Hi all o7,
I would like to hear your thoughts on capital ships, which ones are most popular and why they are used more than others. What do you fly ? Why do you fly it? The way it looks, performance, versatile etc. Thanks for your time.
carriers are crap. there are only a few situations they are the proper choice.
they apply worse than dreads the fighter bay on a thanny costs over 1b and your fighters can be jammed out permanently by a single griffin
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Most capitals are pure ■■■■.
Cariers were somewhat good, now that they have fighters, they are horrible vs anything smaller than a death star. Dreads still can hit a BS somewhat but you would be better being in BS yourself, so structure blapping only still.
tldr: Anti structure ships for 90% of time.
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Didn’t carriers briefly shine after the initial rebalance?
only gate camping tethered to citadels but that was it.
they had a stint where they were still some what useful in PvP (if the enemy didn’t know enough to bring jams)having most of their DPS in the salvo that also had much higher alpha. they were then hit with a supper nerf reducing total alpha application and fighter lock time. all because moving carriers off gate grids was to hard
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So what purpose do they serve now? Glorified ratting platform?
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pretty much
dreads do their job better.
only time they are worth while is in very large groups but then supers start getting used.
they need to nerf HAW make carriers a little (not much) stronger against sub caps and remove or nerf subcap fighters on supers making them anti capital platforms.
oh would also help if they buffed their sensors to a practical level but made them vulnerable to the rest of e-war. something they were supposed to be vulnerable to and ccp even made the UI for it but didn’t implement it w/o explanation. could also make it so ECM keeps its 100% chance but only jams one fighter. basically reducing the flight from 9 to 8 if an ecm is on it
or they could turn carriers into capital E-war platforms and make the support fighters worth it. tbh i would enjoy this a bit more as it would give a distinct role and add a bit more. they could keep some dps to nullbears don’t wine that they can’t rat anymore. at the same time make their superiority fighters stronger than the suppers so they become a counter to them. it would fit in line with the role of utility rather than sub cap killers ccp doesn’t seem to want them to be anyway.
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Instead of nerfing HAW why not just buff carriers back to the point where they’re useful once again? I like all the rest of your ideas though.
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Because ccp quant and his 1% of the 1% nonsense
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Sounds like he isn’t quantitatively analysing the problem correctly.
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Whats HAW?
because if you are going to make a ship designed to be used only to kill sub caps and then you have a ship that can kill subs or capitals the flexible one will always be a better choice unless carriers become oppressively powerful. right now the phoenix and nag are already all that you need as sub cap killers. make fighters better than that and you are going to have a balance issue
Carriers are a cost effective method of countering Supercarrier Heavy Fighter spam, by using Space Superiority Fighters to defang the Supercarriers.
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unless those supers also have a few superiority fighters that are able to wipe yours out before they even lose one
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Supercarriers have 5 launch tubes; given that the point of a Supercarrier is to bring Heavy Fighters to the battlegrid, 3 of those tubes (the maximum that a Supercarrier can use) will be dedicated to Heavy Fighters. That leaves 2 tubes of Space Superiority Fighters against 3 from a regular Carrier. Add to that that the Supercarriers will have their Fighter reserves largely focused on replacing lost Heavy Fighters, while the Carriers will have Space Superiority Fighters in reserve…
except that’s not how it works in real fights… their support fighters are stronger as a base and are just built to screen anyway not kill. they will kill your fighters by simply blasting away your carrier. 4 suppers will alpha most fleet carries and two will alpha any dps carrier
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High-angle weapons. These are capital turrets/launchers that can apply to subcapital targets.
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Thank you.
Honestly, Carriers are where I’d like to see every class of ship. I’d like to see some changes to them, but overall, they’ve got a defined place.
Solo or small gang, they’re going to get face-■■■■■■ by just about any decent small gang. They’ve got some HUGE weaknesses (griffins have been mentioned, falcons etc). They can be defanged with ease. A short time ago, we defanged a pair of carriers in arty Claws. God that was funny. Not gonna say it was all us, those carrier pilots had about as much intelligence as my dog… and my dog eats his own poop for kicks.
Once you put them in a group, they can get very scary. 50-100 carriers will turn away a subcap fleet very quickly. Purely because before the reds can kill 150-300 fighters, they’re probably going to lose all of their ships first. Trying to ECM out 150-300 fighters just isn’t going to work.
But… where they really shine is as a group supporting a larger fleet. A fleet with subcaps, dreads, faxes, supers, and titans. Now they’ve got an indispensable role running space superiority so that the supers can run their heavy fighters. They can run support fighters with their superiority (once they’ve gained superiority) so as to help the supers. All the while the various cogs of the mixed fleet are doing their things.
In a world where every fleet would be doomed to fail without a healthy mix of frigates, destroyers, cruisers, battlecruisers, and battleships (capital fleets do need mixed stuff already so I’ll leave them out), we would REALLY see a lot more dynamic gameplay. It would be the death of the F1 monkey.
now, make capitals useful for something other than fighting other capitals and we’re set. Cause ya know, capital eve and usual eve do not have much in common.
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