Allow Capital Ships, Supercarriers, and Titans in Highsec

[Solonius_Rex]

@Sabus_Narian

Perhaps, but you could dock in blue sotiyos and build supers that way, and amass a stockpile until your ready to ship them down etc.

No, you couldnt. Docking and using the services are on different access lists. You can be allowed to dock, and denied from using services.

I guess you didnt know that about structures.

[Solonius_Rex]

@Sabus_Narian

No it is not unfair, it is good. I actually have a question for you, do you think highsec incursions are a good thing?

I think the amount of ISK/LP is outrageously unbalanced for such a low-risk activity. Which is why I ran a lot of incursions.

[Solonius_Rex]

@Sabus_Narian

Or sent alliance wide, use your brain.

Ive been in goonswarm since keepstars began. What are you talking about.

[Zyal_Oskold]

I can guarantee that if supers and caps were in high sec, a good 7/8ths of your corporation would quit the game.

You think the pirate gangs are a pain in the ass in high sec? Give em caps and watch what happens.

High, Low, Null, Wh all have different mechanics and metas for a reason.

If you want caps and supers, nut up and go to low/null/wh.

You are proposing a game breaking change that would frankly ruin EvE far more than it already has been ruined.

Now back to eating popcorn and watching this trash fire.

[Solonius_Rex]

@Sabus_Narian

I view capital ships as the shiny toys that everyone wants, they are effective, they are big, and can serve as great content generators. In addition, I also love to see capital ships get destroyed in fights,

Anyone can get them, and they already are being destroyed.

@Sabus_Narian

Therefore, I propose to allow Capital ships all the way up to Titans to be allowed in highsec. The only change will be the gate mechanics, the superweapons would be banned, both for balance and for lore reasons, cynosural generators will also be banned, in order to force decisions between travel and useful fits, and all capital ships will not be allowed to dock in NPC stations, carriers must use fortizar outposts, and supercarriers and titans must use keepstars, hopefully causing many fights as groups strive to drop outposts to escape their capital tombs, and to make a capital in highsec an expensive toy, both in purchase, and in storage.

Bad idea, but lets go over your reasoning.

@Sabus_Narian

In addition, since capitals will only be able to be built in lowsec, nullsec, and wormhole space, with supercarriers and titans being exclusive to nullsec builders, this would help to buff the recently nerfed nullsec region, as the vast highsec demand can only be met by nullsec alliances with upgraded solar systems. Does an alliance gain riches by selling these ships to eager highseccers, or conserve them to further their own fleet strength?

Bad idea, bad reasoning.

A). Nullsec doesnt need more wealth. The whole point of the nerfs was aimed to reduce wealth in nullsec. CCP saw too much wealth in nullsec as a problem, and nerfed it. You admit there is a disparity between nullsec and Hisec, and yet, you want it to increase. Dont contradict yourself.

B). Theres a reason why alliances have a rule against selling supers to outside players. Its happened before, and the alliance that did so, basically got kicked out of their region by their own supercaps that were bought by their opponents.

The only alliance capable of selling supers and still maintain their super supremacy, is the Imperium. You know, that section of space in the MER that always seems to mine more than 4 times the amount of the next largest section of space? But even they arent stupid enough to allow supers to fall into enemy hands.

Apparently, you are, though.

@Sabus_Narian

Finally, this would help increase the revenue for CCP Games, as players with deep pockets would want to show off their new toys by buying plex, helping to increase revenue.

Again, you can already buy supers.

@Sabus_Narian

Flaws in this proposal include more power to capsuleers for missions, incursions, and invasions. This can be countered by having missions be buffed with extra high speed frigates that exclusively attack fighters, to add annoyance to the mission runner in exchange for his new power, incursions are now limited to only one spawn at a time, meaning mass contests and friction between capsuleers, and invasions can easily have a dreadnaught that spawns in presence of capitals, similar to a wormhole escalation.

So lets counter carriers by making the rats tougher.

How are the regular ships being balanced around this?

Tougher rats against carriers, means tougher rats against all other ships too.

Seems like your fix, breaks everything below capitals.

@Sabus_Narian

In addition, presence of capitals for the highsec wars would help drive up demand for capital ships, both to kill structures and defend them. This would also open up an avenue for nullsec alliances to wage war across the game, as striking your rivals capital reserves in highsec, and controlling key solar systems with capitals, is now a valid option.

