The Obsolescence of Subcapitals

PvP Gameplay Center PvP Ships & Modules
129

CCP already tried to resource/timegate Titans. It didn’t work. They expected 3-4 in the game. There are now thousands. Maybe tens of thousands.

You are correct. As implemented, both the resources and the industry time jobs did not prevent the numbers of hulls intended. The current system restrict the rate of production but not its supply capacity.

Supply caps will only have an impact if a bottleneck exists resulting in the
Destruction rate > Creation rate

  • Mining Belt anomolies repopulate themselves after depeltion, so that supply is effectively unlimited.
  • Moon Goo does have practical limits, but market data shows supply still exceeds demand

there are currently very few finite limits on production capacities

Haulie Berry

2h

Mark_Remillard:

how exactly would the resource change alter the existing state of null sec control? The Big blocks currently have near exclusive control of key resources.

The hell are you on about? There really aren’t any trivially controlled resources in null at the moment. The closest is moon ores, and even those are pretty accessible to smaller groups.

Just about any group of jackasses can go get some sov if they want it.

The only major finite resource in the game is the “sovereignty” requirement for the capital hull production module. That module is the finite resource. Only one group per system can utilize it.

Edit: And as the biggest limiter (that i can think of) , it appears to not be effective.

in the current environment a group can concentrate all their production into a single system, thereby optimizing defensive capabilities. Theoretically it is true that

Just about any group of jackasses can go get some sov if they want it.

However… can they defend it?
The big null sec blocs currently function as eve’s equivalent to real world “oligopoly”. You are free to move in with your new group and start your new business / capital production.
However if a big group want you gone, you are going to be eliminated.

Forcing players to actually defend a number of systems proportionally equivalent to their production plans will hurt the current largest power blocs.

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130

That’s how reality is. Kill the Ogre and take its gold and jewels and make the village happy and wealthy again.

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Nobody has ever complained about proliferation of an overpowered thing being a problem, the overpowered thing itself is the problem. That’s why everyone uses it. Like when Svipuls were everywhere dominating all kinds of PVP nobody posted “lawd we need to do something about Svipul proliferation”. They were clearly too good, everyone wanted to fly them because they were too good, so they got nerfed and the proliferation “problem” sorted itself out.

Capitals and supercapitals in particular are too good. They’re too easy to fly, way too versatile and have special treatment that’s no longer justified. Things like ewar immunity, why? For what reason do they have such high ewar resistance bonuses? Supercarriers have access to ewar projectors that don’t work on other capitals, what the hell is that?

I don’t want them removed from the game, it’s cool to have huge ships like this. But CCP desperately needs to find a useful role or niche for them that isn’t “■■■■ on everything else”.

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132

In my humble opinion captial ships and super captital ships need to a buff. All ships need a buff.

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and if they aren’t all buffed equally… does that mean some by association got nerfed?

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I appear to have a different foundation set of beliefs regarding the need to “nerf” capital ships. For the sake of clarity, I want to confirm I understand @Xelios and possibly @Haulie_Berry 's viewpoint. Expressed as a “syllogism”, is this what you two believe? I would prefer not to to make “strawman” arguments:

Premise 1: There is a Significant Shortage of Sub Capital Ships in Nulls Sec Combat
Premise 2: Capital Ships are functionally more powerful than sub-capital hulls
Premise 3: The Supply Of pilots are limited.
Premise 4: Production capacities, skill points and ISK cost do not have a significant impact on hull availability for combat
Premise 5: It is desirable to see more Sub-capital hulls in null sec combat
Conclusion: Capital Ships need to be weakened

Do I understand your viewpoint correctly? I have issues with the 4th and 5th Premises but I don’t want to make arguments against a viewpoint nobody actually holds.

135

In a cap fight sub-caps are there to catch people so that the cap can get the kill-mails.

And said sub-caps die. A lot now the Kiki is out and so badly balanced.

I know that Trig stuff is supposed to be scary, and I’m enjoying bits & bobs so far, but I think the answer on this subject is for Cap Pilots to supply the sub-caps with ships.

In Brave we already do that to a degree, but our Harpies are just munched up by Kikis. 80m in Frigate exploding A LOT soon adds up.

If caps get the dank ISK then I think that hiring sub-caps is needed. Or some kind of SRP if the Corp wants to cover it.

As for the nerfs to Cap Krabbers, well, it’s going to be interesting to see how people rustle up that ISK.

