EVE General Discussion

Ok, back to super-serious mode. I'm used to this line of thinking, and have this sort of discussion rather frequently, as my roommate is a professional MMO developer - generally when his friends visit thats the topic of conversation, as it comes up when we're just shooting the ****.

You're analyzing this like a developer, but you still have some bias apparent. The way I see it, it is safe to hurt the viability of the "lone titan" simply because a titan will never be alone, and if it is, it deserves to die. All supercaps should require strong subcap support to be fielded with any shot at surviving. The alternative is just silly. CCP seems to agree, as the direction of their recent nerfs suggests.

The way I see it, Carriers are the only capital with a clearly defined role. The rest don't have one - the old roles they were intended to fill are all obsolete or no longer applicable due to the way the game has evolved. Right now, we have carriers serving as excellent support and logistics (both varieties) ships, dreads not doing much except sieging structures, supercarriers acting as a force multiplier, and titans raping anything that looks at them wrong. These roles are muddled and imbalanced as hell.

What needs to be done is a clear definition of roles for each ship class. Carriers are working well as is, if anything I would extend their role to be the bridge between the rest of the capitals and subcaps - they would be the counter to massive supcap fleets you cannot match. Obviously this would require some tweaks, but as they are vulnerable to battleship alpha and doomsdays, they should be the middle of the road combat capital here. Let them be the flexible anti-subcap / support ships that can be killed by either subs or supers, depending on how the engagement goes.

Dreads are just screwed right now. No one wants an expensive ship to shoot structures in all day, and this is in large part due to the way siege works and the small buffer relative to supers. They tend to just be a liability. It would be interesting to see dreads retooled to be the capital supercap counter - which would likely involve a significant boost to their EHP, among a few other tweaks. This would mean that capitals of the non super variety have two clearly defined roles, and can fight both uphill and downhill battles without super support. Both should require subcap support in order to operate "safely" however.

Now for the supercaps. Right now, they are a little ridiculous. And by a little I mean what the ****. Taking the capital roles defined before, they could be expanded upwards, with Supercarriers being the anti-capital supercap (as they really are right now, honestly). However the nerfs to supers were a little overwrought, they cannot even fit two full flights of bombers / fighters now. Annoyances like that should be looked at, what we have now is a half-thought through half-measure. Basically, unacceptable. Supercarriers should be very vulnerable without support, however, and if caught alone by a subcap fleet, should die unless rescued.

Now for titans. The ludicrous ships of EVE. In my humble opinion, titans should never be able to engage subcaps. Period. They are far too large and far too effective at murdering capitals for this to be even remotely balanced. They should be the superweapons of EVE - a hard counter to massive capital / supercarrier fleets, extremely effective at this role, but completely vulnerable without heavy cap / subcap support. They should NOT make up 50% of a fleet's composition and sit back, annihilating everything in sight, down to the damn frigates.

If it were up to me, Titans would be unmatched at removing caps / supercarriers / structures from the picture. They would be an alliance's primary form of power projection, the "big guns" if you will, which you bring out to swat someone else's big guns out of the sky or remove their claim to a system. And that's it. Giving them the ability to fight with minimalistic subcap support breaks the big picture - it turns them into omnitools as opposed to specialized jackhammers. Something FUNDAMENTALLY incompatible with good game design - you never give a player an omnitool.

OR rather, nerf the signature resolution of XL weapons. At present, XL guns have a resolution of 1000m, meaning that a painted battleship will take full damage. If XL guns were adjusted to a resolution of 3000m, they would still do full damage to structures, capital ships and super capitals with no other changes being necessary. The same adjustment could be made to doomsday weapons, allowing the "only usable against capitals" special case.

In addition, it might be worth nerfing the tracking of XL weapons and adjusting dreadnought siege mode to improve the tracking and signature resolution of XL weapons, thus allowing dreadnoughts to fight off hubcap ships while in siege mode.

I'd also like to see super caps either become immune to all EWAR such as tracking links and remote sensor boosters, or become vulnerable to all EWAR including tracking disruptors and target dampers.

