Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Had a thought earlier today and was suggested by other reddit users to post it here.

With the recent jump fatigue changes to try and localise fights. This caused capitals to become more localised in their usefulness. In the new fozziesov gameplay, capitals are becoming redundant. They are becoming a bit of a nuisance and need some love.

My proposed idea would be this, give dreadnoughts and titans 2 high slots racks. By doing this, they can equip their regular capital guns and other layouts in the regular slots AND point some smaller regular weapons on a second row. With t3 destroyers, we can switch between different modes and such, why not improve capitals to be able to switch between which weapon rack to engage with. Giving groups a larger tactical flexibility before these great ships become obsolete in an ever changing meta of play.

By limiting dreadnoughts to 5 sub-cap weapon slots and titans to 8, they don't get these huge dps bonuses and such, (eg: 20 rapid heavies on a leviathan) And the second rack can only have turrets/launchers. No other smartbombs/drone links/remote reps and such.

If a mode switching feature wouldn't work, an additional module then like the siege module that when activated disables use of one weapon rack and enables the second one would also be a way of blunting the overall impact without making it completely game changing.

I have considered that if people grab 20 dreads and sit on a gate, yes you will be well tanked, you will also have a hard time catching ships. But you also run the risk that someone may counter attack with their own capitals and you will need to switch back to your larger weapons to deal with them.

This whole idea is just my 2 cents on how to keep capitals relevant in a post jump fatigue era.

Not inclined to give carriers point defence systems as they can field drones of all types so they already have ways to take out the likes of frigates and such.

Here is a reddit link to where i initially proposed this idea and received some positive feedback on it.

I think you're missing the point here. Yes, capital guns are designed for crazy high DPS against large targets. No, they are not at all useful (minus drones *cough* ) to eliminate almost any of those so-called subcaps (again, minus smartbombs). This, however, puts most capitals at a disadvantage compared to their subcap counterparts.

It could be useful in some situations, especially if you had to sacrifice something like bastion mode/doomsday/whathaveyou for x amount of time in order to switch to a different rack of guns. This most certainly would add some interesting counterplay for when you have a dread tackled by two or three HICs that it's having difficulty killing by itself. Given, we don't want these ships to be one-man wolf packs, but at least give them a fighting chance if they're on top of their game. Reduced DPS in trade for a high slot module of some sort? Perhaps.

Although, if CCP really wants to make this a thing but not completely revamp all capitals, why not have T2 capital ships? Or perhaps make T3 battlecruisers/battleships with this sort of setup. Could lead to some interesting counterplay where you would fly something like a drake with a rack of heavies AND a rack of rapid lights depending on the situation.

The George Washington still has its own weapons emplacements for shooting missiles and whatnot.

Inties cannot tackle titans, and any cap pilot should have necessary refit:read warp core stabs and mobile depot on hand. No that doesn't solve the 'upgrade inty to sabre' equation, but part of eve's balance is dependent on small ships being able to tackle big ones.

And keeping all ship classes relevant. With this kind of change you could just camp gates in the largest ships and dispense with the need of a sub-cap fleet to support the caps. We had something like this...it was called tracking titans and it was deemed Bad™ and removed from the game.

First:
Whatever some jokers on any third party website post does not belong here. If they wish to propose something they are free to make an account, pay the fees like we do and post it themselves.

Second:
Capital guns are not supposed to shoot subcaptials. That moroses can insta-pop ship is an oversight and should have been dealt with a long time ago.

CCP, since you have startup problems anyways I would feel at all terrible if you "accidentely" deleted capital ships from the database, so pilots need to fly real ships.

And if the day come its used....the only persons who make out on the deal are the seamen on the gun. they will get at least a cert comm, maybe a medal. At least a NAM (Navy Achievement Medai).


Now behind closed doors...lots of officers and senior enlisted will have a lot of explaining to do. It won't be pretty.

Any AWAC who could have eyes on the fighter/bomber who launched this will be explaining why they did not investigate this here say MiG (since Russia sold so many of these...its not just a Russian thing) or report before it fired.

the elint boats CO's will be tap dancing on land mines explaining how MiG(s) or even naval vessels snuck up on the carrier fleet.

Naval intelligence will be explaining how satellite coverage missed a naval fleet on satellite passes.

the pilots on Combat area patrols (CAP) will also be explaining why this threat was not shot up or why they didn't die trying.

Even sub commanders will be brought in. If their HK sub had any chance to eyes on a ship that snuck up.....interested people would like to know how this was missed....or was not reported when found.

Long story short....when a cap fleet launches in todays navy there are more eyes than you count. Its not WWII where that carrier's best intel was a pilot in a scout plane. there is no sneaking up or being snuck up upon by the say Japanese fleet.


Defense in layers.....lots of things have to go wrong to reach the capital ship these days. Its not launch the zero pilot with lots of hi-ex to slam his ride into the capital ship anymore.

And if used....something has gone wrong. Horribly wrong. They are there really to make someone feel better. And most likely because a contractor wanted to make a few extra bucks and hard sold them in the bidding and build phases.


Also some more eve to rl problems.....those systems may kill maybe 1 or 2 harpoons. Maybe. In rl these can be crippling.

TUrn to eve. I can shoot shoot a titan with 4 8 slot bs' all day long. Its not dying fast. That titan pilot has mucho grande time to ask for help. If corp/alliance says sucks to be you and your dumb ass needs to die for titan ratting with neuts in local.....that is not a game mechanic problem. That is an internal personnel problem between titan pilot and his corp/alliance. Or titan pilot is an idiot who does need to die (in game ofc).

They are. But they don't work anywhere as well as advertised or as well as people think. They are "scarecrows" that won't really protect it beyond a one-off attack.

Basically... an aircraft carrier without its support fleet is quite literally "defenseless" against anything that isn't made of tinfoil.


edit: also... this is not real life here. This is a gameplay reason issue. Capitals should not have point defense.

Oh good lord. Ok a few points.

Try not to relate real life things (as cool as an analogy that was) as this is a game and hyperrealism defeats the purpose of game mechanics and balances.

Dreads in their own were designed on the premise of killing other capitals. Rock paper scissors mentality each has a unique role. This ship is a huge tradeoff of not being able to be repped while pumping out massive dps usually in the need of a legion of subcaps to support it. If you remove the need for subcaps, the ship becomes its own fleet.

You might as well give them drone bays back!