Also no Triage as this would be a small carrier. Not some large monster of a ship.

seriously? im just picturing how much use a support ship would be with 9km rep range, i mean imagine an orca jumping through a constellation gate and having to travel to rep someone, not going to happen

I thought we talked about this.

Fighters provide nothing useful and really shouldn't be included.

And I agree with the other guy, no capital reps. Large reps + a bonus to rep amount will have to suffice. This will make them unique from logis, as logis get a range bonus, not amount.

I'm okay with the ship bay as it allows refitting/storage/swapping of small ships (perfect for roaming around).

Why do you want them to have fighters so badly?

Have you ever used fighters?

I love this but no fighters... :D and no, ccp wont consider this...

I gave you a reason: the only benefit to having them would be assigning them and having them chase targets around a system (this is what fighters can do). And this is not something the ship should be able to do. It would mean that it can be safe somewhere at a POS or safespot assigning fighters.

So if you agree that that ability should not be allowed, then there is no purpose to having fighters at all.

I thought the idea of it was that its a "roaming" ship. Being able to idle in a POS and assign fighters simply makes it a cheaper carrier.

No ship maint bays. I have no complaints with a corp hanger tho.

But I have not yet made up my mind about this perceived faggotry of capital remote repping modules...

I was of the mind if we wanted a demi-carrier for hi-sec/escort use, then we shouldnt make it a repping boat at all. Thus, allow it to use large reppers but dont give it RR bonuses at all.



But looking much.. much better than your first topic.

You're missing the point. The ship should have to be in combat on the field to be the support ship you want it to be. This no risk habitual crap in Eve needs to stop, not be encouraged.

Fighters are what make these Escort Carriers and not Drone Battleships. They have less than half as many as Carriers, they don't have jump drives, they have 25% the corp hanger/ship maintenance bay, no ability to fit command modules, and don't get any of the other carrier bonuses. So I don't think these are stealing anything from carriers.

If you want fighters, and want the ship to actually be on the field, you need a new class of fighter that can't leave the grid of the controlling light carrier. Perhaps they can still follow the carrier in warp so you don't have to recall them all the time.

We already have logi boats, we don't need a bigger logi boat in high sec.

I want to see a battle carrier that can make its rounds in low sec, using jump gates.
None of the off grid assigning fighter gayness, none of the super logi gayness.

Just a ship that does damage through smaller craft, that put out significantly more DPS than a Domi's drones can.

Fighter mechanics don't need a change. They work fine as they are currently implemented.

This ship does not need fighters. Simple as that. If you really want fighters, get a carrier or supercarrier.

Logi spam is annoying and very powerful as is, the only thing keeping the logi spam from being op is their cruiser sized buffer. Now if you give players a BS sized dedicated logi ship that has more buffer and more remote repping power, you've created the latest ship that every subcap fleet will use and abuse because you've fixed the only flaw of logis and gave it little drawbacks.

I know you are adament on adding fighters but they are not needed if you are going to have a ship bay. Give a large bonus to flying regular drones as well as a bonus reducing the cost of drone modules installed on the ship. Give them a bonus to both repair range and perhaps even amount.

Since they cant field fighters the bonuses would help make up for the lack of damage output. Furthermore when you leave out fighters it allows for light escort carriers as well which could have a light or medium drone focus where as the heavy escort carrier which you mention here could have bonuses for all drones.

The ship bay already gives you fighter support in the form of frigates/destroyers or even cruisers depending on if its a light or heavy escort carrier.

So basically:
remove fighters
add a range bonus to logi modules
add bonus to drone hitpoints damage ect

With this design you can have a heavy escort cruiser (larger then a BS like what youve proposed) as well as a light escort carrier which would be more the size of a BC and only receive bonuses for light and medium drones and have a slightly smaller ship bay.

In addition the drone bays on these ships would only allow for 1 full reload of drones. This will limit the options but also allow for them to be more focused allowing each faction to claim a specific role based on bonuses. Gallente for instance would be more focused on drones all around, so their ships would have a greater bonus to drone hp/damage ect where as caldari would get a larger bonus for shield transfer ect.
This will mean that a mix of escort carriers will do more then a fleet of one races escort carrier.

Fighters arent actually as amazing as some of you think, a maxed out Thanatos with 15 firbolgs only pushing 1800 dps (15 ogres 950 dps), restrictions on drone bay size would force the player to consider what they carry (25000m3) and the delegation option being the main use of fighters to my knowledge, also, fighters cant hit cruiser sized ships and under very well, which further reduces the dps.

a drone bay of 25000m3 hmm lets look at this shall we, that can hold an aweful lot of drones

There is no reason why a light carrier needs to be able to carry fighters. Simply being able to field more heavies is sufficient, especially given the new drone damage module.