136

When Object A > Object B
People will choose Object A whenever possible

Nerfing Capital Hulls (Object A) will have a very minimal impact on encouraging people to utilize sub-capitals (Object B) instead (edit: unless you make the bigger ships actually weaker than the smaller ones…). You need to change the demand (or supply) of one of those objects. Stat value changes (Nerfs) will not be effective by themself.

At present, (as far as i know) there are no scenarios that allow for both choices where the sub-capital is the better choice. When attempting to evaluate a product from a economic/objective viewpoint, three areas need to be considered:

  • Supply: CCP’s economic reports show that there is an over-abundance of products in the market (things are being produced faster than being expended) I forgot the name of the official economic term for this.
  • Price: Price history of market items indicates we are possible in a hyper inflation scenario (aka too much ISK in the economy, causing everything to get more expensive quickly) This is actually an extremely common problem for MMO’s without sufficient sinks.
  • Demand: What environments (1) allow for both capitals and sub-capitals and (2) with the sub-capital hull being the objectively superior choice?

No attempt to make sub-capital more prevalence in null-sec PVP will be successful until you adjust at least one of the above three.

137

If all the supers and titans would be killed and then the manufacturing time increased to like 6 months for a super and 9-12 months for a titan, people might not be so inclined to yolo them - hopefully.

Back when I started in 2006 and I saw all those long training times, I thought that maybe I shouldn’t concern myself with such things for the time being.

Unfortunately with cheat stix, the aspiring audience has been told to inject supers and titan on day 1.

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I am not quite sure what impact increasing the manufacturing time would have. If Industrialists are still able to sustain a creation rate > destruction rate, there might be a increase in purchase price but I doubt the usage rate would change very much.

If Sov gameplay was changed that resulted in Enrginnering complexes getting destroyed (while in use) more often, that would certainly have an impact though.

The impact of converting real world money into in-game items is far more complicated than i want to think about very much. What I will say is that the people who do this, represent a significant chunk of CCP’s profits, so they will likely always exist in some form. Spending real money on skill injectors (to fly ships) probably has less unbalancing impact on PVP than it would spending it on actual ships and structures.

139

You need to actually read through the thread, as most all of it has been thoroughly laid out already.

Subcaps are used, they simply become irrelevant once caps hit the field. The sole role of subcaps at the X47 fight was, quite literally, hunting cap ships that had disconnected and e-warped because there was literally nothing else they could do that would matter in any way.

They’re not merely more powerful, they’re better in most regards, including cost-effectiveness and mobility, and across all relevant roles.

For any given organization, the number of pilots is ultimately what constrains how many ships they’re bringing to a fight. If you have a pilot with the skills, we can put it in a hull. I can’t remember a time anyone was left behind on a roam, let alone a strategically meaningful “max dudes” fleet because, while they could fly a ship, there just isn’t one available for them.

“Already replaced” is not just a meme. Hell, there’s a guy that basically solo welps a dreadnought into pandemic horde for “content” on an almost daily basis.

It is desirable to have sub-capital hulls be relevant.

From the way you speak of caps, my suspicion is that you lack any practical knowledge or experience on this subject, and are trying to think through the problem based on the way you imagine caps work, which probably only superficially resembles reality. If you scroll through the thread, I think you’ll find that most of the people in it have quite had their fill of that.

While you’re doing that, though, there’s something you should keep in mind:

This is not a case of “Grr, nerf-the-other-guy!”

Virtually everyone in the thread saying that caps are a problem are people who fly caps. Most of us fly caps on multiple accounts, even. Most of us belong to large organizations with many hundreds or thousands of caps and supercaps.

That is to say: According to people who have spent a lot of time/effort/isk/cash skilling multiple pilots into multiple cap ships, the cap ships we have invested so heavily in are oppressive and damaging to gameplay. According to people who have… what, stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night, I guess?.. cap ships are fine, could maybe even be buffed a bit!

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140

@Alistair_Atreides

Japan very accurately lost WW2 for one reason.
[…]
their mentality was one of all risk all the time

Japan entered the war lacking the natural resources to support a sustained conflict. The leadership was well aware of that. Japan knew they could only win the war by acquiring those resources and eliminating its opponents quickly (hence Pearl Harbor and the attempted invasion of China)

Japan went “all risk all the time” because their resource shortages required it.

