Player Features and Ideas Discussion

SC's and Titans are pretty strong. The old hommage was balanced through isk...but CCP apparently has moved away from this as a balance mechanic. Frankly I think all capital ships should lose some EHP including Carriers and Dreads, but they also need to be repurposed and I believe given a reason to bring to an engagement other than just escalation...

First we change the name of the SC back to Mothership though.

Moms-
- Capital Logistics
- EWAR Support
- Jump Clone capable
- Anti Command Link

Gain Triage Mode and Carriers Logistic Stats
Lose Access to FBs.
Can use Clone Vats
Can use Anti Links.

AntiLinks
- Occupies a command module slot, causes ship to lose its effect command link bonuses.

EWAR
- Create new Burst modules for other EWAR. Can be racially bonused.
(SD Burst, TD Burst, TP Burst)

Titans
- Station like service (personal hangar, corporation hangar, fitting service, ability to assemble ships.)
- Capacity to hold a large volume of packaged ships with modules
- Anti Capital DPS
- Doomsday/EMP Doomsday.

The "Station"

Invading fleets should be encouraged to have forward bases of operations as they advance deeper into enemy territory however this can not always be the case, and campaigns can be routed as supplies run low. As such the Titan would fill this mobile forward station role nicely. Offering the ability to hold packaged ships and assemble, and fit them. Unfortunately it can not hold prefit ships meaning it is useful only for rapid resupply, and not long term settlement a POS or Station would provide.

Offense
Titans will offer the highest available damage against Capital ships. Doomsday should remain intact...however what about those pesky subcaps...the new EMP Doomsday is for you...it will pulse the grid and drain any ship in the vicinity of its Capacitor (does not work on capital sized ships.), and disconnect drones removing many ships from the effective battlefield for several moments.

In both cases Moms and **** will carry the Fleet Role bonus of: Enhances capability of Entosis modules increasing their cycle times by 50% and eliminating the need for stront.

Dreads, Will stay mostly how they are now, with siege mode being repurposed to increase applied damage to subcapitals. Offering a large bonus to Tracking and Optimal range. This should allow Dreads to fight BS > BC with minimal assistance from webs and painters. This would make Blap dreads HIGHLY useful for engagements against Battleships for example, But not so great against engagements against other Capitals, or Fleets with Capital support.

To compensate for this of course offensively Dreads base D vs Capital ships is going to increase sharply during unsieged mode. Making them the ideal choice to bring for Anti Capital damage.

Carriers also changing somewhat, losing their logistics ability, and gaining Fighter Bombers. Their new ability will be a drone based "swap". In Fighter mode they specialize in Anti subcap damage territory (BS only up to 70% before other modules, webs, paint), In Bomber Mode, they gain enhanced damage against Capitals, while not as strong or as a dread or Titan in this role still effective. Loses access to ship Maintenance Bay, but retains ability to carry fully fitted ships.

In both cases will receive the Fleet Role Bonus: -25% to Entosis Modules cycle time.

All will retain their Jump Drives.
Tit Will retain its Bridge.



Essentially
- Moms, Fleet Support, Logistical Support (non reps logistics). EWAR, Anti Link
- ****, Primary Fleet Supply, Movement,, Anti Capital Damage, Anti subcap defenses.
- Carriers Anti BS Damage, Capital Damage, Fleet Supply
- Dreads Anti Capital Damage, BS Damage.

All benefit Entosis links while in fleet.

Vision.

Subcap fleet arrives, Carriers come in support to apply their entosis bonus as well as carry in more entosis fitted ships. Moms are brought in for logistical purposes for the fleet, namely the carriers., With them comes jump clones allowing players to jump to the area, more people means more ships, naturally you bring your titan in so your influx of players can fit the ship they need for the role they will perform. Dreads come in to provide anti capital or anti battleship DPS, which of course is dependent on the other sides ships fielded.

Additional
Carriers/Dreads lose 33% current EHP
Moms+**** lose 25% current EHP

"Fighting" supers the past few months has really sharpened my focus on their role in the game, especially going forward.

Overall, these blobs tend to fight on their own terms, on battlefields of their choosing. No timer is more important than a super. While they are very much tied to territory during their creation, once you actually have a blob of them, you don't actually need territory or structures anymore. This makes it extremely hard to trap or simply attack them, or even the interests of their owners. This gives content to super owners, while taking it away from everyone else.

This creates an additional barrier to acquisition, but not a barrier to use or retention. Over time, the barrier to acquisition keeps growing, while the barrier to retention keeps getting smaller. The "homeless" super is actually a really boring problem, and a big component of weaponized boredom.

More than any other factor, I think the syndrome of weaponized boredom has lead to the player user count declines. It's rather cretinous of people to partake in this behavior, and then thump their chests in pride over how "good" they are at EVE-Online. I think they are good at killboards-online, but I'm hard-pressed to say if translates to anything else. I might be in the minority of subscribers on that point, but I probably have more peership among potential subscribers.

Capitals need to be tied to structures at every level. If a capital loses its home port, it should be a capital in trouble.

