Now imagine a fleet of say 20-60 of these polarized neutron talos ships, they can pose a serious challenge to a super or a titan. As you mentioned the dread can do serious damage, I for one do not see a problem with several dreads being used to suicide gank a titan in highsec, I’m sure @Bronson_Hughes wouldn’t have an issue either since he wants more destruction.
A well-thought out post, and I definitely appreciate it.
I’m much less “on the fence” about FAXes now. I don’t think they belong in hisec. Hisec should still be primarily a place for subcaps, and they just do far too much to negate subcapital damage. They wouldn’t be of much use for repping large fleets of suspect capital ships though since they’d just get CONCORDed, but for repping structures in the face of a subcap fleet? Yeah, that would be broken. (I’ll update my OP when I get a chance.)
As for a shift in the meta towards “capitals only for structure shoots”, I’d like to point out two things:
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Large regions of hisec (0.8, 0.9, and 1.0) would still be subcap only, and it’s this region that houses most structures in hisec. The current “Leshak only” meta would likely stay firmly planted there.
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A large fleet of suspect capital ships is a massive target in hisec. 20 or so battleships could effectively engage an arbitrarily large capital ship fleet in this situation if they are smart and only engage them one at a time. The other capital ships can’t fight back, the capital ships cannot receive any remote assistance, and 20 or so battleships can easily take down one carrier at a time with the proper fits and tactics. The capital fleet would be forced to either eat the losses, or re-ship into subcaps to continue. This would provide opportunities both for merc groups to try fielding capital ships in support of wardecs, and for any opportunistic groups to attempt to counter them without requiring them to be part of the wardec.
I hear your concerns, and I share them. I definitely don’t want to turn hisec into “capitals online”. But if you introduce them in a way that they’re incredibly vulnerable, I think there’s just enough room for them to be useful, but at a high enough risk that they won’t become the norm.
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Single players suicide gank freighters all the time. They just multiple accounts.
Using a gank dread would be changing a large ISK investment (both for the platform and the skills) for less multi-tasking, and I’m not even sure it’s an ISK-efficient tradeoff. (I guarantee you some folks will do it for lulz, but would it become common? I doubt it.)
Also, gankers rely on relatively mobile platforms because they have to avoid hostile NPC responses before they engage. I’m not sure they’d be able to do that in a dread, so they would almost certainly be limited to keeping their security status high enough to “fly safe” in whatever system they’re operating in. Not a huge restriction, especially with clone tags available to purchase in bulk, but definitely still a limiting factor.
Good comment, and definitely something to keep an eye on. If this proposal or something like it were to come to pass, it wouldn’t be hard for CCP to tweak the CONCORD response to capital ships if dread ganks became massively common.
Yeah, you are correct if any neutral shoots a suspect capital that is being repped at the time. The FAX would then be CONCORDed. If it is with wartargets, then no effect. The FAX can rep fine.
The only structures that can be repped remotely are POCOs. Upwell structures either repair as a result of a timer ending, or they die. They can’t be remote repped.
But yes, POCOs can be remote repped and that would be easy with a FAX machine without CONCORD.
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Yeah, you are correct if any neutral shoots a suspect capital that is being repped at the time. The FAX would then be CONCORDed. If it is with wartargets, then no effect. The FAX can rep fine.
Instead of having all of this suspect shenanigans, why not have capitals without permanent suspect. That way solo players can enjoy the game without getting ganged up by pvpers, and you can have fun and exiting pvp using the war system, defending/attacking high value and expensive structures.
This has already been explained several times, but you don’t read.
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This has already been explained several times, but you don’t read.
I did, only reasons I keep seeing is “highsec evil must nerf because concord” Highsec can have both concord and full capital access without any problems, making people who want to get people out of highsec angry is not a valid reason why highsec shouldn’t have supers and titans.
No, that’s not a good understanding of it at all.
There is no highsec evil. Highsec is as good a place to play as anywhere else, for people who like what highsec offers.
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- Eve is a PVP-game at it’s core. You don’t get to avoid it just because. If you don’t like it, hey, maybe this isn’t the game for you.
- Capitals are NOT solo-ships. They are designed to be used with a supporting fleet IN PVP.
- That added safety that CONCORD gives you in highsec also comes with a drawback, lower rewards and no access to capitals. If these are changed, then CONCORD needs to change too to balance it out.
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Actually, I think Sabus does not want capitals in highsec “to engage nullsec alliances”, he wants to get more ISK from farming. As what was stated a lot of times in this thread, capitals won’t help with that. Then, his proposal should be more like that:
Add two new ship classes, Ironclads and Mining Battleships. To remove any effects on other space, they are highsec-exclusive (and cannot use any means of transportation except highsec-to-highsec gates). Moreover, to not screw up wars, those new ships cannot participate in PvP (neither attack players nor be attacked).
Ironclads have boosted EHP in comparison to battleships, and can mount capital weapons as a role bonus. Ironclads require Spaceship Command V. There is a new tier of security missions, namely Level 6 (in highsec only, so it won’t influence other game areas), balanced around Ironclads and giving 3-4x more ISK/hr compared to Level 4 missions. Level 6 missions require 9.0 standing to access.
Mining Battleships are battleships dedicated for mining. They cannot use Strip Miners, but get 20-30% bonus to ordinary Miners for every level of Mining Battleships. They require Spaceship Command IV and Mining Frigate V, and feature ore cargoholds around 20-70k cubic meters.
Both of them are not capital.
