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[Lyn Farel]

I also believe that jump bridges and freighters were one of the worst things happening to nullsec.

I fought against UK and then in 9UY in a conventional old school war, and then against TRI and Bob invasions in the region. I think even in the latter cases jump freighters did not exist yet, and it was a major pain for them (TRI especially) to move all their stuff into Providence to wage a war (that they lost so badly...).

[orange]

most players need high-sec.

...

That won't be represented in-game because those very capsuleers and null alliances will still need high-sec areas to survive in regards to supplies, sales, and ISK generation.

No argument that most players require high-sec to maintain their current play-styles.

This does not however mean that a stable, accessible, high-sec is actually required for null alliances to generate resources and arm their fleets.  Once all T1 BPOs are acquired, it is possible to live "off-the-land."  There are issues as one advances up the "Tech Tree" due to most datacores being sourced from high-sec research agents.  This however does not eliminate the possibility of robust exploration (instead of missioning) to locally source datacores and proceed with invention.  It just is a lot more expensive.

However, even given current game mechanics, it is mechanically possible for a null-sec entity to focus on local resources and import from high-sec only those items which can be routinely (say weekly) imported in a Blockade Runner (Crane is ~9,400 m3) - Implants, Datacores, Blueprints.

[V. Gesakaarin]

This is quickly heading into thread branch-off territory but in short:

The games that tend to be the most fun tactically tend to implement a rock/paper/scissors game design where things that are strong vs some things are weak vs others. This forces your fleet to be more 'swiss army knife' than 'blob wrecking ball' 

I'm sure you are all experienced with 'x' blanced RTS type of game where you have to have a mixture of strategies vs 'y' unbalanced RTS game where you can build one type of thing that kills everything and use that only.

Eve makes those sorts of tactical design ideas difficult because it's generally in a state of 'more numbers' generally trouncing anything, and for high end content entire classes of ships that are generally impervious to anything except mirror images of themselves.

It's a fundamental thing about eve's PVP: tactics can often be far less important than throwing bodies at something.

I think the major problem for me is that Eve PvP is essentially in two categories now: Sub-cap and Cap.

Sub-cap PvP can bring with it a multitude of different doctrines and tactics because there's such a wide selection of hulls and fits to choose from. Once you get to capitals however they essentially 1. Render subcaps useless because you need a number of subcaps just to kill 1 capital due to the massive disparity in EHP. 2. All things being equal you'll want to maximize your efficiency by simply using capitals because in the end 1 capital = numerous subcaps.

So you end up with things like hundreds of spidertanked carriers being nigh unbreakable unless you bring a ridiculous amount of subcaps or an equal number of capitals yourself.

It's why I wish there were more subcap options to kill capitals. Why not frig/dessies that can fit compact citadel missile launchers like fighter bombers? Why not a cruiser that's essentially a spinal mounted XL Gun with engines?

Because then at least the dynamic might become: Capital killers -> Capitals -> Sub-caps -> Capital killers

Because then if you drop a horde of capitals it can be killed by a cap killer fleet and the only way to prevent that is to have subcap support that itself can be killed by a cap fleet.

[Katrina Oniseki]

As someone who is in an alliance that actually deals with (and uses) capitals on a daily basis, "hundreds of spider tanked capitals" is not the norm. Capitals are typically and far more commonly fielded in small groups of less than 20.  In those numbers, they have plenty of counters. I would be very worried about the state of small gang cap warfare if XL Cruisers and Citadel Frigates became a thing.

You already have subcaps that do far more damage than a single XL gun would do: Battleships
You already have much faster but lighter tanked versions of battleships: Attack Battlecruisers

Both of those options are viable cap killers. Not sure we need a citadel launcher frigate though. Citadel missiles are currently useless. You'd have better luck and effectiveness using stealth bombers, which already exist in a balanced state.

Also: XL guns and Citadels are not that amazing by themselves. They are actually pretty crappy by themselves, even counting bonuses. It's only when you add the siege module that they become so fearsome.

... on second thought, I wouldn't be worried about XL Cruisers and Citadel frigates because they would be worse than the current options available.

[Lithium Flower]

XL guns on frigates and cruiser simply won't work:
Frigates and cruisers are fast maneuverable ships. Your own movement will completely kill your own tracking.
Your only option would be to make a complete stop or set on approach course. But then even XL sized gun can alpha your frigate.

[Erys Charantes]

XL guns in a spinal mount...  Terrible idea.

For one, forget tracking...  You have none.  Zero.  Nada.  The ships turn rate is your tracking.  Anything able to get any sort of velocity up in transverse can avoid your gun by virtue of your ship reacting to the movements, rather than pulling lead, the firing barrel always being in line with where it is pointing, which is "trying to catch up to the target".  Worse than that, the singe gun by itself is completely outgunned by a standard battleships full rack of weapons, since XL guns aren't, on their own OMGWTFPWN powerful.  That's a dreadnoughts siege mode at work.  The XL gun cruiser would be dead before it got enough shots off to make a difference with it's single, underpowered, weapon, lacking the survivability of a battleship or even a battlecruiser.

