Hello CCP Auroa
first of all, thank you for finally doing something about capital building after almost a year and a half, because for so long it has been impossible to build capitals, which until then was an entire industry in EVE Online. Im only looked in to cap buildding not in to subcapital changs or other changes of this patch.
However, after looking at the data on sisi, I have to say that I don’t think these changes will lead to a lot of capitals being built again. Yes, the amount of resources has been significantly reduced, especially in terms of the need for PI. What has not been touched is the amount of scanning loot items needed, for the Neurolink Protection Cell and Enhanced Neurolink Protection Cell also less gas less needed, but still the amounts that have to be gethert from deep WH system are huge.
If a player would to buy out jita at the time I am writing this, that player could build 16 Revelations and 86% of an Avatar. Yes, that’s progress, but it’s still a long way from being enjoyable and fun.
During the time of the great rorqual fleets it was far too easy to build capitals and supercapitals and I absolutely supported that this is now more difficult.
What I do not support, however, is that all areas of the game that the producer has nothing to do with have to be included in the building process:
Mining in highsec, mining in lowsec, gas mining in WH, sight running in WH sight running in lowsec, and a litte bit mining in nullsec. And only then may all this be assembled in nullsec.
This force a way of playing the game on the producer, namely that of a logistician. Yes, it used to be the case that huge amounts of material had to be procured, but now it is in addition to that a matter of getting it out of WH space or finding people to spend their playtime scanning and having luck with that.
I would just ask the developers to do a build themselves from start to finish to see how many different things have to be done that are absolutely not designed to make it a big industry. It’s just no fun trying to gather all these things from all over the game and hoping someone will get lucky in sights, or trying to find a highsec corp that can mine enough minerals to deliver them in bulk to nullsec, or even talking about supply the production from the WH where no proper logistics path can be built.
With this industry revived, these resources must be made available again in nullsec. Besides the fact that people can then really work on ships again where they are build AND used, this would also have an other effect: there would be more people for content in space again.
No one goes to the higshec for roaming, but to nullsec. If the resources have to be mined there, gathert, what ever, everyone wins. Logisticians, miners, hunters and defenders. This would be a step to where we were before all the scarcity crap and there were average player numbers of 30,000 instead of 20,000 on the server like it is now.
Something else related to faction titan balacing: Molok and Komodo now have pretty much the same build cost as normal titans, their BPCs are going for about 180b and dropping. A Vanquisher used to cost about 2.5 to 3 times as much as a normal titan, now it’s about 5 times. For the fact that the Vanquiosher is the worst of the faction titans and even if the BPC can be bought for LP, these costs are too high in relation and should be reduced, as this ship is now many times more expensive than its kind, even including the BPC price. Similarly for the Vehement and the Vendetta (a Vehement is about 50 times more expensive than a normal dread).
One more note on faction titans which only partially relate to the buildcosts: Faction titans have never been worth their money, but after the heavy nerf to supercaps over the years, they are just ridiculous. To balance this out a bit, one option would be to give faction titans (and yes ONLY faction titans) the ability to fit HAW guns again. This would give these absurdly expensive ships a real advantage over other titans and maybe even allow them to be used on carp beacons, giving the last few capital hunters (whaler) great opportunities and interesting content. I think it would be an other win-win for everyone and give players who have been around for a long time a new goal.
Tldr: This is going in the right direction, but not look only at the numbers. behinde the numbers are players and activities so think about who, why and where they are carried out this activities and whether they are fun.