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[Proposal] Titan Balance (Updated 3/13/2012)
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Tyran Scorpi
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2012-02-10 03:07:06 UTC  |  Edited by: Tyran Scorpi
"We're not happy with the effectiveness of large groups of titans against subcapital ships, so we're making some adjustments to titans and to XL turrets.

This is a quick, surgical adjustment to solve a specific issue we have identified. It's not a general titan balance pass, and we don't consider titans "done" after this change. Titans will require significant further changes, and probably an overall adjustment in role, before they're in a place where we're really happy with them. This will require a reasonably significant amount of work, which we unfortunately don't have the spare resources for right now."
Copied from this thread: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=80374

I have a suggestion for the adjustments to the titan, for when you do get around to making that balance pass.

The Titan currently has the capabilities to perform up to 4 different roles:
Logistics(Bridging/Clone Vat)
Combat(Capital Weapons)
Command(Gang Links/Titan Fleet Bonus)
Super-weapon platform

My proposal to the the CSM is that the Titan be broken down into 3 different ships, each flying away with some of the capabilities of the original ship.

The Titan would retain its super-weapon, and the fleet bonuses. (Titan mkII) [supercapital]
The first new hull would get the clone vat bay and bridging capabilities. (?Mothership?) [capital]
That leaves the capital weapons for the last new hull. (Superdreadnought) [supercapital]

Each of these hulls would need a little fleshing out to make them fully realized as a ship of their own, but this breakdown puts us well on the way towards that goal. See Post #2 for specifics.

In all, this would bring us to having:
Supercarriers, Superdreads, and Titan mkII's in the supercapital class.
Carriers, Dreads in the capital class. (we need more regular combat capital classes, see post #2)
Freighters, Jump Freighters, Rorquals, and Motherships for logistics and industry.

Subcaps < Capitals < Supercapitals < Subcaps
This is how most people want combat between ship classes in eve to work from what I have been able to gather. Recent changes have removed the ability of supercapitals to do much of anything to subcaps. (tracking nerf, standard drone removal) Supercapitals already have the advantage on regular capitals, however, correct me if I'm wrong, but regular capitals do not possess a similar advantage over subcaps, such as those subcaps now possess over supers. I would also like to propose a buff to regular capitals to allow them to crush subcap fleets to maintain balance among the fleet types.

The biggest drawback to this plan that I can see is figuring out what would happen to current titan pilot's ships, and getting the new ships out there to be used without much downtime. If the proposed concept (in post #3) of splitting the cost of a titan down between the 3 ships it is being divided into is decided upon, it would be fairly easy to just give current titan pilots one of each ship, since the total cost would be about the same. They would be left sitting in a titan mkII, with the bridge ship and the superdread docked in whatever station they have their medical clone in(assuming it was not in high sec). They would only be able to use 1 ship at a time, so it would be up to them to sell off whichever ships they didn't want to use to others. Similar methods could be used for getting the new BPO types out there.


TL;DR
Break titans into 3 different ships, only 2 of which are for combat, and only 2 of which are in the supercapital class.
Specific breakdown is laid out in post #2
Also buff regular capitals to maintain the Subcaps < Capitals < Supercapitals < Subcaps balance.
See Post #3 for additional thoughts.
Tyran Scorpi
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#2 - 2012-02-10 03:34:23 UTC  |  Edited by: Tyran Scorpi
(some of this is temporary until I get some feedback or new ideas)
[prices also not current, 50B price tag for a titan is the assumed value, so adjust accordingly]
New super capital ship stats:

The Titan mkII (Price tag? 25B?)
Would use existing Titan hulls and retain all current fleet bonus stats, plus the fleet bonuses from their racial command ships. High slots would now be used for the superweapon, gang links, plus the usual capital fare: smartbombs, cloak, and heavy neuts.
New Super weapon mechanics would be required to bring this ship into balance. See my suggestion in post #3.
Another possible option is adding fleet transport capability. A Titan in the fleet command position could allow up to 249 sup-caps to dock and be carried to their destination by the Titan. An alternate concept would be to allow said 249 ships to lock into docking clamps on the exterior of the Titan.