The first measure would result in no changes to the mechanics of combat (i.e.: no special cases for "is the target a hubcap"). The second measure would increase the utility of dreadnoughts. The third case would allow high-tracking titans IFF the enemy can damp their tracking.

This is, of course, assuming that the design intent was that super capital ships shouldn't be able to fend off swarms of cruisers on their own.

Heh. I try to remain neutral in this issue, and based on your post I think the bias maybe at least as strong in you

Allthough I agree with most of what you write, I think you misunderstand what i mean with lone titans. Lone titans - as in unsupported titans - should indeed die horribly. What I am talking about here however is lone supported titans - as in smaller alliances using them, not only the massive nullsec powerhouses. Used to tip the their (smaller) battles in their favor as a proper flagship should do.

Further on, you say that


This basically means that the only alliances using titans in the foreseeable future would be confined to the established nullsec powerhouses allready using them. There is no room for lone supported titans or even a small group of titans. In your world, titans should be used in a massive blob and only that, and only against other capitals. There is no room in this view for a lone or small group of titans to turn the scale of battles like it has done since 2005.

Also, in your world, the only effective counter to a massive blob of titans would be an even more massive blob of titans, which is exactly what we have today. So basically you woudnt improve the game that much, only free the subcapital blob to roam with impunity.

Needless to say, I disagree with this view.

I want to democratize titans, making them useful and even desirable for most serious nullsec entities. I dont want to see a nullsec continuing as a stalemate between the old established haves and the new aspiring have-nots. Which is also why I want to see counters to titan blobs which does not consist of titans but rather other capital ships providing both hard- and softkill capabilities.

I tend to agree with the OP that the real problem with capital and supercap warfare is that there's not enough content to make a true rock, paper, scissers scenario. Introducing some new content along the lines of tier 4 bs's, and capital ewar ships would go
a long way towards bringing balance to the game.

Years ago motherships(aka predomion supercarriers) were used by pirates to solo gatecamp lowsec pipes because they were effectivelly untacklable in lowsec. CCP balanced them by introducing the HIC with the scripted Warp disrupt field gen. That brought alot of balance to the situation, not by nerfing anyones toys directly, but by expanding the sandbox.

I disagree. There is no good way to prevent alliances from aquring massive amounts of titans in a sandbox game. But there are certainly ways to influence how to best employ them in the field. Which is why I'd like to see soft-kill and area denial mechanics implemented as well as hardkill mechanics.


Titans is the "battleship" of the capital class, and as such they are not specialized, they are generalized. I think they should continue to be so, because it would provide a massive boost to any fleet big or small using them. What needs to be done is introducing more specialized ways to break up blobs of them without killing their viability as smaller entity hammers.


What you are proposing is a one dimensional tank vs DPS calculation, instead of full spectrum counters. Imagine how dull sub-capital pvp would be of tank and dps were the only considerations. I want to see that complexity introduced on the capital level as well.


Yes, if you mean that they only have to watch as the titan blob enters the field killing every capship they have while having absolutely no possibility of doing anything about it, you are right. It is indeed easy.

Actually it did in the example I mentioned.

You're forgetting that when something is added, you have to account not only for its intended role, but its relation to everything else in the game, and the inevitable unforseen applications players devise.

Adding anything to a game hurts balance, and things need to be re-balanced in the aftermath once most of the influences become apparent. Its a part of the development pipeline, and it is unavoidable. Don't be shortsighted.

So your saying HICs are unbalanced?

Along with Blackops, Marauders, and EAF's.

With subcaps, there's a gradual escalation in skillreqs and and performance from frigates up to battleships. That stops at bs's. From Bs's to caps there's a sudden skyrocketing in cost, skillreqs, performance, which repeats itself in the caps to supercaps jump.

If the only subcaps in the game were frigates and bs's, you'd have the same problems as you do today with supercaps. You'd have blobs of bs's pwning the frigs and frig pilots raging about balance and they'd be right.

In this case it solved a problem with a generalized capital ship (the mothership) used in ways never intended, with a specialized counter - the HIC. Not unlike what I propose to do with new specialized capital ships countering generalized titans.