Capital Balance Thread #99 - An Issue of Scale

[Stitch_Kaneland]

@Rowells

I won’t say BS couldn’t use some love to give them some more life, but I tend to find that as an issue derived from them being the top of the bottom of the food chain. Right now, any capital with downward project (carriers/HAW) are basically ships that are multiple tiers up, who’s only acceptable targets are BS. It’s be like if someone built BCs/BSs with the inherent ability to have great effect on Frigates with nothing in between to act a kind of buffer. BS right now are figuratively the whipping post of Eve’s more punishing mechanics and ship balance fulcrums.

Ive said this same thing several times.

Battleships are countered effectively from both sides. Things like assault frigates can walk all over them and then capitals smother them almost completely unopposed.

Battleships miss the dynamic of being able to hit up a level (like frigates can do battleships) by utilizing a smaller sig to counter capital application. LR XL weapons can track subs at 250km, HAW track like battleships and fighters apply nearly perfectly to battleships. To compound this, very few battleships can actually fit a tank or do the damage needed to overwhelm a capital in the same scenario as a well piloted frigate could overwhelm a battleship.

Keep in mind, all battleships are not PvP fit, just like all capitals are not PvP fit. There are plenty of cases of an assault frigate warping in on a PvE battleship (or poorly fit PvP battleship) and actually beating it solo. There is almost no chance of you warping a battleship in solo against a capital and coming out on top. You’ll just be another tick and “what a strange NPC” to a ratting carrier.

Should a battleship be able to solo a carrier or dread? Personally, i feel it should be possible. Certainly not easy or something anyone can do. But someone with good knowledge, fitting skills and a fit purposely designed to kill one should at least be on equal footing while being weak to other ships due to its specific fitting.

Yes, yes, i know, leshaks are a thing. In general though, 1 (potentially OP) battleship does not = all battleships being that way.

Fundamentally, i cant really think of a way to change this without an entire capital rework with actual goals that capitals can participate in, instead of their current, loosely based do everything roles.

Damage caps on structures i feel are a huge deterrant from capitals actually being desired for structure bashes (a role they should be perfect for). Which then forces them into these weird do everything else roles we are in.

Giving defined roles to capitals and fixing structure damage caps would help settle caps into their role. Which makes tweaking them and battleships easier.

[Rowells]

@Naari_Naarian

its an example of good design, involved with emotion or psychological position.

No, it’s an example of lazy design. Just giving a player a set of options means nothing if you don’t build anything else into the choices or consequences.

That aside, you still haven’t manipulated any mindsets by offering a simple choice. The player hasn’t changed their perspective at all. And before you say it, making one choice or the other is not a change in mindset. If the player is already looking for one of those choices and you offer it, you haven’t changed their perspective at all. At best you’ve given them a logical problem to address. They’ll choose what they wanted anyway.

Just like with ships, you’ve only given them the option to do what they want. You haven’t offered a meaningful choice.

@Naari_Naarian

i think you misunderstood. I am ok with subcapitals targeting capitals…

I think you really need to be more clear on your position:

@Naari_Naarian

and potentially, sub-capitals should not be able to target them (with the exception of stealth ships).

You can’t argue both ways. If subs can target capitals, then they are not in separate categories, nor does it give covops ships any new value.

@Naari_Naarian

in either situation they can be threaten’d more.

Except that’s not really the case. My whole point in the OP was that their massive values make subcap actions much less meaningful still remains true.

If my FAX and dreads can still out-tank your fleets before you reach pretty huge numbers, it’s not a huge loss to me if I can still do sov warfare.

Sure the caps can’t fight back, but is that really going to stop my capital blob if I bleed one or two ships along the way? Is that really much different from how much attrition happens now?

[quote=“Naari_Naarian, post:20, topic:148997”]
capitals do not worry about subcaps now because they slaughter them…[/quote]

That, and because capitals don’t have to worry about dying since their HP and tanks are so high. How is a subcapital fleet supposed to be effective if the ships their trying to kill are specifically designed to tank their whole fleet? There is a reason I chose HP numbers as my target for the OP.

Now I’d like to ask you this: why should capitals be only sov and Capital focused? Why can’t they be dragged out of that sphere? Why does this line of thinking only apply to capitals, and not any other class-relationship?