Sure. Lets have the giant blue donut, and unstoppable killing machine that is Test/Goons, invade hisec with their already-vast fleets of dreads and Supers.

You remember Burn Jita, where Goons were able to convince a hundred people to sacrifice ships in order to gank freighters?

I wonder how many people they would be able to convince to just go on a roflstomp across hisec in an unstoppable killing rampage. Great Idea. Very balanced. Hisec-only corps like yours will definately be on par with groups that have been building and maintaing and perfecting Capitals and supercapital production, use, and movement, for over a decade.

What a fair chance all those hisec corps have.

@Sabus_Narian

Thank you for reading my proposal, I hope it helps you to both think of new ideas in order to improve this great game, and to come up with improvements in order to make my idea even better.

We already gave you improvements. Make Capitals perma-suspect while in hisec, or better yet, attacked by faction police as if they were a -10.0 criminal in hisec. That would make it fine for capitals to be in hisec.

[Wacky_Wobbler_Wibble]

This is hilarious. It just boils down to “i don’t want to go to null, just give me null sec content in high sec”

Sabus give it up dude, aint gonna happen, ever

[Solonius_Rex]

@Max_Deveron

Player1: Uhm…(WTF) sure…

CONTINUED:

Player1: Uhh, why cant you just contract me one right now? Ive got the isk.
Player2: I dont have any to give you right now. If you want one really badly, there are some in Basgerin for sale, im sure of it.

Player1: But you said you had like 10 ready?
Player2: Yeah, theyre all called for. It takes like 2-3 weeks just to build a super, let alone building all the components for it. Im not going to spend a month of my time and 10 billion isk worth of minerals, just for a supercarrier to sit in my hangar collecting dust. For titans, its worse, and its gonna take like 50 billion isk worth of minerals and even more time. If you want one, its gonna take some time, and youre gonna have to wait in line.

Player1: (Crap, im gonna be kicked for sure if i have to wait a month.) Uhh, okay, ill buy from Basgerin then.
Player2: Sure. Fly safe.

[Wacky_Wobbler_Wibble]

Haha. That was an awesome sauce story dude, should do more like it, kinda points out the dumbness of this thread lol

[Sabus_Narian]

EDIT: I would also combine this proposal with a broad nerf to total capital hitpoints, reduction in starting resist, and increase in mineral cost, to better balance cost with effectiveness. A high end battleship is around 500m-1.5B isk in value, thus the tank of a carrier shouldn’t be that much greater than a battleship, instead the price gives you jump drive capability and increased damage and application vs a battleship. Same with supercarriers, several million hitpoints and an increase in mineral cost is balanced, compared to the price of a frigate through a battleship. Having such a high jump from battleship to capital ship is arguably the biggest contributor to the capital supremacy doctrine that dominates the nullsec meta.

EDIT: Another balancing feature that would help make CCP money is to release a ‘licensing’ fee for each capital that you want to enter highsec. This license lasts until you leave highsec, and will be on a scaling feature, say 1000 Plex for carrier/dread, 3000 plex for a supercarrier, and 5000 plex for a titan.

Removing some of the hitpoints from supercarriers to make them more in line with sub-capitals, and pay to allow them to go into highsec with plex, could be good balance. What do you think?

[Sabus_Narian]

This is hilarious. It just boils down to “i don’t want to go to null, just give me null sec content in high sec”

Sabus give it up dude, aint gonna happen, ever

It concerns you enough that it can happen to make a podcast, which by the way I appreciate Evocationz Adhera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsrol9PFo5c

[Wacky_Wobbler_Wibble]

Okay I give up, there is literally no way around that massive ego to make u see sense, best of luck Sabus, grtz, you’re a ego maniac

[Sabus_Narian]

I love how you say that threads like mine “need to be shut down”. Why is that?

[Arrendis]

Oh dear god no.

Seriously, no. Enjoy the fact that there’s a part of space where titans and supers can’t go. The presence of supercapitals in highsec warfare would create the same situation it’s created in null warfare: A distinct lack of warfare.

@Sabus_Narian

Same with supercarriers, several million hitpoints and an increase in mineral cost is balanced, compared to the price of a frigate through a battleship. Having such a high jump from battleship to capital ship is arguably the biggest contributor to the capital supremacy doctrine that dominates the nullsec meta.

