So the only way to kill a cap outside of an actual fight is if the pilot is incompetent. Hard pass.
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Well does code complain when they spend say 5-10m isk to kill a 20m barge? 10b in hulls yes, but if you kill the titan the killmail is worth more. Some people like the zKillboard statistics, that is their gameplay.
There’s a huge difference between a 10m destroyer piloted by a single pilot and throwing 10b and 100 pilots at a ship with an invulnerability button.
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Well you can still run pve with a full battleship active tank, if you have issue with the above you can organize a ganking party. Remember people do like pve as a gameplay experience, they have just as much right to that gameplay as you have to your niche.
Firstly it has to be fitted, secondly it has to be activated. Your telling me you can’t ship scan all the afk titans roaming about in highsec, find the ones without your ‘button’ and gank them? Also the kill is harder, your killing a titan, not a retriever, you need to put in the work.
They have a right to do anything I can’t stop them from doing. The same works in reverse.
GL with ganking a carrier with an emergency hull energized fit.
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Speedboats in the kiddie pool.
Real men leave the kiddie pool 
Lot’s of variables, you can choose to gank the freighter that has 10B in the cargo and expanded cargo, or the one with plates and no cargo, free game.
No, I’m saying that it shouldn’t be entirely impossible to gank someone who has enough brain cells to rub together. And I really doubt there will be many people driving around AFK just because of the sheer time it takes to get to the gate on autopilot. Besides, these things have jump drives. I’m not going to fly AFK through Niarja when I can just skip right over it with my cyno alt.
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That doesn’t mean that it’s balanced to have a ship with a “push here to escape gank” button.
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Never underestimate human laziness, I’m betting that there will be plenty of these titans flying around for gankers to be entertained:
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Those are botter titans that got a suspect flag. They didn’t have a human pilot to react to what was happening and they certainly didn’t have any CONCORD protection. It’s incredibly disingenuous to compare the two.
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Perhaps it rewards attentive gameplay, I believe you’ll be in favor of a capital pilot surviving a gank if he was at the keyboard and paying attention at the moment he was ganked, while having no sympathy for the one who was ganked while afk.
Finally, the ‘invulnerability button’ is designed to counter the huge ehp of capitals, and make dreadnaught bombs a feasible tactic. If there is a severe ehp nerf, I’m sure the module can be retired, in the name of increasing capital destruction.
But enough about this button, let’s get back to the pros and cons of the OP proposal.
Negative the video above was a hull only no module fit avatar trying to get into highsec, it was killed in lowsec. If you watch the video, I’m sure you wouldn’t mind having him afk piloting across the uedama gate and getting a gank. Especially since a naked titan hull will be around 3-4m ehp.
Sabus is a known profiteer and extortionist. This is just a troll post. Reported.
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Not in capitals in hi-sec.
But you guys can use marauders…
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According to CCP, wrong.
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Chiming in here, once, for the record. Long post with multiple TL;DRs in bold.
Let’s look at a example of EHP progression from Cruiser up to TItan. I’m preferential to Amarr ships (plus they’re notoriously strong when buffer fit) and all entries assume max skills, a single DC2, a single appropriate T2 plate, a single T2 EANM, and 3x T1 trimarks. Yes, I realize that this is an utter peasant fit for Titans and Supers and it’s ignoring the cost of the rest of the fit (which can be substantial), but I wanted an apples to apples comparison. Also, I’m using ISK price (and estimating for the Titan and Super) but really we should be looking at the build cost (which I don’t readily have access to). So treat this as a very, very rough approximation.
- Avatar: 6.5 million EHP, ~65 billion ISK cost, ~100 EHP per million ISK
- Aeon: 4.8 million EHP, ~35 billion ISK cost, ~138 EHP per million ISK
- Revelation: 1.5 million EHP, 1.95 billion ISK cost, ~790 EHP per million ISK
- Archon: 1.15 million EHP, 1.35 billion ISK cost, ~852 EHP per million ISK
- Abaddon: 112k EHP, 214 million ISK cost, ~523 EHP per million ISK
- Prophecy: 75k EHP, 62 million ISK cost, ~1209 EHP per million ISK
- Maller: 33k EHP, 20 million ISK cost, ~1617 EHP per million ISK.
There are two big discrepancies that stand out to me.
The first (highlighted in bold) is the jump in raw EHP from battleships to carriers. But I don’t see that as a problem in and of itself, I see that as a symptom of the real problem, which is the second discrepancy, which I’ve highlighted in italic bold.
The trend in ISK efficiency of ship hulls (that is, how many EHP you get for the build price of your fit) inverts between battleships and carriers. In this regard, smaller subcaps, Titans, and Supers seem to follow roughly the same trend, but Carriers, Dreads, and Battleships seem out of place. I see three ways to fix that:
- Drop the raw EHP of dreads and carriers without reducing their build price.
- Increase the raw EHP of battleships without increasing their build price.
- Some combination of 1 and 2.
All of these solutions present their own unique balance issues.
For #1, Carriers and Dreads are already effectively cannon fodder for targeted Doomsdays, which greatly contributes to the overall supremacy of Titans. Many large nullsec fights in recent history have just been reduced to large Titan fleets volleying smaller capital ships off of the field. Reducing their EHP will only compound that issue. So, in order to address #1, you have to also give a serious look at targeted Doomsdays, and the overall balance of power among the Capital lineup.
For #2, subcaps are already balanced around current battleship EHP values, so increasing those would require a massive re-work of DPS and EHP for the entire subcap lineup. Also, combat-oriented PvE content would require a massive rework since battleships would become significantly harder to kill and subcap DPS would likely be increasing.
For #3, well, anytime you mix two balance issues together, things get complicated.