@Naari_Naarian

Some times limiting access to things helps diversify a class. I could make the argument that cloaks fall under the same design mentality

If I were to pull a gigx and remove someone’s hands, I haven’t made his feet any more special. I’ve limited what he can do overall and made him less capable and have fewer options overall. If I gave his feet thumbs, that’s a different story (although a weird one).

Which actually ties nicely into that first example you gave earlier. If hard dictation of player choices is what you meant by manipulating player mindsets.

@Naari_Naarian

Yes they are. They can move systems with out gates, they have insane hp values, they can also move others from one system to another. Subcapitals generally cannot do that (except black-ops ships).

And yet, BLOPs aren’t often considered OP. No where near as much as capitals at least.

And you strike my point home. They do have insane HP values. But they still use the same mechanics related to HP. So clearly that’s a place that needs to be addressed. Trying to force a solution somewhere else is ignoring the problem and ‘fixing’ something that isn’t broken. Aside from carriers bending the rules on targeting a bit, there’s not really much argument that capital targeting is the cause of the problem.

If capitals were better balanced in terms of damage, HP, etc, you wouldn’t even need to look at extreme options like hard interaction walls between classes.

Trust me, not nearly as many people would be concerned with a supercap that only has twice the EHP of a T1 battleship, even if you left most everything else the same. Other classes can fairly easily have a huge impact on HP levels closer to their own. A healthy relationship between capitals and subs is very possible if one side isn’t so far ahead of the other.

[Rowells]

I agree with almost all your points above, however I will say something on this:

@Stitch_Kaneland

Damage caps on structures i feel are a huge deterrant from capitals actually being desired for structure bashes (a role they should be perfect for). Which then forces them into these weird do everything else roles we are in.

I think this is actually a chicken-or-egg/catch-22 situation here.

Capitals have their massive damages due to the massive HPs of old structures. Then capitals are designed around other capitals, so they also need more EHP, capacitor, etc. Then you have a situation where capitals are somewhat decently balanced amongst themselves with a focus on structure warfare (albeit that is a self-fulfilling role).

Then structures changed; sov went to nodes, and structures got dps caps. It went from a damage requirement, to a hybrid damage/time requirement. If you view damage caps as pseudo time sinks, it makes it a bit more clear where the issue lies. Arguments for time-sink aside, let’s assume the time investment needs to stick around, at least in form, to make things simple.

For example, to make capitals as they exist now more suitable for structure bashing, you could change the damage cap way upwards, and then add more resists/hp to keep the time-sink relatively the same. The cost of this, is that subcaps are now absolutely inadequate for the job. The difference in performance is massive.

Now on the flip side, you could instead lower the damage that capitals do (for example a dread that does 1500dps compared to its step-below BS that does 750 (numbers arbitrary atm)) and a capital would still be a better option. With the single caveat that structures are for some reason better at killing capitals than subcapitals. Assuming the structure dps issue is resolved, the doctrinal choice path looks much more familiar and is less consequential when tweaks are made to the system in favor of one class or the other.

But I digress, simply put, the problem with caps, supers, and structures seems to me to stem from whatever reason CCP decided they need to have ridiculously high numbers. Though, I don’t think it was entirely arbitrary at the time once they had decided POSes and outposts needed to be hugely tanky. They just failed to consider things like “what if everyone had these” and the status quo was set from there.

[Stitch_Kaneland]

I agree. Nerfing capital dps and adjusting/removing damage caps would help. Then that comes with nerfing their EHP as well. Which resolves the issues outlined.

The biggest thing preventing such a change would be the capital community. They would see it as a huge nerf that their pricey toys are now only 30-50% better than a battleship (instead of 200-500%) better. So costs would have to be looked at as well.

Which then leads to CCP redoing everything structure and capital related. Which i dont really see them doing, or seeing the community being receptive of a big time consuming change like that either.

Maybe if structures went low power for a certain amount of time, they lost their damage cap and a capital could just cyno in, end it in a seige cycle or 2 and leave. Idk, there are a lot of variables involved and CCP didnt think it through very well to provide content.

