Supercapital Balancing - An Educated Opinion

[LordsServant]

Looks like this thread has spilled out into reddit.

Linky?

[Shin_getter]

http://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments...nd_discussion/

[Qwert]

high power density

Aha, THIS is what I was getting at earlier. Titans are just too expensive for one ship to be from a power density standpoint. You can easily match the isk cost of a BS blob with a slightly larger one of Battlecruisers/HACS (3-5x) and take the field, but even a smallish Titan/SC blob reaches infeasible numbers of Dreads/Carriers (20-30x), let alone BS (200x).

[Mike deVoid]

Yes, but you need the pilots. I.e. pilots vs SP

[LordsServant]

high power density

Aha, THIS is what I was getting at earlier. Titans are just too expensive for one ship to be from a power density standpoint. You can easily match the isk cost of a BS blob with a slightly larger one of Battlecruisers/HACS (3-5x) and take the field, but even a smallish Titan/SC blob reaches infeasible numbers of Dreads/Carriers (20-30x), let alone BS (200x).

inversely, how is someone to match 800 BS without 800 BS of their own? Thats simply the N+1 counter which we want to avoid in this game.

This works both ways - for supercaps AND for BS. I believe that every ship class in game should have a counter that is NOT their own shipclass. They may be able to counter themselves, but they should have counters besides N+1.

Fuck your BS(titan, bc, cruiser, frigate, supercarrier, capital, HAC) blobs.

Also, this was posted to EN24 and judging from the comments I think I could count on one hand how many people actually read the article :S

Some of my favorites were the people saying that I was "crying because I couldn't afford my own." Guess they missed the part where I've owned more personal supers than literally 99% of eve. Even with the massive amount of SC/Titan pilots ingame, I think individuals who own multiples of them/large amounts of them over time are very few and far between(as it should be tbh).

[Mike deVoid]

My experience with suggesting change (for games, business processes, whatever) is that you should keep it as short as possible and leave fine-tuning for balance purposes out of the initial post. Also, diagrams help.

[Mike deVoid]

My attempt at a summary:


Changes you suggest:
Supercarrier EHP should be restored to pre-nerf levels (is this down or up?)
Removed Remote ECM burst from Scaps
Remove Doomsday
Remove Jump Portal
Remove Titan bonuses
Remove the corp hanger, ship maintenance array, clone vat bay, and ability to refit other ships.
Titans are the subcap blappers, but relatively ineffective against capitals
Capitals travel faster than subcaps, fix this:
idea A) Introduce a delay to caps joining the fight: spool up time on active cynos increasing with jump range.
idea B) Only 1 cyno jump allowed per X minutes (introduce an RP reason for this, ala WH jumping)
idea C) cynos have mass limits as per WHs
Massivley reduce Titan's agility (or increase mass) such that they take a LONG time to align.

Intentions:
Titans are no longer the swiss army knife of fight and fit into a rock paper scissors linking Titans, Subcaps and Dreads/SCs. Too much of one is countered by something that isn't merely N+1. (see http://dl.dropbox.com/u/64474800/Cap...oposal%20B.jpg )
..to be continued by LordsServant..

[Shin_getter]

inversely, how is someone to match 800 BS without 800 BS of their own? Thats simply the N+1 counter which we want to avoid in this game.

Bombers~ for example. I talked about capital scale bombers, but I don't know if I have any support on this at all.

There are designs where n+1 power density is not a problem. I talked about "drive by nano-titans" because it makes natural sense for a titan, and such a design can bypass effects on power density quite a bit:

Nano-titan design:
1. Equal or Worst then Dread (or some other ship) in per pilot in large engagements
2. Kills small stuff effectively
3. Good GTFO power

With this design, the titan is useful, but would not shit up sov warfare and create power imbalances. It will screw up "pointless" small gang combat as a side effect and probably piss more people off then otherwise though. Then again, they could always drop carriers at a fraction of the risk~

----
There is quite a few ways to achieve #1, that being less scalable then dreads. For example, replace EHP with rep bonus and prevent RR on ewar immune ships.

[Vortex]

inversely, how is someone to match 800 BS without 800 BS of their own? Thats simply the N+1 counter which we want to avoid in this game.

Bombers~ for example. I talked about capital scale bombers, but I don't know if I have any support on this at all.

We used to have capital-scale bombers. They were called Titans, and they made 0.0 a living hell cause your BS fleet would get welped the moment 1-2 decloaks. Bombers are in a good place right now, but you would have to be very, very careful before adding in more powerful mass AoE options because you start to just totally trash entire fleets of ships with practically no investment of your own.

[Varcaus]

Sig radius like now (I think right?) but more so. So bs would still take a hit but be more useful over normal bombs. BC and below would really feel it as long as their mwd is off.

[LordsServant]

Sig radius like now (I think right?) but more so. So bs would still take a hit but be more useful over normal bombs. BC and below would really feel it as long as their mwd is off.

Would be interesting, but would simply end up with "lol don't fly BS in fleets - smaller stuff online." Which pretty much brings us back to 2009 or w/e where smaller stuff was needed to gtfo the field before titans came in and raped everything.

