Ships & Modules

I honestly think that part of whats going on is unanticipated fallout from The Bosse winning the war on lag. Yes, groups like R&K who mainly do smaller scale fights may have been able to do things like hotswap modules in the past, but honestly, would you even have considered taking a Titan or supercarrier into a fight without a tank two years ago? Would you have bet your supercap on your ability to hotswap mods during the middle of a 3000-man clusterfuck? I doubt it.

In this respect, I think a lot of the balance problems that are cropping up in fleet fights are the result of (essentially) entirely new fleet tactics becoming viable.

Unfortunately for you, missiles are not a system promoting player skill, and if you suggest that making turrets to work more like missiles will promote player skill, then I suggest you take a deeper look at how things work.
There is no such a choice here. Truth is that turret are based on statistics and randomness of hit. Adding something deterministic on this randomness won't make it deterministic ; that would only make them more like missiles with odd mechanics.
Statistics work fine with falloff. Problem here is that big guns have huge optimal, and that huge optimal allow to negate their low tracking. We cannot easily change this fact without modifying the formula, so a quick and dirty fix would be to modify the hit chance directly. That would not add more randomness than there already is. That is only how you cap turret damage while keeping the spirit of turrets.
The damage calculation for turrets is the essence of turrets. Turret damages are, by essence, a random number between 50% and 150% of their base damages for each shot. You reduce the dps of turret in the current mechanic by reducing the chances to hit. The graph you see on EFT are only an average. Even the number you see on your screen is an average of your whole group of turrets. Missiles are deterministic, that's why they are less effective than turret in EFT ; it's balance. And that's why the only way to reduce missile damage is to reduce the damage value directly.

There are two big problems here. The turret damage formula, and the roles of ships in today's EVE.

Both need changing. Sig res needs to affect accuracy over distance (closer targets appear a lot bigger, no?) Capital ships (and honestly, most of the other ships in the game) need their roles and sizes more clearly defined.

It sounds simple, but honestly it's quite a lot of work to go from brainstorming all the way to implementing. I'm in favor of the bandaid fix until that can be done.

So all of this stuff is horribly broken and needs fixing?
if people dont rat in titans how are other people supposed to catch the idiots ratting in their titans?
*mumbles something about POS and corp roles*

Disagree. The present tracking formula is one of the great achievements of Eve mechanics. Refitting is another issue but most discussion around changing the tracking formula here, is generally directed at dumbing down one of the most esoteric and excellent aspects of Eve.

Thoughts on the EWAR issue;

Consider replacing EWAR immunity with high EWAR 'resistance', such that you'll need multiple subcaps applying the same effect to have the same result as if they were applying it to a single subcap. Think along the lines of Warp Strength of 25, and carry that idea across to the other EWAR methods. Perhaps make the effectiveness Webs affected by ship mass, etc.

Then, bonus EAFs so that the 'strength' of any EWAR they apply is doubled - so that you could tackle a titan with 25 rifters, or 13 kitsunes.

Also, make it only work for negative EWAR, no Remote Sebos or any of that. It makes no sense that a frigate can 'help' out a titan.

If the drive is to encourage more diverse fleets, making large quantities of EWAR effective against caps could help with this.

ChanceToHit = 0.5 ^ ((((Transversal speed/(Range to target * Turret Tracking))*(Turret Signature Resolution / Target Signature Radius))^2) + (((max(0, Range To Target - Turret Optimal Range))/Turret Falloff)*(Turret Signature Resolution / Target Signature Radius)^2

Wham, bam, thank you ma'am. This very simple change does not put an artificial damage cap on turrets. What it does do is increase the role that sig resolution/radius plays in determining chance to hit by causing it to modify the range factor

As an example, with this minor tweak a 1400mm Artillery II turret shooting at a Rifter that is sitting still at a range of 50km away (assuming no skill modifiers) has a chance to hit of ~74%, brought down from ~99.5% before the change. Again, this is assuming the rifter is sitting dead still at 2km into the turret's falloff. ~98% chance to hit a rupture under the same circumstances, which is very little change from the current formula (which is approximately 99.5%). However, the farther into falloff you go, the chance to hit begins dropping more and more sharply as it is now multiplied by a number that is always less than or equal to 1.