The Superdreadnaught (~18B)
All: 7 High slots and 6 weapon hard points which would leave a slot open for a siege module.
Amarr/Gallente: 5 Med slots and 8 Low slots.
Caldari/Minmatar: 8 Med slots and 5 Low slots.
Base stats (such as tracking) for the hull would be taken from a dread to start with, and then balanced appropriately.
It would get the same dreadnaught skill bonuses that a normal dread of it's race would get, plus a role bonus of +100% capital weapon rate of fire while in siege mode. (This is converted from the current titan's 100% bonus to capital weapon damage) It would be unwise to tracking fit a superdread as you will need lots of tank if you plan on using siege mode, if not, you dont get that pretty 100% bonus that the current titan gets all the time.
What does everyone think about adding +1 High slot and the ability to mount a capital class warp disruption field generator? 25 km range? Alternately, a regular module with a range boost on the ship hull.

New capital ship stats:

The Mothership (~7B) (Working Title)
Possibly an ORE ship, as it doesn't really seem necessary to have 1 for each race. (Not a super cap.) Tech 2 Rorqual?
4 High slots, 6 Med slots, 3 Low slots. 7/6/4 if T2 Rorqual.
Able to mount: Clone Vat Bay, Jump Portal Generator, and Industrial Core.
Industrial Core anchors ship in place while active, making the ship unable to be bumped.
Jump Portal Generator requires the Industrial Core to be active, but allows for bi-directional bridging to a cyno or Titan mkII.

As noted in the opening post, we need more combat capital classes. Here are some suggestions:

Capital heavy interdictor/tackler (Tech 2 Dreadnaught?)
Currently only useful against subcaps, as it can be insta-popped with current superweapon mechanics.

Tech 2 logistics carrier that gives up 90% of its drone capabilities for more repping capabilities.
75% increased capital repper range per level of carrier
15% reduced capital repper capacitor requirement per level of carrier (or logistics)
Can still launch 5 drones, but no fighters.

Tech 2 drone/fighter carrier that gives up 90% of its repping capabilities for more drone/fighter capabilities.
Can launch up to 25 regular drones, 12 fighters, or 6 fighterbombers.
Bonuses to drone speed, optimal range, hit points, and damage.
(Alternately, redo tech 1 carriers into this, and introduce a new ship to handle repping)

Anti-subcap Capital (another Tech 2 dreadnaught?)
Following the concept that regular capitals should destroy subcaps, we need a capital ship that is really effective at shooting subcaps. Something like 6 or 8 high slots for large weapons(not X-large), with bonuses to tracking(allowing it to hit cruisers and larger) and damage(+200%). An alternate concept would be to introduce a new type of XL turret, that is effectively just a bunch of smaller weapons fire linked together to annihilate subcaps. To prevent abuse by supers you could limit the new turrets to dreadnaught use only.

Capital covops bomber
Think stealth bomber writ large, covops cloak, citadel torps, good maneuverability, and capable of jumping to a covert cyno. (alternately, fix black ops battleships to function in this role) [as I think about it further the black ops battleship option sounds like a better idea]
Tyran Scorpi
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#3 - 2012-02-10 03:58:32 UTC  |  Edited by: Tyran Scorpi
Some additional thoughts:

If CCP decided to set the price tag for a mothership somewhere between the cost of a jump freighter and a supercarrier, it would put bridges into the hands of smaller alliances that couldn't afford a bridging ship (titan) currently.

I realize that the CSM has stated that it doesn't want to see more supercapitals introduced, however, in this case there isn't anything really new, its just that the existing capabilities of one ship would now be carried by 3 more focused platforms.

As suggested by Zimmy Zeta: A viable alternative would be to give the Titan subsystems which would allow it to perform some of its various roles at a time. This would allow it to be balanced on a subsystem by subsystem basis, however it would also preclude the possibility of a cheaper bridging ship being available. (unless CCP decided to add a separate bridging ship anyway)

An additional concept that has been brought up, is removing EWAR immunity for supers/titans. In return they should get something like 50 warp core strength and enough sensor strength to require 15-20 subcaps to effect them. In addition, I think that regular capitals should get some love in this regard, with perhaps 5 warp core strength and double their current sensor strength. They are capitals, they should require a team effort to effect them with something designed to effect subcaps. There is a massive downside to this however... removing their ewar immunity would make supers susceptible to tracking links which would put us back where we are now with the tracking problem.

