I kinda think otherwise. I think we’re not going to see capital fights escalate as much after this as we would have beforehand. The way this plays out—to me at least—is that fleets will carry 2-4 force recons with them whose job is to stay cloaked until it’s time to bring in the triage or dreads, and if there’s any concern about an escalation pathway, there’s another half-dozen waiting on a titan to come in and scatter as well.
Absent those 10 alts who are just there to be cynos (as opposed to now, where HICs, Command Ships, T3Cs, etc have other roles, and capitals themselves can provide cynos for an escalation pathway)… there’s no escalation. You see an enemy fleet, the first thing you look for is Force Recons. Kill them all, if you can.
But groups will be a lot more likely to just write-off the initial capital drop. After all, why are you going to drop a small force of supers and titans when you can’t be sure that you can bring in more? Look at what happened in Tribute. Look at what’s happened with every major war. Supercapital escalations are in-the-moment decisions of ‘do I think I can out-escalate the other guy?’
And with this making that more of a risk… it will happen far less. Which means those supers and titans won’t be blowing up. They’ll be home, ratting someplace where they can have 3-4 Force Recon alts in the same system, because 3-4 different players who are ratting in the system all have one. And… because it’s ‘home’, there’s a lot more of them able to get into position if the super/titan can live more than 2-3 minutes (which they can).
So the supercapitals become safer, and only put at risk in a war when their side is going all in. Which means there will be ever more of them, because they’ll keep getting built in numbers that exceed the rate at which they die.
Capital ratting becomes supercapital ratting. Faucets, which had been closing on their own, get opened wide. For a bit more on that, I’m gonna go back over to the Blackout discussion thread, because that’s what it relates to…
I can definitely see where you’re coming from, and it’s hard to argue with someone of your experience. I was thinking mainly carriers/dreads/triage, not so much supers and titans, but once you throw them into the mix…yeah, I definitely see your point.
Have thought a lot about this post and tbh at first worried about it, it seems extreme and Recons and Black Ops are not going to survive on grid in a capital fight stuck to one place for 5 minutes, which may well in turn limit and perhaps even discourage/end cap escalations and the big fights we all want to see. That could well be something that needs looked at. However it also does add a lot of potential gameplay, regarding where u put your cyno’s and possible drag bubbles if you cyno off grid. As well as closing off systems to cyno’s and tactical positioning of ships, which should add to the gameplay.
This could end up being a good change, however I am not sure its there yet. I was heartened to hear CCP Rise on Talking in stations saying they are considering other was of balancing this such as looking at the duration of Cynos. I would like to suggest a few possibilities in this vein. I apologise if they have already been suggested.
Instead of the present fixed 50% reduction in Cyno duration ship role make it recon skill dependent which with Recon Five takes it down to 1 Minute duration. This reduces the vulnerability of these glass canon ships tied to a single spot at 0m/s.
On a similar vein make offgrid cyno’s visible not on overview, but DSCAN and not directly warpable to but able to be combat probed much like ships. While on grid they could and perhaps should remain directly warpable to much like wrecks are. This would continue with the blackout theme while further deepening scouting gameplay and also helping the recons/Black OPs survive, but still be very catchable - it would simply no longer be see cyno on overview and click warp to.
This increased survivability should also increase the chances of big cap fleet action as there is more possibility for FCs to get their fleet into systems/battles without the very real risk of their fleet being randomly dispersed and picked off on cyno in. I am conscious of how such things happen with server issues - I still have nightmares about being caught in the server crash in JV1V back in the day which basically destroyed what could have been a great fight.
With time dilation, lag and often server instability we need to be able to trust we can actually get the ships in to fight otherwise they will not be deployed and we will lose the possibility of the big battles even happening.
This aready happens to some extent with FC’s now often not even calling supercarriers into possible fleet actions due to server issues and the lag their fighters cause. We have to consider that such issues along with much less stable and survivable cyno’s increase the chances of server instability and not tactics and fleet comps deciding battles. In general I believe servers should be neutral actors but we all know this is not always the case those who load grid first have a large advantage.
Both of these these could mitigate the possibilities of this by making the cyno more dangerous than it is at present but still a good fleet tool.
I am tbh not sure such suggestions are enough and suspect cyno’s for the bigger fleets fights might have to put on a capital, probably a Titan to allow for an escalation path for something like B-R5RB without encouraging the present rorqual’s under the umbrella meta. But I believe my suggestions might help mitigate the worse of the problems with the suggested cyno’s only on black ops/Recons.
As i stated very early in the thread - This is a higsec freighter alt.
I do indeed live in sov nul, have done for over 10 years.,.
I don’t believe, like many others who use the forums, I HAVE to post with my main characters.
If you believe i am wrong with what i say so be it. You are entitled to an opinion and i know from your killboard history it will be from a very different perspective to mine.
If CCP wants to see capital fights, but doesn’t want to see every single cap/supercap ratter packing a ‘save me’ button, maybe make the current cyno a ‘Recon Cyno’ and introduce a new cyno module that can be fitted onto a capital/supercap, but functions as a Siege/Triage Module: no incoming reps, and since you’re already ‘sieged’, you can’t activate it AND the module that gives massive local reps on Faxes/Dreads.
