I constantly hear about the menace of capship proliferation. Well, what I want to talk about here today is the big elephant in the room that, for some strange unknown reason, nobody seems to notice. I mean, I just don’t understand how you could notice a flea next to you, and freak the hell out about that flea, but not notice the gigantic elephant standing right on top of you.
That gigantic elephant that I want us to acknowledge is subcap proliferation. Because I literally, and I do mean LITERALLY, see subcaps everywhere I go in Eve. And the more ‘sub’ the subcap is, the more I see them (e.g. frigates and cruisers thick as flies). It isn’t an understatement to say that for every capship I’ve ever seen in Eve, I’ve seen tens of thousands of subcaps.
I know this solution comes up for a lot of problems with the game, but this time I think it could really work. How about we just add “flying a subcap” to the list of exploits, and anybody caught doing it can be banned?
Yeah, where is the equity here? We need to change the oppression of the minority capitals. They are not even allowed in some places, this is beyond offensive and needs to stop. Equality for all. Stop the oppressive majority who exploit the minority.
Until there is a one to one ratio of capital ships to sub caps in this game the tyranny will never end.
It does not stop there! The true menace are all these capsuleers flying around in space! There are way too many capsuleers around flying ships, dropping their litter in every ally, litterally! Not a single system with huge piles of trash, so big people even dock in them!
While I said it in a sarcastic or funny way, and other posters picked up on this and left responses in a similar style, I am trying to make an actual point (using sarcasm to do it). That point is this:
If so-called ‘capship proliferation’ is considered a ‘menace,’ but subcaps outnumber them 10,000 to 1, and if most players’ experience is that they do in fact see many, many numbers of subcaps for every capship they ever see, then why are subcaps not considered even more of a ‘menace?’
Another question. Why do certain players consider capships to be the ‘red-headed stepchildren’ of Eve, which must be treated differently than all other ship classes? For instance, these players believe it is perfectly fine to have literally infinite numbers of frigates and cruisers. There are no possible numbers of frigates and cruisers that could ever raise an eyebrow or make them think they need to be limited somehow, either through game mechanics, price controls, etc. But the red-headed stepchildren of Eve - the capships - are different. See enough of those, and by God, they are a menace! Something needs to be done about them! They need to be controlled!
What causes this mindset? Although I’d like to think there is some deep, interesting philosophical reasoning behind it, the answer is obvious and simplistic. Some people don’t like capships, for whatever irrational reason. That’s it.
Aw, you had to go ruin the thread by trying to make a point.
Personally, I’m slightly anti-cap but mostly anti-supers. Supers represent a catch 22 of power in EVE… you can’t get sov without supers, you can’t get supers without sov. Therefore, only those who already currently have sov are on the approved list to ever have sov. The only way to bypass this restriction is to be sponsored in some way, which imo, is the single shittiest thing about EVE. Regular caps aren’t as big a deal except that they appear to be too effective at certain things.
Because subcaps are all capable of killing each other happily. Rare cases excluded a frigate can kill a BS. And a BS fitted for it can kill a frigate. The active tank is not that different. Capitals represent a massive order of magnitude jump where you need a fleet of subcaps to take a single capital ship on. This means that to fight capitals you need capitals. That leads to super cap drops. And the only way to fight those is your own super caps.
That’s why capitals are treated differently.
The more powerful the ship, the more of a fleet you need to kill the ship in a reasonable amount of time, all other things being equal (fit, pilot skill, skill points, etc). Several frigs are generally needed to kill a cruiser or battlecruiser. Even more are needed for a battleship. So, sure, even more are needed for a capital ship. So nothing is out of order here.
You might try the argument that the gap in size of fleet needed to kill a cap is more in the jump from battleship to capital ship than the jump from, say, cruiser to battleship. If so, I really don’t have an issue with that - I think capital ships should be just that, CAPITAL SHIPS. However I have yet another retort. Would you still have a problem with caps if several more ship classes were inserted between battleship and capship to “smooth the transition” so to speak, so that the gaps in jumps from one to the other were similar? If so, then your problem is that you just don’t like capships, so quit rationalizing. If not, then your problem isn’t the capship, but the fact that you would like more ship classes between capship and battleship.
Wrong. Every capship owner I know does not fear capships, but instead lives in mortal terror of subcaps - particularly frigates. They’ll go on ratting or doing whatever if a capship shows up on dscan. But the second a frigate pops up, they are warping to station quicker than you can imagine.
There is sense to this as troll as it sounds. Light ships are far to popular and versatile especially now that they are doing more and more damage as the years go by. For example the Hecate is pushing battleship blaster dps with a sub 2 second align time. I think larger weapons should sting a lot more. Atm a neutron Hyperion with 3 mag stabs does relatively similar damage to a Hecate with the same damage mods. The consequences for being in large weapon range and being slow/large enough to be hit should be catastrophic compared to light weapons.