Ships & Modules

@Araral



The huge bandwith is a problem from a developers stand point because it paints you in to a corner, you can never make say a rig that lets you launch a extra drone or a other type of drone that uses more bandwith.

The ship was not buy its design made to kill caps or super caps, it was made to "escort" fleets.

ok a rattle snake with 125 bandwith getting to add riggs to get 3 more drones, or use a drone that takes 50 bandwith is not the same as a escort Carrier that has 2500 bandwith getting 3 more drones or using a drone with a 50 bandwith or getting 3 more of the 50 bandwith drones.


STO tho fun is not were we should take ship roles from, the original escort carriers were to defend against u-bouts(recons) and small destroyers/PT boats(not main fleet battle ships and full carriers)


EDIT fighter bombers use 500 bandwith each

Im just tossing the idea out that if you give it huge bandwith and don't do it like supercaps(were they can ONLY use fighters and fighter bombers) then you may run in to problems down the road. As in if there was a bigger than heavy drone made some day then it would get to use them buy default. Then your only recourse is to make it so they have a "can/can not" that has to be both coded in the game and then explained as to why they can or can not.


My personal point of view is this, the escort carrier is not a small platform exclusively for sending fighter/fighter bombers to kill caps(I would hate to see more caps made just to kill the even more caps). Not that we don't need that in game but I just think that role would be better served but say a T2 carrier or a second black ops(or other T2 BS) that launched fighter bombers(or even better stealth fighter bombers) I think the role is clear enough with out more added to it. The game could use a Orca like ship for combat, easy to get around with that can bring the other combat things you may need. Weather thats fighters to chase recons, drones for DPS/Ewar, extra hulls to refit your fleet, or the hot drop.

How about Interdictors get to have some Drone Disrupting PROBEs launched from same launchers as Interdiction Probe...

Area Effect that causes them to disconnect from their owner... like when you warp away, forgetting to retrieve em.
Single Use, Time based. (Time limititation because we don't want an anti-drone forcefield.)

Most effective against BIG and slow boats. (Wouldnt affect sentries much though.)
I thought about giving it to stealth bombers since they have bomb launchers but Interdictors need the gain in popularity, not the stealth bombers.

So we can make the escort carrier UBER.

I just want to point out that "escort carriers" not only acted as a stopgap convoy escorts but as fighter resupply ships and supported amphibious assaults as well.


-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escort_carrier

Literally take the Orca, make some small changes to HP (little additions) and take away some of the cargo space, as per the description of escort carriers being refitted civilian ships. There's absolutely no need what so ever to give a high sec ship like this 55k shields and then a shield resistant per skill level bonus, that's just plain stupid. This thing should tank like a high tier battleship, as to not allow them to simply walk through level 4's or act as incursion support.
As for the whole fighter or fighter bomber argument: that's totally not happening in high sec. Yes, I'd love a ship that was a mini-carrier and possibly able to deploy 10 drones (see more in a minute, no, not 10 OMG OGRES WTF), but fighters in high sec? I really don't think so. And if they did, they'd just be assigned to people and sit at a POS, really can't see that happening. Fighters are for null, live with it and go out there, or suck it up and face the fact you'll never see a carrier.

Continueing about it's drone-ness, sure, give it a big drone bay. It's a droney boat after all, right? Take away any weapon slots (I think I saw that "Kakura" or whatever have two missile slots? No. Make a choice, do you want to shoot or use a drone specific boat. But limit the bandwidth to 150 or 175 or so. Make the skill bonus "+1 drone controlled per level" and make the skill a high rank, meaning you need to be level 5 in order to use 10 drones, let's face it; most people will stick at level 4, because it'd likely be a 30-40 day trip to level 5. So yes it can use 10 drones, but the bandwidth would limit it to only 6-7 heavy/sentries. Make it a fleet support vessel, not something that should be able to go and take on a battleship. I don't know what it could put in the high slots. Gang links? Perhaps remote reps (nowhere near carrier or logi reps though, and limited to "large" size. And only have 2-3 of them). Either way, the high sec version shouldn't be an offensive or DPS heavy ship, that's my opinion anyway. It should be there to support an existing fleet.

Now, perhaps we could have two ships in the "escort carrier" class, the above, aforementioned high sec supporty boat, and maybe a null sec 5 fighters (perhaps fighter bombers) as per users above ideas? Just an idea, now go hate me, I guess

Yup. Love it

+1 for the most reasonable idea i've seen so far. Instead of having separate hi-sec/low-sec models would giving a bonus to fighter(or fighter bomber) bandwith work?

I don't understand it!

afaik most highsec wars consist of undock games and "ganked at belt bcz idiot or local is too big to scroll". Where here does a carrier fits in? Undock is already gay and boring not to mention all the neutral RR in highsec. Hunting ppl down off-station in a BS+ sized vessel? Better use AFs\T3 class.

In lowsec you already have conventional carriers which, assuming you want to gimp capabilities of EC, are better.

If you want just drones then why not go with a Dominix? RR setups is your way to go. And again - if ppl can't kill you they do it to your drones so lot's of drones is no go.

And yes, you ppl say only "what it can or should be able to do" and not "why" in which case "I want a frigate class DD which deals around 20k dmg but eats your capacitor and fittings completely."

Don't intend to get you flamiing, just asking is there a real need for this ships in highsec pvp(what you intend it to be).

I think the main "need" is that a lot of people want it. And that's pretty much it. To be honest, there aren't many more ship types they can invent, balance and put in game that have a specific use (unless they really spice modules/ships up). Besides, it's something "different", you can control 10 Hammerheads (with my suggestion) and do something else to help support the fleet. Yes there are already Command Ships and Logi Ships, but perhaps something could be done to mix them up a little bit. Shove a couple of large RR, a gang link (say a 3% bonused one) and some drone support modules - It could act as a flagship, make things more interesting, support the fleet in a couple of ways.

Like I said previously, take the Orca and make it ready for combat. Make it's EHP about 1.5 times that of a decent Battleship. As for my other suggested "low/null sec only" version of the escort carrier would be a fighter bomber user, so whereas the high sec lower tier escort carrier would have bonuses which allow for the use of up to 10 drones and other support bonuses, perhaps the higher tiered (with more EHP) low/null sec one could have access to only 5 fighter bombers or something. This latter one I can't say I can think much for, I hang round mostly in low and high sec. But still, in my opinion, something needs to be done to counter the ever increasing number of super caps...