EVE General Discussion

I debated whether or not I should write this, as it gives the lobbyists on each side of the titan debate another thread to sperg in, but on the other hand I haven’t really seen a thread that tries an impassionate look at the issue from a game design perspective.
What we have got instead is threads filled with people that wants titans removed/nerfed into oblivion, and people that think titans are fine because they are expensive/hard to build/hard to train into. What destroys the Titan debate is that super capitals – and titans in particular – translate to in-game political power. Thus, many commentators speak not from a game design perspective but really from an in-game political perspective, using the forums as an alternate arena for PVP.

Now – in nullsec today there exist a strategic discrepancy between Goonswarm and allies on the one side, and XDeath/Raiden/PL/NC. on the other. Goonswarm and allies typically have a blob mentality to warfare – which dates back to their roots 6 years ago – while most of the alliances on the other side is comprised of a smaller number of highly skilled characters (what the goons with obvious contempt describes as “elite PVP”). This concept is not new; it dates back to at least the heyday of Mercenary Coalition which was employed by Band of Brothers to spearhead their offensives. This strategic discrepancy obviously reflects in fleet doctrines employed by either side. The goons prefer massive fleets of tech 1 battleships or battle cruisers, and see super caps mainly as heavy hitters in the sovereignty game – structure bashing being their main role, and titans as “flagships”. The “elite PVP”ers see titans as just another combat ship in its arsenal, preferably to be used en-masse to turn the tide of battles. The elite PVP side enjoys a numerical superiority in Titans, while Goons and allies enjoy a numerical superiority in players. This is the strategic situation.

It will come as no surprise that forum commentators that see the situation from the Goon perspective prefer removal or nerfing of titans into oblivion. That will free the blob to once again advance and overwhelm their enemies with sheer numbers. Equally, it will come as no surprise that forum commentators from the other side think the Goons are just crybabies that don’t want to make a real effort, and that the titan isn’t overpowered.

The thing is, the titan as a ship isn’t really overpowered. It does more DPS than a dreadnought, as it should – while sharing the same weapon size and -properties. It has a stiffer buffertank too, which it should. In addition it has some supercap only/titan only capabilities, but those aren’t really debated, especially after the Doomsday nerf that prevents it from DDing subcapitals.

The problem with titans is that they scale badly with numbers. Ship for ship, Titans is where they ought to be. But used en-masse, they become an unstoppable rapetrain. Why does this happen? Well, it is a combination of 1) EWAR invulnerability and 2) very stiff tanks. Since they are immune to EWAR, killing them is the only way to neutralize them. Tank and gankwise, the titan is heavily tank-oriented, but it still dish out enough DPS to **** whatever is thrown their way before any of them really gets into trouble.

So why can’t we just take away a big portion of their tank? This could definitely work against the titan blob. The problem with that is that it would be even more effective against the lone titan, which would become very vulnerable to even a smallish sub capital gang. And since they are 80 billion a ship, people tend to not take too many risks. Nerfing their tank significantly would therefore encourage blobbing even more, and discourage smaller entities from acquiring them at all, leaving the game – titan wise – at status quo, eternally divided between the haves and the have-nots.

Well then, what about taking away their EWAR immunity? Again, this could definitely work against the titan blob. But again – a lone titan would become as useful as a paperweight when encountering a 3 month old pilot flying a Crucifier frigate with 2 bonused tracking disruptors.

And then there is the question of tactics and fleet doctrine. Should numerical superiority be the only way to win null sec sovereignty conflict? Or should there exist a quality based alternative to quantity like it has been for most of EVE’s history?

Lastly we have the training issue. 5 years of training will put a player above 100 million skill points, which is enough to fly any sub capital PVP ship in EVE with near perfect skills. At that point the choice is between stop training or train into capitals. EVE is now 10 years old. The game design issue here is obviously the choice between a skill point “cap” which essentially means that after a certain time you just have to stop training, or evolving the game with its aging player base, giving it new things to train for as the years go by. The thing is, EVE depends on its veterans unlike any other game in existence. CCP provides the games PVE content. But industry, markets and above all PVP is player driven. This is especially true for this games main signature feature – null sec sovereignty wars involving tens of thousands of players fighting epic battles over influence and resources. Who drives this content? Yep, the veterans. Veterans that would drop the game in an instant if deprived of the opportunity to evolve and improve their characters. So, unless CCP really wants old-time players to leave once they reach a theoretical skill cap, they have no option but to evolve the game with its players. Introducing new stuff as the game matures.

Edit: CCP Diagoras confirmed the number of active characters with more than 100 million SP to be 10.766 Characters as of Feb 20, 2012.

Why reserve the 1st and second posts? Why not just post the fecking content to the first post and then post after that reserving the second?

No one will reply until they have read your drivel anyway giving you time to post and reserve the second post.

I like your thinking.. nothing else needs to be said.

Reserved is all this topic needs. to be honest.

while i do argree more cap ships... i think a simple fix for titan tracking could be in the damage applied formula...

sure the chance to hit formula might make it so you should do damage... but the damage applied formula could make it so its negligible at best...

example make x two different variable based on if the value is 0 or 1... 0 being a sub cap and 1 being a cap ship

if 0 is true then x = 0.75 to 1.0

if 1 is true then x = 0.01 to 1.0

what this will do is make it a once in a blue moon shot that even that double webbed/scrammed/ TP bs will never be hit by a titan...

tdlr:
nerf the damage applied formula not the chance to hit...

Cost is never a barrier. It was originally thought there would be very few titans when they came out.

Let me first say: Titans add to the game. Epic tales of epic battles need epic ships and epic losses. Titans provides this property to nullsec warfare. But history has shown that an increased price tag would have no effect. Unless ofc the price is so ludicrous that they are not worth it, and thus relegating them to the scrapheap. Which would be bad for EVEs epicness.

What strikes me though, is that the main reason you dont see massive titan battles is that the price for loosing an entire fleet of them is so large that it could topple alliances and destroy empires. So maybe - if titans were ships you could afford to loose even in large numbers - things would even itself out :) I am however not sure if I am really serious about that.

Enough with the nerfbat whack-a-mole game.

What Titans need is a new counter-measure.

The empires should be working to create a sub-cap or cap titan buster. Perhaps a smart bomb with a huge radius that does tremendous damage to anything as large as a titan. Or ECM linking to blast and override the Titan's ECM invulnerability. Bothan spies uncover a secret weakness... something on that order.

EDIT: AKA I agree with the OP, I think. At least mostly.

Yes.

The problem with this however, is that it will give the defender a massive advantage over the attacker, probably to a level were it would be futile to try an attack in the first place. So, the Titan blob shifts from a offensive weapon to a defensive weapon, making it impossible to eject alliances from space they allready hold.

This would be bad. After all, we want to promote conflict, not restrain it.

This is something I have never understood about eve.. ccp designed the game to be a sandbox (close to real life) which basically made it self policing in game.

The thing I see is eve has a problem with real life actions. In real life something would have been done long ago about how to defend against Titan's or how to defend against cloaky afk'ers etc.

So why does ccp limit what is done in game by allowing exploits and then the spoils of exploits after they're fixed??

Nerf drakes