Home ports should be more valuable than capitals. They should be critical for arming them as well as repairing hull damage to them. Refurbishing and rearming fighters and bombers needs to take place here. We have to think about ships a little bit beyond the fancy container. The fuel, ammo and charges that they use should come from structures, or at least be processed and stored in them.

Usually, large ships transition from high regen to high reserves, especially in capacitor. Since cargo and module charges are an extension of this, it would actually be a good idea to focus on XLAARs, or XL cap boosters for capital ships, stacking penalties for cap regen mods, and diminution or removal of remote capacitor transporter roles for carriers. This focus on managing reserves of war materiel creates indirect avenues of attack for harassing forces, and ties capital deployments to depots. Ask ol' Xerxes about the Hellespont if you see him. It's also a good way to address logi reliance and power projection more generally.

Home ports could have environmental effects that change how ships perform in a defensive or offensive role. In addition to cynoes, they might affect the ewar resistance of a ship. If they affected sensor strength, that would affect whether or not they can be scanned down. This could be extremely important for structures. Environments can also affect aspects of things like siege mode. This could be important in an era when people are have second thoughts about the value of bothering to keep and defend sov. It also increases the risk of using npc null as staging points.

Ports could give different combat environments with different travel rules. Putting them inside of environments with deadspace type rules (without acceleration gates) is tactically interesting as well as providing better user videos. It isn't unreasonable that we create environments within systems where large ships cannot go, yet which contain structures useful to more peripheral interests. Likewise, it isn't unreasonable that we have environments protected by walls which only very large ships can topple.

Entosis is mainly interesting because it makes one ship just as significant as many ships. If we want capitals to be important, they have to be useful either as solitary flagships or in blobs, with nothing in mechanics or timers favoring blobs. Entosis makes this possible if it is connected to capital ships.

In summation, harbors are essential to making an environment where it actually costs more to retain and operate a capital ship than it does to acquire it over equivalent period of time. In biological terms, we would look at capitals and subcapitals as being K-selected versus r-selected respectively, as such they need different governing ecologies. In the long run, that creates a more interesting and dynamic New Eden.

Let's define what a successful capital/super balance looks like:

1) Unique role on the -battlefield- for each capital shiptype, such as the role difference between a recon and an interdictor. Supers and dreads stomped all over each others roles in the Dominion meta and this should be avoided.

2) Unique role -outside of the battlefield- for each shiptype. These ships should have value when there isn't the rare capital escalation fight happening. This could include a place in the sov mechanics outside of fighting, or could focus on utility such as titan bridges.

3) Remain aspirational ships, requiring investment to aquire and risky to use, but very rewarding when successfully deployed. You should feel powerful and vulnerable at the same time while flying one.


********

Suggestion:

Supers
Battlefield role: Fleet multiplier via wormhole-like effects, both offensive and defensive.
Sovereignty role: Structure Electronic Interference super-weapon. Weapon is activated on structures, making entosis links from fleet members twice as effective, significantly shortening capture time for the fleet as long as weapon is still active on the structure.
Out of combat role: TBD, but logistical in nature. Perhaps some type of interfacing/synergy with structures, or an ability that makes structure deploy/setup faster for offensive/defensive purposes.

********


Capitals are what I enjoy most in the game. I've owned my Nyx since it was a mothership and also enjoy dreads/carriers. Hated hearing FCs tell me "get that thing logged off and join fleet in a smaller ship" because the smaller ships could complete the objectives with much less risk.

Overall, I want opportunities to use my ship that includes more than the handful of capital fights we might get per year.

He'd probably like to solo some caps / supers in his Tornado....

Apples and oranges comparison. It's widely recognized that supers and titans are a different breed than subcaps and thus their role and usage in game should be more than just a bigger badder ship.

Titan bridges, the (failed) clone vat bays, etc reinforce that idea that they bring utility as well as battlefield prowess.

The issue is to give supers/titans (and even dreads/carriers) reasons to be used. If that reason is "Once or twice a year you might be able to deploy your super and use a really cool wormhole effect in actual battle" players won't bother given the risk/investment and overall downsides to owning them like being a pain in the ass to move around and dedicating a toon to sit in them.

Cool wormhole effects are nice, but that wouldn't make supers see the battlefield anymore than titans see the battlefield with their super studly gang bonuses they have now. So it becomes about the entire package of the ship.

I thought it was a great idea too, when power projection was considered a major issue. For example, imagine you can only use jumpdrive when in range of 10 LY (or 50 LY, whatever) from your home port. Home ports could be changed, but it would take time and/or effort (kinda "port switching fatigue").
But CCP already solved projection problem with much easier (should I say "dumber"?) means.

Also, gameplay around home ports could solve "unsolvable" problem of proliferation.
By tying utilization (rather than creation) of supers to home ports, we can set either hard of soft limits to the number of supers simultaneously in use. An example of this could be the following mechanics: Supers to undergo regular maintenance, with ISK and/or material sink. Without maintenance, their EHP, PG, CPU and other figures of merit degrade. By adjusting upkeep costs, we can end up with only a handful of Titans to exist (c).
Thus, CCP actually can stop proliferation. The question is - do they want?

