Maybe, one day neutralizer will safe our life.
Thanks bro. Wish you were here.
2 Likes
the issue is not the cap booster, the issue is that the attacker is unable to field a proper fleet to deal with the fax’es.
I agree they need some tweaking. But lets not got he route of the drake. Why not make those nerds but allow a bit more power grid so you can actually fit capital sized boosters in the mid slots in order to have a but less capacitor pressure on some of the more garbage hulls which don’t see much use? It’s not like you can magically get a single fax to rep through a triage cycle like you could with the old triage module on a carrier.
I’m not sure “when the only tool you have (or are willing to invest in) is a hammer, you treat everything like a nail” is an acceptable answer for everything. This may be a decent near-term solution to nerf back FAXes a bit, but it doesn’t really solve the stated issues, let alone any considerations beyond those.
2 Likes
wow you really like fing the players
Not a good change.
Active tanked FAX are not the issue. Max-buffer, Suicide FAX are the core of the problem that your CSM has raised too you.
Active tanked FAX are used by smaller groups to support Sub-cap fleets and should be encouraged, as the current meta stands, Suicide capitals are currently being abused to enable the use of large super-capital fleets, without the risk of losing any of assets fielded.
This change will hurt smaller groups who depend upon 1 or 2 strategically used Capital class ships. This change will actively harm this game.
If changes are imminent regardless of mass customer feedback and backlash. Please consider smaller increments of change. This will be a huge blow to the Viability of FAX outside of Super-capital engagements
3 Likes
Brisc, buddy, I love the hell out of you, but you’re wrong. @CCP_Rise - you should also pay attention to this, because there’s a huge chunk of crap you’re not thinking of. But first, lemme just say one thing about the ‘too much capacitor’ bull.
When a Force Auxiliary enters a fight, they are usually doing so at 25% capacitor, because they just jumped in. If you’re going to nerf their cap stability, figure out some way to not beat the crap out of their cap right away.
Now, on to our example. First off? This is a bad example.
In this particular example, @Brisc_Rubal, you’re objecting to this fax tanking 6 million EHP over 20 minutes. This mino fit, absent any implants or command bursts, has 1.16M ehp. 643k of that is in the shields. So we can drop out the 516k of the armor and structure from the discussion, because it wasn’t repping that at all. That drops the damage tanked to the shields, which took 6,725,612-(174,291+342,039), or 6,209,282 raw hp of damage. Now let’s look at the resists.
Bouncers and Ogres. Bouncers do explosive damage… he’s at 81.89% resist there, and Ogres do Thermal, where he’s sitting at 77.7% resist. Congratulations in firing into 2 of his 3 solid resists. EM’s his ‘hole’ at 72.1% (as it is on most shield-tanked ships that aren’t T2 Minmatar). Hint: SHOOT HIM WITH EM.
Once we factor that in, and the fact that you guys were (based on the numbers in the killmail) shooting 78% explosive, 22% thermal (and the one bold Phoenix who shot him with the right damage type!), he’s looking at 756,068ehp in the shields. There’s also a friendly fleet on-grid, and Brack Region, even Brack Region…, is smart enough to use command bursts. I know this particular pilot definitely is smart enough to insist on them. So if we factor in properly-bonused boosts, he’s sitting at 1,028,356ehp in the shields before any implants.
This means that over 20 minutes, he repped 6.03x his shield EHP. Over 20 minutes.
Here:
[Osprey, Comparison]
Damage Control II
Power Diagnostic System II
Power Diagnostic System IIAdaptive Invulnerability Field II
Medium Shield Booster II
Medium Capacitor Booster I, Navy Cap Booster 200
Medium Capacitor Booster I, Navy Cap Booster 200
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
Medium Murky Compact Remote Shield Booster
Medium Murky Compact Remote Shield Booster
Medium Murky Compact Remote Shield BoosterMedium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer II
That’ll do the exact same thing, with the exact same <2m of cap stability.