Since a Titan is currently worth roughly 50 Bil, you could make a case for breaking the price down since we are also breaking down its abilities. If you make the mothership cost about 7 Bil, and the superdread 18 Bil, you could reduce the price on the titan mkII to around 25 Bil. I wouldn't reduce the time investment required, but it would affect the amount of capital components required, making construction jobs a bit easier on the logistics pilots.

New super weapon could be something along the lines of a focused beam weapon that ramps up the damage based on the time spent firing at a single target. (unable to fire at sub caps) The amount of havoc that the doomsday causes on the target ship should also cause some kind of warp scrambling effect or energy neutralization as well. Possibly going so far as specializing the effect to what racial weapon it is: Amarr would neut, Caldari would ECM, Gallente would warp scram, and minmatar would web.

Ineffective concepts already proposed in this thread:

#1 Make capitals into support for subcap fleets; would destroy the Subcaps < Capitals < Supercapitals balance.
^There are half a dozen other reasons that this idea wont work, but for brevity I am only listing one here.^ See post #51

#2 Remove titans from the game; would dump over 50 Trillion isk (or minerals) back into the market. See post #76
Imigo Montoya
BreadFleet
Triglavian Outlaws and Sobornost Troika
#4 - 2012-02-10 05:32:57 UTC
Interesting concept - effectively turning supercap proliferation against itself.

Not sure if I support it, but worth thinking about.
mxzf
Shovel Bros
#5 - 2012-02-10 05:49:37 UTC
I loled.

Tyran Scorpi wrote:
Because supers being everywhere is such a problem, I propose that we add in more supers, each more broken than the ones we already have.



Yeah, no, supers need a nerf, we don't need even more of the buggers running all over (especially not in the even-more-op state that you've proposed).

Good Lord, I hope this is a troll post. But I've seen too many serious posts like it to have any faith whatsoever in the posters on here.
Tyran Scorpi
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#6 - 2012-02-10 06:09:52 UTC  |  Edited by: Tyran Scorpi
mxzf wrote:

Yeah, no, supers need a nerf, we don't need even more of the buggers running all over (especially not in the even-more-op state that you've proposed).


The mothership wouldn't be in the "super" category, and as a non combat ship I will assume you aren't referring to it.

While the superdread would be a new super class ship, it could be balanced independently from the Titan, and given that it would be just a bigger tankier dreadnought I doubt there would be much issue balancing it. Its not like the Titan doesn't already do this.

The new titan super-weapon that ive proposed is more powerful, but I am sure it could be balanced on a dedicated platform. There needs to be a capital class heavy tackler somewhere in the capital lineup, why not the Doomsday? On top of that, by making the damage ramp up, you force the titan to sit there and shoot 1 target for a while rather than the drive-by-doomsdays you see now.

What I have proposed is in fact a Nerf to the titan by taking away over half of the capabilities of the ship as it exists today.

While I appreciate the time you have taken to make a response, please outline some solid reasons why you do or don't think the proposal will work.

Thank you.
Zimmy Zeta
Perkone
Caldari State
#7 - 2012-02-10 16:57:51 UTC
How about making titans modular and customizable like tech 3 cruisers? Titans should be rare and unique ships, like WW II superbattleships (Yamato, Bismarck, etc.) The builder of a titan should be able to emphazise certain aspects at the cost of others to make truely unique flagships that will go into history..
So several of your above mentioned roles could be added to the titan without actually creating new ship classes.

I'd like to apologize for the poor quality of the post above and sincerely hope you didn't waste your time reading it. Yes, I do feel bad about it.
Tyran Scorpi
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#8 - 2012-02-10 17:21:52 UTC  |  Edited by: Tyran Scorpi
Zimmy Zeta wrote:
How about making titans modular and customizable like tech 3 cruisers?


An interesting concept, but it would rule out the possibility of a cheaper bridging ship. It does sound like a viable alternative if CCP is willing to make Titans effectively a Tech 3 capital ship, and then balance their subsystems separately. I will add this to the additional thoughts section.
Vertisce Soritenshi
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#9 - 2012-02-10 19:36:56 UTC
I have said this a thousand times in a thousand other threads and still stand by it. Titans should stay in the game when the pilot logs off and is inaccessible to anybody but the pilot that logged off in it. They should not be able to be stored in stations or POS structures just like now but only left floating in space inside POS shields. You can eject from the Titan before logging off of course making it accessible to other players should they need to move it.