Also, cruisers are already vulnerable to small, fast targets.  Vulnerable, not helpless.  That armament scheme would make it completely helpless against anything that comes after it below a certain size...  Fast cruisers, frigates of any sort, and drones.  Too narrow, too focused, too vulnerable.  There are already counters that have other uses too, as was pointed out, which would be, and are, far more effective.  What this all amounts to is that the small, vulnerable "cap-killers" could be wiped from the field by frigates, drones and fighters in short order, while posing little real threat to a capital ship to start with.

Finally, and most decisively, there is no code to do it in EVE.  Doomsdays were supposed to be spinal mounted at one point, and CCP couldn't figure out how to make it work.

[Katrina Oniseki]

That armament scheme would make it completely helpless against anything that comes after it below a certain size...  Fast cruisers, frigates of any sort, and drones.

Anything smaller than a battleship. Including some of the faster battleships like tempests. XL guns cannot track for shit, and that's when standing still.

also, I should probably clarify what I told you Erys... when CCP changed doomsdays to direct fire weapons they toyed with the idea of making them spinal mounted but couldn't figure out a good way to do it.

[V. Gesakaarin]

The thing is that it's always a question of scale with capitals. Drop say, 20 carriers, you've still got options without having to resort to capitals usually in the form of lots of neutralizers to break the rep chains.

Once a capital fleet or escalation reaches a certain point the most efficient way to deal with it is to bring more of your own capitals. This is when usually the side that wins is the side that's got more batphones to call more capitals in once so much has been committed. Which is really my point, the natural HP amounts of capitals scale very well as you go up in numbers to the point that really there is no other option but to bring equal or more numbers of your own capitals because there really aren't any other mitigating factors anymore.

By contrast and example, if someone dropped say, 100 Battleships on you (hypothetically) you actually have some choices:

1. Bring Battleships of your own
2. If they're long range fit bring a close range AHAC/cruiser fleet
3. Bomb them with stealthbombers if they're all close together

Someone drops 100 Carriers?

1. Bring more capitals
2. Massively outnumber them

That's the difference for me, while numbers is always going to be factor, there's ways around it on the subcap level depending on what the other side is bringing. This is compared to when capital fights reach a certain number and then numbers of capitals really does feel like the sole and only factor.

[Lithium Flower]

There is also one grave downside to frigates/cruisers with XL guns: they don't have jump drives!   


Actually, frigate with jump drive I feel WAY more fun and useful than frigate with XL gun. Imagine, such frigate, lets call it Blofri. You travel in your BC/BS/cruiser or carrier, hitting some rats or taking plexes, and there is a... maller! You tackle it, cyno up, and suddenly 100 blofries are already tearing you apart 

And if they could jump to covert cyno with little to none requirements to fit one and without cloak... You scatter your blofries around region, looking for targets, and when one tackle something, it lights cyno, and all others jump to him. That would be awesome.

[Louella Dougans]

No argument that most players require high-sec to maintain their current play-styles.

This does not however mean that a stable, accessible, high-sec is actually required for null alliances to generate resources and arm their fleets.  Once all T1 BPOs are acquired, it is possible to live "off-the-land."  There are issues as one advances up the "Tech Tree" due to most datacores being sourced from high-sec research agents.  This however does not eliminate the possibility of robust exploration (instead of missioning) to locally source datacores and proceed with invention.  It just is a lot more expensive.

However, even given current game mechanics, it is mechanically possible for a null-sec entity to focus on local resources and import from high-sec only those items which can be routinely (say weekly) imported in a Blockade Runner (Crane is ~9,400 m3) - Implants, Datacores, Blueprints.

what about moon minerals ? also non-local ice, to fuel a variety of cap ships and POS, and non-local salvage, to build rigs ?

afaik, ice and salvage depend on the "race" of the region of space (guristas space means caldari ice, and gurista salvage), and moons are distributed weirdly as well.

[Lyn Farel]

The thing is that it's always a question of scale with capitals. Drop say, 20 carriers, you've still got options without having to resort to capitals usually in the form of lots of neutralizers to break the rep chains.

Once a capital fleet or escalation reaches a certain point the most efficient way to deal with it is to bring more of your own capitals. This is when usually the side that wins is the side that's got more batphones to call more capitals in once so much has been committed. Which is really my point, the natural HP amounts of capitals scale very well as you go up in numbers to the point that really there is no other option but to bring equal or more numbers of your own capitals because there really aren't any other mitigating factors anymore.

By contrast and example, if someone dropped say, 100 Battleships on you (hypothetically) you actually have some choices:

1. Bring Battleships of your own
2. If they're long range fit bring a close range AHAC/cruiser fleet
3. Bomb them with stealthbombers if they're all close together

Someone drops 100 Carriers?

1. Bring more capitals
2. Massively outnumber them

That's the difference for me, while numbers is always going to be factor, there's ways around it on the subcap level depending on what the other side is bringing. This is compared to when capital fights reach a certain number and then numbers of capitals really does feel like the sole and only factor.

