Now that Titans are a fortune to build, doesn’t it make sense to make titans capable of fitting HAW weapons again?
It doesn’t seem that overpowered given how much risk is on the field if it dies. It’s like 280b build cost on eve-industry.org
the whole point of these changes is to lower capital proliferation.
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Dear CCP,
Titan ships cost so much money to buy and properly fit that most regular players have been priced out of them; thus, they should be made oppressive to subcaps in order to compensate.
Thank you for your time,
Shipwreck Jones
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Good.
It would be too weird ( and boring ) if just any capsuleer could get into a Titan. Normally, Titans are for bosses, commanders, admirals that sort of thing… not lowly swabs with illusions of grandeur.
But… Titans ought to be boardable by “pirates”. Halas, none can escape the capsule except in case of podding, so no pew-pew action on ship bridge like in star wars, star trek ect…
OR we can just make the same mistakes AGAIN!
They certainly were oppressive with HAW, but they should be if they cost 285b to build. When they dropped HAW from titans, they were fairly cheap at like 45b manufacturing cost vs 285b now.
Titans are only good for capitals while supercarriers are superb against both. Dreads are great against both. Why does the most expensive ship get shafted?
I hope you drop your titan on my subcaps, because you’ll have a nice surprise waiting for you. Putting HAW on titans would put them in the field more often, and actually help reduce the number of titans in the wild since no one is building them now.
No, it’s a stupid idea.
1 Like
Maybe next time include your logic as to why it’s stupid.
No, super expensive ships that only an elite few can afford should not be oppressive to everyone else. That’s terrible game design.
Now, a more reasonable argument would be that they should be made more affordable, in order to bring their cost in line with their power, but I’m not so sure that that argument works here either.
Generally speaking, item power increases linearly, while item cost increases exponentially -which I think is a critical design decision for a game like Eve online. If prices increased linearly, everyone would flock to the most expensive ships, which would negatively impact the competitiveness of cheaper ships and newbros, and make it so that everyone would have to spend even more time grinding (or cash) in order to pay for their PvP ships.
Now, I think one of the problems with caps during the age of abundance is that the low prices of caps significantly flattened the curve -which led to the aforementioned problems. So, to me, I don’t feel like CCP moved things out of balance, but into balance (they restored the curve). The problem, however, is one of anchoring bias. Players have been used to cheap caps for so long, that it now feels wrong to them for caps to be so expensive. But, honestly, why should tens of thousands of players be able to afford titans? Is that good for the game? Does that make the game more fun? Personally, I think you’d be hard pressed to make those arguments.
Of course, this is not to say that there are no benefits to cheap capitals -as caps, and supers in particular, provide aspirational goals and hooks for players, which improves player retention. And with cap prices being what they are, I think many players will stop trying to aspire to them. So, there are definitely some trade offs here.
However, that does not mean that capital proliferation was good for the game. And I remain adamantly opposed to the idea that ridiculously expensive ships should be oppressive to everything else in the game (I make an exception for AT ships because they are so rare, that you can go your entire eve career without ever seeing one in the wild. But I digress.).
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You put zero effort into your OP, others already explained why it’s a bad idea. Don’t see a reason to put in more of my own effort other than “no”.
Sounds like rmt
4 Likes
Nice post 
Titans were meant to be alliance flagships, so it’s the alliance’s “elite” ship. I’d say rorquals really pushed bulk capitals for cheap. I took an Eve break and came back to rorquals and I was shocked. It’s more risk on the field, but if it goes unchallenged, alliances can mine multitudes of dreads per hour.
In 2006 I used to go on alliance mining ops in an apocalypse to help acquire minerals for dreads. Compare that to 60 rorquals mining 15 bil worth of minerals every hour.
I’m not advocating for cheap capitals. High capital cost is good. I think all the capitals are fairly well balanced currently except the titan. If a battleship cost 250m and a dread is 1b, why would a veteran fly a battleship? Everyone was in dreads when they were cheap. Snuffykins was dropping HAW dreads every fight. Since the changes, capitals are not used nearly as much.
It’s amazing people are so against HAW on titans. I don’t think it was that big of a deal before, but now that titans cost 2 arms, 2 legs, and 2 nuts, it seems reasonable that they would be capable of taking down subcaps for 285b construction cost. A Phoenix can already get 6k dps on HAW. Would it really be oppressive if the titan had 6k dps HAW when a dread already does?
I have a titan alt and several super alts. The titan is a trophy bridger and the supers are actually far more functional for a fraction of the cost. The supers can go anti-cap or anti-subcap just by swapping fighters. Supercarriers have oppressive sub-cap damage. They can attack from 200km away.
WTS Avatar 250b
That sounds good…I want to see HAW Avatar gank fleets in hisec.
Well, I think that begs the question(s) -what should supers be good at killing, and what should the ship food chain look like?
Naturally, I think it makes sense for caps to be good at killing (larger) subcaps, but should supers also be good at it? Or should they be limited to being good at killing caps and other supers?
Now, to be fair, I am not an expert on cap warfare in any space. So, since this is outside of my area of expertise, I’m coming more from a theoretical perspective on how balance should work, than one of how things actually work. However, I’m of the mind that supers should be good at killing capitals (and structures), but not good at killing subcaps. I mean, there’s nothing bigger than them in the food chain, and they have to have some sort of weakness. Of course, there are dread bombs, but is that still a strat that people want to use now that capitals are so expensive?
