Supercapitals, Ponies and Rainbows.

[Numtini]

You have to understand, if you just make the rest of the game utterly miserable, people will hang out at the crossroads and provide targets.

[Trigona]

I was talking to someone from the drone lands who suggested that Titans should need to use a special fuel to fire a DD, but that the fuel bay required for this fuel only be enough for 2 shots.  A new type of ice, maybe only found in 0.0

Personally I also think that they shouldn't be able to kill sub caps

[Amaron]

You have to understand, if you just make the rest of the game utterly miserable, people will hang out at the crossroads and provide targets.

To be fair that's why they're so desperate for another property.   The vets won't let them fix what's really wrong with the game.   Most empire casual people are never ever going to be interested in high risk gameplay.

[tmp]

I was talking to someone from the drone lands who suggested that Titans should need to use a special fuel to fire a DD, but that the fuel bay required for this fuel only be enough for 2 shots.  A new type of ice, maybe only found in 0.0

Personally I also think that they shouldn't be able to kill sub caps

Maybe just make the titan explode as part of the DD firing process, turning it into the last ditch "up yours" measure from the current weapon it is.

Would solve the problem with their numbers getting out of hand as well

[Nevermore]

How about the more supercaps in a given system the greater the likelihood they're attacked by some NPC superrace, let's call them Antarans, which are designed to crush them. 

[Kageru]

I still think a nerf to supers is good, they should be a symbol of profligate resource use rather than a brutally efficient ship of the line. And making them more fleet command ships sounds good too. But it should also be connected to considering the current Sov structure. Sov is connected to both the super-problem and the blob problem because it ultimately boils down to a series of timers. The timers are needed to balance time-zone advantage but it also means strategy ends up coming down to having more power, in system, when the timer ticks down to zero. Whether that's a blob of super-caps or lagging out the system with sub-caps. It's a war of logistics and tedium.

If they had a system where sov could be a bit more dynamic then a huge blob could be skirmished or out-maneuvered. But a dynamic sov works against the mode of "building up your space". It's actually pretty tough and no game has really come up with a good system.

One approach would be to split sov into two types. Normal sov is relatively easy to capture, cheap to lose (no infrastructure) and can only be done on frontiers (including low-sec and NPC space). For example if you can clear the system and hold it for a small amount of time it's yours. Each alliance has one "capital" system where all the infrasture is. Upgrades radiate out into held space, resources from systems held can be gathered and brought into the capital, starships are manufactured and such. It is hard to take (timers) and even harder to take depending on how much space the alliance holds. So to take the space you need to basically beat their forces back and into submission before you can take the capital. A blob can be defeated by lots of small gangs retaking space to strengthen the defence of the capital. You'd want super-capital pilots for the grand assault but you also want noobies for system attack and defense. The star map provides natural chokepoints already and those become the point at which a new assault will be launched, add some subtle differences to various systems so they become local points of conflict for small gangs.

[Endie]

I suspect that the sov system will be tweake to make it possible to minimise someone's advantages from holding space without making it easier to take their space.  Something, for instance, that lets you shut down their JBs easier than now, steal their moon resources (or their replacement) and so on in smaller gangs while still needing the big battalions if you want to actually take their sov.

[ajax34i]

First, you guys are suggesting permanent, drastic nerfs, which is what we hate CCP for (over-nerfing things).  CCP doesn't need to over-nerf supercapitals, they just need to adjust the built/destroyed and cost/usefulness ratios.  Both of them are out of whack, but most of the things I see suggested would make the ships completely useless and/or cause the destruction of all of them at once.

Second, as far as sov, nullsec sucks to live in.  CCP wants it to be more populated and keeps telling us to go make it a residential area, but their game mechanics are all about industrial parks - you don't have amenities in 0.0, and the point of it is to build supercaps, extract goo, and fight over resources.  Empire is set up to live in, 0.0 is set up to work in.  And lowsec completely fouls up any commute routes.  They tried to make sovereignty be what makes 0.0 more livable, but it's still an industrial area, only now you can build some bare-bones employee barracks on the premises.

CCP doesn't want to go as far as giving Sov the power to make 0.0 as homely as Empire space, and on the other hand making it easy to live in Empire and commute to 0.0 for your daily dose of defending your holdings, wars, mayhem, and fun would change the game quite a bit (what do they do with lowsec, for example).  So, the game is pretty much unfixable, in my opinion.

[Comstar]

most of the things I see suggested would make the ships completely useless and/or cause the destruction of all of them at once.

