With the recent changes made to industry, building capital ships has become a thing that is not a casual (let me throw it in the oven affair). Smaller groups will be at an even greater disadvantage than previously due to lower accessibility to these behemoths. That is the intention (or part of it), to quell capital proliferation galaxy wide. However these smaller groups should also have a way to defend themselves if they can’t get these beasts or don’t have the ability to easily replace them, rather than just having to roll over if an enemy drops 10 dreadnoughts on a citadel.
This is the counter play in question, how can the broad devastating power of capital ships be contested by groups who cannot themselves escalate to capitals?
A Tech 2 Heavy Bomber (Attack Cruiser Hull Class) is the solution proposed here for consideration (and flaming).
Ship Example: Minmatar (Tornado Hull) with traits:
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Able to Fit Heavy Bomb Launcher (New Module)
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Able to fit Ablative Shield (New Module)
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+10% to Bomb Speed per ship level
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Unable to fit electronic warfare modules
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+10% MWD speed bonus per ship level
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10% resistance to dampening and ecm per ship level
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+2% bonus to resists per ship level
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T2 resists
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Heavy HP
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2 High Slots (One missile slot if either is not used for Ablative and Heavy Bomb Launcher)
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Balanced slots otherwise
Access to Module:
- Heavy Bomb Launcher (High Slot) (+5% bomb speed per level): (Used with heavy bombs that have four damage type varieties) Heavy bombs move at a slow pace (though faster than the Citadel bombs), can be locked by subcapital ships, and can be destroyed by subcapital ships while in flight. Heavy bombs are not autonomous, and require the launching ship to remain in position until the bomb connects, meaning if the ship is destroyed, warps, micro-jumps, cloaks etc, the bomb’s guidance malfunctions and it strays off course.
Damage is directed (not AOE) and only impacts the ship targeted
Damage does virtually nothing to sub capital ships
Does devastating damage to capital class ships
- Ablative Shield: High Slot
Ablative shield gives a temporary boost to shield HP (not resists) of the ship for a short period of time.
The module requires a minimum of 35% Capacitor to fire. The ship’s movement is dropped to 0 for 10 seconds after using this module
So while these ships would likely cost the same as a command ship to buy, and are highly specialized against capital ships, they allow smaller groups to contend with capital only assaults on infrastructure when those groups can’t procure capitals themselves. Now a fully regimented fleet with subcap support and capitals would neutralize the impact of these, but it disallows the easy capital dominance that is prevalent today when the unaffiliated groups are ‘picked on.’ And for larger scale engagements, it allows there to be a second answer to the question (How do we take on all these capitals?) Right now, the only answer is to ‘drop capitals.’ That would change with this dynamic.