These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Player Features and Ideas Discussion

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

Ganthrithor's Fleet Warfare Rehabilitation Station (Alternate Titan nerf etc inside!)
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Ganthrithor
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#1 - 2012-03-14 22:34:16 UTC  |  Edited by: Ganthrithor
First, here's what my ideal patch notes would look like:

(Mathematics note: I'm bad at them. My intent is to double the out-of siege damage of dreads. On dreads with dual DPS bonuses I ASSUME the way to do this is to double both values, but I might be dead wrong! Who knows! Regardless, read it as doubling.)

Quote:


Ships

Dreadnoughts

  • Moros: Capital Hybrid Turret Damage and RoF bonuses increased to 10% per level from 5%.
  • Phoenix: Kinetic missile damage and Capital Launcher rate of fire bonuses increased to 10% per level from 5%.
  • Revelation:Capital Energy Turret rate of fire bonus increased to 10% per level from 5%, Capital Energy Turret capacitor consumption bonus increased to 20% per level from 10%.
  • Naglfar: Highslot count reduced from 5 to 3. Capital Projectile damage and Capital Projectile Rate of Fire bonuses increased to 7.5% per level from 5%.
  • Dreadnoughts may no longer receive Remote Sensor Booster or Tracking Link effects regardless of siege state.
  • All Dreadnoughts have received a 25m3 drone bay and 25mbit drone bandwidth.


Titans

  • Delegations from the four empires met with DED and CONCORD officials and a collective decision was made to ban doomsday devices based on their potential to wreak catastrophic havoc on society. Players need no longer concern themselves with mineshaft gaps, and CONCORD have agreed to buy up all existing examples.


Interdictors

  • Interdictors are now constructed from the same high-tech alloys and composites as interceptors, and have received a 30% reduction in signature radius across the board and a new hull bonus: 10% reduction in MicroWarpdrive signature radius penalty per level.


Modules

  • The Warp Disruption Field Generator now confers a 25% REDUCTION in signature radius when running unscripted, rather than an increase.
  • Siege Module I and Siege Module II have had their damage modifiers reduced to 350 and 420, respectively, from 700 and 840. Tracking penalties have been removed from Siege Modules.
  • Capital Turret tracking has been reduced by 15% across the board.


Gameplay

  • Ships can no longer make use of nearby fitting services while being targeted.



Now, Rationalizations!



Titans:

As most people agree, titan tracking is currently too good. The 15% tracking reduction should serve to limit non-tracking fit Titans to engaging battleships or larger. With tracking fits installed, Titans will still track cruisers at long range, battlecruisers at medium ranges, and battleships always, HOWEVER without the ability to combat-refit, Titans will be forced to choose between being able to tank large amounts of damage OR being able to track subcaps before entering a fight, and will be unable to refit on the fly. This fits within EVE's philosophy of "balancing rewards with the risks players are willing to take"-- if you fit your Titan to blap subcaps and something goes wrong, you're going to die. Quickly.

Doomsday removal is just the right thing to do. One-button headshotting was a dumb idea when the targets were grids full of hard-earned subcaps, and they're still dumb today when the targets are players' hard-earned capships. They're just a bad idea. If being a fantastic DPS boat, giving the best fleet bonuses, and being able to jump bridge people around isn't worth the cost of a Titan in your eyes then don't buy one.



Dreads:

Dreads are underused in EVE Online: A Bad Game, and it's easy to see why. Even ignoring the part where DDs currently render them useless for any activities outside un-opposed structure-bashing or suicide-ganking, Dreads are poor investments. Consider the Dread when compared to the carrier:

Carriers

  • Useful for personal logstics and PVE as well as PVP
  • Useful in their designated roles (assigning fighters and remote-assistance) without having to immobilize themselves, but...
  • Need to immobilize themselves to realize their full potential (as the best space-priests in the game)


Dreads

  • Useless for personal anything. Confers zero benefits on their owners outside of the ability to participate in fleet ops (that again, mostly consist of un-opposed structure shooting)
  • Literally vastly inferior to a battleship (and some battlecruisers) in their designated roles when out of siege
  • Need to immobilize themselves to function, at all, period


Doubling dreads' out of siege damage makes them more flexible in PvP (much like carriers, they could be used effectively [IE-- they would still be better than subcap-equivalents] while staying mobile, OR they could be immobilized to unleash their full potential-- the choice would be up to the FC), as well as making them more useful to individuals by giving them a ship that's more powerful than a battleship for doing personal tasks (like PVE, POCO-bashing in friendly space with a few friends, whatever). They could also theoretically be used as a battleship counter while still being vulnerable to gangs of smaller ships (AHACs, welpcanes, etc) or larger ships (supercaps).

To those who say that doubling out-of-siege damage will cater to the risk-averse, I have this to say: you'll still need to siege to bash structures in a reasonable amount of time or to do maximum damage in a capfight, and under current mechanics (the 5 minute siege cycle) its actually fairly safe to use dreads for one-cycle operations anyway, even for the risk-averse, due to the fact that five minutes is usually not enough time for hostiles to respond to a structure mail with a fleet.

