Test Server Feedback

Would get drowned out in the goon sperge thread so I'll post here:

There is a reason why I’ve said for the past 2 years that adjusting tracking will not fix the problem. Just like fixing lock time also does not address the problem at all.

You developers have for years completely ignored your tracking mechanics and how utterly garbage they are. You have also ignored people informing you of why you can’t fix tracking under the current design. So let me drop this knowledge on you for why your first fix to titans has changed so little in what they do that it will have virtually 0 impact on the game after a few months of adaptation:

The current problem is that titans in large numbers can blap the ever living **** out of a fleet with basically no risk simply because they are huge HP buffers that can be repaired by motherships which are also huge HP buffers. Now I could ***** and moan about Capital Remote repairers and their range and their effectiveness, particularly on huge hp and resist stars like supers, but that would go off track of my point, so I’ll avoid the temptation.

So you changed tracking… big whoop. Rather than track around 220 m/s for every 10km of range, an Erebus/Rag now tracks about 110 m/s for every 10km of range. In addition, they have a gun sig size of about double that of a BS. This creates some magical world where a ship further away can be tracked better, but is some how mysteriously the same size as though range dilation has no affect at all on how well you can see that now tiny little dot. In layman’s terms…. This means that if Eve mechanics worked in the real universe, Every star in the whole freaking universe would look approximately the same size as our sun, as would all the planets in size relation to our moon rather than the tiny specs in the sky that they are.
So here’s what happens after your patch to just circumvent the whole problem you just created…. Lock time you say… Tracking speed you say…

Hello MR Proteus, Hello either 5 AEONS with 4 Domi painters or 50 Archons with 4 T2 Painters (and just for luls cause the ship is cheap, why not throw in 2 range extenders for the painters as well). Now that wonderful tengu has an 800-1200 sig and at 60km can be tracked plus has a sig size near the same as the guns do. That Maelstrom has a 1700 + sig… ie bigger than the guns do, and can be tracked at about 12km range…. And oh yeah, you can easily get those 300-400,000 ehp small sig lokis to web down anything closer than those ranges to prevent them from avoiding the tracking problems… not like tech 3’s are rare these days.

Oh but lock time you say… well if the carrier paints before the Titans ever lock…. Oh yeah, Lock a tengu in 30-35 seconds, lock a Maelstrom in 23-30 seconds… that’s so brutal. Oh yeah, and that’s just with ******* Navy tracking computers and sensor boosters, I didn’t even toss in the Meta 13-14 gear.

Gee… in 20 minutes of planning and a slight modification to what my fleet roles are, I’ve just circumvented your entire titan patch plans b/c you thought this was enough to warrant not changing the coding of your formulas so that they make sense.

Good thing there’s nobody in this game who couldn’t ya know, divide their titan pilots up on mumble into 10-15 sub channels, have a few SC’s assigned to each for painting and just perform the exact same way where it’s “paint, blap, blap, boom” rather than the old, “blap, blap, boom”…. That extra step… it will be the death of me. Guess us PL folk, or Raiden folk, or NC. Folk will have a horrible time adapting to this fix bros.

Thanks for the effort… maybe next time you’ll listen to sense, put in the extra time needed, and avoid yet another **** fix.

Now I'm assuming whatever the sig penalty plan was that you had was based at least in part on what I propsed about 6 months ago as I've not seen any other signiture plans offered ever. If you would just ******* do it, It would balance so many combat problems currently seen in this game that it's actually worth the effort. So please stop taking the easy way and do something ******* useful for once in you entire gaming careers.

^^^^^^

The 'titan nerf' sounds more like an april fools joke than anything viable.

:'(

This man gets it. Two of alliances with some of the largest titan fleets in the game studied the proposal, found the loophole CCP had missed, and insist CCP haven't gone far enough and give them some suggestions of where to look. This is how it should be.

I just thought of an solution ..
something in the first post got me thinking. tracking changes over range. why does signature not?
Signature is the component of the tracking formula that defines "how well" you hit something .. its obvious that this cant be static for all ranges.

I propose the following base mechanic:
1. Changing the Tracking-Formula
Signature-resolution of the guns are dependend on the victims distance. I would suggest a linear degression. Lets say at 50k the signature is doubled (just an example. things have to be worked out!)

This would make hits on lange Ranges with close-range guns unlikely.
But a problem arises when it comes to large distances. Here we need a complete change of the Weapon-Attributes

2. Rethink every LR-Weapon according to its Role.
As said that sig-resolution is just a "base accuracy" we really need to increase this for Longrange-weapons (Rails, Beams, Artys). I would suggest that Medium-size weapons get about Frig-Size Sig-Resolution (dont flame! wait for the explanation). Due to the nature of these weapons (low tracking, high accuracy) they cant hit frigs at close Range (Transversal) and have a medium-chance (about 50%) to hit them at range. They would hit "their size" mostly with full damage - until they come too close and gain traversal.

This would give Longrange-Weapons a slight buff (as i think they need them) without changing the damage-output (on paper).

Titans would only be capable of Tracking really big targets at range (50k) and still can shoot the dumb 0-transversal guy next to them.


I mean ... these changes need to be tested throughoutly and its a BIG change (though its just changing 1 formula and some numbers).

I would aid CCP - if they want help - with outworked formulas, actual numbers and so on.

What do you think?

This is why if tracking only is nerf this will not change whatsoever about Titans being able to kill frigs/cruisers/battlecruisers and battleships better than battleship guns.
They might as well come to the field with half EHP, they will still eliminate one by one their targets from frig to BS whatever is on the field and this is the real problem.

I don't care loosing ships on the field but loose ships against invulnerable Titans/super, to who my almost perfect gunnery skills do 100dmg ho wait I did a 300 wrecking shot then....bam, one shot, Titan wins, this game design really sucks.

