Having done the spreadsheet boffin thing in a low to middle tier alliance, I can tell you that supercap production is not for the faint-hearted. I can confirm Grath's numbers, for super production (not titan production, supercap only) the startup for the most efficient arrangement with BPOs was in the order of 50 billion, a good 6 months of research. This enabled you to build 1 super per month.
The sov bills in question for putting up a CSAA meant that it wasn't a 'once every now and then thing', to make it profitable you really needed to be running that thing at near 100% efficiency (you're cynojamming your system, right?). Ideally, you needed to use the BPOs, because the copy time took so long that unless you had two full sets of BPOS (including the double and triple ups for things like the drone bays) you couldn't produce copies fast enough to not run it at a loss. That ideally meant set up in a station system, cause you'd be a retard to put 50b of BPOs in a POS tower.
You can supply a Nyx's minerals with merely a single Rhea load of compressed minerals, but then its a good 8 freighter loads of minerals or something like 17-20 freighter (not JF) loads for the cap components.
The amount of isk involved is very tempting for theft (especially those BPOs) so you can't trust too many people with it, ultimately it comes down to a couple guys and their alts to run the supercap production.
Finally, you have to be able to defend it, because you're completely at risk of invasion and losing everything in the cook time, which is like 30 days.
All this makes supercap production a real PITA for smaller and middle tier alliances. The supercap proliferation today of one side is mostly due to the short-sightedness and schoziphrenic nature of the non-DRF alliances. Now they have a lot of supers, and its hard to take it off them. But those CSAA's were allowed to chug away in the drone regions which no one wanted for 2 years.
Nerf or not, if you let a powerbloc sit there relatively peacefully for as long as they did, the only thing stopping them from being the dominant power now is their own ineptitude. Its almost a shame that CCP has to step in to redress the balance.
99m sp but titan aint one
Buff Leviathans.![]()
[05:28:32] Damienwhat Solette > friend said, if only they didn't have those 2 falcons there, i said they have 3, and he said that just says they don't want to do anything fair, just want to be dicks about it like not normal dicks but big black huge cocks
On the one hand, yes adapt or die, etc etc, one is genreally all in favour of that principle. But as with all things, when taken to an extreme it becomes ridiculous. As I said before, making supercaps a requirement to play in sov space is simply setting the bar too high.
Just give titans thermal exhaust ports, and add in a bunch of force skills. Problem solved, take that evil empire!
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
You see, the supercapital's defenses are designed around a direct, large-scale assault. A small one-man fighter should be able to penetrate the outer defense. Just make sure to pick up your power converters from Tosche station before you try to bullseye that womp rat.
He's lying last time he said he only had a nid or something
battleships have no roles in todays fleet fights
last 30 days;
Rank Ships Kills 1 Drake 52452 2 Hurricane 36346 3 Maelstrom 18573 4 Abaddon 16956 5 Armageddon 9058
anyways sorry for not posting more, ive been nerding the leaked skyrim beta, its pretty awesome
I don't agree with this perspective but you argue the point very well.
Veterans are in dire need of goals and focus. I mean, what's left to do in EVE if you've done it all? Long term goals are a necessity for veteran players, however, just because you train a 60 day skill shouldn't, in my opinion be something we all seek to do.
I'm personally a fan of more required skills which effect more than a single attribute for setting longer term goals in EVE. Having more required V (5/maxed) skills that effect more aspects of flying in space are how I feel ships should be trained into. Their next batch of ships which they introduce should, again, in my opinion, have more prerequisite skills to get into them rather than cock block skills. Titans included.
That said, even with the isk/time invested in having the ability to fly a Titan, there are a lot of pilots who have b-lined straight into them in order to boost an alliance's strength. This has put a lot of veteran players in EVE who have "done it all" into "power alliances" and don't want to put the long term effort into building up smaller entities. This specific point is why they're bad for the game from a long term EVE survivability stance. For the alliances who are more newbie friendly and accept pilots who don't lack experience, they're easily crushed by players who have simply put more time into the game, not skill. There needs to be better counters and nerfing supers right now is the best fix till CCP introduces a wider variety of countering ships to EVE (T2 dreads anyone?). The newbie friendly alliances need to at least have a chance where right now entities such as yourself with the combined efforts of your allies (w/e ya call your blues) demonstrate this point perfectly. It's risk adverse and you all have in essence, won EVE and created an unstoppable force. It's time now to scale it back just a little.