(I do not support the change written in this post)
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Updated the OP. Changes include:
No FAXes. Hisec should still primarily be about subcaps, and FAXes simply do too much to negate subcapital damage.
Added version 3, avoiding the suspect flag by way of militia service.
Added version 4, no avoiding the suspect flag at all.
Minor streamlines and cutting of some of the weirder minor details I had added before.
Updated my thinking and rationale behind things like suicide ganking, nullsec blocs trying to monopolize 0.5 moon mining, etc.
Cheers!
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Love the militia version. But the price will be that no capitals can use normal cynos in high or low sec they will have to use gates. And the supercaps will only be allowed to jump 1 to 5 gates in 1 hour max in low sec only according to their jumpdrive skill level., so their roles will turn more to defense of territory. And will not be allowed in high sec. Meaning industry and black ops cynos mechanics will stay unchanged.
In this way i could maybe see dreads and carriers in the lower high sec systems allowed
There was at least one other thread discussing removing cynos (regular cynos only, not covert or industrial cynos) from losec. I’m not sure I want to roll that up into this thread, but personally I’m all in favor of that. It would make moving capital ships riskier and reducing the risk of a capital hot drop would likely boost PvP activity in losec.
I don’t see a problem with ships jumping out of hisec under any circumstances. Jump Freighters and BlOps have always been able to, and technically a legacy hisec capital could jump out if they chose to currently. But no cynos of any sort in hisec so no jumping into hisec. (This includes all cynos.)
Your idea of limiting how many gates a supercap can take per hour based on skills is interesting, but I think that deserves its own topic. I personally wouldn’t just make it losec gates, make it all gates. This would make supercaps more reliant on cynos, and, if coupled with removing regular cynos from losec, would keep them more or less to nullsec.
Thanks for the reply! Great feedback.
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Bronson,
I’ve kept my eye on this thread, and read your prior thread on the old forums, too.
First, let me say, I am against this idea for two reasons: 1) you have a wall-of-text, with ifs, ands, and or buts, which means it would be incredibly complicated to implement with an associated risk of bugs and unintended consequences and all that entails, and 2) I see this whole movement of caps in highsec as the equivalent of leaving the barn door open and being shocked the animals escaped and are now running loose over the countryside.
But, having written that, if you must discuss having caps in highsec (which I disagree with – I’m going to continually point this out) then I think neither you nor Sabus had done enough archaelogical digging into the design concept of caps and so your solution/recommendations are built on faulty foundations.
- Caps were in highsec at one point.
- Caps were designed to be alliance assets.
- Caps were designed to explode.
If you really want caps in highsec, make your proposal easy to implement, not convoluted and difficult to understand from a design and end user perspective. Don’t tie allowance to standings (already difficult to understand) or type of space (1.0, 0.5, etc.), or suspect mechanics.
Tie your proposal instead to an already existing and well understood ingame mechanic, to structures.
If you tie cap ownership to structure mechanics, and by that, to be as clear as possible, cap owners would have to be members of a structure owning corporation you eliminate a lot of the clutter of your proposal. The war dec structure mechanics are already in place. So, what this boils down to is this: an aspiring cap owner in highsec would have to be a member of a war dec eligible corporation (so caps could be shot and not gank proof due to Concord time limitations) and have to dock their cap in a corporation owned structure (no npc stations), or cap owners could log off in space as was done in the past.
This would allow anyone in any space the possibility of so-called end game ship content, while replicating the original design intentions, and accounting for the gimping mechanic (in this particular situation) of Concord.
Another way of saying this is: players in highsec could have caps, under almost exactly the same conditions as cap owners in every other area of the game, without CCP having to if-and-or-but the mechanics.
By making cap ownership dependent upon structure ownership you replicate, in highsec, the already existing framework of how caps are regulated in low and null, while accounting for the highsec exclusive mechanic of Concord, without casting highsec caps owners as special exceptions, to already ingame mechanics. The small rewards provided by highsec, would answer any questions asked about risk vs. rewards, in introducing this mechanic change.
This would allow caps in all areas of space, and address the complication of Concord.
If you still wish to limit the types of ships allowed, i.e. dreads okay, titans, nope, that could still be done.
But, as it stands, you have so many exceptions in your proposal, it seems a potential disaster in the implementation with nightmare implications on the side.
I don’t really want to discuss this, as I think caps are a disaster in the making in highsec; but, if we must discuss caps in highsec make the proposals as simple as possible so implementation is as simple a possible, otherwise you risk complications of CCP proportions.
I think you have done a yeoman’s work on this subject, and though I disagree with your proposal, it would be churlish of me to not recognize your effort in putting forth this proposal. My hat’s off for slugging it out.
o7
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This is (mostly) a version 2.
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Removed a large number of off topic posts. Please keep posts to discussing the ideas proposed, not your own ideas. Thank you.
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Caps were in highsec at one point.
And should be brought back
an aspiring cap owner in highsec would have to be a member of a war dec eligible corporation
Will serve only to harm highsec players. A solo NPC corp player who hates pvp and wants to fly capitals deserves the right to do so…
But, as it stands, you have so many exceptions in your proposal, it seems a potential disaster in the implementation with nightmare implications on the side.
That’s why you want to do one change, allow all caps to use highsec gates. Simple.
Updated my thinking and rationale behind things like suicide ganking, nullsec blocs trying to monopolize 0.5 moon mining, etc…
Your idea will still nerf nullsec, why not be in favor of full capital access across highsec?