Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Note: This topic is only regarding carriers, not supercarriers.

A long-standing problem with carriers is that, contrary to the general flavor of EvE, they can be good at doing many things at once and as such are often perceived as being overpowered. While addressing certain mechanics such as logistics and drone assignment may help alleviate this perception, at the core of the problem is the ship itself.

All carriers have, in no particular order:

1. Impressive remote repping abilities.
2. Massive drone bays and access to fighters.
3. The ability to transport large quantities of goods, including assembled ships.

And they possess all of these things at all times without having to choose between them.

Carriers need to specialize. What I propose is simple: strip some of the ability off of current carriers and add them to a new set of carriers. Particularly:

1. Existing carriers would become "Support Carriers", geared towards durability and fleet support. Their drone bays would be reduced significantly (125 bandwidth, ~1000M^3 drone bays), they would lose access to fighters and Drone Control Units, and they would lose their "1 additional drone per level" bonus. They would retain their current primary logistics bonuses and the ability to use Triage modules.
2. The secondary bonuses on the Thanatos and Nidhoggur would change from fighter damage and remote rep amount to capital armor repper and capital shield booster amount, respectively. The Nid would also exchange one low slot for a mid slot (5/6/5) to better support it's new local shield tanking bonus.
3. Replace the Drone Interfacing V requirement with something of similar skill points but more appropriate to a logistics platform.

These two changes would retain existing carriers as logistics/support platforms while greatly reducing their combat ability. The Thanatos and Nidhoggur would become more durable with tanking bonuses in line with other racial ships. This would open up some interesting gameplay options for considering which carriers you want to run triage and which you want to spider-tank.

4. Introduce a new set of carriers, Attack Carriers, that have overall stats, slot layouts, and skill requirements similar to current carriers (including the 5/6/5 layout on the Nid), drone bandwidth and drone bays in line with current carriers, retain their ability to fit warfare link modules, but would have no logistics bonuses, significantly smaller ship/fleet hangars, and be unable to use triage modules.
5. Bonuses on these new carriers would be oriented towards fighter combat. Damage, tracking, range, speed, etc. as appropriate. No bonuses to non-fighter drones aside from number controlled and sheer volume. No bonuses to local tanking/durability.
6. As these are capital ships geared towards combat, they would gain the ability to use siege modules. Siege modules would not be changed to grant any bonuses to drone/fighter DPS. As such, there would be no gain in damage output, only local tank.

These new carriers would fulfill the combat role of existing carriers without sharing any of their logistics prowess.

In the end, there would be three "flavors" of capital combat ships:

1. Dreadnoughts, who's single role is to apply massive damage to large targets.
2. Attack Carriers, who's single role is to provide combat support to fleets.
3. Support Carriers, who's dual roles are fleet logistics and fleet resupply.


Thoughts?

I like it. Fleshed out enough to be usable, not so fleshed out that it's pie-in-the-sky. Gives CCP room to work. Couple things:

"Attack Carrier" sounds a little off, to me. I'd go with "Assault Carriers". It fits a bit better with the idea of combat support, to me.

Siege modules - I'm not sure if you can use drones while in Siege. I know Triage shuts off drones, but does Siege? Any old-school dread pilots know if you were long ago able to use drones while in Siege?

There are no ships in game that can use a siege mod and also have a drone bay.
Yes back in the day Drones could be used in siege.
Drones cannot be used while in triage


Maybe the OP would be happy if only super carriers could use Fighters? and just leave everything else as it is now.

Also Let Titans fit Siege mods ok thanks.

I get the feeling you have never flow a carrier I know you have never flown a nid at the very least if you think adding a mid and dropping a low will let it shield tank and support a shield fleet with shield transfers


-1 for not understanding what you are talking about

The travel changes in no way changed the fact that carriers are capable of performing multiple missions exceedingly well without having to choose.

I've brought up the notion of nerfing capital remote reps and then buffing triage modules to compensate in order to force carriers to commit to be useful logistics platforms, but that never got anywhere either. Aside from dealing with the over-utility of carriers, it would bring Triage modules in line with Siege modules.


Siege modules do not specifically exclude drone use. Back in the Day, Moroses actually relied heavily on sentry drones to contribute to their damage output while in Siege. That massive drone bonus was one of the main reasons I actually chose the Moros to train for.

Triaged carriers are committed to logistics, and as such shouldn't be able to use drones.


I used to fly shield doctrines in a Thanatos. If I can fly shield doctrines in a Thanny, you can sure as hell fly it them a Niddy, and having one more mid for a cap mod that doesn't kill your local tank or another resist mod will only make it easier.

Limiting carriers to fighters only, much in the same way that super carriers are limited to fighters and fighter bombers, would be a good start to fixing carriers.

Fighters are now very very good at ROFL stomping subcaps. Perhaps too good. But at least they have to travel to their target and a carrier can't carry several hundred spare fighters.

Only thing they need is to have their drone bay listed fighters only. They should not be able to attack anything smaller than a battleship with any reliability. That is what a subcap fleet is for. No more Sentries, no heavies, mediums or lights. Fighters period. Boom Carrier is fixed. It can apply some damage to BS, and maybe some BC, but anything smaller and it can't effectively apply damage.

Time for the swiss army knife to go.

But I do want to say the line "without having to choose". They most certainly do have to choose. Im not sure where you heard that lie but Carriers are not omnipotent they can do singular roles well, but they are not diverse everythings. A repping fit carrier is not going to possess huge amounts of damage application or tank, a tank fit isn't going to project much damage application nor repping application, damage application sacrifices tanking and repping application. You can not run a carrier good at everything and immune to everything. Damage fit and rep fit carriers are very susceptible to Alpha fleets, including very cheap Nados (comparatively) and rep fit/tank fit are susceptible to high DPS fleets such as Megas, or even Talos!

Carriers are very weak in their roles when acting as a swiss army knife. Exception of course being, having access to drones which dominate the subclass ships.

As someone who has killed more titans than Nidhoggurs, let's fix the current state of Excellent->Ok ->Bad ->Terribad mix of racial carriers before we start ******* around with splitting them apart.