It’s not. The real jump isn’t from battleship to capital, though there is a definite jump there. That’s also a result of a missing half-step (Small: Frigate → Destroyer. Medium: Cruiser → Battlecruiser. Large: Battleship → ???) that creates more feeling of a gap than the mechanics actually produce. But the problem jump isn’t capitals. It’s supers. Let’s take a quick look at the progression (and full disclosure, I know someone who’s working on a larger article about this and what it all means, hopefully coming out not long after the new year on INN).

Example:
Moa → Megathron:
386dps → 528dps. An increase of roughly 36%
72.1k ehp → 201k ehp. Increase of 178%

Megathron → Moros
528 dps → 7399 dps. An increase of roughly 1400%
201k ehp → 2.25M ehp. An increase of roughly 1100%x.

This increase is roughly proportionate. The dps increase and the ehp increase in both full-step cases is fairly close together^[1]. The battleship’s in more of a ‘survive longer’ stance while the dread is in ‘kill more’, but the numbers aren’t out of line with one another, or really that horrible as a continuing progression. But now, let’s look at the next step.

Moros → Erebus (WITHOUT OFFICER FITS || Doomsday not included in dps #s^[2].)
7399 dps → 13259 dps. Increase: 79% increase
2.25M ehp → 40.9M ehp. 1818% increase.

Suddenly, the increase in damage and the increase in tank are completely decoupled. There’s a reason the only thing that kills titans in any kind of decent-sized group is titans in an even bigger group: nothing else lives long enough to chew through all that ehp. Sure, you might kill 1 or 2 titans with 100 dreads if they’re isolated, but if not? You won’t get the titans. You’ll at best get some faxes or dreads or rorquals while the hostile titan pilots have themselves a grand old time turning you into killmarks. Titans (and supercarriers, too, considering the 46.7M ehp the Aeon sits around) and supers just don’t die unless you pound on them with a fairly hefty group.

As for balancing around material costs… no. Don’t ever fall into that trap. That’s how they were originally balanced when CCP imagined there’d never be more than 4 or so titans in the game. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because it just means the people who are already in the best position will run away with the arms race even more, because we not only have the biggest supercapital fleet, we’ve got the most masochistically single-minded autistic nerds ever assembled all mining their little black hearts out to make more.

This same effect kicks in, only much, much worse, for the ‘pay to enter highsec’ option. It basically ensures that the richest groups, who already have a metric buttload of these things and the ability to generate vast sums of ISK, will have more access to capitals in highsec. Not just because they can afford to pay, but because they can afford to pay and will pay for titans fleets that won’t ever leave highsec. They’ll just kill the capitals everyone else is paying to bring in. Really. Never, ever balance against ‘cost’. It’s a fool’s gambit, and it will only explode in your face exactly the way it consistently has in EVE over the last 16 years.

---

<sup>1. The Mega does look like those numbers are hugely varied, but it’s just because the numbers are, by comparison, a bit small.
2. The doomsday’s not being included because you fire it once, and then it’s done for the next 4-5 minutes. Entire ships can die in that time where the DD isn’t applying at all, so the #s would be misleading.</sup>

[Sabus_Narian]

You wrote an excellent post, thank you for taking the time to write it, the footnotes make it exceptional.

It’s not. The real jump isn’t from battleship to capital, though there is a definite jump there. That’s also a result of a missing half-step (Small: Frigate → Destroyer. Medium: Cruiser → Battlecruiser. Large: Battleship → ???) that creates more feeling of a gap than the mechanics actually produce. But the problem jump isn’t capitals. It’s supers. Let’s take a quick look at the progression (and full disclosure, I know someone who’s working on a larger article about this and what it all means, hopefully coming out not long after the new year on INN).

Your right, the progression from battleship to capital is immense, in terms of ability, damage, and hitpoints. While I wish to see the ship classes equal across New Eden in terms of accessibility, you speak the truth when it comes to the craziness from battleship to carrier/dreadnaught. Short of massively nerfing capitals, I think several new classes of ship should be introduced starting from the next level up from battleship, to the level down from carrier/dreadnaught. Perhaps these ships could be the ‘hunter killer’ class of capital, designed specifically to be a nuisance to the larger ships.

Suddenly, the increase in damage and the increase in tank are completely decoupled. There’s a reason the only thing that kills titans in any kind of decent-sized group is titans in an even bigger group: nothing else lives long enough to chew through all that ehp. Sure, you might kill 1 or 2 titans with 100 dreads if they’re isolated, but if not? You won’t get the titans. You’ll at best get some faxes or dreads or rorquals while the hostile titan pilots have themselves a grand old time turning you into killmarks. Titans (and supercarriers, too, considering the 46.7M ehp the Aeon sits around) and supers just don’t die unless you pound on them with a fairly hefty group.