Yes, that Minokawa only has 1m46s of capacitor if it’s running everything. You know what’s interesting, though? You’re shooting it, so it doesn’t have to run the incredibly cap-hungry remote shield boosters. Turn those off, and it’s 41m of capacitor. By the way, turn them off on the Osprey? It’s stable without either cap booster running.
The Minokawa is less stable than the Osprey. And the Osprey can receive remote cap transfers (this one isn’t), remote reps, and is still mobile. The Minokawa’s sitting in one place, unable to escape, unable to receive remote assistance.
This is a bad example.
Next, to reiterate: you say this took 20 minutes to kill. 6.7 million damage over 20 minutes is 5,600 dps. Being generous? It’s TWELVE Megathrons.
What the hell were those Machs doing? I know what they weren’t doing. They weren’t shooting EMP into that Mino’s resist hole. (if they were, it wouldn’t have shown their bouncers as the primary damage source).
So, to be clear: This is a bad example.
That doesn’t mean the overall thrust of the argument is flawed. A triple-ancillary local repping Force Auxiliary can be insane to try to break. BUT THIS EXAMPLE IS BAD. THIS IS THE 240 MILLION ISK TICK EXAMPLE. This example, when you actually do the math, is NOT one of the problem cases. This is a single local rep doing 1/10th the work it’s capable of. This thing CAN rep almost 2 dreads of incoming fire, 52k ehp. It didn’t have to.
This is not the example you want to be hanging your hat on.
As one of the most experienced logi pilots in the game, the issue with Force Auxiliaries is twofold:
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Remote Repair is overpowered. If you have enough, you only die if they can volley you off in a single shot. If you don’t have enough, nothing on God’s green Earth will keep you from losing, badly. No tactic, no brilliance, no nothing. Logistics is the singular point of failure in any large-scale combat.
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Capital ships are large-scale combat, whether you like it or not, whether it’s a large number of capitals or not. They have the EHP to be large-scale combat, period. This has been true since the moment Force Auxiliaries were introduced not because of the Force Auxiliary, but because of all of the new capital modules that went in at the same time. Triage carriers were never this individually unbalanced.
I respect the work that was done in trying to ‘fix’ Logistics (and for the love of GOD, can we call them something else? Logistics is moving shite around. These are tender ships, engineering ships, hell, call them Fleet Auxiliaries!), but up and down the size scale, it’s not fixed. The bigger the ship, the more obscene the logistics capabilities get because of the capacity for survivability of the hull class (S/M/L/XL). I strongly suspect that the glaring hole in the Logistics chain at ‘Large Hulls’ contributes to this: T1 battleships are supported by T2 cruisers, so those T2 cruisers have to be able to survive in T1 battleship fights.
Well, they don’t.
They don’t need to be able to survive. They need to be able to do their job and have a chance to survive. And T3Cs just make it worse. My Logistics Legion doesn’t need to be able to come in at 3x the tank of a battleship with 1/3rd the Sig Radius.
Overhaul the whole damned thing. PLEASE. Frigates to Faxes.
(Actually, the frigates are in a pretty good spot.)
13 Likes
-In a mid sized fleet engagement with active fax, hostile ships have more than enough time to overpower the tank of a fax before it drops out of triage, whether using caps or subcaps.
Except they don’t. Small to medium fleets can’t output the damage needed to overwhelm the local tanks and cap boosters make it very difficult for them to neut down to turn those tanks off.
I’d like to see:
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A smaller reduction to local and remote reps than proposed but still have a reduction from current state.
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A reduction in fleet hanger size
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Greater differentiation between the cap booster reliant and rapid rep “small gang FAX” like the Ninazu vs the more fleet oriented FAX like the Apostle. Increase the % effectiveness of the cap booster and rep duration bonuses of the Ninazu, adjust fitting and bonuses of Apostle to force it to choose between remote rep, local rep, and cap stability while still keeping its tank strong.
