These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Player Features and Ideas Discussion

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

CCPlease: Supers get Drifter Shield
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Vorononv Circut
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#1 - 2015-03-26 00:34:16 UTC  |  Edited by: Vorononv Circut
CCPlease: Supers get drifter shield

I want to start off saying that I don't want to see supercapitals nerfed into the ground. If you spend the time needed to maintain a personal character-coffin, you deserve to fly it - and often.

The way things are going right now, it's looking like super pilots should consider unsubbing their accounts. This isn't good for you, me, or CCP. There's a substantial number of subscribers working towards the mutually assured destruction supercapital build-out, and it provides content for all.

The core problem with supers is their immunity to e-war. They have the most DPS in the game, and the largest hitpoint buffers. Combined with spider tanks, we end up with the N+1 problem. Removal of the e-war immunity would instantly make them vulnerable to sub-cap fleets and remove the N+1 problem for a sufficiently skilled small gang. However, complete removal of e-war immunity would turn these guys into flying coffins at the mercy of any small gang. A balance needs to be struck.

CCP - you provided the solution with the Drifter battleship superweapon / shield.

I'm proposing you create a new high-slot module, I'll call it a Projected Forcefield for lack of better terms, that mimics the Drifter's second shield layer. Take away the base immunity to electronic warfare and allow Supercarriers and Titans to fit this module.

Activating the module gives you the drifter shield and the ewar immunity. However, it would also have effects similar to a HIC disruptor, preventing friendly remote effects, and prevent local reps from being used. Like the drifters, it also prevents the ship's superweapon (doomsday, remote ECM burst) from being wielded.

Please try not to focus on specific numbers, although I'm providing justification for why I picked what I did. Instead, nit-pick the concept. Numbers are important, but they area easy to change. Core game play needs to be there first.
Vorononv Circut
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#2 - 2015-03-26 00:34:25 UTC  |  Edited by: Vorononv Circut
Forcefield Projection Generator I

Description / Lore:
While uncovering the secrets of the Drifters, capsuleers were quick to identify the physics behind their forcefield and apply it to their own ships. Unfortunately, the enormous energy output of the Drifter battleships is unmatched by all but the largest capsuleer ships.

Creates a projected forcefield when activated. De-activates manually or upon depletion of projected forcefield hitpoints.

The projected forcefield has several effects upon the partent ship whilst active. It prevents any form of electronic warfare from interfering with the ships systems. It disables all local and remote shield boosters and armor repair systems. It also prevents friendly remote effects from being rendered to the parent ship.

Prevents the operation of Doomsday Devices and Remote ECM Bursts.

Can only be fit to Titans and Supercarriers


    Module specs:
  • Reactivation Delay: 60 Seconds
  • Activation cost: 25,000 GJ
  • Forcefield HP: 1,500,000 HP
  • Armor Repair Multiplier: 0
  • Shield Boost Multiplier: 0
  • Capacitor Recharge Multiplier: 0.5


Numbers and why I picked them:
The reactivation delay is there to provide the vulnerability window. The forcefield should always come back at 100%, and this prevents immediate spamming and using it as a "tank" module.

If you want to nit-pick numbers, pick on the activation cost. It's purposefully a little harder for SuperCarriers to use than Titans. A ship should be able to activate it immediately after jumping, but its cap cost should be significant such that it can be prevented by (very) heavy nueting pressure.

The hitpoints need to be significant, but not insurmountable. Without resistances, 1.5M HP is very roughly what you would expect a single dread to grind through in a siege cycle. For those of you familiar with sov warfare, it's 15% of an SBU.

The repair multipliers are there to "lock in" damage and prevent active repping from restoring HP while invulnerable to attack.

The capacitor recharge multiplier is there to offset the lack of a local tank while the forcefield is active. A ship can keep the forcefield up indefinitely, and has no need for any active tank mods during this time. This multiplier attempts to balance against a ship coming out of the forcefield with full cap, ready to burst rep itself and still have cap left over to immediately re-activate the forcefield.

    Take a wrecking ball fleet made of Aeons as an example.
  1. A group of Aeons jumps in, and immediately activates their forcefield.

