Mass doesn’t matter if the fight happens in someone’s home hole, and usually that’s the case. In fact it’d make it even more unbalanced, because the attackers would be the only ones having to pay this huge mass penalty to bring FAX to the fight.
Hello there,
I’m here to give my thoughts on this change and what would have been better.
1st of all, nerfing the rep amount doesn’t change main problem of “being able to be repaired against decent damage”. All caps of the game can easily have enough hitpoints to avoid getting one shot by a fleet that doesnt have a doomsday. A subcap logistics can be countered by ecm,damp , outmanuevering, neut pressure, and newly added microjump field generators. In contrast to this there is not any properly working mechanic in game to counter against capital logistics warfare expect landing more numbers on grid.
2nd, Size difference in fleets in aspect of isk is so huge in capital vs subcap meta that against capitals subcaps can not get a chance of winning isk wise. under subcap meta, size difference can be used as an advantage, like assault frigates against cruisers, or battlecruisers against battleships. When you rise up to capital warfare, anything undersized is just a snowflake with a supporting role. Game needs some kind of mechanic which does not depend on numbers but in play style.
I want to put some ideas around which I think can create new gameplay and approach to capital logistics warfare
Diminishing repair amount
As you know repairing is a capacitor and time depended operation. A capital ships repair capability should be calculated by Rep amount per cap per sec.(lets call it REP/joule sec) If a debuff can be added to capital repair modules which will drop our REP/joule sec after each cycle, even if you bring more numbers, organizing repairs will rise up as a new challenge.
- As a base all capital remote repair modules should have a stacking attribute that after each cycle its capacitor need and cycle time would increase for a certain amount of time.
- Capital self repair modules can be effected by debuff but cycling them would not add any stack.
- Increase the base repair amount and reduce cycle time of remote capital repair modules so that even with the debuff they can be used by other capital ships
- Racial carrier skill at 5 will negate one of this effecs in Force Auxiliary (for ex gallente and minmatar should negate cycletime debuff while amarr and caldari capacitor need)
- Triage to reset or drop cooldown of debuff. Also debuff duration can be lowered in triage. Debuff duration should not be so long that each cycle of triage should be organised by pilot to get maximum repair amount without endless cycling of modules
- Also with increased repair amount it would give FAXes some decent amount of repairing abilities without triage
- Capital logistics and repair skills to change debuff cooldown, stacking debuff amount
So what does this changes offer
- First of all it gives subcapitals have advantage over time. If capitals want to fight longer , they would bring more numbers which would result in bigger escalations
- Better logistics organizations. Since capital ships dont move, dont cap chain, organising the debuff timing repairs and triage will result in more serious triage piloting instead of becoming a sandbag alt.
- Punishing overrepairs. Over repairing a subcap by a fax will result in lower REP/jouleSec effiency in its next cycle. And also it would become a penalty to its self repair. Trying to sustain fleet can result in more vulnerability while Faxes would need subcap logistics support to get rid of debuff.
- Capitals not depending on FAXes. With enough numbers, capitals can stand up by organizing remote capital reps without FAXes
- Variation in ships. Depending on the debuff , all races’ FAXes can shine up in different situations.
This was my main idea of how capital logistics could be changed. At the same time I’m thinking that all logistics modules could be size depended like weapon and ship signatures. Can you think of a capital welder trying to repair a frigate ? I think I’ll post about it another time.
Update time!
We’ve decided to delay changes to FAX until we can spend some more time looking at options. It’s clear from the huge range of input here and elsewhere that FAX balance is very complex and we want to make sure we make the best change possible.
We’ll check in again as soon as possible with revised proposal.
Thanks for all the input!
15 Likes
you guys need to go faster
2 Likes
On behalf of both RepSwarm and HEAL Team Six, 
Better orgs already have better orgs.
They need to do it right. That usually means taking the time to understand the problem properly.
3 Likes
Thank you for taking the time to think this through and consider a diverse range of play styles.
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Your suggestions make me doubt you’ve ever been in a capital fight of any significance. In UALX FAXes were almost useless due to lag and desync. It would be impossible to do any kind of advanced tactics with FAX in those large fights. We also don’t need a change that just results in even more ships in system and consequently even higher server load.
So disappointing… you guys need togo on play your own game again to see how ■■■■ faxes are. Remove them all together and adjust the other caps/supers then…
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If only they started months if not years ago when people were already saying it was a problem.
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They did.
But you have hundreds of people who lack indepth knowledge, screech about their idea on how to fix it. Most people make comments like yours, which are neither constructive not useful. People are never happy. If it isn’t X then it is Y that they perceive as wrong.
My criticism is that they didn’t address the issue before, and tbh your most doesn’t make me believe that they did. I do agree that a far majority of the players would be poor game devs, but it doesn’t change the fact that FAXs has been a huge balancing issue for ages and CCP didn’t look at it until recently.
