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Dev blog: Reworking Capital Ships: And thus it begins!

First post First post
Author
Tau Phoenix
The Graduates
The Initiative.
#361 - 2015-10-26 13:44:21 UTC  |  Edited by: Tau Phoenix
Whilst we are discussing capital changes. Another comment i'd like to suggest and this will either go down well or in flames:

Will CCP ever consider letting subcaps (including their pilots) dock in the carrier to allow them to be jumped to a location and then undock from the carrier?

This could be a good mechanic that may be used for various activities in game.
Rivr Luzade
Coreli Corporation
Pandemic Legion
#362 - 2015-10-26 13:54:02 UTC
Are freighters, jump freighters and Bowheads included in the "give them all FH/SMB, ewar changes" thing, especially the web resistance?

UI Improvement Collective

My ridicule, heavy criticism and general pale outlook about your or CCP's ideas is nothing but an encouragement to prove me wrong. Give it a try.

Mr Floydy
Questionable Ethics.
Ministry of Inappropriate Footwork
#363 - 2015-10-26 14:01:13 UTC
Having seen a few people mention it now.... I too am now concerned by the idea of Capital points/scrams. These need to be balanced extremely carefully to not just favour the biggest group of capitals. As others have stated, if you get bubbled/pointed by a HIC you can kill it and escape. If you have 10s of supers pointing you? Well you're stuffed.
loquacious7
KarmaFleet
Goonswarm Federation
#364 - 2015-10-26 14:15:54 UTC  |  Edited by: loquacious7
Aesir Terona wrote:
Mr Floydy wrote:
Aesir Terona wrote:

Thanks for the giant "Screw you" to everyone who trained triage II. Completely uprooting the the triage carrier pilot will go over grand.

Maybe you should read the blog before posting rubbish.
Triage modules will be fitted to the Force Auxiliary. They will replace the Logistics Carrier.


ITT - people jumping to conclusions and solid proof you can't please everyone.

I didn't train for a goddamn Force Auxiliary

either way, it ends up nerfing all capitals more for the sake of making more "options", which, following CCP's record at balancing, means one thing will be outstandingly good, and the other two will languish in disuse because CCP isn't very smart.

+1 I feel your pain. I want to know if I don't like what you did to the ship class can I have my isk and skills put back into something I would like to use in the game? :)
Sayod Physulem
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#365 - 2015-10-26 14:34:23 UTC  |  Edited by: Sayod Physulem
First Post
To elaborate my point against the change to combat refitting:

The entire point of those changes is, to get more fights as I got it. That is why you want to make capitals more useful (thus more used) and eliminate the n+1 problem.

Now we all don't want to lose our ships, so we try to predict the outcome of battles and try to foresee if we will win or lose. And we won't engage if we forsee that we will certainly lose - I mean we are not that stupid. So if the outcome of a fight is predictable and both of the parties know the game very well and are intelligent, the party which will lose, can predict that and will avoid the fight.

So if you ignore ganks ("fights that happend because one party was bad at the game") you can only get people to fight, if the outcome is not predictable from the outset. Because then both partys can think they got chances.

And factors that are determined IN the fight are less predictable than factors that are already determined beforehand.
Now in case of fixed fitting, you have a fixed factor making the outcome more predictable resulting in less fights. But if the outcome depends on your performance IN the fight - your refitting in the fight, the fight becomes less predictable. Which is good as I we proved before.
This is the same reason, why I like the idea of trickshot doomsdays because the outcome is determined in the fight and not before, making people more likely to try their luck.

On a sidenote:
Keep in mind, that you can never eliminate the n+1 problem completely. By introducing a upper limit to your defensive capabilites (triage) you
  • don't eliminate the advantage of having one more damage dealer to kill the enemy faster
  • don't eleminate the advantage of having backup when your meatshield dies

  • If there is "the best" doctrine, then the group with more people will always perform better with that doctrine than all the other groups. So the only thing that can ease the n+1 problem, is making the doctrines and the interactions between ships more complex, that it become harder to know "the best" doctrine.
    Basically you need to give people an advantage if they know the mechanics better, but also make sure that they will never understand the mechanics fully or else at some point the word of "the best" tactic will spread to everyone and even the "blobber" will use them.
    As an example: Rooks and Kings found out that logistics are powerful and dominated larger groups using them but at some point other people learned that aswell.
    So you always need that new tactic that is even better - and given that people are crafty, they will eventually hit the roof and find "the best" tactic in the given meta.