Making Dreads better all-around just seems like a decent idea, and anything that gives me more ratting-caps to blow up can't be all bad :)


To Be Continued...
Ganthrithor
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#2 - 2012-03-14 22:40:11 UTC  |  Edited by: Ganthrithor
Dictors and Hictors:

Much of the current problem with supercaps seems to be their ability to escape tackles, with or without subcap support. Personally, I can think of at least 2-3 occasions within the last few weeks where Titans would have died if it weren't so damned easy for them to just blap Dics and HICs and warp off. Beyond the supercap issue, light dictors just seem to be underperformers in the small-gang and solo PVP scenarios they should be so well suited to. Much of this is due to their uncanny ability to get insta-shredded by just about anything that isn't another frigate or destroyer. Simply put, they're too easy to blap. For everyone.

A 30% signature radius reduction + MWD sig bonus for dictors would bring them down to a size roughly double that of inties. This would allow them to perform better in solo / small gang situations, as well as making them more difficult for larger ships to blap during fleet fights. Any way you slice it, a sig reduction would allow dictors to do their jobs better. Inties, the "other" T2, tackling-specialized ships, get one. Why should dictors be left flying around with the sig radius of a cruiser and the EHP of a frigate?

The HIC change I proposed is a bit more modest, but the goal is basically the same: tackle is the weak link in modern fleet fights, so make it more survivable. Bubbling hell-nerfs the speed and actually INFLATES the sig radius of HICs under current mechanics, making them easier for battleships, dreads, and titans to nuke. Instead of making them bigger, make them smaller and harder to hit! Spaceship death of all kinds will doubtless ensue! Scripted behavior (which doesn't gimp speed) would remain unchanged.


SMA Mechanics Change

This is the clincher. The main reason Titans are currently beyond OP is this: they can all load up a tracking/damagemod heavy fit and jump into a fight vs subcaps. All supers turn on fitting services. When a Titan is primaried by the hostile fleet, they simply open their CHAs and swap to a tanking fit (or, even better, a dual-layer tanking fit), allowing them to magically switch from 10m EHP subcap blapping machines to 50m+ EHP bricks (and then back again, if the damage stops, I guess).

THIS IS ******** AND SHOULD NOT BE A THING.

The solution is simple-- much like ships are unable to cloak or be boarded while targeted, change SMA mechanics so that ships are unable to use SMA services while targeted by someone (or thing! Damn you, gate rats!). This eliminates the whole problem of combat refitting while avoiding other, clumsier solutions (such as, "no re-fitting while aggressed," which could leave you sitting in a POS waiting to refit for 15 minutes because your friend target painted you for a laugh, for example).



Conclusion

These changes are designed to kill three birds with one stone:

[list]
  • Fix "titan tracking"
  • Make dreads less horrible, more useful
  • Cause more death, destruction, and little (and big!) blue flashes all over New Eden by making it harder to run from the consequences of your bad decisions!

    • Something of this scale would surely qualify as a Big Deal(TM) over at CCP, and I wouldn't expect them to make changes of this magnitude magically appear overnight, but something along these lines is our best bet for a mid-long term solution that would make fighting supercaps less mind-bogglingly awful whilst avoiding us having to read Grath Telkin / Andski posts all day long.

    Thoughts?
    mxzf
    Shovel Bros
    #3 - 2012-03-14 22:56:45 UTC
    What's wrong with the changes they're already planning on doing? Why not see how those turn out before suggesting drastic changes?
    Ganthrithor
    School of Applied Knowledge
    Caldari State
    #4 - 2012-03-14 23:14:21 UTC
    mxzf wrote:
    What's wrong with the changes they're already planning on doing? Why not see how those turn out before suggesting drastic changes?


    Because the current change (while I'm not gonna get all :mad: about it because its a temporary band-aid fix) takes a useful class of ship and turns it into a much less useful one, while doing nothing to address any of the other concerns in my posts? (Dread-awfulness, underpowered tacklers, broken-ass SMA mechanics, etc)
    Ganthrithor
    School of Applied Knowledge
    Caldari State
    #5 - 2012-03-16 19:42:49 UTC
    Titan Tears Thread: 100+ (IS IT DEAD YET??) pages of "CCP, don't do this!"

    Posts in alternate solution thread: 1

    Amount of OP read by sole respondent: The title
    Velicitia
    XS Tech
    #6 - 2012-03-16 19:48:53 UTC
    mxzf wrote:
    What's wrong with the changes they're already planning on doing? Why not see how those turn out before suggesting drastic changes?


    +1

    One of the bitter points of a good bittervet is the realisation that all those SP don't really do much, and that the newbie is having much more fun with what little he has. - Tippia
    Shobon Welp
    GoonFleet
    Band of Brothers
    #7 - 2012-03-16 19:55:52 UTC
    Your rationalizations don't seem to match your suggestions.
    Ganthrithor
    School of Applied Knowledge
    Caldari State
    #8 - 2012-03-16 21:55:42 UTC
    Shobon Welp wrote:
    Your rationalizations don't seem to match your suggestions.


    Care to comment in a constructive manner?