Posts tagged “Titans”

Dev Post – 13 March 2012 – Titan quick-fix.

An interesting post came up from CCP Greyscale:

Hi everyone,We’re not happy with the effectiveness of large groups of titans against subcapital ships, so we’re making some adjustments to titans and to XL turrets.This is a quick, surgical adjustment to solve a specific issue we have identified. It’s not a general titan balance pass, and we don’t consider titans “done” after this change. Titans will require significant further changes, and probably an overall adjustment in role, before they’re in a place where we’re really happy with them. This will require a reasonably significant amount of work, which we unfortunately don’t have the spare resources for right now. In a similar vein, we’re not making more extensive balance changes (or addressing this issue in a more technically complex way) because we’re allocating the minimum resources needed to resolve the specific issue (titans performing excessively well against subcaps in certain circumstances) satisfactorily. If you have any further questions about this paragraph, please ask away Smile

For the immediate future and until such time as we have the resources available to do a comprehensive overhaul, we want to ensure that titans perform decently against other capitals, but do not represent a serious threat to subcaps. We want titans to have clear vulnerabilities, and as much as possible to have them acting in support of the main capital/subcap fleet rather than the other way round. We’ve already prevented doomsdays from being fired at subcaps, and this adjustment should continue that trend.

We have talked to the CSM about this, and we’re comfortable going forward with these changes in light of that discussion. I’m not going to put words in their mouths, though.

Specific changes being made:

XL turret tracking halved, siege module tracking penalty removed

This should generally make titan performance against small targets significantly worse, without seriously impacting their effectiveness against larger targets, or negatively impacting dreadnaughts in their common use-case (ie, in siege mode).

Titans reduced to 3 maximum locked targets, and base scan resolution reduced to 5

This should make trying to engage smaller targets very inefficient, due to long lock-times and an inability to queue many targets at once. This reinforces the titan’s MO as a slow-acting but hard-hitting platform (in line with the doomsday’s huge damage and 10 minute RoF). The scan res number is balanced around multiple Cormack’s sensor boosters, on the assumption that money is not a limiting factor for titan pilots, and therefore that people will shell out for officer SBs if that lets them continue do this kind of thing. Our understanding is that this isn’t standard practice right now, but we have to balance for expected behavior after the change, and for worst-case scenarios.

Expected release schedule for these changes

These changes should hit TQ some time in April. If there is a sizable release in April then expect them to turn up then; if not then we’ll announce deployment dates for these changes closer to the time.

Changes considered and discarded:

(I’m expecting at least three people to not read the word “discarded” and make angry posts about something in this section. C’est la vie.)

Titans can’t lock subcaps at all

Guaranteed effective solution, but we considered it too hacky and restrictive.

Adding a “minimum sig radius” attribute to turrets, below which damage would fall off regardless of tracking

Too big a change and more technical work than we actually needed to solve the problem.

Changing the lock time formula

As it is, the lock time formula doesn’t really scale in a nice way between battleships and capitals (the kink in the curve always happens around cruisers regardless of the scan res and sig radius), but again we decided we could solve the issue without resorting to this sort of technical work.

Changing XL missiles to match

While in a strictly regimented world we ought in principle to nerf XL missiles and remove the penalties from the siege module for them too, in practice they’re not actually a problem due to the way missile damage scales against small targets. Leaving them unchanged also serves to differentiate missiles further from turrets, which might make them more useful on capitals under certain circumstances.

Now, of course there are going to be the usual tears.  That being said, while I think these changes are a step in the right direction, it isn’t the cure.  (Oddly enough, shortly after I read the post, the Eve Online forum site when down for maintenance).
 
In fact, it’s not even close.
 