I see nothing wrong with any such plans. The biggest subcap fight in a long time, between the two biggest NAP's in Eve, >1500 people in VFK happened yesterday, and apparently lag wasn't too bad (anyone who was actually there wish to comment?).

Supercaps are no longer needed. Or wanted, Titan Bridges are ok, and Titan's already provide huge fleet bonuses if anyone actually ran then as Fleet Command ships, but no one does for some reason I've never understood.

[Simond]

CCP doesn't need to over-nerf supercapitals

Yes they do. Restricting by cost and build time was CCP's original plan, and it doesn't work.

[Sir T]

The other restriction was the sheer time you need to train to be in one. Of course with people selling eve characters on ebay, any prospective titan character can shave months or a year off the time easily. Hell my character could step into a Titan tomorrow of i had the isk for the hull and skillbooks. Any dread pilot has the majority of the training done.

most of the things I see suggested would make the ships completely useless and/or cause the destruction of all of them at once.

I see nothing wrong with any such plans. The biggest subcap fight in a long time, between the two biggest NAP's in Eve, >1500 people in VFK happened yesterday, and apparently lag wasn't too bad (anyone who was actually there wish to comment?).

Supercaps are no longer needed. Or wanted, Titan Bridges are ok, and Titan's already provide huge fleet bonuses if anyone actually ran then as Fleet Command ships, but no one does for some reason I've never understood.

one of the problem with supers now is that even if you nerf their power to the level of a Battleship they are in such numbers that you could sit them in a POS somewhere in the center of a region and pop them on top of any gang you want. Roaming gangs are single guys in falcons. Eve is at its best with supcap fights, and even dreads and carriers don't cause as many problems as they are fragile enough to actually die. That said the same capital bloat problem exists with capitals as well. Once you lose your capitals its almost impossible to achieve parity again. But at least you can fight with battleships.

[Goumindong]

CCP doesn't need to over-nerf supercapitals, they just need to adjust the built/destroyed and cost/usefulness ratios. 

Doing that will require massive nerfs. Quite possibly beyond what has been proposed here.

Furthermore, lets get some other things out of the way

1) You cannot just adjust the cost. If the last few years of EVE has not taught you that increasing the cost will just delay the time it takes to get a super-capital blob then i don't know what will(productive capacity is increasing, not decreasing/staying the same) Furthermore, if you need super-capitals in order to fight someone with a super-cap blob then increasing the cost INCREASES the gulf between the people who have blobs already and those that don't.

2) You cannot adjust the "built/destroyed ratio" without nerfing the shit out of them. You also cannot get usefulness to the right place without nerfing the shit out of them

This means that you have to nerf the everloving shit out of them or you have to radically re-design their role in the game.

[Stabs]

Is he talking about making 0.0 less useful?

I think what he's talking about is not varying resources across different areas of null sec. The one resource notable for being concentrated in a certain area (Technetium) has become a bit of a game design fiasco.

I think he's rather talking about the lack of resources that depend on nullsec for extraction. There are too many other sources of megacyte than nullsec Arkonor. High sec ice mining is a little too good for an activity so afk-friendly and low risk (outside of Hulkageddon).

(And that's why he says they got it right for T3. If you want T3 components you have to go to W-space).

So what we may see is something like Stront being removed from the high sec ice and restricted only to nullsec ice, but available everywhere in nullsec that has Ice fields. Drone compounds and mission loot that yield megacyte may have the amount reduced. I imagine the aim is to get more people doing a wider variety of tasks in nullsec than the current trend towards every nullsecer being a carebear-despising pvper.

[palmer_eldritch]

Is he talking about making 0.0 less useful?

I think what he's talking about is not varying resources across different areas of null sec. The one resource notable for being concentrated in a certain area (Technetium) has become a bit of a game design fiasco.

I think he's rather talking about the lack of resources that depend on nullsec for extraction. There are too many other sources of megacyte than nullsec Arkonor. High sec ice mining is a little too good for an activity so afk-friendly and low risk (outside of Hulkageddon).

(And that's why he says they got it right for T3. If you want T3 components you have to go to W-space).

So what we may see is something like Stront being removed from the high sec ice and restricted only to nullsec ice, but available everywhere in nullsec that has Ice fields. Drone compounds and mission loot that yield megacyte may have the amount reduced. I imagine the aim is to get more people doing a wider variety of tasks in nullsec than the current trend towards every nullsecer being a carebear-despising pvper.