I personally wouldn't mind them staying the way they are right now IF CCP introduces more options to counter a fleet of them.
Lastly, you mentioned the ROIR incident where we had the Avatar tackled and into deep armor and were we in tempests, that Avatar would be dead. I understand your perspective, but you have to remember. You're discussing numbers of 40 supers and a handful of triage carriers in range to rep while your support (fmerc) countered our fleet by popping dicters. You failed to mention that it took over 300 of us to out DPS those reps. This is an insane number fo people, supers or not. This is the point many of us are trying to make. A fleet of supers shouldn't be able to be fielded without the support. They need to be volunerable to this and should require support. Should sub caps be able to Alpha a titan or take it down with ease? No, but 50 titans shouldn't be the counter to a sub-cap fleet either.
Yes, 50 titans should be able to counter a sub-cap fleet. The amount of time and resources required to get those titans, get the necessary and trusted pilots, get the coordination and doctrine to use them effectively far far FAR outweighs getting a few hundred 10m sp noobs in t1 gunned hurricanes. But you are of the camp that the t1 blob should always win because you have neither the foresight, vision, skill, or wherewithall to compete with a superior skilled foe.
The time and effort argument just shows how fucked up this problem is. Those who put in the time and effort have the ability to make sure no one else will be able to put in the time and effort to match them. Checkmate.
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
I'm more talking about how there's always a call to nerf anything bigger and badder than your own fleet not so much the specifics of each scenario.
That said, torp Caracals and Cruise rifters.
But everything in EVE gets taken to the extreme. That's the nature of the game, you have 1? Well I'm getting 2. You have 2? Well I'm getting 100. Nerfing supercaps so they aren't Iwin buttons is fine, but nerfing them to the point that makes them giant wastes of isk is a reversion of the game. The bar isn't too high, all the players on the 0.0 scale have been there for years now. They've all had the chance to make it an even playing field. Whether they were smart enough to do so isn't a flaw with the game it's a flaw with your own alliance/corporation/leadership for buying into the idea that the game is stagnant rather than progressing. People bitch when I start bringing up the ye olde days, but history tends to repeat itself -anyone or anything that accepts the status quo is fucked.
It's like Zagdul was talking to Grath, but quoted me.
I disagree with almost all of this. Eve doesn't have the broad appeal of a game like WoW, but it grew steadily and consistently from its release right up until CCP started taking huge steaming dumps all over it and lost all their positive (and free) word of mouth marketing from their players. There's no reason whatsoever to believe that 370k accounts is some kind of hard limit or that further growth is impossible provided that CCP unfuck themselves.
Second, relying on vets at the expense of new players is suicidal because you're going to have attrition of the userbase even if the game is perfect - people finish high school/college and suddenly find that they don't have anything like as much free time as they once did, or they start a business or family, or they hit a rough patch financially, or they just discover women and booze and decide that those things are much more fun than scarfing down cheetos and blowing up spaceships with neckbeards. Some degree of churn is inevitable; even if your goal is just to maintain your current number of paying subscribers, you've got to maintain an influx of newbies to compensate for the perfectly natural and unavoidable loss of older players.
Third, if it's true that vets "stay in EVE stay regardless of Titans and supers" then it really doesn't matter whether supers get nerfed - by your own argument, the vets who own them are committed lifers and won't be leaving even if their giant spacedicks get castrated.
Finally, you talk about keeping the current 370k, but if you were to actually ask them all individually how they'd feel about a super nerf, my guess is that 300k-odd would say "uh yeah, sure, I guess" and then immediately go back to shooting red crosses in highsec, 10k-odd are bots, slightly less than 60k would say "about fucking time," and a vanishingly small proportion would get kind of mad that anyone would even think of hurting their precious. I really don't think there's any mileage in trying to claim that keeping supers in their current state will help user retention.
