I don’t disagree with you about CCP doing a lot of things in a bubble, but that’s really a different issue than this particular case. The BS changes are not going to break mining in alphas. Also, anyone who plays EVE for 250 hours in 2 weeks (that’s 18 hrs a day btw) deserves to get whatever they want (and I won’t be convinced that such a player would remain an alpha either).
To your other point about HACs sucking and all that - again I agree with you. The thing is - and I’ve said this for years - the problem with balancing ships in EVE is that you have to balance for both solo/small gang and fleet combat. You make any ship amazing in small gangs, and chances are you unbalance it for a fleet of 250 of them. The answer to that problem I believe is an inverse damage cap on remote repair modules based on hull sizes. Something like 2 Guardians per Cruiser, maybe 3 for HACs. Something like that as a starting point. This would increase the death rate for large fleets, and more importantly, de-tether fleet combat from solo/small gang. You could make ships like the Battleship or the HAC immensely more powerful without making them unstoppable in fleet fights, because no matter what you field, you will lose some of your fleet unless you absolutely out-fly your opponent.
You seem to forget that rorq’s are a thing. The amount of minrals mined by a mining battleship fleet would be a drop in the bucket compared to a rorq fleet. Its barely even going to register on the radar. No one cares about mining battleships, more power to the alphas that want to work the system and bring down ship costs.
HACs were weak before BC changes but were still better than most bcs. I know, because i flew BCs everyday before the buff and even recommended/made a post outlining how to fix BCs (by giving them range buffs and tracking buffs, a la destroyers). Which im assuming led CCP to buffing BCs to what they are now.
BCs are hard counters to cruisers in most cases, just like destroyers are hard counters to most frigates. Do you whine when a thrasher kills a rifter, or a svipul/sabre kills a jagaur? Same principle. There is a food chain in eve’s ecosystem, BCs and cruiser interaction was broken for a long time because BCs had no way to properly counter cruisers. Its more noticable now that HACs are weak now that the food chain is repaired. There will never be true balance in this game, the meta is always changing and adjustments will be made.
You seem to think my objection is to the idea of mining battleships. My objection is to the methodology of design and balance that produces them.
Almost two and a half years ago, when the logistics changes were still coming, I wrote a piece that looked at something like that. Specifically, it was diminishing returns. The execution’s a little different, but the results are the same: the guys flying the logi in fleets can’t tell who or how many of them have which guy they’re defending. So there will be a move to counter that. The move is pretty simple and obvious: everyone flies triage. I can get a Lif up to 1km/s, and its drones are effectively a logistics cruiser. Then, if things get really hairy, you triage. Now your reppers are more effective than that 2 Guardian cap you’re proposing, and the only way to really counter it is to drop dreads. Especially if a battleship fleet is cruising around with 30-40 Force Auxiliaries, because there’s no point bringing anything smaller.
And now nobody’s bringing any roams out bigger than maybe (MAYBE) cruisers, because you’re just gonna get dropped by an escalation chain. That’s actually the end result of a lot of changes you could make to logi: make it riskier, and you’ll see people doing less because they’ve gotten risk averse. They have more to lose, so they want to lose less.
It’s not an easy thing to fix. But it needs to be part of a solution that looks at how all of the pieces interact. You can’t fix one piece and expect it to not have ripples.
So I don’t see how everyone flying triage changes things. The inverse damage cap applies to the hull, so they can have as many triage as they want, but you won’t get more rep than your hull can withstand. Now, maybe there is still a benefit to having many extra logi chaining their reps so that you don’t get your repair in bursts and have the remainder wasted, but something like that would be extremely difficult to pull off.
As far as the risk averse, we’ll see how risk averse people get when their keep stars are on the line. Sooner or later you have to commit or be destroyed anyway.
If anything I would think this would encourage more hit and run tactics, as field control and maneuver would be more important than absorbing shots.
Also, I’ve never thought you were the cancer killing EVE, though I do think you’re jumping to some wild conclusions. Having a battleship gang backed up by 30 FAXes wouldn’t really benefit the battleships that much under this idea, though it would be a lot of ISK on the field for exploding.
I think its bull you went straight to the ships people already fly and get used and completely ignored the ones people have left for junk like half the galante and amarr ships again I dont get on alot because its always the same fight get in mach get in ferox tired of no competition between what ships to use and what weapons maybe figure out not everyone wants to fly missile and rail guns all the time
No, see, that’s just it: keepstars would be less likely to be on the line, because people aren’t going to be risking their titans and supers frivolously. If you make it more likely for things to blow up, people are less likely to risk their big expensive stuff blowing up. So what are you going to hit a keepstar with? It’s probably got a defensive force of supercapitals. Will you send yours in if you know you’re probably going to lose them? Or will you hold them back to defend your own keepstar?
That all depends on how badly I want to remove an enemy Keepstar. If you want it dead, put your chips on the table, if you don’t care, go krabbing instead. If you choose the latter, you are gambling the enemy doesn’t want your Keepstar dead more than you theirs. The again, maybe the Retributions will blot out the sun so to speak.
If you want to remove an enemy Keepstar so badly you’re willing to lose 20-30x its value in titans, go for it. Your enemy’s titans will remain tethered until the Keepstar pops its DD off, and then they’ll start firing off theirs, 10 at each target, because your triage can’t do a damned thing.
But you’re also forgetting that in order to do that, the enemy has to also put their own supers at risk. Now while we’re talking about tethering, I would imagine you and I would agree that something needs to be done about it. To start with, cap fighter control range at 500KM instead of 3000KM or whatever it is now. No more sitting on a siege fort.
“The FC ship is probably the most un-sandbox thing I’ve ever seen, a 2 slot ship with pre-set stats and role. It has no place in EVE and “head shotting” already has many viable counters.”
there are uses for things that tanky. warpins for fleets could be an example… when paired with a couple MJD dessys, you could park that sucker right in the middle of an enemy fleet that it would tank for days. just gotta be creative with it. draw rat aggro? use in wormholes? use in incursions?
Outside of 300km, you’re not gonna do anything to it that won’t be countered.
As for ‘something needs to be done’… yup. But again: not in isolation. That’s the cause of all of these problems. ‘Let’s do this one thing to solve the problem’ ‘yeah!’ without ever looking at ‘what will happen next?’
Being countered is not a problem, that’s working as intended.
As far as the not in isolation - regarding the figher control range, what effect does that have beyond forcing carriers off a siege fort? Yes it means they’ll die if they can’t be defended, but other than that what effect?
Couldn’t have said it better. Some of these changes people have been asking for for a long time, some are totally unexpected but interesting. But THE most exciting part is CCP listening to our feedback about balance in general and the potential we may get just as big a shake up one or possibly more times this year.
Well, it really doesn’t. Not any more than the tethering move does. You drop fighters at 500km, set them on the defending cit at a 30km orbit, and then warp to your fort. We’ve already seen that in really big fights with fighters on both sides, you’re really not going to have much opportunity to recover them anyway.
BCs will still have mobility advantages, and application advantages. A ferox should lock the typical frigate in 8.5s, where the Rokh does it in 22.2. If it’s an ECM frig they could miss a whole cycle before you even get them locked again. I think it would be a pretty safe change to bring that up some.
And uhh alpha mining battleships what? If you are going to be using a mining battleship you will likely be jetcan mining, and still would even if they doubled BS cargo. And with rorqual mining I doubt any changes to alpha mining would make a large difference to the economy.
And with player incomes the way they are you are almost always better off doing something else and buying the minerals. Anyways alpha mining capabilities probably belongs in another thread I think.
