[Proposal]How to roll back Surgical Strike Resistance Nerfs and deal with Supercap Proliferation

Council Of Stellar Management Assembly Hall
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*So I came back after two years, and found that CCP has decided to reduce resistances for all hulls (focused on tank builds) in response to capital tanks. Funny enough I predicted this would happen in 2014, but I didn’t think they would also nerf subcap resists, because of this, I’m rewriting my original 2014 Proposal for a Nuclear Submarine Class (Cruiser hull) to allow subcaps fleets to engage Supers and reduce their resistances over time, at the suggestion of ROLLING BACK the Surgical Strike Resistance nerfs):

We have Stealth Bombers, which are frigates that fire extremely oversize weapons. They also have bombs which do great damage to subcaps.

Now let’s make a Covert OPs Cruiser or BC that’s only effective against Supercaps: The Submarine Class.
They fit Citadel CRUISE Launchers.

These ships must be pretty thin, a cruiser sized tank and sig radius. They would not be allowed to fit MWDs, only ABs. Having an AB would still make them difficult targets for HAW dreads and titans. Carriers would still be able to kill/chase off these cruiser hulls.
Allow them to target hostiles while cloaked. Unlike other covert ops, these ships cannot recloak for at least 3 minutes after they break cloak.

Finally this ship class could fit special bomb launchers that reduce armor, shield and hull resists of the target. Each bomb would reduce the resistances by 0.1%, and last for 120 seconds. These ships would not be allowed to fit regular bomb launchers (so they can never be used against subcaps). Nor can these ships fit any turrets, missiles only, capital sized turrets could be easily abused via webs/scrams/etc in subcap warfare. Also, the small 0.1% resistance debuff per bomb would make it futile to try to bring 1 or 2 of these cruisers along in a roam for the sake of resistance reduction.

The bomb could be refired every 60 seconds, restacking and resetting the duration of the resistance penalty. At 0.1%, it would take 20 of these ships to cause a reduction of 2% every 60 seconds.

The bombs would also be race specific, Amarr hulls could only use the EM resistance bomb. This would would force the fleet to fly the same race and for the overall fleet composition to plan and agree on the damage type based on the ongoing situation.

For balance reasons, a paper thin tank means about 20k ehp (with boosts). The lore reason would be quite simple: The hulls are being gutted of their defensive capabilities to make room for citadel launchers and missile bays. These ships would melt instantly to regular subcaps and sniper ships (oracles, eagles, etc) without support.

Due to the cargo size of citadel missles, these ships could also not remain on field for more than 15 minutes before having to resupply on missles. This logistical problem would balance out the otherwise easy ability to formup and field of these cruisers. These ships would have to DOCK in order to restock missiles (no cargo container drops)

Also these ships would quite pricey. A fleet of 20 of these cruisers would be several billion ISK…cost must be considered in balance (to some degree).

So what does this proposal do, from a larger viewpoint:

1: It makes it possible for subcap fleets to dispose of Supers.
2: It makes it important to have a standard subcap fleet to swat these Submarine Class cruisers.

The above two points overall make subcap tactics and deployment and PILOTS (most of the EvE playerbase) useful, wanted and able to contribute and have fun.
Ends the days of pure Super domination. A Fleet of unassisted Supers would evenutally die. Overall, Super deaths would skyorcket and these ships would only be deployed in the manner that they were originally intended: As strategic assets that bring a lot of firepower to bear.

It allows the overall resistance nerfs in Surigical Strike to be rolled back. The bombs will decrease resistances over time, and thus CCP does not need to nerf the resistances of subcaps in order to increase the chance of Super kills.

I cannot for one believe that CCP would nerf the resistances of Subcaps becasue of their failure to find another way to weaken Supers. There are many frigate/cruiser fits that I myself use that go from strong to useless with these resistance changes. I’m sure most of my other fellow EvE pilots feel the same way. Why are our subcap fits/brawls being punished for Supercap proliferation?

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Also wanted to add:

The primary reason of Supercap proliferation has always been:

THE MAJORITY OF THE PLAYER BASE (sub cap pilots) CANNOT ENGAGE THEM.

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this is false, they reduced resistances on a few specific modules.

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In other words, if you’re ship’s focus is its tank, it’s been nerfed.

Ships that don’t build around their tank, buffed by default. Polarized builds, super buffed by default.

The whole subcap meta is being jeopardized for supercaps.

I made an edit since apparently people can’t think beyond the literal interpretation of text.

@Jin_taan

You’re thread on the obselence of subcaps inspired this post. My proposal makes subcap cruiser hulls useful vs Supers and regular subcap fleets useful vs the paper thin subcap super killers.