    You can only really eliminate that by constantly shifting stats and attributes and trying to obscure what you do, so that people will never perfect their playstyle, because when they find out something that works really good, the meta already changed.
    So maybe create a plan constantly changing stats before people reach that point of knowledge and tell you which ships are op and should be nerfed. The game doesn't have to be balanced - it just shouldn't be possible to know which of the ships are the good ones.
    Querns
    Science and Trade Institute
    Caldari State
    #366 - 2015-10-26 14:53:37 UTC
    Tappits wrote:
    fenistil wrote:
    Dear CCP,

    these changes seem exciting, escpecially the Titan related changes and how you handle fighters.

    There is ONE BIG THING, that was not addressed:


    1. Jump portal generators


    One of the major differences between the small and the big guys is the ability of being able to bridge your forces. Or being able to help your logistics efforts by bridge-ing.
    The reason is simple: a Titan is a good 100+fit+character. Let's say, to get your hands on a Titan, one needs ~200bill ISK. You can see how that could be problematic to small entities.

    With the changes of SOV and power projection, we can see the rise of small empires, eg. in Fountain, but really all over the map.

    Request:

    Please make use of Jump Portal Generators available for those who has no access to hundreds of billions, either on a dedicated platform or maybe on the proposed new Force Aux capitals.

    I can imagine simple limitations to it so that Titan bridges also have a place: eg. limiting the amount of fuel it's platform can store, the size of force it can project can easily be limited. This Titan bridge for bigger, more established entities has a place.

    Thanks!




    Do you know how the first alliance made the first titan? They worked hard. they did not beg CCP to change the game to let them do something others can do without all the hard work.

    I, too, fetishize BoB.

    This post was crafted by the wormhole expert of the Goonswarm Economic Warfare Cabal, the foremost authority on Eve: Online economics and gameplay.

    Firvain
    Wildly Inappropriate
    Wildly Inappropriate.
    #367 - 2015-10-26 15:01:30 UTC
    Mr Floydy wrote:
    Having seen a few people mention it now.... I too am now concerned by the idea of Capital points/scrams. These need to be balanced extremely carefully to not just favour the biggest group of capitals. As others have stated, if you get bubbled/pointed by a HIC you can kill it and escape. If you have 10s of supers pointing you? Well you're stuffed.


    As it should be?
    Fredric Wolf
    Black Sheep Down
    Tactical Narcotics Team
    #368 - 2015-10-26 15:23:58 UTC
    So in the image of Home World and Sins of a Solar Empire. I would like to ask that corvettes be added to super carriers. A slower ship that is able to stay on the field against subcaps longer but with fewer ships per squadron. I think it would still give supers a uniqueness and provide a missing part the the carrier class arsenal.
    Tiberizzle
    Your Mom Heavy Industries
    #369 - 2015-10-26 16:03:44 UTC  |  Edited by: Tiberizzle
    How will this RTS interface for fighter control interact with fleets? If you can't engage on a locked target or aren't locking targets to engage them, will you be able to direct them to attack a broadcasted target? If you are able to engage on a broadcasted target, will it be possible via interaction with the broadcast status line and broadcast log, or will you have to find it on overview or (worse) direct the fighters at the target's bracket in space?

    Will there be assist or guard mechanics for the new fighters? Drone mechanics have long been preferred by multiboxers for their ability to allow some limited scaling. Fighters almost gained this with the skynet nerf but then lost it before the skynet nerf left sisi -- if fighters don't gain something comparable to assist for this iteration in place of the lost drone assist mechanic, multiboxers will be largely shut out of capitals and you can expect hundreds if not thousands of subscription losses to result.

