger targets appear.

Dreads should be anti-BIG-target ships and nothing more, structures, capitals, supercapitals. Period. If you want to use them, protect them with stuff that can shoot smaller ships. For example BS or carriers. Yeah, these cannot deal 10.000 DPS if needed, but thats fully intentional. With that "one-ship-to-rule-them-all" concept you are going into the complete wrong direction. And that "yeah but you need one minute to refit!!!" does not make it any better.