Nerd Rage Incoming

I'm gonna save my whole nerd rage post for tomorrow, but I'd like to do a little foreplay and let you all in on a few things.

First of all, here is my avatar in Captain's Quarters.  Really?

Secondly, here is a fun reply a got to a tweet of mine:

Stevie says: #tweetfleet You can buy a useless monocle or two Carriers. What are you gonna choose? @EveOnline knows... The monocle, of course!

K4el says:

@stevietopsiders @EveOnline #tweetfleet F that. Better deal here. nearsights.com/monocles.html

K4el deserves props for that extremely witty remark.

Fly safe!

-Stevie

PS- In response to tweet, I was asked what settings that picture was taken.  Max settings all across the board (except AA), even including "Physically Simulated Cloth and Hair."  All of that running on an i5-750 and ATI 5770.

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

The Forked Tongue of CCP

Talking the Talk and walking the Walk are two very different things.  Whether the United States in the middle east or CCP in null-sec, what is said and what is done are radically different.

We have all heard how CCP Greyscale & Co. want to make null-sec open to small alliances.  In dev blog after dev blog, Fanfest presentation after Fanfest presentation, the brass at CCP has made it clear to anyone who will listen that they want null-sec to be full of small alliances, constantly engaged in small-gang warfare.  Doesn't this sound beautiful?  It does, except CCP, through its game design changes, is actively fighting against it.

How?  First, they made Supercarriers, an asset usually available only to large null-sec alliances, totally (in the words of my WoW-playing brother) O-Peed.  Then, they made sovereignty super-expensive to hold by requiring huge sums of money to pay for upkeep and iHub upgrades.  Next, they reduced the amount of income made by individual pilots (and corporations who collect taxes) with the anomaly nerf.  And now they have made it easier to make money in high-security space by greatly simplifying missions.  These are terrible crimes that strike at the heart of any small alliance, right?  They are, but at the same time, they have increased the money available to large alliances.  Nay, not even alliances, the dreaded 0.0 power blocks.  CCP nerfed power blocks by making technetium available only in the space of the Northern Coaltion, and then the developer placed numerous low true-sec systems in the botting empire of the Drone Russian Federation.  The hate for small alliances is clear.

What is the solution?  It is simple.  Well, not really, but it may be possible.  The first step towards small null-sec alliances is a change in players' attitude.  Whenever CCP mentions that it wants to encourage small alliances to enter null-sec, members of 0.0 power blocks cry out in anguish: "Bu...  Bu...  But it's human nature to want to band together and steamroll small groups of players.  You can't fight our instincts!"  A smaller, quality group of players is capable of defending its holding from an alliance with a larger amount of players.  Have you ever heard of Pandemic Legion?  Looked at the sov map of Delve recently?  To a certain extent, quality can trump quantity, and it will not require your alliance to play Eve as a full-time job, like the Legio Pandemica.

There are also some things CCP could do.  Most notably, they could add more space to null-sec.  This step (or "tweak" as they might be prone to call it) would have to be implemented carefully, though.  If the space is beyond the current border of the galaxy, CCP will have inadvertently made that space accessible only to alliances with either a jump bridge network (nerfed as it is) or a significant supercapital fleet for bridging.  I feel what may be required are some "special" gates that can handle the passage of capital ships.  These could also be implemented in parts of the current galaxy, say on the Tenal-Cobalt Edge route or the Paragon Soul-Period Basis gates.  Such a change would encourage fighting between the alliances at both ends of these long jumps.

CCP has promised some major changes to null-sec this winter, so we will have to see whether or not they stick with their vision of a 0.0 populated by small alliances or whether they fall prey to the allure of the power block.  Or maybe, as the recent agent changes suggest, they set course for a fluffy, loving, PvE Eve Online.  Only time will tell if CCP can walk the Walk.

Fly safe!

-Stevie