    Fighters are too expensive to carry hundreds of or send waves of on a 100km death march to the target currently. You can fit a 20 man frigate gang out for the cost of a single wave of fighters at current costs and the frigate gang will shred the wave of fighters inside of a minute with no losses. Will fighter and fighter bomber cost be adjusted to reflect the reality that they're pretty much kamikaze against even modest opposition? If not, carriers and supercarriers will not have a viable damage dealing mechanic as launching fighters for 300M per wave is an invitation to be trolled and nothing more.

    Will fighter volume or the fighter bay volume be adjusted to accommodate extended engagements where AOE DPS or free fire on fighters can under current mechanics rapidly render carriers and particularly supers pretty much helpless when they're reliant on fighters for damage?

    A major concern for many players who use capitals in PVE is that fighters don't currently auto-aggress NPCs. Will fighters auto-aggress NPCs after this iteration which removes the ability to use regular drones which do auto-aggress NPCs?

    edit: also embedding fighter staging / launching in the inventory screen as shown in the preview is pretty much ebola, have you considered not doing that? That whole UI mock-up is horribly space inefficient, it'd be hard to believe something worse than the existing drone bay interface could exist without being shown that mock-up. Fully a third of the interface area is inherited from the inventory interface and has absolutely nothing to do with fighter functionality. Then you get to the fighter-relevant parts of the interface, where more than half the display area is empty space. 4k monitors are not very common yet, you can't waste that kind of screen real estate in 2015 TYOOL P
    John McCreedy
    Eve Defence Force
    #370 - 2015-10-26 16:18:46 UTC  |  Edited by: John McCreedy
    Nerfing HPs on Caps/Supers is all well and good but is the build cost going to be reduced proportionally? No one is going to fly 100bn ISK ships with **** Hit Point values.

    As for the ECM vulnerability, I'm not convinced. It's the one thing that makes Supers different to Capitals. Changing that just makes them a bigger version of the previous class. If they're going to have an inbuilt warp strength that's so high then why bother making it overly and unnecessarily complicated? Just leave the immunity in place.

    Again, like above, if you're going to do that then their build cost (and so sales cost) needs to be reduced to reflect their increased vulnerability on the battlefield.

    13 years and counting. Eve Defence Force is recruiting.

    Niclas Miula
    Center for Advanced Studies
    Gallente Federation
    #371 - 2015-10-26 16:18:50 UTC
    To be honest, I like it pretty much.

    This, the new structures... Nice stuff is coming to EVE it seems.

    But I still hate the Fatigue stuff and the new SOV. And I want more trailers. What do I pay ya for? Work for it Lazyboys
    loquacious7
    KarmaFleet
    Goonswarm Federation
    #372 - 2015-10-26 16:27:12 UTC
    Querns wrote:
    Tiberizzle wrote:
    Querns wrote:
    Combat refitting needs to die. There is no skill involved in switching your modules to tank when you see yellow boxes. No ship should be able to mellifluously mutate to the exact optimal configuration for whatever situation they are in. Your fitting choices should be meaningful.


    I disagree very much.

    Refitting can absolutely require skill in the form of in-depth fitting knowledge and correct situational prioritization of attributes.

    Even something as simple as "Throw on full tank" has stupid many permutations.

    What even is full tank???

    Is the incoming damage balanced or can you optimize further from omni for it?

    Could the incoming damage change, how much should you optimize and leave yourself time to react to a damage type switch?

    Can you overheat specific hardeners until burnout then refit fresh ones to buy more time?

    Which hardener combinations give you the best omni profile with your native resists, the best trade-off vs other likely damage type swaps?

    Which sacrificial heated hardeners give you the most tank for the longest for a particular damage profile?

    Could you get bumped and lose the ability to refit, could you get neuted, should some or all of your tank be passive?

    If you're active hardened and being neuted should you generate cap, should you inject cap, should you reflect neuting with capacitor battery and get fed cap?