That being said, World War II is not an ideal analogy for EVE, for at least 3 reasons (probably more):

  • EVE player factions have minimal resource scarcities (other than sovereignty)
  • Reinforcement timers on structures invoke siege warfare strategies. The WW2 pacific campaigns rarely involved long term sieges (lightning strikes were the norm)
  • Unit compositions in World War 2 did not include comparable examples to the drastic survivability discrepancy created by Capital ships in eve (the subject of this thread).

If you want to use real world history to find parallels to “The Obsolescence of Capitals” in Eve, you might have better luck with the battles between the first metal armored warships during the American Civil War (Other countries built them first, but that war was was the first use).

Civil War Ironclad Warships

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141

Be very careful with statements like this. It borders on committing a logical fallacy (Appeal To Authority)

When making an argument, the presenters Knowledge, experience and "“formal education” is actually irrelevant. The only thing that matters is the evidence you provide to support the claim.

The other person could also challenge you to provide proof of your formal education. How exactly would you do this under an anonymous identity on the internet?

“You dont know {“X”] Capitals, [therefore you are wrong]”
is an even better (inverse) example of the Appeal to Authority Fallacy @Haulie_Berry and @Scoots_Choco have been retreating to it whenever they were unwilling to respond to the actual arguments presented.

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142

Right, so you’ve both stayed at a holiday inn express and taken philosophy 101.

But wait, while you were whinging about “fallacies” you managed to completely avoid the actual topic!

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143

Assigning resources to create parity in a competitive environment is a valid strategy only when your side has an advantage in reserves or replenishment capability. Withiout this, the strategy functions soley as a deterrent. The United States invokes this strategy because its’ economic advantage allows it to win almost any battle of attrition.

The potential Rapid resource replenishment rates and asset reserves in Null sec heavily undermine any strategy reliant on attrition (as someone earlier stated earlier “Suicide Dreads are a thing”)

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Backed further into a corner, you now resort to insults Fallacy: Ad Homimem

An intellectual honest person would to attempt to debunk the claim. You cannot do that. Instead you start calling people stupid.

145

You didn’t make a claim, as I pointed out. You tried to divert to whinging about fallacies.

Which, you’re still doing, presumably because it’s easier than discussing capital ships, which you can’t.

And, for the record, it’s a neophyte mistake to conflate insults and ad-hominem. An insult is just an insult. Ad hominem suggests that your argument is wrong because of [some feature re: you].

I was, in fact, merely insulting you. :wink:

Did you have anything to add about capital ships that isn’t abundantly incorrect, or…?

146

@Haulie_Berry

Claim: Mark does not know anything about the subject and therefore “stayed at a Holiday Inn”:
Was “knowing the subject” defined: No
Was any evidence provided for this claim: No
Did you explain how to prove knowledge of the subject: No

“I was, in fact, merely insulting you. :wink:”

Congrats, I fell victim to a troll.

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And yours is just a continual fallacy-fallacy. It’s pretty likely that if you could opine thoughtfully on the subject you would have done so by this point.

You haven’t, so it’s likely you can’t.

Your entrance to the thread was, “Caps are fine, could maybe even be stronger! They just need a really rare resource to fix the supply!”

We’ve done the really rare resource thing before. It results in cartels. You don’t seem to be aware of this and, worse, you don’t seem to actually believe that it would happen again, which is indicative of your ignorance on the topic.

Furthermore, the fundamental nature of “Really rare resource” means that people who can wield power (in the form of highly mobile, highly versatile, cost effective capital ships) will have the easiest time controlling that resource. Now we have a thousand titans and we control the means of making the titans, and there’s nothing you can do about it because we have the titans that you would need to challenge our control.

Given that the ultimate problem with cap ships is that they’re so powerful as to be absolutely necessary, that is what would happen, because there’s literally no other choice.

Your proposed “fix” for caps was, “Make them even stronger and create OTEC 2.0 (hey the acronym even still works)!”

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148

Can you actually demonstrate why you feel anything i’ve already said is incorrect?

here ill even help you out…

Haulie Berry

2h

Mark_Remillard:

how exactly would the resource change alter the existing state of null sec control? The Big blocks currently have near exclusive control of key resources.

The hell are you on about? There really aren’t any trivially controlled resources in null at the moment. The closest is moon ores, and even those are pretty accessible to smaller groups.

Just about any group of jackasses can go get some sov if they want it.
[/quote]

The only major finite resource in the game is the “sovereignty” requirement for the capital hull production module. That module is the finite resource. Only one group per system can utilize it.

I’m waiting…