This WILL cause Titans to be killed a lot more and a lot harder to maintain and protect. Titan proliferation issue resolved.

Balancing is another issue.

Bounties for all! https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2279821#post2279821
Sephiroth CloneIIV
Brothers of Tyr
Goonswarm Federation
#10 - 2012-02-10 19:48:01 UTC
I don't see a problem with a ship with many roles. It is after all a titan, a captial of capitals, flagship of the armada.

Maybe tracking is too good for hitting subcaps, but still what is wrong with multiple roles with a 50 billion ship.
Tyran Scorpi
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#11 - 2012-02-11 03:39:44 UTC  |  Edited by: Tyran Scorpi
Vertisce Soritenshi wrote:

Titans should stay in the game when the pilot logs off, left floating in space inside POS shields.


What you are proposing is a core game mechanic change, which should be intuitive and straightforward. To fit that, the change needs to be applied to all ships or none. If you could convince me that this is a change you want to propose to fix a problem with all ships, then I might back up the idea. However, I can't get behind a core game mechanic change that would affect all ships, just to fix a single broken one.

Sephiroth CloneIIV wrote:

I don't see a problem with a ship with many roles. It is after all a titan, a capital of capitals, flagship of the armada.
What is wrong with multiple roles with a 50 billion ship?


I don't really have a problem with a Titan being able to perform in multiple roles, but it shouldn't be able to do so all at the same time. The real problem shows up when you are dealing with a group of 40 of these "flagships". Even once CCP introduces a capital class heavy tackler, a blob of Titans as the ship exists today will still be nearly untouchable.
Smiling Menace
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#12 - 2012-02-11 10:00:22 UTC
Easy way to balance Titans is to remove their turrets.

Dreads have turrets for Capital and POS bashing and the Titan will still have it's DD for the near instapopping of other capitals.

Will solve the Titan problem and make Dreads useful again.
Cuisinar
Eternal Silence Ltd.
#13 - 2012-02-11 14:05:31 UTC
err ... no!

you guys should really move on to another topic ..

titans and SC are fine atm.
Tinu Moorhsum
Random Events
#14 - 2012-02-11 16:05:16 UTC
Frankly, the problem and the solution are very easy.

The problem is not that the Titan needs nerfing. Some ongoing balancing might be in order but it's not completely invulnerable.

The same goes for supercaps

The problem is simply this. They are *difficult* to kill and relatively easy to make. Ergo, many more Titan and supercaps are being created than are being destroyed which, if nothing changes, will lead to ever increasing sizes of Supercapital blobs.

Basically, the number of titans that can be simultaneously put in combat should be limited so that EVE doesn't die a slow death to ever increasing proliferation of Titan blobs... This can be done in several ways but my favorite is to introduce a mechanic whereby the Titan must "log on" to a corp TCU in order to activate it's jump drive.

Advantages to this approach
(a) it allows for the creation of large numbers of titans (for logistics or defense) without the risk that null-sec will simply fill up with invulnerable titan blobs
(b) it creates a new reason for large alliances to *need* to take and hold space if they want to develop their combat capability (= more reason to make war).
(c) it creates a new way for alliances that don't have huge titan blobs to have an impact on the combat capability of corps/alliances that do (ie by SBU'ing systems or destroying TCU's). In other words, no more (nearly) automatic win because you can put more titans on the field. With this mechanic, the number of titans you can field on a given day will depend on more than the number of titans you have.....
(d) it can create new drama in the form of "stranded" titans that are locked down in one system (unable to jump out) because their corp lost sov

tl;dr:
Titans may need fine tuning but the problem is that many more are being made than destroyed. What needs balancing is how to ensure that the growth in *numbers* of titans that can be fielded in combat is limited. A proposal for a mechanic to enable this was made in this post.

T-
Nylith Empyreal
Sutar Rein
#15 - 2012-02-11 21:02:17 UTC
If I remember right, in a regards to Empire law and the stories in regards to Titans. Specifically that next to planets they can actually change tides etc.(As off as that sounds...) Wouldn't it mean a shitload of them on grid at the same time **** up orbits / gravitational pull? Would be kidn fo funny if 80 on grid or so cling together and crash/crunch. Twisted

Who's the more foolish the fool or the fool who replies to him?
Katalci
Kismesis
#16 - 2012-02-12 04:15:56 UTC  |  Edited by: Katalci
There is nothing wrong with titans as they are -- the problem is that the majority of people are too stupid to counter them.