      2. Note: Assuming 70% cap to jump and NO cap mods, after landing, ships will have
    • Aeon: 28.1k
    • Hel: 24.4k
    • Nyx: 25.3k
    • Rev: 30.9k
    • Wyv: 23.9k
      • With a 25k activation cost, all but the Wyvern and Hel can activate the module "immediately", and those would only have a very slight delay. Titans would have no problem at all.

  2. A hostile fleet begins taking down the forcefield on one of the supers.

  3. Once broken, the Aeon begins taking shield and armor damage, is now vulnerable to e-war, and is free to give and receive remote reps and use its ECM burst.

    4. This is where the fight really begins, and several new outcomes are possible.

  4. For sake of argument, friendly fleet members do not break their forcefields for remote rep, and during the 60-second deactivation timer, the hostile fleet takes the Aeon through shields and into armor.

  5. The Aeon re-activates the forcefield. The armor damage is "locked-in" and the Aeon is unable to repair itself as long as the force field is active.

  6. Go to step 2...


Now, at any point in time, friendly forces could break their forcefields to apply remote reps, but they suddenly become vulnerable themselves.

Does this suddenly mean a group of 100 subcaps can take on a 10-man wrecking ball fleet. No - and it should remain that way! Now the fight is real though... the supers get to make tough decisions, sub-capital "fair fight" doctrines are possible without killing server hamsters. Electronic warfare is a real threat, and the wrecking ball fleet could and should keep subcaps on the field to counter now-viable hostile threats.

TLDR: CCP, please give supers a Drifter shield!
Anhenka
The New Federation
Sigma Grindset
#3 - 2015-03-26 01:08:06 UTC  |  Edited by: Anhenka
I see absolutely no reason why I would ever put up this forcefield, unless I was in a supercarrier with literally no other supercarriers or carriers on the field within rep range.

Edit: Aaah, I see no ewar immunity unless you have the shield up and are therefore unable to receive reps.

Tell me, why exactly do you believe supers need an addition kick in the nuts after Jump Fatigue was added, jump ranges were severely limited, the ability to assign fighters was removed, and the impending removal from being useful in sov warfare?

Was this proposal actually supposed to support people using them in any way shape or form?

Vorononv Circut wrote:

I want to start off saying that I don't want to see supercapitals nerfed into the ground. If you spend the time needed to maintain a personal character-coffin, you deserve to fly it - and often.


Saying that, and then following it with proposed harsh nerfs that remove the only remaining highly positive aspect of supercarriers is an odd way to go about it.
Vorononv Circut
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#4 - 2015-03-26 01:33:57 UTC
Anhenka wrote:

Tell me, why exactly do you believe supers need an addition kick in the nuts after Jump Fatigue, limited jump ranges, removed ability to assign fighters, and the impending removal from being useful in sov warfare?


I don't really see this as a nerf. The jump changes effectively neutered them, won't argue there. It was a heavy-handed approach to preventing rapid response fleets. It's a bit off-topic, but I still don't see how new sov renders them useless. Spread a group of 20 of them around a constellation. Why wouldn't you want your most ridiculous alpha-tank staying power fleet there capturing a timer? If a real threat shows up to any small super groups, they can easily jump anywhere in the constellation and defend one another.

Back on topic, not a nerf:
Everything else in Eve has two ways to crack it. You can out-tank it, or use some form of e-war to make it less effective. The super blob does not have that, which means the best fleet comp to fight it is the exact same comp + 1.

This creates the equivalent of a nuclear arms race and stagnates the game. If you have 500 titans online, but your opponents can collectively bring 501, you shouldn't risk it. It's overwhelming majority or mutually-assured nothing. The only FC skill is rage pings and logistic chain.

The proposed change gives them some real content. If you bring your 100 super-caps and your opponent drops 150, you can still win with a superior strategy and fleet comp. The ships see action, both sides feel like they can win.
Anhenka
The New Federation
Sigma Grindset
#5 - 2015-03-26 01:56:39 UTC  |  Edited by: Anhenka
Vorononv Circut wrote:
Anhenka wrote:

Tell me, why exactly do you believe supers need an addition kick in the nuts after Jump Fatigue, limited jump ranges, removed ability to assign fighters, and the impending removal from being useful in sov warfare?