Ah, that sounds a lot more promising. I hope you're right.

[Brolan]

How about if you make supers more vulnerable to smaller ships?  So you need an escort of smaller ships to keep them safe?  That would reduce their numbers in a fleet.

You know how torpedos scale down damage when they hit a small ship?  How about having bombs from stealth bombers scale up damage when they hit larger ships?   They can make up some technobabble for why this happens.

[Comstar]

You know how torpedos scale down damage when they hit a small ship?  How about having bombs from stealth bombers scale up damage when they hit larger ships?   They can make up some technobabble for why this happens.

But then you'd need escorts for caps and supercaps and a balanced fleet and 35 day newbees could fly Xwings and destroy the bridge deflector shields to ohgodthatwouldbesogood. Hell it would give *destroyers* something to do. Not to mention making Hurricanes.

[TripleDES]

Faction Warfare, All of Lowsec, Ice Mining, L5 missions.

Practically being a pain in our asses, trying to get us to play their stuff to try to keep the status quo that took no/less effort before? Ace!

[Amaron]

How about if you make supers more vulnerable to smaller ships?  So you need an escort of smaller ships to keep them safe?  That would reduce their numbers in a fleet.

This is what I was pointing out in the second post essentially.     Missiles that do crappy damage to normal ships but really hurt cap ships.   Frigs+Cruisers with massive turrets that have trouble hitting subcaps.    That way you actually need to bring a subcap fleet to take them out.   If you're supercap fleet is subpar you can still win with superior numbers.

[Sir T]

It reminds me of how world war 1 fleet composition came about. It was all ships of the line till the torpedo was invented. Which meant battleships became vulnerable to torpedo boats. Which created the necessity for smaller and more maneuverable capital vessels called Torpedo Boat Destroyers (later shortened to just 'Destroyers') to escort the big ships and protect them from torpedo attack.

Of course if CCP tried such a redesign the old guard would scream that they "deserve" to win becasue of the skillpoint investment. Which is frankly a load of bollox. Their $15 is not any more green than the newbies.

[Pezzle]

This is what I was pointing out in the second post essentially.     Missiles that do crappy damage to normal ships but really hurt cap ships.   Frigs+Cruisers with massive turrets that have trouble hitting subcaps.    That way you actually need to bring a subcap fleet to take them out.   If you're supercap fleet is subpar you can still win with superior numbers.

How do you make them do big cap damage and not big tower/module damage?  Would this be a new ship type?  You do realize they made the stupid supercaps to prevent blobbing.  Making a ship to kill the cap blobs that are supposed to prevent blobbing seems...  Also high sec ganking would get cheaper, among other things.  I really see no way to balance caps and supercaps with the rest of the game in combat.  

[Stabs]

Anti-supercap torpedo boat sounds like a good role for T3 Frigates. Horribly underpowered against subcap fleets, expensive, deadly to unsupported supercap fleets. Fills in a gap in the game, balances supercap blobs, doesn't directly replace any other ship.

And you could balance the nullsec economy at the same time by making them made mainly of morphite and megacyte.

[Pezzle]

Inventing a ship to kill off a ship that has big balance problems is doing it wrong.

[Lantyssa]

Of course if CCP tried such a redesign the old guard would scream that they "deserve" to win becasue of the skillpoint investment. Which is frankly a load of bollox. Their $15 is not any more green than the newbies.

Their $15 is probably less than a newbie's $15 since they're more likely to be able to buy plex with ISK, at that.

[Fordel]

It reminds me of how world war 1 fleet composition came about. It was all ships of the line till the torpedo was invented. Which meant battleships became vulnerable to torpedo boats. Which created the necessity for smaller and more maneuverable capital vessels called Torpedo Boat Destroyers (later shortened to just 'Destroyers') to escort the big ships and protect them from torpedo attack.

Of course if CCP tried such a redesign the old guard would scream that they "deserve" to win becasue of the skillpoint investment. Which is frankly a load of bollox. Their $15 is not any more green than the newbies.

It's Bollox but they would win anyways, CCP is part of the 'old guard' remember. 

[Amaron]

Inventing a ship to kill off a ship that has big balance problems is doing it wrong.

Weren't cap ship fleets a problem before supercap fleets became the new problem?

[Kageru]

Not that I've heard of. Carriers die fairly quickly to sustained fire in a way that super-caps don't. I believe there's a whole bunch of people interested in seeing how many maelstroms it takes to alpha-strike one.