Tinu Moorhsum wrote:
hey guys **** non-sovholders and small alliances

This is a worse idea than the OP
Tyran Scorpi
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#17 - 2012-02-12 20:23:48 UTC  |  Edited by: Tyran Scorpi
Smiling Menace wrote:

Easy way to balance Titans is to remove their turrets.

Dreads have turrets for Capital and POS bashing and the Titan will still have it's DD for the near instapopping of other capitals.

Will solve the Titan problem and make Dreads useful again.


Having 40 DD in a blob, is basically having 80 Million damage you can instantly apply to a single/multiple capital targets, which is enough damage to take out several supers all at once, or a whole fleet of enemy dreads. The capital weapon portion of the titan is actually the least Op in my opinion. (assuming the tracking issue is fixed)

Tinu Moorhsum wrote:

Titans may need fine tuning but the problem is that many more are being made than destroyed. What needs balancing is how to ensure that the growth in *numbers* of titans that can be fielded in combat is limited. A proposal for a mechanic to enable this was made in this post.


An interesting concept, perhaps you should put up a proposal of your own for people to respond to. However, SOV mechanics are getting changed up sometime in the near future, so I would suggest you think of some way to manage the idea without linking it to SOV control since we don't know how the new system will work.
Malcanis
Vanishing Point.
The Initiative.
#18 - 2012-02-13 10:52:52 UTC  |  Edited by: Malcanis
Counter proposal:

(1) Admit Titans were a huge mistake, even though they sounded :awesome: at the time
(2) Remove all Titan BPOs with reimbursement at NPC prices. Delete all BPCs with reimbursement at 10% of NPC BPO price. All construction jobs are cancelled, with construction materials removed to the station hangar of the owner of the job. Remove all Titan and Doomsday skillbooks, with reimbursement at NPC price.
(3) Transport all Titans and their pilot to whichever station has their medical clone
(4) Perfectly reprocess those Titans back to the capital parts, repackage the modules and ammo, and reimburse the rigs
(5) Remove the implants from the Titan pilot's clone and place them in the hanger
(6) Reimburse Titan-specific skillpoints; the Racial Titan and Doomsday Operation skills only.
(7) Delete all references to Player Titans from the database and the Evelopedia
(8) Get on with our lives.

"Just remember later that I warned against any change to jump ranges or fatigue. You earned whats coming."

Grath Telkin, 11.10.2016
Asuka Solo
I N E X T R E M I S
Tactical Narcotics Team
#19 - 2012-02-13 17:08:51 UTC  |  Edited by: Asuka Solo
I fully support expanding capitals and super capital hull ranges.

But I flat out reject this proposal.

Titans are not broken. They were designed to be giant dicks and they are working exactly as intended.

Blobbing Rifter pilots crying about blobbing supers and their awesomeness are just spacepoor and should be banned so that they do not pollute the world with their crappy ideas about balancing caps.

To solve our current problems of proliferation and unique usage of supers, just remove the ability for supers to damage or hit sub capital ships. Remove all the sub capital ship's abilities to shoot, damage and or tackle supers. Then boost the mid range capital ship hulls with new ships that are either:

1) Super effective against sub caps but useless against caps and supers
2) Super effective against capitals and supers but useless against sub caps

Remove super carrier and Titan vulnerability to HICs and dics completely and introduce T2 Capital EWAR designed to make capitals and supers cry with tears of rage on the forums.

Let the hobos with cheap small things go play with other hobos that have cheap small things. Let them out blob eachother to death and cry some more about broken war mechanics in a sandbox game where the wealth of players increase in a long enough time frame to the point where they could afford to blob supers.

Stop this super cap whining for the love of....

Eve is about Capital ships, WiS, Boobs, PI and Isk!
Tinu Moorhsum
Random Events
#20 - 2012-02-13 17:12:17 UTC
Katalci wrote:


Tinu Moorhsum wrote:
hey guys **** non-sovholders and small alliances



It should be made clear that Katalci was unable to make an argument of his own without deliberately misquoting the content of another.

I object to being maliciously misquoted and distance myself from any association with the assertions being made by Katalci.

T-
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