Alistair, I didn’t really agree with most of the points you made, real-world allegories aside, though to be fair I don’t think you have enough subject matter expertise nor the security clearance to really give an accurate depiction of modern naval combat, but that is beside the point.
This statement quoted is absolutely one of the most ignorant things I’ve ever read. I would highly suggest you watch Olmeca Gold’s CSM video. Goonswarm has more manpower and resources than most in-game entities combined.
Olmeca Gold’s efforts, combined with those who followed in his footsteps, achieved a state where they were able to tax ‘2 to 3 percent of the region’s income,’ and they stole/destroyed trillions of ISK in assets. That said, I really do think your point about carriers/capitals/etc being expensive is false. The proliferation of capital/supercapital ships in EVE is so wide and tall that losses of these assets only matter to smaller groups who cannot as easily replace them, and even then that is few and far between. Even Titans are in the “#AlReAdYrEpLaCeD” category now.
THAT said, I don’t think anyone, not just you, can use the opening-move or mid-game arguments, because, simply put, EVE is at the end-game stage for the majority of its core player base, whether they have the skills to participate or not. Capital ships are utilized without a lot of risk. The risk is death. So what? Already Replaced. Whether you wish to acknowledge that or not, it is the reality that is the current state of EVE.
Supcapital ships CAN be very meaningful, but I would argue their relevance in large engagements is low. I think you’ll find that HICs/Dictors/Bombers/Trig Ships are the only ones that are relevant in capital-level engagements. The first two have the obvious pinning role, while the last two bring some of the most versatile, interesting combat aspects to the engagement. However, even with that point made, those last two are only relevant in smaller engagements that don’t escalate. After an engagement escalates, as I’ve seen on countless streams of big battles, the caps fight the caps and the subcaps fight the subcaps.
The fix for this is something that is almost impossible to implement. Jin’s proposals aren’t bad ideas, but don’t fix the core issue: supercap/cap proliferation. These ships need VALUE again, rather than simply being the meta. The underlying problem is scarcity. Reading the EVE economic reports, you can see that there are simply not enough assets/ships/etc destroyed to make up for the ISK faucet that is mining/PvE/industry. However, you can’t simply make resources scarce because then those people that enjoy the non-PvP side of EVE don’t have content. This is another result of the ‘end-game’ timeline in EVE. We can mostly all remember when Titans were literal gods, and capital ships were truly force multipliers in engagements. It simply isn’t true anymore.
TLDR: Subcaps are obsolete after a certain level of escalation due to the mass proliferation of capital/supercapital ships, and this is a result of EVE being in an ‘end-game’ state. I hope this proves to be constructive.