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Less resistance to sensor dampeners from being in Triage. Possibly increase vulnerability to neuts while in triage (-% resistance)
Nerf FAX repping subcaps (especially armour, which is already garbage) 
Nerf individual FAX so that you need more to do the same thing as before
Make anti citadel FAX even MORE unviable (giving an even bigger advantage to the citadel owner)
WHY CAN’T MY NANO GANG ORTHRUS KILL THE 2.5BN CAPITAL SHIP THAT BASICALLY TACKLES ITSELF WHEN IT REPS??? TOO STRONK
Make intel bots against the eula? 
Actually hunt and ban botters/RMT
Increase the risk of ratting in a carrier/super or subcap (literally if you’re paying attention its virtually impossible to catch you)
FIX YOUR ■■■■■■■ SERVERS SO THEY DON’T CRASH ON A WEEKLY BASIS
5 Likes
This a bazillion times. Dont throw the baby out with the bathwater. Leave the nerfhammer at home and fix broken stuff. Like the game itself.
Kthxbye
3 Likes
Seconded. Motion carried.
1 Like
CCP i love you, finally you do something useful !!!
FAX’s usually aren’t just sitting in space waiting for a fleet to show up. It’s an escalation. They undock it in response to something.
You can build FAX’s in any wormhole class with all the same ease. All the minerals fit in a single DST and Azbel/Fort can build them in any hole.
You can’t bring capitals through C4 holes.
Hard Knocks is also a 440 man corp (with countless alts and friends). They can bring 100bil in ships on a whim to fight a FAX (https://zkillboard.com/kill/69623484/). This is not a “typical” wormhole experience.
There are many corps out there with even less than a dozen members who own a fort and have a small cap fleet in a C1. Just by spending a few bil on this fleet, they’ve created a force that cannot be overcome by what must be over 90% of wormhole space. Yes, any group can always batphone and join forces to take them on. However, it is not easy. The defenders are getting a huge cost effectiveness. This is good, though! It gives them in an edge when numbers are limited. I’m just concerned about effectiveness of the cost of a FAX is above and beyond what it should be in wormhole space.
1 Like
if they had brought 1 neuting ship it would have died, and its hard to believe that that shitfit repped that much against 150+ man subcap fleet, maybe if they weren’t using an alpha doctrine and probably not primarying it the whole time it would have died faster. Look at how much damage the dreads did, probably because once they touched it with a neut it died.
Also there’s literally 129 pilots on that kill mail so idk why you said 150+ man, considering a lot of those have 0 damage and a lot of the machs have much lower damage which sounds to me like a good chunk of that fleet got there later…
EDIT: I looked at the amount of ships on the killmail, there were 27 machs and 25 ishtars, so only 52 mainline ‘dps’ ships. And machs are an alpha doctrine so here we can see the drawback of using an alpha doctrine (with no neut due to fitting), if they’d have used a DPS doctrine like Rattlesnakes or Nightmares (both can have a neut aswell) they’d have probably broke the tank quite easily.
Is there any way to reduce the reps based on upon sig like the neuts? If Fax reps worked like cap neuts it would even things vs subcaps. Of course this does nothing for the local rep issue.
Correct. So don’t let my bad example get in the way of recognizing that this is a useful nerf in regards to the specific issues we’re talking about.
Yes, we need top to bottom balancing on a lot of things, but I don’t want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
2 Likes
I hope you realize that this changes nothing about how faxes are used in null, except requiring that you request 2x the previous numbers of faxes to x up for an op.
Faxes are OP
But let’s all completely ignore the systems, design and balance work that have been built over the last 13 years that let players make intelligent decisions about countering other players fitting decisions.
Give people options to combat opposing logi and dps with something called ewar, and almost all of these problems go away.
Faxes are OP
There should be no reason that FAX and Dreads are 80-100% immune to ewar from other capitals. You are literally preventing the carrot that starts the escalation cycle from working, the ability to escalate and counter a force with what you think is a solid plan of attack besides just bringing more numbers in more expensive ships.
How about you stop making decisions that deincentivize the use of capitals and instead start incentivizing the use of capitals and capital sized modules to counter dread/fax balls instead?
It was a typo. I meant 100+ fleet.