[Rowells]

Yep, gonna be really hard to stuff those genie back in the bottle. I’d expect a full plan to reach desired levels might take a couple years of balancing things in segments would be necessary. It also makes any mishaps in the process much less painful as the mistake itself is smaller.

Tie that in with a couple role splits or adding ships in the gap, the overall change may not often feel as harsh as it really is.

And yes, the capital community is honestly going to be the biggest obstacle in my eyes as well. However, I do have some hope, seeing as jump fatigue somehow managed to make it through (even though it is miles less harsh than it started out).

As for structures, in the mean time I think they just need to tone down the offensive strength against capitals quite a bit so that regular capitals are more easy to use. You can kind of see how strong they are in the fact that structure bashing metas focuses more on extreme stand-off ships (LR Titans/Dreads, carriers). It’s just too prohibitive to bring a Dread or FAX directly on grid. Structures are way too decisive in smaller capital offensives imo.

I have some theories on more comprehensive structure changes, but that’s for another thread. Time-sinks definitely need some looking at.

[Naari_Naarian]

@Rowells

You haven’t offered a meaningful choice.

opinion.
we gave them the choice of risk vs reward by going through dangerous area for shorter travel times or safer, longer travel. most of us designers would argue this is meaningful.

@Rowells

You can’t argue both ways. If subs can target capitals, then they are not in separate categories, nor does it give covops ships any new value.

Yes i am i am open to either both the positions of only cloak ships hitting them or all subcapitals of hitting them, it would need testing to make the best choice but in both situations i am not ok with capitals hitting sub-capitals. they should have drawbacks, in this case i dictate that drawback should be that after killing structures or other cap fleets they either do cap to cap player-npc fighting, or get in a subcap and roam/gate camp.

they should not sit in capitals 100% of the time.

@Rowells

If my FAX and dreads can still out-tank your fleets before you reach pretty huge numbers, it’s not a huge loss to me if I can still do sov warfare.

fax’s can be moved down closer to bs, something like an orca’s level of size.

@Rowells

Sure the caps can’t fight back, but is that really going to stop my capital blob if I bleed one or two ships along the way?

other capitals and supers will pop this blob. and capitals are still threaten by stealth bombers pretty heavily.

@Rowells

Why can’t they be dragged out of that sphere? Why does this line of thinking only apply to capitals, and not any other class-relationship?

because the end result of eve should not be invalidation of the subcapital fleets as a byproduct of training them by the general population. in other words, we should not end up with capitals-online. there needs to be a serious drawback to capitals to bring them to a postion where they are a tool, not a primary ship.

@Rowells

Which actually ties nicely into that first example you gave earlier. If hard dictation of player choices is what you meant by manipulating player mindsets.

Naari_Naarian:

in design we have to make hard dictation sometimes, hard stop changes are required for serious situations, where at other times we do things like nerf-scaling (like the fax changes).

When it comes to capital slapping around subcapital, we need to hard-brink wall nerf them out of existence (for the most part) or ship vs ship fighting (exception being cap vs cap).

@Rowells

They do have insane HP values. But they still use the same mechanics related to HP. So clearly that’s a place that needs to be addressed.

No, because they are tools and should remain toons specialized for specialized situations. you dont use a hammer for everything and you should not use a capital or super for everything. they should have clearly defined roles and places they are used.

capitals should not be used for ship to ship combat (out side of their own class sizes).

@Rowells

If capitals were better balanced in terms of damage, HP, etc, you wouldn’t even need to look at extreme options like hard interaction walls between classes.

this change would simply change capitals from being a t1 bs to a t2 bs. this just makes the problem of capital spam more consistent, and if they dont get reduced in value/price they will never be used, defaulting players to cruiser hulls and return the triad days of hac/recon/logi while at the same time invalidating capitals completely.

@Rowells

Trust me, not nearly as many people would be concerned with a supercap that only has twice the EHP of a T1 battleship, even if you left most everything else the same. Other classes can fairly easily have a huge impact on HP levels closer to their own.

i dont agree. stat squishing pushes us to capitals online faster, while making them over priced under performing battleships. not to mention its highly inefficient for development resources and will likely never be reversed when we decide its not as good as we thought. a role defined existence is better.