    Do you really even need to go full tank or is there enough surplus RR that you could reduce your tank and affect the fight beneficially in some other way?

    tl;dr: you can dismiss it as "too powerful" or "too tryhard" but please don't even try to dismiss it as "no skill"

    All of these choices are largely congruent to a situation where you can't refit, except they matter even more when you have no replacements.

    The small depth of tactical decisions, amplified by the removal of cost associated with changing your modules, in no way is worth the complete neutering of all the strategic decisions involved in picking your fit in the first place.

    I'm curious why do you dislike the utility of the current carrier platform?
    John Selth
    Collapsed Out
    Pandemic Legion
    #373 - 2015-10-26 16:37:46 UTC
    fenistil wrote:
    Dear CCP,

    these changes seem exciting, escpecially the Titan related changes and how you handle fighters.

    There is ONE BIG THING, that was not addressed:


    1. Jump portal generators


    One of the major differences between the small and the big guys is the ability of being able to bridge your forces. Or being able to help your logistics efforts by bridge-ing.
    The reason is simple: a Titan is a good 100+fit+character. Let's say, to get your hands on a Titan, one needs ~200bill ISK. You can see how that could be problematic to small entities.

    With the changes of SOV and power projection, we can see the rise of small empires, eg. in Fountain, but really all over the map.

    Request:

    Please make use of Jump Portal Generators available for those who has no access to hundreds of billions, either on a dedicated platform or maybe on the proposed new Force Aux capitals.

    I can imagine simple limitations to it so that Titan bridges also have a place: eg. limiting the amount of fuel it's platform can store, the size of force it can project can easily be limited. This Titan bridge for bigger, more established entities has a place.

    Thanks!



    Titans are supposed to be an alliance or corp wide effort to achieve. Rally your corp together and get them working for one. I don't like to say #nopoors but LITTERALLY nopoors. Go out and earn it like every other corp has done in Eve history
    Harry Saq
    Of Tears and ISK
    ISK.Net
    #374 - 2015-10-26 17:10:30 UTC
    The changes are very intriguing, and I have a few follow on questions:

    1. Since the fighters are now in a squadron, and damage bars were replaced by remaining fighter indicators, will the effectiveness of the squadron diminish with the number of fighters lost (i.e. DPS drop and other effect strength/likelihood diminish)?

    2. Can you add tactical overlay UI circles to the vertical plane similar to the ones on the horizontal plane to aid in not getting Kirk'ed because our only frame of reference is in line with Khan's thinking?

    3. Can we get color fill and line brightness controls to help us customize the tactical overlay so it is not always so bright?

    4. Can we customize the placement of the distance indicator circles according to preferences such as setting our own intervals (say every 5km instead of 10km) and have "always on" settings for weapons range spheres of our liking (like a UI checkbox or something)?

    5. When we detach and move the camera from our ships, can we have the tactical UI center on our squadrons/drones, or centered on the camera, or any spot of our choosing? Would it be ridiculous to have that tactical overlay added instead of replacing our current (or maybe even a different color so we know that is not our ship's tactical UI but our floating one)?
    d0cTeR9
    Caldari Provisions
    Caldari State
    #375 - 2015-10-26 17:10:48 UTC  |  Edited by: d0cTeR9
    Great buff for dreadnoughts and titans.

    Carriers will now become 'meh', and supercarriers will become even more 'meh'.

    If CCP thinks we have the time to micro-manage fighters like that... then they better get a hefty EHP buff. Otherwise carriers/suppercarriers are going to be volleyed off the field so quickly...

    We really need some skill information for those new capital modules. Do we need to start training those level 5's to use t2? We getting deadspace equivalent modules?

    Been around since the beginning.

    Flavious Signtai
    Royal Amarr Institute
    Amarr Empire
    #376 - 2015-10-26 17:30:40 UTC
    The idea of changing the triage mechanic to a totally different capital ship is crazy, and not in the good way. Like was mentioned in the blog, many of us bought and use our carriers specifically because it is a capital logistic platform.