Anyway, this ideas only provides means to tone down the power of supers. But the biggest concern at the moment is about if they can have a role at all. With fozziesov, fielding capitals doesnt give you any advantages, because
1) no DPS is required to shoot a structure,
2) no reps are required to save a structure,
3) holding control over the grid is irrelevant, because command nodes will keep spawning elsewhere.

The fundamental problem I see here is that CCP decouples capitals from everything interesting (from sov, from POSes, from sub-caps PVP, from industry and even from ratting - remember the goal of Greyscale anomaly nerf?) in attempt to make it easier to balance them. But they have to link them to something, capitals must have some effect to the rest of EVE universe.

One more mode: Works for all capitals

MOVE mode

Can be activated and lasts until next DT or 24 hours, or some decent amount of time
Must be at Zero Fatigue
Cannot activate any offensive modules or drones
Can't receive reps


NO restrictions on jump fatigue and jumping in general (Like the old days) Can go from Tenal to Stain in 5 minutes
Can't go into move mode again until fatigue is back to zero


At next DT receives 3 days fatigue as the penalties while moving are severe and prevents hot dropping as no offensive modules or drones can be used

It does allow an alliance or corp to "Deploy" without causing people to contemplate suicide, but doesn't allow for instant power projection - due to cooldown on offensive modules and drones

This is not my idea, but I am posting cause no one else did and I thought it was an awesome idea

I'm willing to interpret a solitary cap as a flagship capital. Every ship needs a role, and if we separate that from damage, we can think about giving them effectiveness even when they do not have a blob of the same ship type around them.

Titan doomsday should have a fundamental effect rather than just an amount of damage. If a doomsday shuts down remote reps on a target for a time, or put a significant reduction on remote rep efficacy, then it doesn't matter how many DDs you put on the target. Even if you have multiples of them, you probably want to stagger their deployment. In that period of time, one is just as effective as several.

Motherships main thing seems to be not needing to have a triage mode and their ewar immunity making their logistics ability extremely powerful, at least in large numbers. Like other logi, there isn't much reason to field them in small numbers. The nice thing about warfare link bonuses is that they don't stack with other maxed out bonuses, so this is a step in a good direction for keeping them somewhat useful as a flagship. Making them different than carriers probably should involve removing their ability to use fighters. If they only had bombers, that would make battleships a problem for them, much as frigates are a problem for battleships.

How would I buff the mothership as a flagship? Give it DRADIS capability. If it can decloak anything within 50km or so radius, it provides a huge benefit to any fleet. Void bombers will have a hard time getting close unless the anti-support screen is dropped. Alone, capital ships can't do anything to repel bombers. There really is no reason to maintain their ewar and tackling immunities if they are intended to be flagships. DRADIS modules would have a clear aura around their hosts, and negate incoming repairs. It would actually be better if they did have a triage mode as carriers do.

A good ecology can be established by making dreads and carrier-based fighters quite deadly to battleships, but tweaking fighters to the point that they are ineffective against cruisers even without oversize propulsion fitted. Hictors, meanwhile, don't really need a propulsion penalty.

Personally I don't feel adding modes etc to these capitals is the solution. There's no need to over complicate it. Imo adding modes and all that will only complicate balancing instead of tackling the problem of versatility of roles carriers/sc's have today.

The overall problem with capitals today is their undefined and or overlapping roles. One of the best changes to capitals was giving dreads a very specific role and making them great at it. While dreads got balanced, Carriers, SC's, and Titans have yet to be given a specific role that would encourage balanced use. The worst of the 3 is by far carriers due to their incredible versatility and strength in almost any situation.

Carrier
Carries in their current form are a swiss army knife ship and can do it all out of triage. It can fill any role and do it very well, taking away the need to fly almost anything else. Almost all null sec pilots use them as a mobile home. Why not emphasize that very ability that the everyone already uses them for. At the same time their versatility should be reduced to a more specific role and make room for the other capitals to fill those roles.

• Increase ship maint bay by 50%
• Increase fleet hangar by 100%
• Reduce non triage rep amount by 50%
• Reduction in non triage rep range by 50%
• Reduce non triage drone dmg by 50%
• During Triage all regular bonuses and restrictions would apply. (Can't be remote repairerd, can't jump/move, etc)

Dread: Current role is perfect, they just need to buff the Revelation and Phoenix.

SuperCarrier: - Not sure yet what to propose for these, but I'm thinking about it.

Titan
Currently there is very little reason or many situations where they ever need to be on field. Unless it's a driveby, or massive capital brawl.

• Remove Command ship fleet bonuses to capitals
• Make Titan Fleet bonuses apply to capitals only and limit range to the grid

* A few more things need to be added or removed for Titans but it's a start. The goal is to have them present on the battlefield in a meaningful way*

How about when a dread is in siege it can use ewar against supers?