Player Features and Ideas Discussion

If you've been keeping up with eve geography, you may have noticed the massive stockpiles of supercapitals and titans being churned out every day from major alliances. There is a certain worry within the community that this may put pressure on smaller alliances and speed the death of eve.

I propose a new kind of ship/mechanic that could perhaps add a little more flavour to the massive capital slugfests brewing on the distant horizon.

Boarding mechanics might be a great way to elegantly nerf capitals, while adding a new dimension to eve. It could take the form of a module, or a ship, or perhaps all ships can do it, or maybe certain ships get boarding role bonuses, etc. There could even be a new set of skills to go with it. Militants could become a new trade item in the eve economy.

Boarding would be a way to disable, disrupt, or destroy large ships. The exact mechanics would have to be refined over a long period of discussion and testing, but the general idea is have it be a way to counter the effectiveness of capital ships.

This has been proposed, in like six different flavors.

It doesn't make sense in Lore, a Titan has like thirteen THOUSAND crew and you would need to run for a couple of kilometers to reach anything vital, let alone take over the ship.

It would not be balanced. If you can kill a Capital more effectively with sub-caps than with caps then people will stop bringing caps, especially because most of the people with cap fleets also have lots and lots of bodies to throw at each other.

There is no mechanic that is going to let a small entity heroically win against a larger one other than incompetence on the part of the larger entity or extreme competence on the part of the smaller one. Neither of those can be enshrined in game mechanics by CCP.

Or, to put it as it's more commonly said: "You can't patch stupid."

Most people just don't think to include the idea of patching stupid *into* the game in this.

the size it takes to get to that level now that carriers have been fixed is rarely seen and until you get to that level you need sub caps or you're screwed.


though i feel removing HAW would be a good move i still don't get why these were added at all particularly when they made carriers a pure anti sub cap ship

It's not really the problem that needs fixed though. Eve needs more reasons to NOT be part of the super ultra mega coalitions and alliances. Too many people want to be part of the biggest fishes in the sea with too few reasons to NOT be. Even with all the changes that have been made to try and break the map up more, there are still not enough game reasons to NOT be part of the largest biggest groups, except personal choice really, because all those changes still haven't addressed that core issue.


No, I don't have a good answer for it either. But if that issue were able to be addressed, then this issue would be a long way towards a non issue.

Lore wise: you have to sit there pumping thousands of troops into their ship, I'm not crazy about the idea

Gameplay wise: the best counter to a capital ship is removing its support.

The hours spent running around hallways and engineering decks aren't very plausible...

This. Very much this.

If they want to have more smaller groups, they need to look at supporting them with bottom up income options in all areas of space.

Proposing something that I know will be hated, but make gate travel more like it is with wormholes with mass restrictions (null/low only, more restrictive for null) and nerf cynos even more. That would go a long way to fixing the cancer that is sov null.

Also make moons deplete over time.

this would do nothing but making managing large groups slightly more inconvenient