So, what else is there? Seems to me like subcaps would make a great choice. It would complete the rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock food chain, and, in theory, make subcaps useful for supercap engagements, as they would be both, good at killing supers, and necessary for defending them -which I think is important for a PvP game that is set in an open and persistent world (versus arena or matchmaking style PvP games where where players will wait until they hit level cap before engaging in PvP, or where there are algorithms that match players based on “skill”). I think it’s important to design balance so that players of all ages can be competitive and make meaningful contributions to fleets, because that not only provides the most fun for the most people, but also helps ensure that newbros don’t feel like they’re foreover behind the vets, and nothing but cannon fodder and/or easy kills to them.
meh. I those are some rather unwieldy sentences, but I’m getting tired. So, that’s where I’m going to leave things.
And, yeah, I do think that titans should have a bigger role than subcap fleet shotguns. However, I’m not sure that making them good at killing subcaps is the right direction to go with them.
And just to be clear, I don’t find the “what about super carriers” argument compelling because I don’t think that they should be very good at killing subcaps either. So to me, I’d rather see them be less effective at killing subcaps, than see titans also be made good at it in order to achieve some sort of parity with them.
Anyway, I think this is a complex issue, and I most certainly don’t have all the answers. But I know what I don’t want -and that’s super capitals being able to pwn subcaps.
3 Likes
I’m not sure why people are opposed to this, gives another reason for Titans to be on grid that leaves it exposed to an anti-capital counter drop. Which is how they die.
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People would prefer no one use them it seems. They are intended to be station spinners.
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Titans, and supers in general, should never have been added. They’re either oppressingly overpowered or not worth the risk.
When they got introduced they were terribly/hilariously OP, which was ok because almost no one used one (apart from the Hera). The problems came with unbridled resource and isk farming so “everyone” had multiple super alts which made it all BS.
Get to a point where current stocks are all gone and it’s incredibly difficult to farm the isk/minerals (so it’s a corp effort again) and then maybe they could increase their subcap capabilities.
1 Like
I don’t really believe a counter system is the sole aspect for combat. I don’t believe a single HIC should be able to solo kill a titan. If that were the case, I would say all ships should have a similar build cost.
In my opinion, Eve is more about risk. If you risk 5 billion vs 5 million, there should be significant gains in power. Sure, there can be diminishing return as well, but without gain in power, there is no incentive to fly anything except small ships.
I started Eve in 2006, and Eve was already fairly mature by then. I joined an alliance and many of them flew command ships, recons, BS, etc. but I just flew a punisher. I was still quite valuable though as I maintained tackle throughout fights since bubbles weren’t used every fight. At the same time, goons were just getting going. Everyone laughed at the newb group because all they flew were T1 cruisers, but they also knew they could actually swarm you with T1 cruisers and do serious damage. Eve is almost entirely about the ISK war, and goons often won the ISK war in the early days.
Later on I got into the Armageddon which was incredibly powerful. Webs were 90% slow at the time, so I could slaughter almost anything. It was fun and seemed fair, since frigates were basically throw away trash. I grew from my tackler punisher to a battleship that could do some damage.
One day I watched my alliance mate single volley an enemy battleship with his Phoenix. I also saw carriers that had fighters that would chase you around the system. I died from one of the first titan doomsdays which was AOE like the bosonic field generator. It was all extremely fun, because going up against such opponents is actually terrifying. I feel that Eve has slowly become less fun over the years as things “become more balanced”.
Even in other games like Battlefield 2, the aircraft were severely overpowered compared to ground troops. I was a superb aircraft pilot and would slaughter people all over the map. It was seriously fun just mowing them down like nothing. On the other hand, when I was the victim of the aircraft, it was equally fun. It was terrifying seeing or hearing the jet coming in my direction; I could watch the bomb detach and turn my crew into dust. My bro and I were caught by an attack chopper; we hid behind a boat, and I got blown to bits. He didn’t move and the chopper moved away. It was memorable, because you have certain death against and overpowered aircraft.
Today Battlefield games are fun, but most people I know would wager BF2 is still the best ever. BF games have actually gone downhill as they become “more balanced”. A guy on the ground can more easily take out aircraft, so aircraft aren’t desired as much and not really that fun.
This huge wall of text brings me to two points:
- Eve is about ISK wars. The more ISK you throw down, the more power you should wield.
- Going up against an opponent who is grossly overpowered is actually fun if the reward is worth it. It’s satisfying to take down opponents who are extremely powerful.
Welp, we agree on this, but…
We disagree big time on this. I want skill to be the biggest factor in determining outcomes, not isk spent. Don’t get me wrong, things like SP and ship cost should provide advantages, but I don’t want to see them trumping player skill.
Anyway, our disagreement may come down to different values. So, I doubt we’re going to see eye to eye on this. However, it was nice to have an actual discussion with someone that didn’t devolve into ad hominem attacks, straw man arguments, or any other such nonsense. 
Edit: And just for clarification, I didn’t mean to imply that you don’t care about player skill at all. People tend to have different opinions on how important player skill, SP, and ship cost should be, and I personally want player skill to be much more important than the other two. Others, might want to see more balance between the three (and some, want isk to be the most important factor).