I agree, nerfs to supercarriers/titans or introduction of specific anti-capital ship classes could help alleviate this.

As for balancing around material costs… no. Don’t ever fall into that trap. That’s how they were originally balanced when CCP imagined there’d never be more than 4 or so titans in the game. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because it just means the people who are already in the best position will run away with the arms race even more , because we not only have the biggest supercapital fleet, we’ve got the most masochistically single-minded autistic nerds ever assembled all mining their little black hearts out to make more.

Very true, mineral mining cost in 2006 is vastly different than 2020. I believe the mineral cost should reflect the class of ship. A frigate costs roughly what a frigate class, and so on. You pay/build for performance, if you want a titan class ship, you pay or use the minerals for a titan class ship.

This same effect kicks in, only much, much worse , for the ‘pay to enter highsec’ option. It basically ensures that the richest groups, who already have a metric buttload of these things and the ability to generate vast sums of ISK, will have more access to capitals in highsec. Not just because they can afford to pay, but because they can afford to pay and will pay for titans fleets that won’t ever leave highsec. They’ll just kill the capitals everyone else is paying to bring in. Really. Never, ever balance against ‘cost’. It’s a fool’s gambit, and it will only explode in your face exactly the way it consistently has in EVE over the last 16 years.

This is also a good point, my proposal for the cost was to make it more expensive to own it in highsec than in nullsec, so that CCP can make some more money to help their financial situation. However you are correct that the wealthy can pay for the fee easier than the poor, however that has always been the case, the trillionaire player has greater influence in the sandbox if he starts spending money than the player with a few million. However the little man should always have a place he can fall back to, in highsec this will be NPC stations and perhaps if the balance of keepstar dock only does not work, NPC owned megastations, with unique appearances ‘similar to the new Jita IV-IV under construction’, that allow you to park your supers/titans if you end up losing your citadels in war and pvp.

Let me know what you think, I appreciate the effort that you take in this discussion.

[Arrendis]

@Sabus_Narian

I agree, nerfs to supercarriers/titans or introduction of specific anti-capital ship classes could help alleviate this.

I honestly don’t expect to see any serious nerfs to supercapitals. That’s not CCP’s way. They’ll make some tweaks and twist some knobs, and we’ll see changes like the ones we saw to the BFG—which really didn’t change anything significantly—or the ones to the Muninn and the Ferox before that… which didn’t change anything at all.

I mean, seriously. The Muninn changes didn’t make them any less the dominating subcap in the meta. The Ferox changes made us change all of one module and it’s still the battlecruiser of choice for massive fleets.

They’re not going to change anything in a meaningful way, because changing it in meaningful way would require a large radical change, and they don’t do that. Worse, they’re not wrong, because if they did make a large, radical change… they’d probably be looking at losing subscriptions, just like happened w/the Blackout.

The whole ‘heavy bomber’ idea that’s been floated a few times… it’s been looked at more than once, and on the whole, it introduces even more problems. After all, an anti-capital platform, unless it’s done extremely well… just kills subcaps even better. Especially if it’s a cloaky. Stealth Bombers are already overpowered, and everyone knows it. Make a bigger one? That does more damage? MMmmmmm let’s not.

@Sabus_Narian

perhaps if the balance of keepstar dock only does not work

It doesn’t even work in nullsec. If you aren’t big enough, you can’t defend a keepstar. If you can’t defend a keepstar, you can’t own a keepstar. If you can’t own a keepstar, then your supercarrier and titan pilots can never be used in any other ships. So smaller groups wind up in a situation where a)they don’t have as many pilots (they’re smaller, you know?), and b)the pilots they do have can’t be used in all situations (because they can’t get those characters out of their supers).

And the worst part? This past summer, we demonstrated that the only groups who can defend keepstars are the Imperium, Legacy, and maybe WinterCo^[1]. PanFam couldn’t. Beyond a certain token level of resistance, they didn’t even try. Anyone with a supercapital fleet smaller than PanFam pretty much only owns a Keepstar because neither the Imperium, nor Legacy, have come to kill it.