    Carriers and Supercarriers will now become obsolete, as dreadnoughts will become the DPS platform, with carriers serving no role. Yes, supercarriers have the remote ECM, but now... that's really the only thing going for it.

    This is a horrible idea to create a new ship class, stripping carriers of their one good trait.


    However, if you gave carriers greatly increased damage/hp bonuses to fighters and drones, all may not be lost.

    Do not nerf the hitpoints... capital ships are, well, capital ships, and shouldn't be able to be destroyed by a few tackled orthrus'.
    FT Diomedes
    The Graduates
    #377 - 2015-10-26 18:39:53 UTC
    Definitely excited to see Dreadnoughts retaining a good role and to see Carriers becoming less jack-of-all-trades, master-of-all-trades. I look forward to trying out the new dedicated Force Auxiliary ships.

    CCP should add more NPC 0.0 space to open it up and liven things up: the Stepping Stones project.

    Marius Vuld
    Brutor Tribe
    Minmatar Republic
    #378 - 2015-10-26 18:52:50 UTC
    As someone who is inching closer to fly a carrier, and was training for the logistics role, I am eager to know what is happening on the skill side of things.

    Will the prerequisites for FAUX captials be the current carrier skill book?

    Or will I require another 500m isk skill book with a x14 multiplier to fly each of the new racial FAUX ships?

    If so would you consider giving the same number of SP for the new FAUX skill book as the racial carrier already trained?
    Rowells
    Blackwater USA Inc.
    Pandemic Horde
    #379 - 2015-10-26 19:01:21 UTC
    So, with capital neuts, will we see dreadnaughts with utility highs or is it going to be a similar scenario in terms of "pre-assigned" fittings for the highs?

    any idea if the naglfar will experience any issues in terms of fitting balance with the reduced turret need?

    Will the meta versions of modules follow similar suit to subcap meta (post module balancing)?
    loquacious7
    KarmaFleet
    Goonswarm Federation
    #380 - 2015-10-26 19:03:21 UTC
    Flavious Signtai wrote:
    The idea of changing the triage mechanic to a totally different capital ship is crazy, and not in the good way. Like was mentioned in the blog, many of us bought and use our carriers specifically because it is a capital logistic platform.

    Carriers and Supercarriers will now become obsolete, as dreadnoughts will become the DPS platform, with carriers serving no role. Yes, supercarriers have the remote ECM, but now... that's really the only thing going for it.

    This is a horrible idea to create a new ship class, stripping carriers of their one good trait.


    However, if you gave carriers greatly increased damage/hp bonuses to fighters and drones, all may not be lost.

    Do not nerf the hitpoints... capital ships are, well, capital ships, and shouldn't be able to be destroyed by a few tackled orthrus'.


    None of the changes are for the player base, you know the ones that played a game loyally for years. Suddenly your years of skills and organization force projection was discouraging new players. So they nerfed and nerfed til it was miserable to play the game, felt like your first year all over. But making the game easier for new players to skill into the needed ships seems to have backfired. Turns out the new players really wanted to pay their dues just like the bitter vets. :) they wanted to be in big groups fighting in doctrine ships that people fit tooled and theory crafted over for weeks, they just did not know it then... Only thing is a lot of those players left when they saw the game changed every time someone complained about the game not being fair/null warfare is broken or too hard to start playing. So 60k counting bots turned into 40k, so they said fix it some more, then it went down to 30k. Now with the same logic applied comes a bigger nerf but with bling and promises of more fun. If only someone would say wow remember when Saturday's had 60k players maybe we should see what worked best back then and build from there. Then use that old trick, convincing players the game will be easier if you have more stuff and more skill points. *evil laughâ„¢* " Hope, I'll take that first." *** Remember when people had goals like get logi to V, learn to sit in a Guardian, all the while your next four hundred days or more will be carrier skills. That goal was worth something back then, billions in skill books then billion or more in hull and fits. Suddenly you have the ultimate utility ship (if it is gold in color) ;) ... You could be useful in really big fleets and say I was there... back when we would complain that bashing outpost and blowing up blockade units is dull. Wow if we only knew then what we know now... :)