Yes. Good. I’m almost certain that is the whole point.
You’re right, it isn’t. It is about the player who gets alpha’d at the very start, who then doesn’t have to self-destruct in order to reship faster and try to get back to help before it’s too late. It means they have more “options” as to how their main ship blowing up is dealt with and what they can/can’t do when that happens.
What if for frigate escape pod instead of already available frigate hulls introduce a special frigate hull specific to Frigate escape bay only. A frigate that rams in capitals with high speed and damage and gets destroyed it self as well. Kind of anti-cap suicide frigate. Aka The kamikaze Frigate. I know it sounds like a really bad idea ??? 
Thx for letting me put a succubus in my battleship
you can load a shuttle into a nestor already. 5k m3 ship maintenance bay - it’s really just there to allow fleetmates to use the nestor to refit.
Bollocks.
It’s not all about advantage.
Eve is a game. It’s about fun. And being blapped out of a fight isn’t fun.
Aside from that, it still makes changes to the tactical consideration.
Nullbears gonna null
They will just be blapped anyway just a little later.
The changes tactically are not meaningful. If you are outnumbered then having yourself appear in a frigate when you die isn’t going to change the outcome. Thus the game is still about who fields more pilots or kitey people hoping for to lure someone away and blap them. Otherwise they run away.
Really if the game wants to make tactics interesting, then there are plenty of improvements to be made. Make it much harder to not commit. The most boring thing is kiting for both sides. The kiters don’t commit and run away. Anything that won’t be alphad by them is too slow so it’s pretty much one side or the other kills one or two that make a mistake and then the kiters run away and/or the brawlers dock up.
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True, though you forget frigates have all slots (high through to RIG) to make an ultimate escape pod.
You can make a frigate jump faster and accelerate better than capsules.
Plus you could passive tank.
With just those you can have a fast accelerating to warp frigate, with a high passive damage resistances. Would allow most to turn back to a gate or warp off after a gate camp attack. Throw this on an Assault Frigate with an good Assault Damage Control you could get a tank with EHP high enough to get to a gate before the Assault Damage Control deactivates.
Also a capsule almost guaranteed to die to a smartbomb gatecamp unless the camper is messing up while a frigate has a chance or even almost guaranteed to make it depending on the fit and circumstances of the camp.
No frigate gets into warp faster than a pod so the “acceleration” argument is moot. Burning back to the gate, sure a frigate can burn back to the gate faster however:
if you were in highsec or lowsec, then your pod just warping off is much faster than a frigate and much faster than burning to the gate. They simply can’t lock your pod if you do it right. Anything bigger than a pod can be locked by a good enough tackle.
No matter where you were at, if you aggressed then you aren’t getting back through the gate, assault frigate or not.
So pretty much the only use for the “mega escape pod” would be if you are solo roaming in a BS in null. Get caught somewhere and bubble is up. Lose your battleship without fighting back to get aggro, and hope they don’t have webs to stop you getting back to the gate or enough DPS to just blap you before you get through.
You basicly just don’t like EvE … that is what you’re saying.
So in order for this to make sense in the context of the “frigate escape bay” you would have to have taken a BS to somewhere first, lose it, then on your way back somehow run into a smart bomb camp.
First off, smartbombs are impossibly easy to avoid. Simply don’t come at the gate at an angle that is in the bath of the bomb. So ping off of a belt, planet, moon, etc at the right angle and then even your pod can avoid the bomb.
For those that say being in a frigate will guarantee avoid the smartbomb, I welcome to to visit me with your frigates. So many of them could easily avoid the bombs but instead die thinking they are invincible in their travel ceptors. The people that do avoid/survive the bombs don’t do so because they are in a frigate. They get through because they come to the gate properly as explained above.
Then you could say “my assault damage control > your smartbomb!” True, but then the tackle on the other side will get you anyway in your slow AF ;).
Say what?
I smartbomb quite often and pretty much anyone with half a brain / isn’t lazy can easily avoid the bombs. They don’t however so I am happy to collect the loot they bring me.
Say what, again?
I heard a rumor that smartbombing dreadnaughts could cover the whole gate.
I haven’t personally tested bombing using a dread on a gate (now I might just for the hell of it) but for all ships that I have tried, you can not activate the bomb within the bombs radius of the gate. Also the “zero” of the gate is not a pinpoint, it is a sphere. Thus there is a sphere around the gate that no matter how big your bomb is you simply can not bomb in it. Officer/T2, faction smartbombs have a larger radius but then you have to be further away from the gate to use them. The benefit however is the greater damage and wider angle they will cover. Still though, even against someone using officer bombs it would be easy to come at an angle not in line with the gate they are catching from.
So what you are saying is that the outside sphere of your ship model cannot be touching the outside sphere of the gate model if you want to fire your smartbombs? I had thought that it might be the center point of your ship and the sphere of the gate, but what you say makes sense.
Most of the smartbombing camps I have seen are lone machariels, which put out such low damage that I am surprised it can kill anything.
The sphere created by the bomb (which is greater than your ship’s size) can not be crossing the sphere of the gate’s zero. So for example if you have a bomb that has 5KM range, you have to be more than 5KM away from the gate’s zero to activate it. If you have a T2 bomb, you have to be more than 6KM away, etc. So there is never a time where you can “cover the gate” with a smartbomb. At best you get inline with a target gate and wait for a victim to warp straight to you. If they come at an angle that is far enough off from inline with the in-gate (by for example warping to a celestial first), then your bomb won’t hit them. Also constellation and region gates are much bigger. It is much easier to avoid a bomb on those gates (if anyone even bombs on them) due to their huge zero sphere size.
The machs are used because of their warp speed/movement speed. If you have to reposition your bomber often then they are good for that purpose.