The real problem has always been on the production side.  True, Titans are supposed to be the uber-weapon of choice but remember, at their introduction, they were supposed to be a huge expense.. available ONLY to massive alliances.  I.e. they were only able to purchase, and support,… one, maybe two.  The Supercarriers also were supposed to be so expensive that having just one in the field meant business and that losing just one would be significant enough to destabilizing the alliance.  Fast forward to today and supercarriers are lost about one every two days.  Many of these ships in the hands of pilots who clearly have more isk than brains.  However, supercarriers are being produced at a phenominal rate of over 3 a day and Titans as well, while requiring more time and resources, are being produced at a rate of 1.5 per day on average.
 
One and a half titans being built.. EVERY DAY!  Three supercarriers are being built.. EVERY DAY!
 
I think CCP is hoping that if you nerf both the Titan and the Supercarrier enough, then demand will decrease.  But as Ripard Teg wrote a little while back, CCP loses more Titans to disactivated accounts than from actual combat.  In November, a grand total of 2 titans were lost to combat.  Only two.  Over the past four months only 18 Titans have perished.. with half of those in October.  Yet those losses were replaced by about two week’s worth of Titan production.  
 
Here are CCP’s own records on this:
 
We still need to wait a few more months to see the results Crucible had on Titan and Supercarrier killing.. but the simple fact is that it is highly unlikely that production of supercapital ships will cease anytime soon.  And as long as alliances such as -A-, Pandemic Legion, Goonswarm, Red Alliance, etc. can field FLEETS of supercapital ships, then there is no way that ANY small alliance will ever have the option of developing null-sec territory.
 
Hopefully some of you CSM are reading this.. because you need to get CCP’s mind off of nerfing supercapitals.. and start finding way to make supercap ownership a painful expense, both in isk, time, and resources.

March 13, 2012 | Categories: Eve Politics, Game Dynamics | Tags: , , , , | Leave A Comment »

Random Ponderings and Thoughts

Sometimes there are just too many things to talk about, and think about, so your mind goes into “Clift Notes”  mode.  With a lot of possibilities in Eve starting to show themselves, my mind drifts from point to point to point.. especially when those possibilities really don’t have much information out there to pull from.

So, this post is a bit of a reflection on that:

Thought #1:  CSM 7 Elections

It seems pretty clear to me that there is quite a bit of backlash against CSM 6 as being too “null-sec” focused.  Personally, while I am a HUGE fan of low-sec upgrades, calling CSM 6 out on that was pretty lame.  Null-sec game play was badly, BADLY broken with the Dominion release and needed a fix.. in fact, it needed that fix years ago.  Supercap ignorance (which still need to be continued), bad game and sov mechanics, and CCP’s disconnect with Eve, the spaceship game, made null-sec (CCP’s cash cow) unfun.. in a game.  CSM 6 did a good job getting CCP back on task, and YES, dealing with null-sec right away was crucial.

Now, CSM 7 seems to be, at least from the outset, starting to refocus its view more game wide.  The low-sec push seems to be the most outstanding.. and even seems to be gathering more steam than null-sec pushes.  It seems that both the high-sec and low-sec communities are starting to understand the inherit advantage null-sec alliances have, and are beginning to make efforts to counteract that.  But, Ripard Teg makes a good point regarding this situation on his blog: http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2012/01/herd-ducks.html.  I suspect that Ripard is correct in that Mittens is definately going to try to dilute the field.. and probably be successful enough with it that he will retain the chairmanship.

However, I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing.  Mittens has proven himself to be quite.. adapt at forcing CCP’s hand, and even he is subject to popular control.  The more serious issue will be controlling the other seats in the CSM.  Now, you already have Seleene and Trebor who are just strong advocates of the game in general and will likely be good to keep around no matter what the ebb and flow is.. so the real problem for High-sec, Low-sec, and WH voting blocs will be organizing themselves in such a way that they are able to strategically spread their votes across their best 3 or 4 candidates, while not wasting votes on ones that never will get picked or on ones that already have plenty to get in.  Oddly enough, I don’t think it is as much of an uphill battle as it seems to be.  Even if they get only one or two more HS/LS/WH candidates added to the CSM, it should be enough to see real changes start to happen.  CCP has already acknowledged how broken Low-sec is.. and really the difficulty is determining if low-sec should be a Learning bed for jumping into Null-sec, or if it should be something unique and wholly different from the null-sec experiece.. both ideas have good points.  In regards to one Eve University candidate, you might want to check out Poetic’s blog here: http://poeticstanziel.blogspot.com/2012/01/counting-sheep.html