I don't really see this as a nerf. The jump changes effectively neutered them, won't argue there. It was a heavy-handed approach to preventing rapid response fleets. It's a bit off-topic, but I still don't see how new sov renders them useless. Spread a group of 20 of them around a constellation. Why wouldn't you want your most ridiculous alpha-tank staying power fleet there capturing a timer? If a real threat shows up to any small super groups, they can easily jump anywhere in the constellation and defend one another.

Back on topic, not a nerf:
Everything else in Eve has two ways to crack it. You can out-tank it, or use some form of e-war to make it less effective. The super blob does not have that, which means the best fleet comp to fight it is the exact same comp + 1.

This creates the equivalent of a nuclear arms race and stagnates the game. If you have 500 titans online, but your opponents can collectively bring 501, you shouldn't risk it. It's overwhelming majority or mutually-assured nothing. The only FC skill is rage pings and logistic chain.

The proposed change gives them some real content. If you bring your 100 super-caps and your opponent drops 150, you can still win with a superior strategy and fleet comp. The ships see action, both sides feel like they can win.


Your proposal changes absolutely nothing in regard to N+1 gameplay. Not one teeny tiny shred of anything. 100 supercarriers will be wrecked by 150 supercarriers, pre or post change.

The only thing this adds is effectively removing ewar immunity in most situations. The shield would ONLY be used when a lone super is tackled by a group that does not include a hictor or Dictor, and needs to emergency jump out. Triage carriers die in moments under heavy fire, because anything that removes their ability to receive reps means that masses enemy fire can burn through their individual buffer in seconds.

A shield that adds briefly 5-10% to their EHP briefly but disables them from receiveing remote reps when they most need to be receiving them?

Might as well be a suicide button.

Your changes do not fix N+1 gameplay. They do not let a force magically have a chance against a larger one. It does nothing but strip ewar immunity away supercaps in most situations, leaving them highly vulnerable to ewar.

You might claim this is not a "heavy nerf", but it's basically a veiled "TurboNerf Supers" whine.

Supercarriers lost their ability to use non fighter drones. Then the ability for their fighter bombers to hit anything smaller than a carrier was stripped away. Then they had jump range nerfed, they had Jump fatigue added, the scan resolution on their fighters was greatly reduced to between 10 and 25% of previous depending on type, they lost the ability to assign fighters, and they soon will be losing their usefulness as structure grinders.

Literally all they have left is their ewar immunity, the mediocre ECM burst, and the ability to have all their DPS be stripped off the field by a wave of bombers or two.

But let's nerf them even further right? Go ahead and strip away the one meaningful benefit of a super over a normal carrier. They are obviously super deserving of more nerfs despite the fact they are about to become useless for basically anything except hotdropping people doing stupid things with capitals within arms reach of their staging system.
Vorononv Circut
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#6 - 2015-03-26 02:27:08 UTC
Anhenka wrote:

A shield that adds briefly 5-10% to their EHP briefly but disables them from receiveing remote reps when they most need to be receiving them?

Might as well be a suicide button.


You're absolutely right, the 5-10% EHP boost disables remote reps, but it's not a suicide button... once it's gone, they have their full tank (and ability to receive remote reps) left. Even better, it pauses the fight for them every 60 seconds. Any ship that's primary isn't going to keep their secondary shield up for any length of time.

Anhenka wrote:

Your changes to not fix N+1 gameplay. They do not let a force magically have a chance against a larger one. It does nothing but strip ewar immunity away supercaps in most situations, leaving them highly vulnerable to ewar.


I think we're not seeing eye-to-eye, and it's my fault for not explaining well enough. Right now, if team A can amass more (relevant / in range) supers than coalition B, there's absolutely no reason for coalition B to log them in and take them to a fight. Aside from other super-caps, there's really nothing that can counter them.

You're absolutely right, 100 super-carriers vs 150 super-carriers, the bigger fleet wins. Move to a bigger 250+ man fight, with 100 super-carriers and 150 sub-caps vs 150 supers and 100 subs.

With current mechanics, the bigger super fleet wins and the other team may as well go home (or not show up, as the case more often is). With the change I'm proposing, this is a fight that both teams might think they could take. Is that a super nerf? I suppose it could be argued as such, they move from all or nothing go big or stay offline to a fleet comp that's worth bringing out. I would argue that it gives them more content and makes it not a nerf.
Anhenka
The New Federation
Sigma Grindset
#7 - 2015-03-26 02:51:25 UTC  |  Edited by: Anhenka
Vorononv Circut wrote:

You're absolutely right, 100 super-carriers vs 150 super-carriers, the bigger fleet wins. Move to a bigger 250+ man fight, with 100 super-carriers and 150 sub-caps vs 150 supers and 100 subs.

