EVE General Discussion

As have I, Brother Cybertherion. As have I.

Except it really does, and tons of games with any kind of large capital ship tend to use similar scaling with a big jump in durability for high value assets.



Except that it really really doesn't.

Frigate has been used to mean various things over the last 400-ish years, and even in modern terminology the term is used in various navies to refer to everything from something smaller than a Destroyer to as large as a Cruiser.

Destoryer has a bit more consistency but bears no resemblance in role or usage to an Eve Destroyer.

Cruisers have, similarly to Frigates, referred to a variety of sizes of vessel ranging from something that's almost a Destroyer up to Battlecruiser size while still bearing the classification of "Cruiser". Also, again, doesn't really fit the role of an Eve Cruiser at all.

Battlecruiser hasn't been used as a classification since WW2 but were generally classed as Capital Ships.

Battleships, as you yourself pointed out are capital ships in naval parlance, and bear basically no resemblance to an Eve Battleship.

Carriers in Eve bear little resemblance to the role or purpose of a Carrier in naval warfare.

Dreadnought in naval terms actually refers to a type of Battleship from around the era of WW1.

A Super Carrier in naval terms doesn't launch bombers, though it at least fits the relative change in scale and power from a regular Carrier.

There is no naval equivalent to a Titan.

So yeah, Eve doesn't follow the naval scaling, the roles, or even use the ship class names for anything other than vague indications of size. Saying "but the word choice" when arguing a balance parameter is ridiculous.



Capital ships were planned from the beginning of Eve and were added more because they were cool than for any other reason. CCP certainly had other reason but "invulnerable POSes" weren't much of a problem.

They also weren't intended to be *that* rare. Titans were, but that's because they were a couple orders of magnitude more expensive than a regular Capital Ship and ridiculously hard to build. Since then the game has changed and evolved drastically. Citing old design intent, especially with any intention to convince the developers, is pointless and ridiculous. If something is violating old stated design intent then that intent and the reasoning behind it is clearly no longer valid.

There are a ton of reasons I can think of why an upkeep tax on a ship is a poor idea, especially from the perspective of Eve ten years ago. Not the least of which being that these ships were almost entirely stored in space sitting inside POS shields at the time, which would make determining an owner, applying tax, and determining what should happen to the ship should someone's wallet be empty difficult and annoying to say the least.

I think you just don't like big powerful ships. That's perfectly fine - everybody is entitled to their own likes and dislikes. But some of us do like big poweful ships. So fly what you want and let us fly what we want.

Oh, man, I laughed so much… you are serious or you just joking?

“Truly wonderful the mind of a child is.”
– Yoda

Truly Imperial ambitions!

Ok, may it be, but that thing should cost 50 trillion ISK and should require 7 years of skill learning and should be able to be destroyed by 500 battleships.

P.S. Only Darth Sidious can drive such a thing...

I'm not sure that works like "Bettlejuice", just saying.

Works just as good with only one mention

/c

The initial run of ships was like 4-5 classes and only had "the same roles" in the loosest possible definition of the term "role", considering that Eve is not a naval combat game and bears very little resemblance to naval combat at all.

Your argument here seems to be that Eve should try to hew closely to real-life naval combat ship classifications and roles, despite bearing no meaningful resemblance to it in any way and having made no case on your part for why this would be fun or good game design.

Also Capitals Ships already have a fuel cost, to jump the ship, as well as significant ammo costs on a Dreadnought and now significant Fighter costs on Carriers. Your argument seems to be that it should be more expensive to run the ship than to build it, which is frankly ridiculous from a game balance or just a "fun" perspective.

There has always been a big jump in EVE between one class and another, particularly in-between the sets of classes where module size also shifts.

Capitals in EVE Online are not simply a bigger class of ship; they are also far more advanced in their function. In fact, Dreadnoughts are arguably based on the World War I concept - a ship built around massive guns. In the case of EVE Dreadnoughts, they are starships built around three pairs of XL weaponry, with the Siege Module upgrading their damage output to suitable Capital-scale levels.

The same goes for the Carrier class which are, of course, based on modern Carriers. That is the EVE Online line-up: a hybridization of World War I and modern day ship types.

The types of ships truly unique to EVE Online are arguably the Force Auxiliary Capitals (that said, RL fleets also need logistics support, IIRC), and most definitely the Titan-class Super-Capital.

