One of the most common reasons given for the prohibitive price of capitals is do to their power projection. While i still feel this high cost only effects newer/smaller groups. What if we did something crazy and made capital jump drive a module. Transferring a huge portion of the hull cost out of the hull and into this mod.
I can see it either fitting a slot like a t3 sub system or occupying a high slot. No dread or carrier has 8 highs so adding an extra hs to each could serve as a minor buff to capitals who don’t use them.
This will allow smaller groups to use them defensively at a major cost to mobility. Still don’t know how many would with how vulnerable they would be. That would probably depend on how much of the hull cost was offloaded. But we would probably see more solo roaming Dreads just looking for a brawl at least.
Since you mentioned capitals… would this apply to jump freighters and Rorquals? It’s an interesting idea, though (maybe should be extended to Black Ops as well). High slot probably works best.
this is the role of jump bridges and should stay that way.
I could see it having a use for rorqs especially with how much the current rorq meta is built around their jump drive so you would be giving up a lot. With JFs I don’t think they really need it but assuming the Jump dives are all the same it would only reduce a small amount of the total hull value when compared to a carrier or dread so i don’t think it would harm much.
The only real downside I see with the JFs is this would be harder to make into a high slot.
BLOPs do not need this. their price is perfectly fine for what they are and already see wide use from even very small groups. All removing the Jump drive would do is make it so you have a very cheap heavy cyno ship. likewise it would further restrict the crowded Highs of a blops if this was made into a High slot mod.
where again just making this a subsystem mod is viable HS adds a small advantage to the ships electing not to use them and avoids adding an extra type of slot to their fitting windows.
Interesting idea for sure moving most of the cost out of the ship and into the module so people can use the capitals without their negative side for much cheaper sounds very reasonable.
But that also means defense is now cheaper than offense and I think with current mechanics defense is already overtuined.
But your idea + a rework of offense/defense could work, reducing the grind needed by making citadels cost resources so there is a limited amount of them per system and then having cheaper capitals that people try gate could lead to more unexpected side battle which might even be more interesting that the main “planned” battle.
We could jump 20 supers or buy 50 and gate them, ■■■■it lets gate them. Get’s caught in multiple traps where they are separated in different systems.
there are ISO-5 or ISO-10 stuff in the game, why not have a new drive which can be fit to ship, requires ISO-whatever and is superior to the older ones… some how.
no it would just make every ratting bot safe from cynos lol. you are gain pushing cynos into something large groups will have just a mild inconvenience with but killing it for smaller ones.
on that scale the problem is isk just stops being an issue. anything you try to make more expensive just puts an advantage towards older larger and more established groups.
and again from what I can tell supers are already in a good place balance wise so this would only be a change to standard capitals.
The only difference would be that instead of a single char being the cyno char you would need to use a small fleet to accompany the cyno which a small group can still do. And actually do it better as they are usually better pilots too and can make more use out of smaller numbers.
The difference comes in when people use 8 cyno alts all searching for content in different directions covering a lot of ground which is already a problem better to focus the 8 chars into 1 group searching which stops this crazy projection.
right so an inconviniance for large orgs but no longer possible for small groups lol.
overall making space safer for ishtars everywhere. Cynos are about the only things that add risk to doing just about anything in Blue null. Especially when a small group wants to target a larger one and isn’t just randomly looking for content.
Why do you need a cyno to kill ishtars when a interceptor + small gang can easily farm plenty of them.
Cyno’s are designed for taking out bigger ships.
But it becomes a massive problem in low sec as now you cannot fly a battle ship in low sec anywhere in gal/cal wz becuase snuff will drop it in 10minutes with their 12 searching cyno ships.
Covert cynos were designed to hit ratting and mining ships in enemy space.
any intel channel worth its salt is going to report that well before you even get close to a system being used for ratting or mining.
not because your in a BB but because you’re in something with a high enough isk price. But no you shouldn’t be doing that in snuff range. good thing there are pleanty of areas in LS where you can still do this just fine.
that said in cal mil if we could bring in a similar number of fax/dreads as snuff for half the cost you can bet we would have given them those fights lol especially in LS where bubbles couldn’t be used to keep caps from getting to the fight
its a huge buff to groups like snuff not the rest of us. the insurance is what we all told CCP needed to be removed to alleviate the cap issue i have no idea why they are bringing it back.
some do but its far easier to manage 1 red through space than 7 or 8.
aye. and snuff doesn’t have all of the cal/gal warzon in range and there is still loads of cal/gal ls out of thier range.
But smaller/newer groups needing to use less populated space to grow isn’t a bad thing its a natural thing.
currently the hardest part is getting the initial capital. while a higher insuranse pay out makes that easier for everyone that compounds to large groups who already have stockpiles of the caps. basically anytime a line member loses one of these ships the group only needs to pay 25% of the cost back to the line member (depending on their srp some may cover the initial insurance cost as well) then sell them back another dread.
so large groups can far more freely drop caps with little risk where small groups will have an easier time paying for the next cap but they still need to source it and there may not be any near where they stage. especially now that you need a much larger investment to build caps with CSAA no longer being buildable. So you need access to at least an Azbel. if you want to be building them.
IMO LS was at its healthiest when most small to mid sized groups were able to field a capital fleet. It made it harder for larger groups to freely drop on anything as many local groups could at least challenge smaller escalations that you may see outside a larger groups prime time. LS corps also tend to defend their own and it wasn’t uncommon for us to be able to punish null groups that thought they could get away with dropping suppers.
large groups will always and should always have an advantage in a game like EVE but there needs to be a path for newer or smaller groups to grow. the currant balances has the gulf just too wide.
The only counter point I can see is that insurance only lasts 2 weeks so if you wanted to really â– â– â– â– with snuff you would pretend to want to bait them into a big fight get them to insure their dreads then call it off and let their 2 weeks of insurance wear off and they loose a ton of iskies.