Sorry, but I'm gonna Goon-sperg in your thread.

Fully agree with your assessment of the situation. The core of the problem lies deep in the current signature / targeting / tracking mechanics, and there is no solution that allows Titans to keep using turrets without rethinking these in detail.

Although on the other hand, your suggested 'fix' is so far from being balanced I'm surprised the forums haven't tipped over. We're way past the point where Supercap fleets can't be effectively neuted without some form of new AoE neut weapon (or a real boost to Void Bombs). Even if halved, a typical supercap fleet is going to contain over 5 million cap in addition to the additional energy generated from insured 'waterboy' triage carriers (that are effectively disposable). Even in an optimistic case, a fleet of 50 neuting BS will barely manage to cap out a single supercap before being wiped out by the rest if this is the extent of your proposed nerf.

As the devs have indicated that any short-term nerf to titans would involve a minimum of work - so a role repurpose is off the table - here are my suggestions (take some or all of them to preference):

1) Keep the current proposed nerfs in place, but allow Electronic Attack Ships (and possibly Recon cruisers) to bypass supercap ewar immunity. The current changes make it all but impossible for supercaps to fend off these tiny ships without support, provides a role for those frigates outside of alliance tournaments, and brings tracking disruptors and sensor damps to centre stage for ewar. Titans will find it hard to keep up with their little painting/webbing teams with the sensor boosters negated, or weapon range reduced to nearly nothing.

2) If the Titan is intended to be a real anti-capital platform, make it one:
Keep the current nerfs, but amend them like so:
a) All capital class ships (and large structures intended to be shot by capitals) have their sig radius increased heavily. This allows titans to lock them in a reasonable amount of time.
b) Reduce the number of XL turret/launcher slots on all titans to 4.
c) Reduce Doomsday base damage to 1 million, reduce fuel use by 75%, reduce cap use by 75%.
d) Change Doomsday Operation to reduce DD cooldown by 5% per level (to 7.5 mins at level V).
e) Allow the racial Titan skill to online 1 additional Doomsday module per level.

Titans are now able to do a similar amount of DPS against capital-class targets as before, and have more flexbility to deal with DD-tanked vessels. They still have XL weapons, but that capabilty is reduced making the issues with tracking less of an issue until Titans can recieve a new role.

3) More ewar options to counter the lazy balancing that is supercap ewar immunity:
Increase the range of void and lockbreaker bombs, reduce the damage they do to themselves so more can be fired at once.
Allow lockbreaker bombs to affect supercaps.
Allow Remote ECM Bursts to fit a focus script that jams a supercap for XX seconds.
Allow regular ECM Bursts affect supercaps.

The problem isn't REALLY Titans offensive capabilities.

The problem is that THEY DON'T DIE ENOUGH.

While I somewhat agree about nerfing a bit (Like a scan res nerf + number of target nerf mostly for armor Titans, as shield Titans can't really enhance their scan res) their offensive capabilities.

It needs a more though out nerf on "What makes supercapital fleets so hard to kill".

See, there is this thing about capitals. Every capitals in this game have a "Siege/triage/Industrial" mode in order to be effective. I think that having a siege-like mode is the counter to exponential capabilities of capital fleets. And it actually works with Dreads or Carriers. Massive ships indeed, but their local tank is actually breakable.

A Siege-like mode for Titans (Specifically Titans. Motherships are currently balanced. Hard to kill, indeed. But very killable) that reduces scan res by half (It's not really a massive nerf, but it's still a bit better than currently), that reduces the maximum active targets to 5, reduces Tracking by 25%, and prevent any sort of remote reps to be applied to the ship for...5 or 10 minutes. It's a supercapital, so I would say 10 minutes.

Add the "Titans can't refit from something that isn't a POS" and it's all fixed. Titan pilots will have to choose between either a (still) highly effective blapTitan or a massive EHP monster.

I've read this story about the PL Titan kill in Amamake. And I've read those "If he could have refit, he would have been saved".

And seriously, no more of that. A Titan (A ship that is supposed to have some sort of support/defense fleet), caught ALONE, fitted in a ******** way, by 40 dreads. And you're telling me that if the pilot wasn't being a ****** back then, he could have been SAVED ?

No. Just no. When you undock your subcapital ship, you choose between Railguns or Blasters. You choose between a NanoTempest or an Armor RRPest. You choose between a MWD-fit Logistic, or an AB-fit Logistic. You choose between a CloackyTengu or a 100MN Tengu.

Titans just shouldn't be able to perfectly match all situations while still being the best of the best for every tasks (Such as killing stuff or tanking stuff). If you're caught with your pants down, you just die, you just can't say "Hey, well, that was a nice trap but nope, My ship just gained 50M EHP because I clicked a few buttons. I know, you've caught me in a difficult position, but having stuff in my cargohold and having single buddy in a carrier just prevented you guys from doing ANYTHING to us".

No refitting in space for Titans and Siege-mode for Titans.

You can now suicide-kill Supercapitals, although it's still quite difficult, and you'll have to throw a massive quantity of subcapitals in order to break through before running out of fleetmates.

You can now lay a trap for wrongly fit Titans.

You can still hotdrop ratting carriers with your Supercarrier as it doesn't need a siege-mode in order to do any kind of damage.

BlapTitans aren't dead, a good 20+ of those will still facefsck every subcapital fleet within range (Oh hai, you can now use long range subcapitals against Titans as they won't be able to refit to long-range guns so easily !). But you can drop stuff on those and expect at least one kill.

All in all, I think that Titans offensive capabilities are fine (Well, ok, maybe a little bit over the top), if they have exploitable weaknesses and are less versatile.