I really think any AoE weapon has no place on titans are there's just too many of them to properly balance it tbh. Balancing AoE titans on their current numbers makes them worthless for smaller alliances with only a few, and retarded OP for alliances like Raiden who have >9000 (not exaclty that many, but u get my point).

I really think actually having to lock and shoot stuff is kinda the way forward.

I like ur Summary Shin, I prob shoulda put a Tl:dr + pictures up for EN24. :P

[Mike deVoid]

Do you mean my summary?..

[Rynnik]

Do you mean my summary?..

I like your summary, but you forgot the part where they are restricted from NPC Null and Lowsec due to some 'insert LOLRP reason about NPC empires'. What Lords is saying makes sense within the realm of SovSec but doesn't make sense outside of it.

[Varcaus]

Do you mean my summary?..

I like your summary, but you forgot the part where they are restricted from NPC Null and Lowsec due to some 'insert LOLRP reason about NPC empires'. What Lords is saying makes sense within the realm of SovSec but doesn't make sense outside of it.

[LordsServant]

Do you mean my summary?..

I like your summary, but you forgot the part where they are restricted from NPC Null and Lowsec due to some 'insert LOLRP reason about NPC empires'. What Lords is saying makes sense within the realm of SovSec but doesn't make sense outside of it.

Herpaderp - yes Mike. Wasn't really paying attention when I posted that.

Also, why would they be restricted from NPC Null and losec? The only problem with supercarriers in losec is they're currently p. much invincible due to lolecmburst. If my changes were taken into consideration, they'd be just fine.

Concentration of power isn't just for Goons vs BoB-scale fighting.

For example, one of the best ~gudfites~ in eve happened not too long ago. Iirc two groups(not sure who, this is from memory) went at it in syndicate - one group had ~15 dreads + support, and the other side had ~6 dreads + 2x SCs + support. Without the SCs, it woulda been a total rapefest for one side - with the addition of the two SCs, it was turned into a ~gudfite~ with plenty of kills on both sides in an evenly matched fight. None of the SCs died, but a GF was had by all involved. THAT is how SCs should be used - to balance out imbalanced numbers fights, not "drop 100 SCs and 50 titans, rape everything" as they are now.

[Itiken]

I feel introducing mass limits to cynos, akin to WHs would solve a lot of the "OMGLOL200 NYX WE WIN" stuff.
no numbers to hand but say 15 Normal Caps / 4 SC&titan per cyno.
Sure you can drop 15 pantheon Archons, light 15 more cynos, drop 60 Titans, but it makes life a bit more interesting than "PUSH BUTAN WIN FITE"
DD/ECM needs to go though. I'm cool with Portals, to a degree, but again, within cyno mass limits.

[Mike deVoid]

Cool. Well then summarise your intentions too .

[Itiken]

Cynos mass limits to around 15 dread/carrier ~ 3 scaps/titans
Titan Portal usses cyno mass limits (1-time fule usage)
DD Increase the CD (to 1 hour.?)
- 60 titans wipe out 60 carriers. :dealwithit.gif:
ECM Burst Unusable in lowsec
Allow scaps to fit siege and triage modules
- fighter bombers need siege to deploy
Leave links on SC/Titans
- fix links by making them links grid only

in LS's example - both 'teams' would fit through a Single in cyno.
Everyone inc Supers goes Siege green, and demolition begins.

[LordsServant]

Cynos mass limits to around 15 dread/carrier ~ 3 scaps/titans
Titan Portal usses cyno mass limits (1-time fule usage)
DD Increase the CD (to 1 hour.?)
- 60 titans wipe out 60 carriers. :dealwithit.gif:
ECM Burst Unusable in lowsec
Allow scaps to fit siege and triage modules
- fighter bombers need siege to deploy
Leave links on SC/Titans
- fix links by making them links grid only

in LS's example - both 'teams' would fit through a Single in cyno.
Everyone inc Supers goes Siege green, and demolition begins.

Theres a few issues with your suggestions and better solutions to the "problems" - also siege on SCs would be literally retarded. Their only advantages over dreads atm are EHP and mobility/tactical flexibiltiy. Perhaps a 1 minute siege cycle, but generally a bad idea.

I just got home from work and feel like shit(the phrase "pissing out your asshole" comes to mind EDIT: as in what Im doing, not what I think of anyones opinions, just to clarify =P ), but I'll expand on why exactly I don't think that shortlist is applicable/feasible atm.

[Liptonez]

Probably a stupid idea, but what do people think about capital plates/extenders? This has been weird to me for a long time now... Why can only supers buffer tank?

I guess it's kinda obvious, simply because motherships + titans (these only somewhat) don't need damage mods to do 8k DPS. But basically everytime you see dreads/carriers dying to supers, they always have active tanks, which practically are completely useless. Something like a "3200mm" plate, giving what 25-50k raw HP would make especially dreads so much more survivable against stupidly high DPS ships. If 20 dreads tanked for 10 more seconds each compared to now, that's an extra what 20 million damage over the time they take to die.