Nerfing the Supercarrier

As we learned during the Alliance Tournament and the accompanying podcast interviews, CCP Soundwave plans to nerf Supercarriers come this winter.   The problem with supercaps, a topic which has been beaten to death already, is that they are too powerful and versatile for their relatively low cost.  “Relatively” in relation to Titans, that is.   While many ordinary players are excited about the nerf, supercap pilots fear that the ships they trained hard for may become useless rust buckets, much like they were in the Mothership days.  Hitting a home run with the nerf bat is going to be difficult, but done correctly, CCP will go a long way towards showing null-sec players that the developers still care about them.  What follows are my proposed changes, many of which were fleshed out in an informative thread on Kugutsumen.

Supercarrier Changes:

• Change fleet-boosting shield mechanics.  At the moment, shield-tanked Supercarriers jump into a system not at their maximum EHP, whereas armor-tanked ones do.
• Remove Supercarriers’ ability to field Fighters.  Without Fighters, Supercarriers will not be very effective against subcapital fleets.  To do damage to subcap fleets, Supercarriers will need to roll with subcap support.
• Reduce the size of the Drone bay.  Supercarriers should be limited to two flights of stealth bombers plus some normal drones.  Their current ability to fit waves upon waves of every type of drone imaginable is just silly.
• Allow Supercarriers to dock in stations.  A change such as this would be an excellent tweak for Supercarrier pilots.  As things stand now, once you get a Supercarrier, you’re stuck with it unless you want to buy/train a parking alt.  We may want to extend this to Titans as well.

Dreadnaught Changes:

• Reduce the siege timer to 5 minutes.  As it is now, any Dread fleet sitting around for 10 minutes is just asking to be hot-dropped.
• Increase the tank of Dreads while in siege mode.  This should be done by raising resists while in siege mode.  Ideally, a Dreadnaught in siege mode should be able to withstand around 3 Doomsdays.

Titan Changes:

• Reduce Titan tracking.  Currently, Titans can rape Battleships with their guns.  Again, this change would make sure that supercaps moved with subcap support.

Other Changes:

• Logoff mechanics need to be changed.  If you’re flying around in your super and jump to an un-scouted cyno, you should pay for your mistake with your ship.  In today’s Eve, the pilot can simply log off, and unless the person who caught you has supercaps or a large gang standing by, the stupid pilot will make off unharmed.

I think that implementing all of these changes in tandem will go a long way towards weakening the supercap (primarily Supercarrier) blob.  Increasing these behemoths' reliance on subcap support will discourage the random supercap hotdrop and lower the skillpoint entry barrier for newer pilots, who now don't need a Mom of their own!  Additionally, I would like to suggest that Black Ops battleships get a larger fuel bay and slightly longer jump range.  These ships are not used very often, and a slight boost to their Black Op-ness will encourage gangs to go behind enemy lines, wreaking havoc and engaging in small-scale PvP.  Brilliant!

Fly safe!

-Stevie