And really, that’s a bit ridiculous, isn’t it? ‘You guys get to use your supercapital pilots in other ships if and only if the really big groups let you’? That ain’t right.

Really, supers should be removed before they should be allowed to oppress and stifle even more of the game.

---

^{1. I say ‘maybe’ because I don’t have any info on how many titans WinterCo’s got. FRT’s got a fair number, and they’re not small, but Horde’s bigger, and the last two years of war in the North have proven they and the rest of PanFam don’t have enough.}

[Sabus_Narian]

I honestly don’t expect to see any serious nerfs to supercapitals. That’s not CCP’s way. They’ll make some tweaks and twist some knobs, and we’ll see changes like the ones we saw to the BFG—which really didn’t change anything significantly—or the ones to the Muninn and the Ferox before that… which didn’t change anything at all .

I agree, massive nerfs are not the route that game developers tend to pursue, if players like something, then why take it away and lost subscriptions/support.

The whole ‘heavy bomber’ idea that’s been floated a few times… it’s been looked at more than once, and on the whole, it introduces even more problems. After all, an anti-capital platform, unless it’s done extremely well… just kills subcaps even better. Especially if it’s a cloaky. Stealth Bombers are already overpowered, and everyone knows it. Make a bigger one? That does more damage? MMmmmmm let’s not .

Well it will not be cloaked, and it can be killed, the idea is to take say a 300m isk hull, slightly larger than a battleship, and have it be able to fit XL weaponry, similar to a talos or other such battlecruiser can fit large guns. So the ship will do around 2000-4000 dps, and be annoying to kill with fighters and capitals. It can be destroyed much easier than a capital, but the cost and insurance favors the side deploying these ships. It is just an idea.

It doesn’t even work in nullsec . If you aren’t big enough, you can’t defend a keepstar. If you can’t defend a keepstar, you can’t own a keepstar. If you can’t own a keepstar, then your supercarrier and titan pilots can never be used in any other ships. So smaller groups wind up in a situation where a)they don’t have as many pilots (they’re smaller, you know?), and b)the pilots they do have can’t be used in all situations (because they can’t get those characters out of their supers).

Very fair point, sadly nullsec now is dominated by those big 3 factions, all the others really don’t have any sort of chance to compete in a full scale war against them. Reading this I’m in favor of having a ‘super’ station in every highsec region, which will be very large with ability to dock and undock supercarriers/titans, where highsec residents can park their ships in the event of nullsec destroying all highsec keepstars and citadels. The good thing about highsec is you can be kicked, but you can never be kicked beyond a certain point, you can lose everything and still have NPC stations to fallback to and rise up again. if you want an easier time to travel and store your supercarriers, you need to enter the keepstar risk, and local keepstars in strategic areas will be great isk makers and content generators.

Really, supers should be removed before they should be allowed to oppress and stifle even more of the game.

I as a highsec resident wrote this post in order to balance the game, which will never be balanced if highsec residents cannot access all the ships that other players get to have. However if you remove supercarriers/titans from the game completely, then I will support that, since it helps highsec residents. And having just carriers/dreads would be fine by me, since those will be the highest level of ship in the game. But like you said, such drastic action will cost CCP financially, the potential value of supercarriers/titans to help CCP make money, simply because they are the ‘big toys’ that people want to show off, vastly outweighs the penalties of removing them.

Hence why I want them in highsec, imagine the amount of plex being bought, not only to buy them, but to pay for all the fancy skins on the NES store. The isk sink applications as well are valuable, more will be destroyed, sold and thus be charged tax, and more players will know of them and want to have one.

[Arrendis]

@Sabus_Narian

Well it will not be cloaked, and it can be killed, the idea is to take say a 300m isk hull, slightly larger than a battleship, and have it be able to fit XL weaponry, similar to a talos or other such battlecruiser can fit large guns.

Right. So it’ll basically die to dreads as soon as it’s on-grid. That’s… kind of part of the problem, you know? The big issue is just how much the supercapitals can endure, damage-wise. Let’s say you do 4000dps. Drop 100 of them. You need 100 seconds to kill a single titan, assuming you hit it in the weak resist and there’s no faxes.