And all of the Capital-class vessels in EVE have unique attributes that set them apart from their Sub-Capital brethren.

The Dreadnoughts have the Siege Modules which, for the price of essentially anchoring them in space and no remote repair, improves armor repair and shield boosting, raises resistance to certain types of electronic warfare, multiplies damage output of its Capital guns by 700 to 840% (for regular turrets; missiles get up to 200% damage bonus).

Carriers are the only class of ship able to field fighters (though I've heard Guristas Caps will be able to field fighters on Dreads and Titans), and double as Command Ships due to their ability to fit two Command Burst Modules. Same deal with Supercarriers, only they can field Heavy Fighters for long-range and anti-Capital roles, improved bonuses to Command Bursts, and the new Burst Projectors give them an Electronic Warfare Superweapon. Force Aux may be focused on giving Capital-level Logistics support to Capital fleets and others, but they too have use of Command Bursts.

As for Titans, what needs to be said? All the EW resistances of a Dreadnought without the need of a Siege module; able to fit three Command Burst modules; a Phenomena Generator; a Clone Vat Bay; double the turret hardpoints of a Dread and thus exceeding double the firepower fully trained with, again, no need for Siege.

On top of the ability to use an assortment of Doomsday Weapons, the ability to open Jump Portals for fleets, and the highest EHP of all the ships in the games.

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But like everything else in EVE, despite all the power and versatility these things possess, they are just as vulnerable (if not more so, due to their massive sig radius and low speed) as all the other ship classes.

But long story made short, it doesn't break any RL progression. EVE simply hybridized the concepts of Dreadnoughts and Carriers that were established in WWI and WWII into the line-up of ships in EVE Online, with the only unique concept being the Titans.



How long have you played this game, again?

Battleships and Capitals have always been intended to be the "heavy weapons platforms" in fleets. The ships that you use either to take down other Capitals or Battleships, or POS structures like towers and now Citadels. Cruisers were always intended to be the multi-purpose category of star-ships for ship-to-ship combat, not to mention being the most easily accessible and least expensive option.

On top of all that, they are functionally the best category. Frigates and Destroyers are small and fast, but fragile; Battlecruisers and Battleships are powerful and have large EHP, but are slow and easy targets, and the same applies to Capitals. Cruisers are the middle-ground - they are fast, have decent DPS, good tanking capabilities, and are able to fill the majority of fleet roles.

In other words, they do their jobs.

CCP is not going to change that because you haven't grown out of the mentality of "bigger is better".

I haven't reached the end yet, has someone mentioned that allowing caps in high sec will result in Mercs parking Supers and Titans on every gate in Jita, Niarja, Uedama, and Amarr and DD'ing everything that tries to get thru?

edit: nope, it was kind of implied but not in a war-dec kind of way. Since we are entertaining silly ideas, how about caps in High sec islands?

Each class of ship should have some efficiency or they should not exist.

IRL, At the end of the sail days we had ships of the line and cruisers and not much else, for good reason.

Around WW I and WW II the number of ship classes dramatically increased with the introduction of new classes and their counters as advances in technology allowed them to be developed.

Since then we have seen battleships become obsolete and the convergence of some smaller classes due to advances in technology allowing the more efficient implementation of multi-role.


The main point; In Eve Online if we are going to have Capitals, Battleships, Cruisers, and Frigates, there should be some reason for their existence; or we shouldn't have them.

The current reasons:
-Capitals and Supers are essentially ships of the line for persistent strategies.
-Battleships are generally close strategic range work-horses.
-Cruisers are generally long strategic range work-horses for raiding strategies.
-Frigates are generally fleet support units.

Before the battleship speed nerf, cruisers weren't used as much and players complained.
Since the battleship speed nerf, some players complain about the slow battleships.

I think the BS speed nerf has done a nice job to introduce better trade offs for battleships and cruisers, each see their fair share of use now.

To be honest though, I think the game would have been better off if we didn't have Capital ships. There original intended use was anti-structure and only became a fleet use ship once Supers got buffed during Dominion.

I think the game would be better off with Battleships (with no speed nerf) being the "ships of the line" with Supers being more a support role as they were before Dominion.

It would be far more friendly to new players, and easier for the casual player to support their doctrines.

It is possible many do not stay with this game due to the cost of maintaining their basic doctrine ships.

They just don't have the time, and don't want to spend even more money via a PLEX.