If a light carrier can field fighters, and moreso if it can assign them, it pushes too far into the niche of the current carriers.

first off, general response: i think you're thinking of these in a bit smaller terms than i am. you're thinking of them being effectively battleships. i disagree with that - this ship feels to me to be a touch smaller than an orca, if you understand my meaning. so, you'd need capital legos to build the thing, but you could also afford to enlarge it slightly - not a carrier's capacitor and HPs of course, but something comperable to a freighter or orca's HP values. see where i'm going with this?

as for large fights in nullsec, if you're familiar with the PL fleet doctrine they call "slowcats", that should answer your question right there, although i dont see why they would alter it to a smaller ship class in their specific case. a TL:DR as i understand it for slowcats: patheon RR carriers (not triage, in other words) that have sentries stuffed full in their drone bays. launch, assist to target popper, recieve 13k alpha every 4 seconds in whatever flavor you choose. regardless, if you make this orca sized, you wont see it in nano roams, but the possibility of keeping a wing, or even a doctrine of these in a state of readiness for an alliance is signifigant, especially for home defense fleets. their ability to put damage down on many different sizes of ships, balanced by their material cost and slowness, would serve particularly well there imo.

i like your explanation of large local v. capital remote. i'm still not sold on the capital remotes, but i respect why you came to that descision.

i'd like to again highlight the 20% damage/HP per level versus the +1 drone per level. i think that'd be all the buff you need to make them viable - fighters unfortunately would not be viable in a combat situation in null that i can think of. i think it best that they be scrapped - it's still a carrier in the fact that it's a drone dedicated platform capable of launching more than the usual 5. (guardian-vexors not included, of course.)

After reading this, my support for this iteration took a nose dive.

Seeing as battleship size/hull was tossed around in the first thread and is kicked around every second sentence here and battleship 4 is the main training hurdle. Thought we'd talked it down from a bigger ass capital carrier. In fact I thought that was the original point, wasn't it? >.>

One thing that is potentially a very powerful mechanic is if this ship enables you to refit, it would make BS gangs more versatile because they could refit in haste to adapt to a incoming or foreseeable situation, or even during fights. Think a bit about this, its a ship that can travel through gates and you can use it to refit...

So... ship fitting service? Would be a very nice option for WH dwellers too. Build price should be equivalent to an Orca or higher.

I can see how this ship could be nice for some doctrines, but as soon as you need mobility you are kind of miffed, then again most BS gangs are not very mobile.

This paired with the "warp 100km forward" module the devs are considering might be interesting...

We've been over this.


We don't need escort carriers we need our normal carriers to be cheaper and have their roles more clrearly defined.

I definitely love the idea. However, I'm not into the bonuses to the reppers. It's a carrier. Give the bonuses to rep drones!

The drones lack of large amounts of repping capacity offsets the long range capability so it doesn't infringe too heavily on the role of the logistics cruiser. I was thinking of a 100% bonus per level. The same is true of the capacitor requirements. This is a carrier after all, not a rep ship. If this is for a BS fleet, and able to go where other capitals can't, then the repping should be on par with BS capabilities, not Capital ships.

This may belong in another discussion entirely, but instead of having remote repping bonuses, allow Internal repping capability. A docked ship can be repaired at the same rate as a capital repper. This would require the creation of a new subsystem or module unique to carriers.

So far, I see this listed with BS Skills. But with the kind of capabilities this thing is going to have, it's as far above a BS as a BC is above a cruiser. Use the same model. Give it the capabilities, but add a new "Subcapital" skill, just like "Battlecruiser" is separate from cruiser. BC isn't on the required path from Cruiser to BS. The same would be true with this.

Consider requiring the use of subsystems just like T3 cruisers. Perhaps allow the carrier subsystems?

I honestly don't care about capital ships nor ever want to fly one. I don't want nor need something to bridge me into capitals with capital specific abilities. Which is where all the contention seems to be coming from with this idea.

Looking good now Loi...I support this.

Glad to see the fighters gone. I feel the EC should be that last stepping stone into caps and a nice drone bonus seems more on par with the progression. Good size, nice layout and well thought out.

The bonuses of all the ships seem kinda the same, blah blah same ship, different model / texture.

been done to death.

racial orcas.


moving on.

Bumping for the pure greatness of the idea.

I would love to see a ship which is to the Orca, what a Carrier is to a Rorqual.

ok' this actully does make the escort carrier idea intresting. They trully would be escorts' but they wouldn't be truly OP in highsec. I like.