Any bets on 100 of them surviving that long with a battleship’s ehp? Let’s keep in mind: if it’s a missile boat using Citadel Cruise/Torpedos, you’ve got to add flight time while the supers (which are always aligned) prep to warp off. If you’re using guns, that goes away…

At that point, why are you ever fielding anything but these ships to fight battleships? After all, dreads hit battleships perfectly well w/XL guns. These are just mini-dreads that are mobile, can fit MJDs, use mid-slots full of tracking computers to get reasonable tracking on enemy battleships, and fire out to God’s own range^[1]. Now the subcap meta is these things and high-speed HACs (ie: Muninns and Eagles, mostly). And… nothing else, because you don’t dare field anything else. Except bombers. We’ll come back to that…

But that’s not the worst effect of these things. The worst effect of these things is the psychological follow-ons. How important was getting into the biggest, baddest thing in space to that player? How much did that cost them in terms of time and effort? Not just the time to get the titan itself, but the time sunk into the skills for the titan or supercarrier? That question matters, you see, because by introducing this cheap, disposable supercap killer, CCP’s told them ‘your time and effort beyond getting battleships and XL weapons is meaningless to us. You wasted that time.’

And as soon as CCP is sending the message to players that chasing their goals is a waste of their time because the devs will nerf those goals into the ground when they feel it’s necessary… you’ve got angry players, just like happened this summer w/the Blackout. And if they feel like a game company’s just taken a crap all over years of work, all over years of their life, really… why do they keep giving that company money?

I’m not saying that reaction is desirable. I’m not saying those players won’t be short-sighted. I’m just saying it will happen if CCP goes the route of ‘disposable supercap killer’. And that’ll happen without the bevy of supercapital kills people want these things to produce. We’ll come back to that, too.

@Sabus_Narian

Very fair point, sadly nullsec now is dominated by those big 3 factions, all the others really don’t have any sort of chance to compete in a full scale war against them.

It’s worse than that. The ‘big 3’… can’t really afford to compete in a full-scale war, either.

We can’t. Not really. Nobody can afford to use their supercapital fleet in a battle they aren’t reasonably confident of either winning, or getting out of with minimal losses. That’s because nobody can afford to lose their supercapital fleet, not even us. Losing the supercapital fleet means not just losing that war, but losing the next 2 years… if you’re lucky.

When we attacked Tribute, NCdot wisely chose to forfeit their space in order to save their supercapital fleet. Three years ago, when the MBC attacked us in the North, we made the exact same decision. If somehow we and PanFam were to fall on Legacy, Vily’s too smart to not make the same call.

Supers are what you need to take space. Supers are what you need to hold space. You need space to build supers. If you don’t have supers, but you do have space, you won’t hold space unless you build a lot of supers, fast. If you don’t have space, but you do have supers, you can get space. If you don’t have space, and you don’t have supers… suck up to someone who does, until you’ve got the supers to go looking for someone who has fewer, and then take their space.

And that’s why the ‘heavy bomber’ or ‘pocket dread’ idea… the ‘this thing kills supers and costs very little’ won’t get the massive number of supercapital kills people (including us!) want: once those things exist, you won’t see supercapitals being lost, because you won’t see them being used, unless one side or the other knows they have a massive support fleet in place to quickly wipe out any hostile cap-killers that show up.

So the small groups who’d want to use those things? They won’t be the ones using them, because the big groups will use large fleets of stealth bombers to BlOps in on a covert cyno, get set up, and prep to blow the crap out of any cap-killers that show up, nice and safely cloaked^[2]. You know who’ll use them?

The big groups. Because they can throw away fleets of battleships, and they can have these things on-grid with support in order to provide deterrent against the enemy escalating. So the supercapitals won’t die. And eventually, in 2-3 years, CCP will forget what the conditions were that led to those changes^[3], and they’ll convene another capitals focus group^[3a], and we’ll be right back here again.

Only in the intervening time, because big groups adapt better^[4] than small groups do, the big groups will be even more dominant, with more of a head start on the new arms race.

@Sabus_Narian

Hence why I want them in highsec, imagine the amount of plex being bought, not only to buy them, but to pay for all the fancy skins on the NES store. The isk sink applications as well are valuable, more will be destroyed, sold and thus be charged tax, and more players will know of them and want to have one.

But no, introducing them to HS wouldn’t have the effect you think it will. The supercapitals won’t be destroyed there. Remember: you still have to actually declare war. In HS, the big null blocs can see you coming. And they can just destroy your war HQ with bombers.