Not a bad place to start, but I think we can do better. We might also consider this

ChanceToHit = 0.5 ^ ((((Transversal speed/(Range to target * Turret Tracking))*(Turret Signature Resolution / Target Signature Radius))^2) + (((max(0, Range To Target - (Turret Optimal Range * (Target Signature Radius / Turret Signature Resolution)))/(Turret Falloff * (Target Signature Radius / Turret Signature Resolution)))^2

As you can see, optimal range and falloff are now modified by sigres/sigrad while range to target now remains unaffected. This should give a much more realistic result. Let's crunch the numbers now, using the some of the same ships and scenarios as before

A rifter against a 1400mm Artillery II, still at 50km (2km into falloff) holding dead still. We find that the new optimal range for hitting this target is 4,200. The new falloff is 3,325. Again, this is assuming no ammo modifiers to range/falloff. So the chance to hit that Rifter at 50km is now ~0%. Once the rifter moves into the new optimal ranges and holds still, we begin to see a reasonable chance to hit (in a real scenario, bring lots of webs + target painters, etc.

Now let's try that same Rifter but with a T2 1mn MWD on (while holding still or otherwise at zero transversal, for some stupid reason.) New effective optimal = 25,200. New effective falloff = 19,950. Chance to hit at 50km ... ~34.2% Much better!

Now the Rupture, no ammo/module modifications, no transversal. New effective optimal = 15,600. New effective falloff = 12,350. Chance to hit at 50km ... ~0.004%

Now let's try a Hurricane. New effective optimal = 28,800. New effective falloff = 22,800. Chance to hit at 50km ... ~54.9%. Incredible! Behold the power of math

And let's do a Maelstrom ... 460m sig radius vs the turret's resolution of 400. We don't take a modifier greater than 1, so optimal/falloff remain unmodified and 1400mm arties vs. Maelstroms (or any ship with a sig radius greater than 400m) remains unchanged from the old formula. Magnificent. If we wanted to be really clever (and even more realistic, I think) we could allow for modifiers greater than 1. In this case, the new effective optimal would be 55,200. New effective falloff = 43,700. Chance to hit at 50km = 100%, in addition to the range being increased overall.

With the first formula I presented, the changes are a more mild emphasis on the importance of sig radius/resolution over distances. The second formula is much more realistic and balanced, imo, but also possibly more likely to **** everyone off. It is worth noting, however, that sig radius/resolution are easily modifiable numbers, and CCP is currently in the middle of a balancing pass over every ship in the game

If you actually read all of that, thank you for your time.

It enforces the idea that big guns are for big targets and little guns are for little targets. This is a good thing because it helps every type of ship have its own niche in any fleet size, and especially starts to shine when fleets get really big. With the changes I presented, if a fleet doesn't bring something to counter small ships then those small ships are going to continue to be a pain in the ass throughout the entire battle. It makes HICs and DICs more survivable. It even opens up EAFs as being viable choices for large fleets. Stacking battlecruisers/battleships/capships one on top of the other until they make up 80%+ of your fleet composition is a bad thing for patently obvious reasons. This solves that problem by clarifying the roles of each weapon size.

If you dig a little deeper into the math and start applying transveral to varying weapon sizes and ship sizes, with sig boosting and reducing modifications, etc, what you find is that it even goes a long way towards mitigating the problem in the current turret damage formula where, in big fights, no matter what someone is capable of landing solid shots on you. Putting 10-20 titans in a fleet and blapping absolutely everything is no longer a problem. This way, a fleet that is not well balanced is a very, very vulnerable fleet. That HAC/T3 fleet you're talking about is very vulnerable to battlecruisers, or frigates with superior numbers.