[I]spherical monkey fears and envies[/I]
I think the DD nerf is sensible however I hope they dont nerf HP's or tracking to much. As Penif stated so eloquently the CFC has a 45k player roster to draw from. There is absolutely no possible way to engage that from our standpoint with out some real force multipliers. Having said that when we do engage we are putting a ton of isk on the line and that 45k man roster can still make us pay. I get it nobody likes fighting PL because you walk away with a sore ass and bruised pride. From being a opponent of PL's in the past when they roll into town you know things will be exciting and painful. When they went to Delve I went headlong into them knowing that it was going to be painful but it was exciting and fun the whole way. Spaceships best played when no fucks are given .... just do the damn thing.
YOUR EVE is veteran players. Mine (and most other people's) is filled with new players who have yet to train for their first T2 cruiser, and most other entities in game are probably a variation on that story to varying degrees. Even if the collective of titan pilots say "FUCK THIS! NOT MY TRACKING!" and quit the game over it, most people's gameplay experience wouldn't be dramatically altered. Highsec definitely wouldn't notice, for most in 0.0 it would just mean fewer "supers tackled" jabber pings at odd times throughout the day and in lowsec it would mean they could start hotdropping Mallers with impunity again.
While all this is a valid point, the thing about supers is that they're so expensive and/or hard to replace that most people would end up losing heart after losing one in an engagement. While this is probably something adrenaline junkies find hilarious, I want wars to last a long time. While this probably would necessitate a huge change in how SOV works, relying less on supers for certain tasks (especially since we already have anti-structure ships: dreads) would be one of multiple steps I would've preferred to encourage. Refocusing them to support the fleet in non-combat roles is also something I keep thinking would make wars slightly more interesting and dynamic, but that would be subject to field testing. vOv
This comes down to orders of magnitude. Should 1000 or 2000 players be able to defeat 45000? Probably not. The effort you spent probably shouldn't give you that massive of an advantage. The amount of time, money, and skills that go into improvements should have a diminishing return, not expand exponentially.
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
Why do you guys even try convincing each-other about an issue, that both groups have their minds set on?![]()
If we are doing pure BS against pure frigs, like AB assault frigates the frigs would have a pretty good chance, yeah.
And even so, a decent size frig gang would be able to kill most of a logged off BS fleet in 15 minutes. The same can't be said for a superfleet vs BS, can it?
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
"But whatever you do, don't make this anti-capital weapon suck against non-capital ships."
I agree that logoff mechanics are probably the most abused part of supers. The whole "we are getting ownzoned, oops I DCed and can't login" syndrome is broken game mechanic.
But another thing about supers that I know you experienced first hand in Delve is the haves vs the have nots. You need a massive and stable powerblock to be able to build supers. When your bloc is attacked and you are unable to match supers (for whatever reason) you will probably lose your space, your coalition will collapse, and its corps join other alliances. There is no way for new alliances and powerblocs to form because they will never have enough supers to be credible (not being able to make their own, much less replace losses). This leads to the current situation we have now, with 2 blocs with all the firepower, and a few minor alliances stuck in the middle. There is no room for new groups to form without being crushed or absorbed by their larger neighbors. I know its been said alot before, but this will kill eve unless some massive change is enacted.
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
*insert standard comment about 100 hurricanes here*
Couple things to think about:
Nerfing Supers against subcaps would help small gang PVP we all crave: How often do we see bored alliances with too many supers dropping them on goddamn everything? PL in lowsec is an example, sort of, but its more the titan and super hotdrops from folks. Yeah, we all see that bait maller, lets fight anyway, oh, they dropped 3 supercarriers. Warp out.
What's left for vets with everyting is the metagame. Its creating the corps, and the alliances, and leading the empires and the people. Unfortunately at the moment, there seems to be a lot less in the way of empires, hopefully the DRF-rest is no troll and the blocs will break up a bit. This game needs more smaller-sized alliances, not massive sprawling multi-regional conglomerates. The same issue with NC is happening now, on a larger scale, with the DRF, although being russian they are even more impenetrable and seem more unified to the average western player. Unfortunately for the vet, if they only thing that gives you satisfaction in the game is getting a bigger gun to squash people with, all games have a very finite shelf life.