I think they did well. It could use a nerf in w-space (via a capital rep reduction effect on w-space systems).
This could have been done over a year ago. And it still doesn’t address cap charge 3200s but I hope that the new proposal will include that.
plz look at DREAD DAMAGE PER DPS PER SECOND vs FAX HEAL PER HPS PER SECOND
that is the main thing that needs to be addressed,
both within the dread class dps needs addressing (moros should not do less damage than two hulls with half as many damage bonuses as it)
and without of the class - 2 dreads should probably out-heal 1 apostle both targeting a super. i’m not saying they should be 1:1, but dread damage is so far below apostle healing atm
This ^ Moros is so far beyond F****** at the moment there is no reason to fly one… and I’m a die hard Moros preferential pilot. Dreads in general are in a horrible place gameplay wise, and faxes obscene rep amounts negate whatever partial role they had left. Pretty much have to have supers to overpower faxes anymore, and even then, mileage will vary.
Why not give all caps Siege Modules?
Dreads keep the same and Titans be their big daddy’s.
With Carriers and Supers make the Networked sensor thing a do the same thing as a Siege Mod etc? Tweet it’s effect so it makes it worth using, eg Fighters can only be launched when siege green etc
Do you also go to the automated ATM machine? Damage per (Damage Per Second) per second? You can rail on about ‘that is the main thing that needs to be addressed’, but it’s not actually clear what CCP is trying to address here. They’re being about as clear about what the actual problem is from their perspective as black swamp mud. The kind that’ll suck the boot right off your leg and never give it back.
And that’s part of the problem here: they may not know what the actual problem they’re trying to fix is. They certainly can’t expect everyone to get on the same page as far as solutions go when they’re not communicating clearly about what they’re trying to solve.
For example, they’re probably looking at the numbers and noting that fax reps aren’t actually out of line with logi numbers across the board. A single Apostle puts out about 80% of the damage of a Naglfar, which is right where the Guardian is for the Megathron, and other T2 logi / BS comparisons. When you take resists into account, though, the Guardian’s delivering something like 3x the ▲EHP as the Megathron. But people have accepted ‘you need X DPS to break normal amounts of logi’.
So why is the same rough ratio bad for capitals? The difference in the math is negligible, the static in the graphs smooths out nicely as your same size scales up. So if the math looks right, where’s the problem?
It’s us. We don’t use the ships the same way. We don’t do ‘battleship bombs’, and we don’t expect battleships to annihilate anything they target (even ships bigger than they are) instantly. Now that titans and supers are being used in numbers similar to the way battleships have been fielded, though, we’re suddenly expecting the math to say different things.
Yelling about one aspect of the situation (dread v fax ▲EHP) isn’t going to fix anything. It’s exactly that kind of limited focus that causes these problems. The ‘main thing’ that needs to be addressed is ‘the entire capital/supercapital balance issue’.
All of it. Because it all fits together. And that fits together with capital reps on subcaps. And all of it influences the rest of it in how the ships are used, how likely they are to be called on for a specific role, etc.
and @Kara-Selim: no. Titans already have a limitation on the things they can do that nobody else can. DD/Phenom, and you can’t leave for a while. Just making them ‘big dreads’ won’t change or fix a damned thing, except make it less likely people will put their 60-billion isk ships at risk. As for the ‘fighters only when the NSA is on any you can’t receive reps’… c’mon. Even dreads can still shoot their guns without going into siege. Are you seriously suggesting that carriers and supers should be completely helpless unless they push a button that says ‘you can’t be helped’?
3 Likes
Why there should be a distinction between FAXes in wormholes vs in nullsec ? w-space players need a force multiplier, especially since there is very unlikely for a w-system to hold a corporation with more than 10-20 players at most, as it can hardly provide for more. Now even with forts ( which are pretty much useless because they cannot remote rep and they dont have the firepower to take down even a couple of logis ), if they dont have cap support they are easy targets for a fleet of 50 ( check killboards ), nerfing FAXes in wh will reduce that number even more.
In nullsec you can install a cyno jammer and have the upper hand ( aka supercaps, which are way more powerful than caps ) in the early stages of any invasion. Why, then, it is a problem in whs to have the advantage of fully-working capitals in the same early stages of an attempted eviction ?
Not a bad idea. You nearly made shield very powerful and promoted the Rorqual to primary triage 
Because conditions for engagement are different. Even under a cynojammer, you can gate in if you can achieve gate control, or you can incap the jammer. Nothing’s going to let you bring in that fourth dread through a hole. You have to roll a new one. Meanwhile, the defender can be sitting with a pair of Lif’s running their heavy shield bot IIs on a Sabre, and a dozen Nidhoggurs perched 1000km away with fighters already orbiting the hole.
While gating in your titans in a situation where the enemy supercapital fleet’s already in position might be a bad idea, it can be done. Pushing four capitals through that wormhole remains an impossibility.