EVE General Discussion

I play in games for a long time - and i see something in eve that i already saw few times in my "player life".
At some point there is something uncontrolled, unstoppable - brining a loot of fun to a wining side ... but at the end brining death to a game or at least leaving it with minimal player base.
It usually begins with "I win button".
For some time this fun - but at some point even "wining" side gets boored, and game begins to leak players faster and faster every day.
As far as know - eve had already few times this kind of "issue" but each time it was "managed" in some way.

With upcoming skill changes more, and more players will move to the capital ships - this is fun , but it can be also stab in a back for this game.

As already big fleet engagements are mostly :
- follow your anchor
- lock broadcasted target
- press f1 for primary
- press f2 for secondary
...We are approaching something more "fun" - slowcats - already growing , and growing on numbers , but still in "somewhat manageable numbers".

Simple calculations - i didn't check them : http://evenews24.com/2012/08/08/ask-dr-fit-what-is-a-slowcat/
"
- Bouncers max range: 120km – 2300 volley
- Gardes max range 60km – 2400 volley
- Wardens max 140km – 1800 volley
(...)
Having a 50 carrier fleet (...) achieve would mean a 120K volley, every ~4 seconds."
And of course the main thing - all of them are controlled by one fast tracking ship.

Now , after those few months (from 08/08/2012) the typical slowcat fleet grew to 100-150 carriers , and more pilots are on the way.

So lets talk about 150 slowcats ... shield ones ( after skill changes - they will be quite easy to get):
- Immense Tank - med slot based
- Immense DPS - low slot based
- Immense Remote Repair - we are talking about carriers after all

Will eve become.
- Jump to cyno
- Drop your sentries
- Assign to me
- Now rep fleet

400-500k alpha every 4 seconds.

Yes this will be fun - but for how long.
How long it will take for people to get bored?
And slowcats are only small part of the issue:
- BLOB!!! - fun as hell - 30% TDI
- Titan bridge - bigger bloob - 10% TDI
- Slowcats - additional 100 players on grid ... and over 1000 new sentries ....

Will CCP find solution for this - or do you see one?

Need a new naming system.

There are also counters to slowcats.

- You can try to damp/jam/kill the target caller
- You can use smartbombs and bombs to destroy sentries (Destroying enough T2 sentries will at least make these fleets costly and will reduce DPS while pilots redeploy and reassign.)
- You can bring slowcats
- ...
- You can bring Titans and supers

Slowcats actually require more work for the average F1 fleet member, so I don't see a problem with that aspect.

Screw that adapting crap, CCP is supposed to fix it. Right OP?

*roll*

"Are SlowCats worth it?" What do you mean? Are you referring to their performance vs price or is this a stealth nerf thread?

The question of how long something is to skill for or costs is a moot point when it comes to balance, which is kind of where I think you're going with this? Ultimately more players will be able to skill for and afford the ships required with the progression of time so it cannot really be used as a reliable limiting factor.

There are two things that make slow cats a very effective doctrine and I have summarised from your post.

1) The ships have high HP, saving them from alpha attacks, and are naturally able to spider-tank verses dps very well.

2) The ability to assign drones means that the FC only has to attack a target, there is no broadcasting, no reaction times, no human errors etc. In addition, when the drones attack their alpha is high and their dispersion can mean that tracking issues are often mitigated.

The result of which means it is a tricky tactic to counter if executed correctly.

Generally the tactic vs drones is to destroy the drones because most ships can only field a flight or two of the ones they are using to kill you. On a carrier this is true but only with Fighters. The disproportional volume of fighters vs sentries is so great that a carrier can carry 4000 sentry drones.

A wave of bombers, for example, would normally be enough to wipe out field of drones and would be an effective tactic were it not for the above fact.

I'm not entirely sure where I stand on this one but I think that perhaps if something were to be done then perhaps if fighters were made to be 2x the volume of a heavy/sentry drone and the carrier drone bay reduced accordingly [20 Fighters | 40 sentries] then it would mean that aoe-blapping the sentries was potentially a viable tactic. But, like I say, don't know how I feel about this.

Slowcats ARE worth it. That's the point. Hard to kill, unstoppable when it comes to fire power vs hp and repping power.
Any change will be connected to nerf of the slowcat doctrine.
"The disproportional volume of fighters vs sentries is so great that a carrier can carry 4000 sentry drones. "
That is one of the reasons why big number of slowcats is so unstoppable. If you kill the drones - they have plenty more.

As for the bombing - have you tried?
When carriers are not moving - they can instantly scope drones - and redeploy them few seconds after bombs explode.

If you can already fly a carrier, you'll be able to train the other race carriers much, much quicker.

Only going to happen (nerf) if it comes to high sec

IKR. I was thinking that the common cockerel would make an excellent collective naming convention.

Fast-cockerels
Slow-cockerels
Fat-cockerels.

Right?

Yes, of course. And T1 are the obvious choice given their expendability.

I was merely citing the number for completeness and to show that you can effectively have "unlimited" replacements.




True. Perhaps killing the drones is not intended to be a counter option at this level..