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Encourage? Nothing encouraging about it.

These changes do basically three things:
- kitchen sink roamings that accidentally stumble upon a ratting supercap have a better chance of killing it
- force subcapital deployment alongside supers by making subcaps as immune to supers as possible without using the word immune
- they fiddle with a few fleet-fight performance knobs to see what happens, reminiscent of the equipment tests run in chernobyl in 1986

Now if we look at it, what is actually the problem with supers? They are designed to be cap killers. And they are undeniably good at it. So good in fact, that fielding caps against them currently is ritual suicide. But that is not the fault of supers - that would be like blaming a vagabond for being fast.
So, now that we have ruled out engaging them with regular caps, lets look at subcaps. Titans take a special place here since their doomsday can take out key infrastructure ships like fleet commands in a very reliable way. The other thing at least for turret titans is basic tracking mechanics which guarantees them to at least have some effect if the fc sets them up correctly.

Going on to supercarriers, what about them? Their dps? No. Since the last round of fighterbomber changes a fighterbomber hits an abaddon for 8 to 15 damage per volley. That's not even enough to make your twitchy finger broadcast for reps - it adds up if you look at 250 scs, yes (75k), but you just got hit by a 30 million HP damage volley, there are bound to be scratches (0.25% effective damage!). Their best bet is somewhere in the fighters / sentries / heavies ballpark in which they deal a little above twice as much dps as fleet battleship inside 60km control range. So the subcapital damage output of 250 supercarriers is 550 battleships worth, hardly something the cluster has never seen before.

If you've ever engaged 550 battleships, you know there is simply no tanking that inside their engagement zone. There is not. Accept it. Embrace it. But (assuming even numbers which already means you failed in setting up an unfair fight) you get a steady decline of incoming dps as ships explode. With the EHP of supercaps, their dps decline over time is always shallower than any subcap forces'. The EHP in turn they received because they used to fold in 20 seconds to anything looking at them the wrong way and because they are actually needed in cap fights which are a lot more static than subcap fights once they are on.

All of this combined results in the "supers are the only counter to supers" mantra. So, what is CCP hoping to achieve with these changes? The -20% HP change makes the dps reduction steeper, without having them implode against 20 battleships like they used to. With the drone changes I assume they hope that supercarrier pilots will go for 10/10 or 15/15 splits between bombers and regular fighters. This reduces the damage output of them against both capital and subcapital targets and removing the titan's headshot aimbot. So, less dps output and steeper over time dps reduction.
Will this give subcapital fleets a better chance? Yes. Will the odds-improval be enough to stop the whining or fix eve? No. Will turning these screws even more fix eve? No, it will just break supers again. With their destructible dps without the endless-waves feature that saved the Dominix through the ages they will already be borderline.

The real core problem is not that supers are designed as cap killers. Giving subcaps better odds is all fine, but subcaps are not the designed weightclass in which to engage in. The problem is that no other capital is actually designed to fight capitals - short story short, fix broken dreads.
Siege weapons were fine in the days of RMR and served their purpose while sov was linked to POS. Newsflash, that's history. POS are engaged to annoy your enemy, force fights and flush a few isks into your wallet. They are an opportunity target now, not a tightly regulated core game mechanic.

So, dreads redux:
- remove the 2 target limit that was imposed on dreads because of station hugging moros pilots. supers take care of that problem all over new eden reliably and fast
- remove the remote rep restriction
- soften the tracking penalty in siege considerably
- switch the local rep boost in siege to +120/140/160/180/200% hull, armor and shield hp depending on dread level
- no warping / docking while in siege, but movement does not have to be restricted
- siege timer at 5 minutes is probably still a good idea

What do we achieve with this? We get an actual supportable, fully insured and comparatively easy to get into damage backbone for regular capital fleets that is not just breakfast any more. You will not come out of engaging a 250 supercapital fleet with a 175/75 dread/carrier fleet (again, failure to set up an unfair fight) scott free and you imho never should - but a considerable amount of supers will die, your losses will be easier to replace (isk, build time and build capcity wise) and you actually have - depending on actual fleet compositions and tactics - maybe even a shot at holding the field / forcing the retreat (wiping 250 supers with even numbers should for the time being be unrealistic I think). But this could actually generate nice combined forces fights.

As Titan proliferation increases, the doomsday will probably have to be looked at again. Then again, engaging 250 titans feels like it should hurt by sound alone, yet how much remains the question.

PS: by the way, what is it with all that 'no remote rep' nonsense. Are you all imprisoned in motsu or a 2005 timebubble? active tank stockholm syndrome?

PPS: and fix capital shield reload mechanics by making it like armor
Not even a sandbox needs passive (super)capital shield tanks

Not been a problem because they were overshadowed by the bigger super-carrier problem.

The "Capships Online" slogan appeared well before super-cap buff in 2009, you should remember carrier blobs and fighter swarms of 2007-2008.

Fighters should be changed so that when fit for DPS, carriers can apply about 50-60% of their theoretical fighter DPS output to a stationary battleship (a class lower) and 100% to a moving (super)cap.

Neither changing their signature resolution to 400 nor leaving them as is is a balanced solution for all fighters.

Perhaps any changes can be postponed, but carriers should be watched very carefully in the following 3-4 months, lest they become the new battleships (again).

Honestly, as a Moros pilot, the current changes are fine. I am fine with losing some cap stability to gain the DPS a blaster dread should have (This is a 33% dps increase if I understand correctly). Tracking increases or vastly changing the sig of a SC and Titan would be welcome.

TIME TO GET REAL WITH CAPITAL BALANCING !

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1) make dreads able to shoot slow moving (>100m/s) battleship sized targets with their capital turrets, even if they don’t make full damage they should be able to cause some trouble to a slow moving BS. --> Improve dread primary guns tracking.

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yeh but the max 50km yourll be able to hit currently, still leaves a blaster moros worthless in all but 1 maybe 2 situations. it cant even hit a large pos properly at 28km

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The one degree of freedom I currently see is that with the ECM burst fix, sieged dreads will keep their locks against Remote ECM spam. And supers are not that good at dictating range...

So one could arguably engage a super fleet with dreads with a steadier dps output than now. You will hemorraghe dreads like a stuck pig while doing it, but if you are willing to go for a suicide dread op, the option will be there. The question will be if someone is willing to try it.

Edit:
clarification: with the currently proposed devblog dreads, not the redux dreads from page 95ish