Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Ok!
It's name is inapropriate.
Change the name so. Dreanought -> Heavy Siege.

Or somethng else...

You dont know to much from World War History right??

Battleships :

WW1 BS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship
WW2 BS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:World_War_II_battleships

Battlecruisers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser

DREADNOUHTS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreadnought


dont take offense, thats not my intention.

I kind of see where you are going here.

But the fact is there can be no real-world correlation on these grounds; if there were, we would be attacking the entire battle system of EVE which is itself pretty ridiculous for a supposed space simulator.

Missiles in a culture with EVE-like technology would themselves be small robotic ships. They would have their own warp drives and EWAR, and would be fired from multiple AUs away as ships accelerated at or away from one another at simply ridiculous speeds (hundreds of thousands of kilometers per second.) in space there is no drag so if you accelerate you continue to accelerate at an exponential rate until you actually actively attempt to decelerate. Defensive systems would include point defense, something EVE simply does not have. Large ships like battleships would have no trouble destroying smaller ships. No warship in human history has ever been limited to a maximum of 8 weapons and 8 weapons only, it's ludicrous. And in space why on earth would any ship have a maximum lock and firig range of 249 km? 249 km is a ridiculously miniscule distance when considering the massive distances in a solar system. Light from our sun takes 8 minutes travelling at 299,399 kilometers per second to reach Earth.

EVE's environment is actually much more like an underwater environment; the "space" mechanics we have all come to know and understand in EVE correlate much more to the way submarines work than the way we know spacecraft actually work. This has been pointed out in other threads.

I am not urging a complete modification of these rules CCP have built into their game. What I am asking for, is that the general EVE populace be given a weapon that can realitsically compete with the established "powers that be" and their thousands of supercaps. The dreadnought should be that weapon.

In that case you need to massively cut down the training time required to get into a dreadnought, to allow new pilots the chance to get into the new fleet "battleship" in a reasonable amount of time. Something like the time required to get into a T2-fit BS or HAC, for example. Otherwise, new pilots finding that they need to train for 18 months and spend billions on skillbooks alone before they can be useful will just quit. After that, you need to find a new role for battleships, which your new Dreads will completely obsolete.

You see, ideas like yours come up repeatedly, and the fundamental problems with them are well known.

If this is the case, why would anyone fly a battlecruiser, if battleships make them obsolete? Or fly a frigate, if cruisers make them obsolete? A dread is not a battleship. Bses would still have a role in whatever combat fleet was being run. Dreads would become a weapon that had the ability to fight battleships and supercaps, and one that took time to train for and use, not for noobs. It is fitting that someone who has been playing the game for years have the ability to get into a ship that is better than a battleship IMO.

Otherwise the only option is to try and build and fly more and more supercaps. Now I have been playing for 5 years. The concept of training an alt toon as a holder for a ship that costs billions of isk but cannot be docked, makes me just want to quit. The concept of having my mains stuck in a ship like that all the time and unable to go and do stuff for fun? Also makes me throw up my hands. And even if I wanted to do all that work for a supercap (I don't) I would still have to align myself with a nullsec powerblock, most of whom I despise, just to get it built. All of that work just to jump on the bandwagon with a game mechanic that never should have been allowed to occur, the momblob "I win button."

THose that like the status quo are afraid of anything that might mess up their sweet little gig but those that honestly take a good look at what is happening in nullsec should reasonably agree that what we need is a relatively cheap and accessible weapon that can destroy supercaps.

To fly a battleship effectively in PvP alone takes noobs at least 18 months or more. True noobs have an almost unbelievable learning curve in this game. Even with expert training and advice a noob won't be able to get t2 guns on a battleship or be able to fit it properly until he has a whole host of training done, weapons upgrades, advanced weapon upgrades, all the engineering skills, skills for t2 components, you name it.

At the end of all that training (or maybe before they even start!) what are we telling them? "Go join Goons or the RMT Russians if you ever want to have any sort of satisfying endgame, your only other option is to stay in empire FOREVER."