(Hey @Sabus_Narian, do you understand now why I wanted to have this conversation separate from the idea of allowing capital ships into hisec? Each issue on its own is already incredibly complicated.)
Now, does the trend in ISK efficiency with increasing hull size have to be a linearly decreasing relationship? (i.e. do we need to drop carrier EHP by half or double battleship EHP?)
No.
Capital ships are, and always should be in a class by themselves, separate from subcaps. I don’t necessarily see a problem with there being a discrepancy in ISK efficiency at that transition point between caps and subcaps, but I think there is an issue is with the magnitude of it. Right now, there’s about a 50% discrepancy, I think a 25% one would be far more balanced overall (other issues notwithstanding). (Yes, this is purely my gut feeling, I have no hard data to back this up, just experience and intuition.)
- TL;DR #1: reduce the raw EHP potential of Dreads and Carriers by 25%, or increase the raw EHP potential of Battleships by 25%, or do some mix of the two totaling about 25%.
The other issue here is more subtle, and that is that Titans and Supers effectively have such large EHP pools that in typical combat settings (i.e. not a fleet dropping on a single ship) you get into a traditional N+1 situation where the only way to win is to field more Titans and Supers than the other side.
- TL;DR #2: The current meta N+1 established by the massive EHP pools of Titans and Supers needs to be looked at, but only after addressing TL;DR #1. This adjustment would need to extend well beyond just their EHP
As for capital ships in hisec, one of my largest concerns with that (and I have many, which I’ve laid out here) is the possibility of using buffer-tanked capital ships as highly gank-resistant haulers. If the EHP of carriers and dreads were reduced to the levels proposed by the OP, that would go a long way towards reducing that concern. However, in order to drop their EHP by 50% or more, you’d have to also reduce their mineral cost accordingly; anything else would be far too heavy-handed a nerf to capital ships. Could this work? Possibly? But doing so would likely destroy a massive chunk of existing player wealth and dramatically alter the dynamics of combat all throughout New Eden. This seems like a huge change to make in a single go just to justify allowing formerly restricted ships to operate in hisec.
(I’m not considering Titans, Supers, or Rorqs here since there is a large consensus (including myself) that believes that they have no place in hisec. They’d be even more broken in this regard.)
- TL;DR #3: Nerfing capital ship EHP enough to allow them to operate largely unrestricted in hisec could work, but would almost certainly break ship balance in many unpredictable ways.
Cheers.
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Well written and thought out post, thank you for doing it!
Drop the raw EHP of dreads and carriers without reducing their build price.
This is the point most in line with my stance and proposal, you mention the concern of titans being able to volley lesser capitals off of the field, and with the nerf in ehp, this will be true, most capitals will suffer serious damage from doomsday weapons. But remember the titan itself will also suffer a serious nerf, I want around 5m ehp WITH the buffer fit, lower as a base hull. Effectively, I want titans to be similar to tactical nuclear weapons in real wars, very powerful, but also very expensive and fragile.
I want for the ability to start seriously volleying titans off of the field, say 200 dreads will have the combined dps to start eating fax support like candy, and enough dps to put serious pressure on competent titan pilots, and since dreads can have a temporary ehp boost with the emergency damage control clicky, huge battles can begin and end relatively quickly with untold numbers of losses. Pitched battles and all in drops are now much more important in the null sov war meta.
(Hey @Sabus_Narian, do you understand now why I wanted to have this conversation separate from the idea of allowing capital ships into hisec? Each issue on its own is already incredibly complicated.)
Of course, remember my stance is not only to add more content and improvements to highsec, but as a believer in the sandbox ideal, I want nullsec to be vibrant and healthy, so that people join and stay in the game not only because of a good highsec, but also because of a good nullsec, and eventually a good lowsec, we all know lowsec needs love.
If the EHP of carriers and dreads were reduced to the levels proposed by the OP, that would go a long way towards reducing that concern. However, in order to drop their EHP by 50% or more, you’d have to also reduce their mineral cost accordingly; anything else would be far too heavy-handed a nerf to capital ships.
I disagree with that statement, I’ll cite the example of an Alliance Tournament ship. I believe the mineral costs should be the same, and the ehp dropped by 50% or more, to get the low enough numbers for ganking to be a rare but existing threat in highsec even for titans, and for capital fights to be much more high stakes.
An alliance tournament ship is around 2-10 times better than the equivalent pirate faction variant, depending on the level of modules fitted. If you t2 fit an AT ship, it is about twice as good, if you go all out and fit deadspace/officer abyssal modules, it can get quite powerful, up to 10 times better. But the price is much more, you can say it is unbalanced, paying 150B+ for an AT frigate that may have the same ehp/dps as a small gang of frigates combined.
We both admit that capitals are a huge jump from sub-caps, take the example of a marauder vs a normal carrier, the ehp/dps and abilities simply are greater in all ways, for about the same price. I have no problem with capitals being more of an min-max for capsuleers and their corps/alliances, the meta was best when everyone primarily used sub-caps, and big nullsec fights were battleship fleets, not 300 titans on side a and 300 titans on side b, especially since the small nullsec alliances simply are eliminated in such a scenario.
(I’m not considering Titans, Supers, or Rorqs here since there is a large consensus (including myself) that believes that they have no place in hisec. They’d be even more broken in this regard.)
I believe all ship classes should be accessible in normal space, this includes high/low/null. In order to make this balanced, the ship classes should be balanced with all regions in mind, I believe the nullsec/low exclusivity of capitals caused ccp to disproportionally buff them compared to sub-caps, causing this entire mess. If however capitals are in highsec, then the ehp and other traits need to be balanced in order to be balanced with the other ship classes.
@Bronson_Hughes Thank you for the discussion, do come again I enjoyed it 
NO NERFS PLEASE, better make some battleship able of hunting (HAW-) dreads.