I do see what you mean, though. I don't quite see it as being as bad as you say, however. You'll still want to bring the big guns out when your enemy brings its big guns out, or when it's time to shoot structures. IMO, Battleships that don't have BC support *should* be vulnerable to a bunch of Cruisers (more Cruisers than Battleships.) Just like Cruisers that don't have Destroyer support should be vulnerable to a bunch of Frigates. Or capital ships without subcap support being vulnerable to subcaps. Again, it's that concept of Frigate < Destroyer < Cruiser < Battlecruiser < Battleship < Frigate. The farther apart in size ships get, the less effective they ought to be against each other. It's a simple balance. A hypothetical lone cruiser should have just as hard a time breaking a battleship's tank as the battleship has hitting the cruiser. Ability to hit vs Ability to break tank.

The pre-fight decisions that are undertaken when utilising the SMAs in combat are more intricate ( do I have X,Y,Z yes but hold on F could be useful ) Too many options and you reduce what else you can do during combat ( now I am down XXXX m3 so I now can not carry as much XXXXXXXX as I think I will need ) one option always impacts another.




Changing your fitting in an ever changing combat scenario is what makes the fight interesting if this is one of the fundamental problems with fights then why remove this long standing ability ?
Make it a feature and call it good, The problem by the thread title is TITANS not Ship Maintenance Arrays.
The ability to refit in space is an ability that adds an unknown dimension to combat and makes it less about numbers and more about the pilots ability in combat. Combat needs to be more than just orbit, fire and win or fire and win but more about the impact an individual can have on the outcome of a fight.

I must say that the devs never amaze me anymore hiding such a game change like the proposed Ships Ship Maintenance Array change in whatever stage of conception it’s in within a thread about “ Titan changes – update “ since it impacts ALL capital ships.

This is where experience and understanding core game play is so necessary to have any say on the fix. I've probably got more capital combat experience in my left nut than any other 2 FC's combined in game. I'm approaching somewhere near 75 Supers killed in combat, and only a handful of those were raw ganks. I've also watched somewhere near 57 of my friend and allied lose their supers, and participated in probably another 100 odd kills or losses where I wasn't in control of the fleet.

Something like changing titan's ability to fit in a fight is about 0.000001% of the problem. Basically, this is how 99% of fights unfold in terms of supers"

One side commits, the other side counters if they have better numbers, super numbers dictate the day, dreads have 0 impact other than fodder, support spectates.



Basically the rule of thumb with supers is that titans are about 10x the combat value of every Mothership, Motherships are about 40x the value of any dread. That's of course assuming it's an actual fight and not 40 dreads vs 1 random mothership.

Primary issue with titans is that they have no natural counter. FIRST AND FOREMOST. The one "natural counter"... Dreads, got screwed long ago when supers became anti capital platforms. Dreads fall quickly to Doomsdays, the 1 shot wonders, which makes it nearly impossible to fight large titan numbers. Dreads die in under 30 seconds to any lightly coordinate mothership group.... IE choose a random target near the top of the list and see how many fighters end up on it.

BS and below suffer only because the tracking to range balance is ****** up.

But who's honestly going to be so liberal with titans if all the sudden, dreads are a threat again. I fought this battle intensely when the first changes to supers were made with fighter bombers and DD 1 shot bull, and it flew under the radar, but lets face facts, you removed the role of normal caps when supers became the blap mobile.

So ask yourself this honest question Greyscale. Is the problem really the guns on titans, or the fitting array, or the amount of target locks, or is it that you have 2 ship classes that counters any ship in game capable of effectively killing it. Because when you realize that this is the true problem, you'll see that Titans and SC will always spawn in mass on a grid, in higher numbers simply because remote repair + the encouragement of insane resist due to cost of ship vs cost of gear factors and the overall unkillability of them encourage this.

Even if you implemented lower damage though some crap sig/balance damage scale rather than adjusting the tracking formula, there's a natural counter to your solution which is, bring more titans and start focusing fire. Eventually, the damage will still blap, and the ship is still near impossible to kill. And even when you nerf titans into oblivion, we're already working on a solution which involves BS vs 3600 DPS fighter bombers once we "adjust" their sig and speed for them... and yes, we've tested it on SiSi.

Fix the core problems, quit looking for the easy solution that avoids the core problems.