Not acceptable.

You don't see small groups of startup alliances attacking supercap fleets with subcaps. Currently not only would they be completely unable to overwhelm a group of supercaps' spider tank, (without what? A 300 man alpha fleet? Would that even work?) but even standard fighters are quite effective, especially launched 15 at a time by a group of ten or more moms like we tend to see, against battleships.

If dreads in their current form could beat supercaps we would see them used attacking supercaps and we don't. People aren't using dreads for anything but attacking POSes or sov structures, if that, since supers do a better job of that as well, at least until it's time to sit there for two hours shooting the shields. o\ Don't get me started.

The reason people would field battleships is cost, training time, and greater versatility and mobility. The reason they would field dreads is to counter supercaps, if dreads were anything but a waste of time. Perhaps if the dreads could only partially hit the BSes, they would want BSes to counter BCs or HACs? I don't know. Obviously a balance would be required. The fact is that dreads are not tough enough on their own to stand up against a determined group of BS or supercap pilots. They would still need support and losing them would still hurt as they are ridiculously expensive. But the ability to hit a supercarrier hard and to defend themselves against a large BS group is what I am advocating, and I don't see how that makes BSes obsolete at all.

Currently we have a situation that results in stagnation and apathy.

Supercarriers will remain the weapon of choice with the current modifications, and will still be used against BSes. Dreads will remain useless. Small groups will simply quit EVE in frustration, unable to get past the catch-22 of "need sov for moms, need moms for sov." Battleships are still woefully inadequate to fight supercarriers as anyone can see. EVe's endgame remains out of reach for anyone not interested in toadying up to the existing powerblocs. EVe becomes stale, and SWTOR is coming out in December.

Maybe EVE should have a "WoW-like progression" of some sort. Or, a dreadnought capable of being referred to as a "dreadnought".

You do realize that this is the exact same thing that all the mom and titan pilots are saying on the forums after the announcement of the upcoming nerf right?

Capitals should never be effective counters to subcapitals. We saw this with supercarriers, and hopefully we've learned from that mistake. With the winter expansion anyone dumb enough to throw a momblob onto a subcap fleet without support is very likely to go home with a few supers less and that is how it should be.

Now in regards to the dread changes, I feel they were a step in the right direction. However, CCP didn't take it far enough to make dreads viable for anything other than pos bashing. Namely the issue is their reliance on their local tank. While most dreads can stand up to the fire from the tower they're attacking, their tank becomes woefully inadequate when faced with the damage thrown around in even the smallest capital fleet engagements. However, if three critical changes are made, dreads would quickly find a place back on the front lines.

First, either make dreads useful out of siege or allow dreads to receive remote reps while in siege. Dreads are essentially glorified battleships out of siege, but in the current environment going into siege is essentially a death sentence. Comparatively, triage carriers are similar deathtraps when confronted with a capital ship engagement, but why carriers still make it to the front lines is that they are still can fill an additional role outside of triage.

Second, adjust the siege bonuses so that the module provides additional resists at the expensive of some of the repair bonus. Essentially retaining the same effective rep amount [Amount Repaired/ (1- Average Resists)] while making the ship less likely to get alpha’d. Because if I’m spending the isk to buy a 1.5 billion ship I’d like to get more enjoyment out of it in a fleet engagement than the few seconds before it gets DD’d into oblivion (doomsday really shouldn’t be just a lolwheredyourshipgo button, but vov).

Third, there is absolutely no reason why a dread should be hitting a super for anything less than 100% damage if the target is within optimal range. CCP fix the tracking on dreads already jeez!

P.S. Weathers we miss you! =P

A HP buff is definatly a good ita, not as much as a super but maybe enough that it can at least tank a super for a bit. and yeah a super is a flying station, it should do 100% damage to them.

Miss you to Jon but I still log off a good bit before most executioners long on. TZs can be a pain.

with the exception that most of todays mobile artillery has about 30s deployment time and fires with a range so that defense is not a problem.