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No, it’s not. Stop sensationalizing stuff you have absolutely no idea about.

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The goal of this change is more explosions and that goal is likely to be achieved. Capital ships will be affected the most - as intended. High end hardeners (officer, deadspace, etc…) will be affected more than basic T2 - as intended. The nerf is general, affecting all ships, so the playing field remains level. There are workarounds - hull bonuses, reactive armor hardeners and damage controls are not affected.

All in all, the patch should have the intended impact and at relatively low cost in terms of development effort - once the design work is done it’s basically just changing a few numbers in the database.

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Supercaps will not die unless subcaps can engage them.

Any change to Supercap resistances retains the N+1 formula, which is why super deaths are rare, since no one will deploy them if they are the N-1 side.

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from the dev blog

it also diminishes the overall power of logistics and will make modules focused on speed and damage a more attractive option. The hope is to see bloodier fights, less stalemates, and a huge cross-sectional shift in the fitting meta.

Honestly, I’m kind of excited about the surgical strike changes, and want to try them out. Like, a huge meta shakeup is exciting (and, I hope, I’ll be able to take advantage of it). Plus, I like the idea of a more dangerous and bloody Eve. Unfortunately, I do have a concern, and that’s how the player base as an aggregate will react -especially since these changes are coinciding with resource scarcity. So, I don’t know. I guess we’re going to find out.

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And this is another stated intention of the changes planned for this quadrant. CCP plans a true “rock - paper - scissors” dynamic where capitals are the counter for subcaps, supers are the counter for capitals and subcaps are the counter for supers. This is the first patch in this series. not the last.

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CCP planned 3-5 steps in the scarcity phase. They’ve shipped 3. I doubt the scarcity phase will extend beyond the end of this quadrant. We should see the start of the redistribution phase by July.

For now, I’m seeing material costs rise a lot faster than selling prices which makes production planning a challenge. Both ships and modules will get a lot more expensive. Unless alliances can cover this through SRP, I suspect they’ll have trouble filling fleets until people adjust to the new economic reality and reset their “anchor” for what things should cost. This isn’t necessarily bad - loss in Eve is supposed to be painful.

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Yes this is definitely a step in the right direction.

The Super > Cap > Subcap > Super triangle is always how I envisioned the game should be. Hopefully they can make it work. I still fail to see how subcap fleets have the dps to kill supers without my current proposal.

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Please imbibe on the mystical tide pod fruits.

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strangely all of my frigate, destroyer, cruiser and battleship armor/resist fits failed to spontaneously explode when this patch was release, something is obviously horribly wrong here

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A tank base don speed/sig/active rep will now suddenly explode against certain blap arty fits.

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Would you like to take this statement back now? Entire subcap doctrines have been rekt by the resist chances.

Nano kite doctrines are even stronger now.

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Please show me where “entire subcap doctrines have been rekt by the resist chances”. I’ll wait. :slight_smile:

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I’ve seen three incursion fleet doctrines redone with minor adjustments to fleet fits, from the basic starter fleet member fits through to the elite Vet fits.

Most removed the third module and replaced with things like trimarks, DC’s, damage specific resist modules, basically reducing the stacking penalties to help keep good resists.
Other options have been done like reducing number of damage mods in favour of better regen or adding DC.

Anyone saying doctrines haven’t been changed are in closed groups at have their heads in the sand.

To be honest to fix resistance looses isn’t too hard, might cost a little bit more to update fits, or change fits to higher regen builds, but its do able.

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For armor tank doctrines it means dropping a damage mod, which is huge.

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Armor PvP doctrines got hit hard because now they have to drop a damage mod (in low slot) to maintain same resist levels.

Or a change to an active armor resist mod (depending on enemy fleet).

Shield Fits in PvP have barely changed, and shield doctrines were already more popular to begin with.

Most shield docs rely on range kiting (on anchor) as it is +(logi), instead of raw EHP. Also remember the armor logi reps come after the cycle, this forces armor fleets to drop a low slot damage mod for extra resist.

Our entire BNI (brutix navy) doctrine had to fit reactive armor hardener instead of 3rd mag stab. That’s just an example.

Meanwhile the shield rail BC (ferox) retains it’s 3rd mag stab.

This nuance is sufficient to break BNI vs Ferox.

The BNI is already at the disadvantage of speed, now it has 1 less magstab.

And all of these resist changes were done in the name of nerfing SUPER caps.

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I agree with your post.

My issue is that the resist changes were aimed at Super caps, and yet affected all subcaps.

The simple change is the Heavy Bomber class (in the CCP/CSM minutes) that matches my OP.

I’m glad to see they are considering this Heavy Bomber class.