With current mechanics, the bigger super fleet wins and the other team may as well go home (or not show up, as the case more often is). With the change I'm proposing, this is a fight that both teams might think they could take. Is that a super nerf? I suppose it could be argued as such, they move from all or nothing go big or stay offline to a fleet comp that's worth bringing out. I would argue that it gives them more content and makes it not a nerf.


In a bigger 250+ man fight, with 100 super-carriers and 150 sub-caps vs 150 supers and 100 subs, a 1.5 million EHP temporary shield is burnt away in 1-2 seconds. It becomes basically useless.

The other 99.99% of the time you are not the primary and bursting the shield every 60 seconds, you have no ewar immunity, and neither does anyone else in your fleet, since they can't have the field up in order to use their remote reps or remote ECM's.

Since having the shield up prevents Remote ECM bursts, remote repping, remote capacitor transferring (basically everything you bring a supercarrier along for), there is NO reason for someone in a fleet fight to have it up unless they are being shot. And what's the point of being ewar immune if you can't actually do anything while immune?

That means that nobody uses it unless they are the primary, and since you don't have EWAR immunity unless you have it active, nobody has ewar immunity. It's really that simple.

And without the ewar immunity, a supercapital gets deep dicked by a single Keres or Celestis. Did you know that with info links a good Celestis pilot can damp someone down to 17% with a single overheated damp? Once Celestis could lock two supercarriers down to 5% of their typical lock range or scan resolution.

Losing EWAR immunity means uselessness for supercarriers. Even more useless than current. Which is ******* hard.
joecuster
Iron Inquisition
Brotherhood of Spacers
#8 - 2015-03-26 03:55:49 UTC
obvious troll post 0/10
Tiddle Jr
MOONFIRE SERVICE PROVIDER
#9 - 2015-03-26 04:37:53 UTC
N2S should wardec BNI so wr could see who is right.

"The message is that there are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know" - CCP
Anhenka
The New Federation
Sigma Grindset
#10 - 2015-03-26 04:55:15 UTC
Tiddle Jr wrote:
N2S should wardec BNI so wr could see who is right.

Brave would totally win. Not gonna lie.

They might win by running our ships out of ammo and trapping us in three bajillion km of solid bubbles until we rage self destructed everything, but they would still win.
Leto Aramaus
Frog Team Four
Ribbit.
#11 - 2015-03-26 05:08:05 UTC  |  Edited by: Leto Aramaus
Quote:
I still don't see how new sov renders them useless. Spread a group of 20 of them around a constellation. Why wouldn't you want your most ridiculous alpha-tank staying power fleet there capturing a timer? If a real threat shows up to any small super groups, they can easily jump anywhere in the constellation and defend one another.


Exactly this.

All I hear these days is crying that caps, especially supers, are being "so totally omgwtfbbqnerfed, totally useless in fozziesov, wah wah wahhh"

Jump Range was a power projection nerf, not a combat nerf.

Fighter assign nerf is an ability nerf, again arguably not a combat nerf... omg you have to target things yourself and actually set fighters on them yourself? You can't sit at a POS anymore and give your Alt fighters in a Ceptor?? Poor you.

And the new Sov system doesn't change your ships at ALL... it just removes grinding away millions of structure HP, a task you all love to cry about how boring it is.

You claim to want a "use", or a "purpose"... but it sounds to me like you only want risk-averse and never-want-to-die roles and purposes.

How about you use your ships like everyone else uses subcaps, for combat against each other?

Oh you have no fights because the evil jump fatigue made it so every other entity with supers in jump range is blue?? Start resetting blues and killing each other.

All that said... I support major buffs to Supers. More HP, more damage, more bonuses/specials/passive abilities. Titans should do the damage of Dreads. Slightly less than Dreads, but not much less. Titans should also have drone bays, even fighters, unbonused and fewer then carriers of course, but still have them. Titan supremacy.

The UI update we deserve