Well before that it was ship of the line battles between battleships and logi/support chains. More various ships included, sure, but it was mostly the same concept behind. To break a fleet of 200 BSes, you had to bring the same setup. Smaller ships didn't work. melee HACs or not, or people would have used them intensely in the past. Any decent line fleet setup in that time also included a good number of support ships that were mostly HACs and anti support ships.

I prefered that situation though, since it still gave a role to more smaller ships than it is currently the case with caps, which only involves interdictors and a few scouts/cynos.

[Gaven Lok ri]

I wouldn't go frigate with XL gun. I would go t1 frigate with a cap target only doomsday with relatively short range (just needs to be longer than smartbomb) and an ammunition charge too big for the frigate to carry reloads. This would also make interceptors, Interdictors, bombers (for the bombs) and destroyers utterly invaluable as they would be your point defense.

But I would also only do this after escalating the size of ships another level. I think a Cap Killer Titan would be interesting (no traditional armament, but multiple doomsdays).

[Lyn Farel]

The immediate problem I see with your view is while I absolutely like it for its "historical", genuine feel with evolving technology, it is also about a game we are talking, and old ships would progressively lose like in History their value and become eventually obsolete. Look at what happened to the old dreadnoughts on sea, or even battleships. They got literally smashed by aircraft carriers. The same way that pikemen/landsknecht formations disappeared against tercios companies and muskets, trenches against tanks, or whatever.

Do that and you will eventually render titans more or less useless in combat since all you have to do is to literally swarm them with thousands of doomsday frigates, point blank escort or not. Also, they are useful now because they are already cap killers, like supercarriers. If your new weapon comes into the equation, it removes the combat utility of every cap ingame, as I said above, making them back to their other secondary roles, which is POS bashing for dreads, transport for carriers, jumpbridging for titans and nothing for supercarriers. Do that and every titan will just stop to be brought on the battlefield and do like before Dominion : jump bridging people from a safe remote place and nothing else. It would just mean that introducing such a deterrent to bring us back to the time before Dominion.

I don't think it's a solution. The only way for that not to happen and that kind of scissors/paper/rock gameplay to work is to actually provide new roles for those to be outdated ships that are so invaluable on field that they have to be brought nevertheless.

I like the idea to have evolving tech. Like at any new age of discovery, that they actually change altogether the current meta by changing every ship in their role and attributes, trying to adapt to each other as a new weapon concept is brought into the equation. But to be perfectly honest, nobody would go with such a drastic change of gameplay, but that would be rather awesome. And people would complain less about the current meta since they would have to actually create a new one at every change, and they would be too busy adapting before the next change happens. The main issue is that such a fickle gameplay would frustrate almost every gamer, and devs are certainly not ready to give up the years they spent into polishing their gameplay to suddenly drop it altogether for a new one. That's a whole different mentality that is not really suited to Eve, unless you deconstruct Eve itself, unfortunately.

I would love such a MMO though, instead of the tier escalation most MMOs, Eve included, are used to.

[orange]

No argument that most players require high-sec to maintain their current play-styles.

This does not however mean that a stable, accessible, high-sec is actually required for null alliances to generate resources and arm their fleets.  Once all T1 BPOs are acquired, it is possible to live "off-the-land."  There are issues as one advances up the "Tech Tree" due to most datacores being sourced from high-sec research agents.  This however does not eliminate the possibility of robust exploration (instead of missioning) to locally source datacores and proceed with invention.  It just is a lot more expensive.

However, even given current game mechanics, it is mechanically possible for a null-sec entity to focus on local resources and import from high-sec only those items which can be routinely (say weekly) imported in a Blockade Runner (Crane is ~9,400 m3) - Implants, Datacores, Blueprints.

what about moon minerals ? also non-local ice, to fuel a variety of cap ships and POS, and non-local salvage, to build rigs ?

afaik, ice and salvage depend on the "race" of the region of space (guristas space means caldari ice, and gurista salvage), and moons are distributed weirdly as well.

Alchemy and/or cross-region/alliance trade (without using the Jita 4-4 middleman).

Ice & Salvage are distributed by "race" quarters and Moons are distributed in a similar fashion to some degree.   To some degree it will mean the value of Mercury in Deklein will be much higher than it is in Esoteria.  It also may mean an alliance based in Deklein favors Caldari starbases/capitals versus Amarr starbases/capitals since they have those resources readily available.

I did not say it was optimal to go it alone in null-sec, just that it is possible to do so.

[Silas Vitalia]

Can we get a Thread Master to split this off from the OP into a pvp balance thread?

On that same note,

This game might be very well served to include a new pvp orientation of smaller ships affecting very large ships.

Something like this:

Being able to target subsystems and turrets, but only by certain ship classes.

I don't think it should ever be ok for a frigate to be able to hurt a Capital ship, but I really, really like the idea of a group of frigates being able to take out a capital ship turret, or a specific module like an engine or jump drive. 

This gives 'useful' things for small cheap ships to do that might not be balance breaking but provide pinpoint activities.

Then we'd also get the bonus of having new modules to fit like 'point defenses' or give new roles for 'defender missiles'

We'd get a neat whole new arena of different ship classes fighting each other.