Thought #2:  Supercap Balance

Are they balanced?  In my opinion.. no.  In fact, they still have a long way to go.  The problem with supercaps has always been two-fold.  The first problem is production related, which I will discuss, and the second is power-projection, which has partially been tempered with the Crucible expansion.  As far as the production problem goes, note how many Titans and Supercarriers were produced in the last few months:

August, 2011: http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=4878&tid=4
September, 2011: http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=4884&tid=4
October, 2011:  http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=4885&tid=4
November, 2011: http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=4886&tid=4

You’ll notice that production way, WAY outstrips losses.  While this now doesn’t have as much of a bearing on sub-cap fleets.. it still has a major impact on Sov control.  Sure, you can assault a system with sub-caps now with out much worry about Supercarriers coming down and swatting your fleet and let’s pretend that Titans’ XL weapons get nerfed so that they cannot be influenced by tracking links or computers, what happens next? Well, first.. your sub-cap fleet is going to take a few hours/days just trying to get sov in just one system.  And the MOMENT you drop any SBUs, a Supercap fleet is going to wait til you are gone.. and reinforce your SBU in just a few minutes.

Not a good situation if you are one of those new, small alliances trying to get a foothold into null-sec, is it?

The simple reality is that CCP waited far too long to deal with this issue and now Supercapitals have, in a sense, broken the game mechanics.  How so?  Because now they are so many and they’re proliferation is so absolute, that there is no hope for new alliances to gain a foothold into null-sec by any traditional means.  The only way for a new alliance to get into null-sec is to recruit Pandemic Legion, or to steal a big Supercap wield corp out from another alliance.  Both of those options are likely to involve the loss of at least a few metric tonnes of isk.. something new alliances are very unlikely to have.. as well as probably losing a considerable amount of self-control too.

I was pondering a couple ways to deal with the production issue.  The first idea has been mentioned before, and I think it is probably the easier idea to impliment of the two, and it involves adding a monthly “maintenance” fee to each supercapital.. either in the form of a monthly isk charge (the least effective), to a resource requirement to keep them active.. like having them burn through so much Zydrine or other precious metal per month.. irregardless if it is sitting in the hanger or in combat.

The other idea is based off of the original flaw in the supercapital ship concept.  The original supercapitals ships meant to be used by very large alliances.. a rare weapon or tool to bring out either in the most dire of circumstances or at critical junctures in battle.  Unfortunately, the problem was that it still only required a single pilot.. a single person to skill up and operate it.  That also means that a single person can own it, move it, etc.  Hardly an “alliance-only” asset especially since it operates EXACTLY like any other ship.

My thought was that you can make it so that the ship does not work unless you have several pilots operating it.  Now, this is much more difficult to do, both from a logistics standpoint.. but also in a coding standpoint.  However.. what if, a Titan for example, could not move from system to system as one whole unit.  But instead, had to be moved.. somewhat “Voltron-ishly” as several components to the target system THEN after it is put together will it operate as a Titan.  The individual components still would require the same Titan skill, and each of the components would fly under their own power (though effectively defenseless) and once in system could then be set up in such a way where only one pilot operates it, and the other three or four or so.. just watch.  Now THAT would be a true “alliance-only” asset.

Whatever configuration the nerf to production is, the goal should be to keep the desire and need at a high level, but to reduce the availability to near zero.

Well, that was pretty much all I was pondering Eve-wise.  Have a good one.

January 31, 2012 | Categories: Eve Politics, Game Dynamics | Tags: , , , , , , | 3 Comments »