[DayDream]

I don't play this game, but aren't assault frigates somehow "missing" a ship bonus or something?


How about just giving assault frigates like +1000% damage to super capital ships?  I'm talking about the ships like the wolf or retribution.   I played with the Eve Fitting Tool a while ago, i seem to remember you could get those frigates up around 250-300 dps, and i kinda remember something like dreadnaughts do like 3000, so i dunno i'm just guessing?

I dunno if eve's combat engine can support doing that, or if there's any precedence to that sort of bonus for effects on specific ship classes?

[TripleDES]

If at all, they should scale their resistance in relation to distance to a supercap. So if they're buzzing around one close by shooting it, their resistances go up a lot, sig radius down, so they can't get picked off that easily, while retaining normal performance when in subcap fights.

[Sir T]

Inventing a ship to kill off a ship that has big balance problems is doing it wrong.

Weren't cap ship fleets a problem before supercap fleets became the new problem?

To a certain extent. First people focused on cap only battles, in which case the bigger blob wins. Case closed. Also that was pre-Apocrypha, where lag ruled and affected everyone bar BOB. When Apocryoha hit and lag cleared to a level not seen before or since, BOB & Co lost 250 caps inside a week and abruptly stopped MAX and fled back south.

People are probably still smarting from the Prenerf supers that were unkillable, and the 4 Motherships MC had effectively destroyed Dusk and Dawn by themselves.

Not that I've heard of. Carriers die fairly quickly to sustained fire in a way that super-caps don't. I believe there's a whole bunch of people interested in seeing how many maelstroms it takes to alpha-strike one.

Also Dreads may be tougher, but once they drop into siege they have to rely on their own tank and its impossible to remote rep them, so spider tanks are out. That balances them out nicely.

[Morat20]

Inventing a ship to kill off a ship that has big balance problems is doing it wrong.

Why? That's how it's done in real life.

[Phildo]

Assault frigates were supposed to get some kind of bonus to afterburning, but that was delayed.

[eldaec]

You could put a huge torps fitting bonus on any number of ships, destroyers would be my favourite (and this would open the way for another t2 destroyer at some point). At the same time you could increase torp damage and explosion radius to effectively increase damage to caps without changing the dps they do when ratting.

But you'd still need to nerf supercap HP, dps, and their ability to receive remote assistance (siege mode for FBs and doomsdays maybe).

Give the dreads a natural role damage bonus to replace the siege damage bonus.

Make the carrier interface for SMA access not horrible, and you could start to see them used to carry anti capital destroyers or something idk.

[Sparky]

Inventing a ship to kill off a ship that has big balance problems is doing it wrong.

Why? That's how it's done in real life.

No one new will ever join Eve if they have to grind being a spearman for 6 months.

[Morat20]

No one new will ever join Eve if they have to grind being a spearman for 6 months.

Not what I meant. I meant that, in real warfare, if you've got some sort of overwhelming advantage -- either people invent a counter, or you win. :)

Since "them winning a crushing victory forever and ever" is out, and it appears that -- tactically -- there is no real solution, the EVE devs are forced into one of two solutions.

Either nerf the overwhelming advantage bit or develop a counter.

Something like cheap destroyers fitted with capital ship-killers is actually not only a kinda workable idea, but is the sort of tactic/response real world would come up with. (As noted above with carriers, submarines, etc).

The worst thing you could do would be to develop an even bigger ship, capable of killing capital ships. Then everyone would just move on to flying that. Retasking something like t2 or t3 destroyers and forcing the enemy to start dedicating resources to handling them is at least a leg up on that. Every pilot flying an escort ship isn't one flying a capital ship, and as long as the new anti-capital ship ships aren't capable of face-raping battleships, well....

Plus it fits into their already developed "big and slow can't hit fast and small" concept. You won't want to risk your blob of supercapitals until you clean out all their nasty little "I might die, but I'm taking two months of supercap with me" gankers.

[eldaec]

Inventing a ship to kill off a ship that has big balance problems is doing it wrong.

Why? That's how it's done in real life.

No one new will ever join Eve if they have to grind being a spearman for 6 months.

Everyone in EVE "grinds" flying a small tackler/ewar/bomber/whatever for at least 6 months. Then generally have more fun than the capital guys do, because a Rifter pilot never ever has to shoot or rep a POS.

Takes almost 6 months before you can fly a mediocre battleship properly. These are arguably the most enjoyable 6 months you'll ever have in EVE Online : The Spaceship Themed Bad Game.