I just had an idea how to fix the current issues with supercapital-proliferation forcing a stagnation in nullsec.
The current problem is that if one side has a lot more supers than the others, than they usually have enough faxes/reps to win the fight onesided. There is no risk when you have enough supers/faxes.
Solution:
Just prevent supers from receiving reps, period. they are either buffer or self-rep, but they cannot receive full hitpoints every second. If they commit and take too much damage, they die.
If that isn’t enough the “commitment” has to be taken even further. Supers that engaged in battle cannot warp off for the next 30-60min after the first player-agression. This way supers will only be used sparingly and only as a last resort. And whenever they are used, everyone has time to respond.
Other than that supers could keep the same powerlevel or even be buffed back.
I think these changes would be very much in the spirit of these ship-classes. They are incredibly huge and powerfull, so huge and complicated actually, that it needs a dedicated structure to repair them after taking damage. Unfolding their weapon-systems and switching to “battle-mode” means all hands/resources/focus on weapons and leaving the bare minimum on engines. Like a fortress that arrived and needs to unpack.
You wouldn’t just cyno them into everything, do stuff for 5min and warp to safety and jump out again. You wouldn’t just attack something and after the supers take damage you just jump in 10 faxes. If you bring them and your opponent does not stand down with their supers, a ball of explosions will ensure.
They would also feel more like a one-time, expensive force-multiplier that you keep for really important engagements. Supers would likely get used less, but whenever they do get used, they would have a high chance of forcing a fight with a big pricetag on both sides.
In a battle between titan fleets faxes are obsolete: titans die from DD alpha damage - there is no saving them. The side with lower numbers loses because will lose their critical mass of ships/dps first. Thats why “n+1” is the solution for most “problems” in eve, especially large scale fights.
I strongly beleave supers/caps currently have no role in PvP, capital/structure fights aside.
Their rep-power is just too great to engage them with subcaps, unless you outnumber them 50 to 1.
I think that would change if they lose their capibility of receiving reps. You could finally grind them down if you can hold the grid long enough. Currently if you bring one to 30% armor and a fax lands you might aswell pull your 40mann gang out, regardless if they can kill you or not you won’t kill the caps anymore.
Just answer this question: What kind of ridiculous subcap-fleet would you need to break a pvp-fit super + a blingy fax? It’s just 2 ships. You can defang them all you want but you won’t break them ever.
That is the basic issue why CCP nerfs caps at the wrong end: the dps output/tracking.
If you cannot kill them with with a medium fleet, they shouldn’t do much damage aswell, right? …
I wish someone from CCP would see this…
I get that a Super receiving 1 million ehp per second from faxes feels cool, but with their nerfed damage and unbreakable tanks they currently prevent fights from happening.
In my opinion, I really emphasize that MY I’m not saying it’s how it should be. Caps should be powerful and survive a small/medium fleet if they have support. If they can’t do that noone will take the risk.
When ideas like this rise I generally try to make people understand that cap pilots are not NPCs and will not just suicide to give you a shinny killmail.
@Nikalath
Sure I want supers to stay powerfull. Maybe even have their damage/application buffed. But to compensate they need to be killable by subcaps!
Supercapitals would be the shiptype to “win the grid”, but not not be a mobile bunny anymore that hops around everywhere.