The Supercap should be a tool for territory battles, and sov grinding. It shouldn't be involved in small gang warfare, the supercap was always envisioned to be the lynchpin in a large fleet and never meant to fly as the only thing in a fleet. Unfortunately what it was meant for and what it is used for are two different things, and its taken CCP too long to realise it. Now, they're trying to adjust the mechanics to bring it back in line, and force it so that if you want to have an empire with 7 regions you need more than your 50-100 supercap fleet to police it, you need to organise your subcap masses.
Organise the subcap masses brings in a wide array of challenges for vets to work through.
CCP have been making some sort-of subtle tweaks to help adjust all this though. The no-supers-through-JB nerf was a nice touch, fighterbombers can't hit subcaps very well also, the no-subcap-DD should also be good. They could go further though.
- Lowering the cost of a cynojammer so its no so crippling to have for a smaller alliance without moongoo coming out their ears would help, forcing people to win subcap battles first where the footing is more equal.
- Nudging the cost of running alliances over a certain threshold in numbers or sov would help increase the amount of alliances which, while many would initially be blue, introduce more and more chiefs into the mix who could potentially have fights with each other.
- Really going after ratting bots would help cripple the renter empires and make it so you need more people in 0.0, and systems aren't handed over to single persons as often.
- Removing ECM Bursting, since supers are immune to EWAR to start with, and aren't being used as much in subcap battles anymore, there's little need tfor this and massed ECM bursts are silly.
Gently tweaking around the supers with some minor nerfs to the boats themselves would help, IMO, although it wouldn't fix things overnight. But making it harder to use 50 supercaps to rule in isolation means more co-ordination, more thinking, more people, more mistakes, more drama, more fun.
This would suggest that groups aren't running around in fleets of them, which isn't true. With the advent of every new expensive fleet composition the amount of loss in engagements slowly increases while the care of the losses decreases.
Yeah we all do, but we all show up for hell camps as well.
This is one of the few super nerfs I do agree with as it's a pve element of the game. Super fleets burning through structures in less than a minute is anti-pvp and something that should be relegated to other ship classes or at least made not as efficient.
No one should get stuck with a 80b isk command ship unless it's a new ship that's introduced and someone buys it knowing that's what it is. Now introducing new super-class sized high slot items that could be used for support purposes instead of weapons if the pilot chose to use them would be something worth looking into.
The reason there are no new alliances in 0.0 is existing alliances hog up space. Space that they really don't use. Sov should be exponentially more expensive the more you have instead of flat rate scale as is. That way alliances make conscious choices based off what there needs are not holding more than what is sensible. 0.0 is getting less crowded imo I think most people are bittervet enough that we would subconsciously welcome some new blood into the shitpot of 0.0 to spice things up. I can't even think of a alliance in 0.0 now that isn't a pet or part of some coalition. I agree with you lots of changes need to happen and im sure some of them none of us will like in the short term but if it breaths life back into 0.0 then it was worth it. The whole they have more supers were gonna lose our space. Generally speaking the have not's are in bad space anyway. Rebase to NPC space and come out swinging when the blob loses focus much like AAA are doing AGAIN. AAA space is bad in every measurement so aggressors don't actually find reason to fight to hold it as much as AAA fights to get it back.
The thought of a new supercap from the fleet command ship school of thought gives me the most raging boner. Especially if it has new that-class-of-ship-only gang mods which do insane things.
It probably could be made into a good supercap counter, if it allowed poorer alliances to use battleship or regular cap fleets to take down titans more easily.
?"eve's a bad mmo, really bad, it's only saving grace is the people playing it, which i guess doesn't say great things about the people playing other MMOs"
It is true that there is no 1 problem with eve. There are many interconnected problems, and pulling the wrong string ends up breaking everything. If only CCP had some way of releasing a major change that would simultaneosly change the way that supercaps, sovereignty, 0.0 industry, diplomacy, and resource distribution worked together in a synergistic way to make eve more fun.
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
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