At the same time, CCP has to be extremely careful about trying to increase the demand on PLEX. Demand increases, PLEX price increases, and last year, we saw just how close things still are to PLEX price being high enough to start to have serious follow-on impacts on the economy. CCP actively began to take measures to reduce that price… but that’s not going to last if there’s a new, massive surge in demand^[5]. It’ll just make it impossible for smaller guys, especially people trying to make their money in HS, to afford to PLEX their accounts, and ultimately will drive players out of the game.

And again, I’m not saying all of this is good. I’m not saying this is desirable or in any way something we should be looking at and going ‘oh, well, awesome!’ about. It sucks. The supercapital problem may well be un-fixable at this point unless CCP’s willing to seriously sit the players down and say ‘here’s the situation. Here’s how we’re looking at fixing it. We know this will take years to pull off. We know it’s gonna suck until then. So in the meantime, here’s how we want to make it suck less, and here’s how we’ll try to offset the bits we can’t make suck less. Do you guys have any feedback here, before we do this?’

And then… and then… they have to do the thing they’re not doing now: they have to engage in the feedback discussions, instead of dropping a feedback thread and utterly ignoring it. 12,000+ posts in the Blackout threads. No CCP responses. Extensive feedback about the HyperNet Relay on these forums. And I don’t mean the ‘no gambling!!’ stuff, I mean serious looks at the UI and implementation. No CCP responses.

And I don’t think that’s because Convict doesn’t want to reply, I think it’s because the community team is short-handed compared to the workload. Just like basically every other team at CCP. They slashed payroll in order to sell the company, and as a result… there just ain’t enough people there to do what needs doing. And I really wish that wasn’t a completely foreseeable result, but…

Well, look at what’s happened with the AT.

---

^{1. Because if they’re short-range, welcome to massed BFGs as the supercapital fleet’s defensive weaponry.}

^{2. This, btw, is why if these cap-killers get put in, they’ll need to be cloaky in order to be effective. If they’re not cloaky, they’ll be prey to stealth-bombers. And that’s already the reason regular battleships don’t get used: too slow to avoid bombs, and the torpedo is a weapon designed to kill battleships. Exactly the situation the supers would face, scaled down 2 steps.}

^{3. Just like they forgot why they nixed the original AoE DDs and tracking titans. Really, I’m a little surprised they didn’t go back to ‘hey, we should let them DD through cynos!’ while they were at it.
3a. And it, too, will be filled with ‘capital ship experts’ just like the last one was, which will translate out to ‘players who want their supers to be unstoppably OP death machines because they, too, have forgotten what happened when they were’, just like the last one.}

^{4. I know Hilmar’s a big fan of ‘small, indie studios always disrupt the paradigm and out-compete the big guys’, but really, that’s a phenomenally foolish viewpoint for him to take. If that were true, CCP wouldn’t have had to turn to VC money a decade ago, and they wouldn’t have had to sell themselves to Pearl Abyss. Small organizations adapt faster, not better. In the vast majority of cases, that fast adaptation is ‘die’. Small businesses fold up shop more often, and far faster, than Fortune 500 companies. Small populations are more vulnerable to environmental disruptions killing them off than large ones.}

^{5. And they’re acutely aware of this limit, too. If they want to push more PLEX/microtransactions by any significant degree, they need to grow the playerbase. That’s why the number of hypercores needed for raffles depends on the market price of the cores. Cores, ultimately, all come from PLEX, so the market price is linked to PLEX prices, and hews pretty close to the 1:10 point, since you get 100 cores for 10 PLEX. As the price of PLEX goes up, the price of cores goes up. As the price of cores goes up, the number of cores needed for a given raffle goes down. This has the effect of mitigating demand: as they get more expensive, you need to buy fewer of them, so the price can go back down.}

[Eivar]

Please don’t bring those things to HS. It’d be like herding elephants throughout a Universal theme park: lots of but no one wants to clean up the mess.

[Max_Deveron]

If you have to nerf Capitals so much like this…
To be in HS…

Then its simply not worth having them in HS, besides being game broken.

@ISD_Buldath could we get this thread closed now for its trollish and purposefully flammatory reason of creation?

[Sabus_Narian]

If you have to nerf Capitals so much like this…
To be in HS…

Then its simply not worth having them in HS, besides being game broken.

So if there is an imbalance, it is best to leave it be because it benefits you?

could we get this thread closed now for its trollish and purposefully flammatory reason of creation?

Only people being trollish and flammatory is you and others who don’t want the status quo to change, tell me why highsec should remain inferior to other areas of the game and lacking in end ship content?