Having been in both PL and Goons over the years, I know who i believe have the most damaging play style - Hint; It ain’t Goons.,
All we need is mass limits on cynos - If you’re out in your ratting super, have your cyno fit, light it when you get dropped but keep in mind only 3 or 4 capital class ships can use your cyno and while your cyno is active no other cyno’s can be lit by your “friends or allies”.
I like the siege/triage part of your suggestion - No point dropping fax’s as no reps for the ship with the active cyno.
Increasing burn down time for Cynos to 15 minutes on Caps/Supers instead of 10 - No reps for 15 minutes, you’re going to have to think carefully about whether you light or die alone and not take 3 or 4 friends with you.
Let’s fix null once and for all and disband large bloc alliances and have only a max of 4 corps which can be in a alliance with a maximum of 250 players in total in said alliance.
Eh, mass limits won’t really help much. How do you determine ‘friends or allies’? Members of the same fleet? Same alliance? People with blue standings? Doesn’t take much to get around all of that, and it’s not worth CCP’s man-hours to make a system players can subvert before it’s even in.
Goonswarm1-101 will exist within 20 minutes. Besides, fleets can be bigger than that (by 6!). Again, there’s no point calling for CCP to invest time and effort into ‘solutions’ that don’t fix anything, and which everyone already knows how to get around. As long as it is possible for players to communicate outside of the game client, it will be impossible to prevent groups from organizing through third-party means.
That mechanic already exists - If your not blue you can’t use a Jump bridge, you can’t dock in a citadel, - It probably wouldn’t be hard to extend this to Cynos on Supers and Caps, would it?
Basically i was thinking of the “Not blue can’t jump” or in this case “If blue can’t jump”. Sure there will be those who find ways around it but I believe it would be better than what is on the table. It might even create some real conflict drivers.
EG; I want to hit a ratting super in Delve, I can get dreads there but they WILL drop 100+ supers on us - So we don’t do it.
If we can get our dreads there and they can only drop 100 Supers on us over a period of time, it is opening up an opportunity for us to kill some of them before our suicide dreads meet their demise - Conflict chances is the key.,. I’d love to throw away dreads to kill supers, as long as our chance of killmails and tears (I hate that saying but) is higher.
More risk more vulnerability for Supers and Caps is key to killing Supers and Caps.
Just moving cynos to Recons is a half assed attempt at something that could be good. 5 Supers/Caps ratting in a constellation - 5 Recons to cover them with cynos not much change there if each of those cynos can still jump in 100+ Supers.,.
Some null empires declared economic war on Jita a month ago 'because they were very mad about the NPC drifter crap, and saw HighSec corps petitions to CCP as the cause of the drifter crap.* Thus CCP perceived that they needed to slow the power growth of null empires… ei nerf umbrellas.
Its also a cash grab by ccp.
I’m less sure of this last point: The bubble burst and the value of ISK was dropping rapidly compared to Plex prior to the change. The USD price of plex is fairly static. Therefor the ISK per USD was dropping rapidly. After this change was announced the ISK price came back up a bit, maybe due to all the injectors required. Thus CCP may have been attempting to keep their (likely bubbled) Isk prices up. I think the drifter NPCs are also part of this.
*: …That’s not really why they targeted Jita
4.1: A stable Eve without NPC drifters, without injectors required for surprise cyno changes, with super caps dropping to defend whole regions of yield optimizing mining barges… that paradigm was making too much Isk and spending too little cash by CCPs standards.
Considering the amount of our lives most of us have put into video games, why have we not created good, player owned, democratically directed, open-sourced sandbox games?
Given that we’re already spending too much time in front of screen perhaps we players should move toward ownership of our experience rather than continually experiencing the downsides of being a commodity for shareholder’s quarterly earnings.
Its not just Eve with this problem. Even the crowd funded titles lack democracy and player ownership.
I’d be on board with that. Siege/Triage-like penalties for subbcaps seems a bit extreme, but that would perfectly aligned with existing seige modules EDIT: so it’d be great for a capital-class cyno. Heck, even make the fitting, duration, and fuel consumption the same between capital cynos and siege/triage modules just to satisfy my inner spreadsheet nerd.
Prior to the 10th, the ISK price of PLEX was dropping. This means the value of ISK relative to PLEX was rising. CCP has said they want the ISK price of PLEX lower. The PLEX price bottomed out, then started rising again, before these changes were announced.
Because democracy is a terrible way to actually get anything done. It’s a wonderful form of government, mind you, for exactly that reason: the only time the government exercises its power is when people can agree on things. When you’re trying to develop a product, though, imaging trying to get consensus just within the dozen or two people in this thread, let along a few hundred or thousand players.
And would be, yes. That’s why I was thinking the siege/triage penalty would be for a Capital Cyno (with capital module fitting needs).
When he uncloaks and you probe/dscan him, until then he can’t do anything while cloaked, not even see local anymore, so it doesn’t matter. If he uses probes, you can see those.