Bump for one of the greatest ideas to be posted in a long time

i really like the idea of have a ship for in between battleships and capitol ships, as it is the moment you get advanced spaceship command to only way to really get anything from it is to train it up to 5 immediately (unless you are going for the orca/rorqual) so this will allow to make that gap smaller perhaps requiring advanced spaceship command at lvl 3

Well maybe a step back and a hard look at the ship's role and the comments made should be done.

1. Fighter mechanics at present allow safe-spotted fighter support on the field. In Hi-sec this has tons of inherent problems among them being that Concord has to be able to kill you when your drones give you a GCC. Being in a POS gives you protection from that. Therefore current fighters as we know them would be unsuitable.

2. There are worries that remote repairs from this ship would make Logistics Ships less useful in fleet warfare because the ship could fill that role. Admittedly a spider-tanking battleship fleet does that just as well.

3. Worries about cost/benefit and mobility to keep up with battleships.

Now my thoughts on this...

When I first heard the idea for an 'escort carrier' I immediately thought of a Charon-class Freighter with it's cargo-bays converted to a flight deck... I just did. Now, historically the role of Escort Carriers is to protect stuff like freighters, merchant ships, amphibious assault ships and so forth. They have 1/4 the capacity of aircraft of a fleet carrier and are meant simply to be a cheap alternative to fleet carriers.

To get something with a similar niche in EVE requires some hard thinking, and will unfortunately require a new type of fighter craft as the ability to field fighters is actually the definitive ability to the Carrier Skill in EVE. As we already have frigates named interceptors, my first choice of name is off the books as Interceptors as short range fighters that lack a warp drive would have been ideal.

Oh what the heck... Fighter Interceptors, there we go. Fighters that can't go to warp, Interceptors... which considering the ship's role is an Escort. Makes sense.

So what are Fighter Interceptors? Well... looking at the stats for Fighters and Fighter Bombers show a clear trend... Fighters have a sig radius of 100 or so... which is much closer to cruisers than frigates. Their weapons also have a signature of 125 meters, the same as a cruiser size turret. Fighter Bombers... or just Bombers as they've removed the second attack from them due to load issues are meant specifically to kill Dreadnoughts with their damage radius of 2.25 kilometers or so. Nothing but a Super Capital really takes full damage from them.

Interceptors are therefore the little brothers of Fighters with weapons with a signature and tracking comparable to frigate size turret and slightly less dps then a fighter. They should be fast with a speed of around 3 km/sec (compared to the 2km/sec of fighters or the 1.5 km/sec of Fighter Bombers). They also have less HP's and a smaller signature radius of around 40-50 meters. Their lack of warp drive will keep them from being abused and at 3km/sec with a viable reach they might be a decent weapon to use against Interceptors.

As for the Escort Carrier itself... I still really like the idea of a ship with the HPs and size roughly like a freighter, but shrinking it to be viable to keep pace with current Battleships would definitely need to be done... though the Freighter does probably give a good reference for how much EHP should be in an Escort Carrier.

An Attak Carrier would be really interesting. But it still should get some High Slots (maybe 4), no Hard points, which can be used for Large Shield/Armor/Hull Repairer or Gang Links or Large Neuts/Nos, but without bonis for these moduls so that the Drones are still the main weapon.

This is different idea for a support carrier, filling the roles of ewar and minor logistics at the same time, the cha would allow for extra ammo and modules in the event a ships burns out a module or runs out of a needed ammo. Also i have never seen a ship that only had one or the other.
So as far as the War Ships go there would be:
Support Carrier, as above
Assault Carrier, as posted before

No to fighters, anything this ship has should be able to be used in hisec, so let it use drones.

Escort and support carriers are looking good so far, but I have to ask, why give gang link bonuses to the Assault carrier instead of the support carrier or something else along those lines? Why not give it a bonus towards drone enhancing mods such as range, navigation, and such, instead of the gang links. Additionally, I assume that these carriers are going to be packing a heavy tank, bridging the gap between battleship and carrier with the Assault carrier of course having perhaps the closest between the two in terms of defensive capability.

I'd like to see more Mid-Size Caps i.e Orca, Freighter size stuff that is combat ready as stepping stones up.

I unfortunately don't think that a light carrier adds anything to this potential, and I think we need a more unique role concept.

The proposed idea that support carriers would need capital energy transfers makes them useless in high sec, that us the point behind this thread high sec carriers, the cost of the t2 assault carrier with unbonused links means everyone would use Command Ships for there boosting. Without any sort of drone HP boost smart bombs would rip apart all drones that came near the ships. No speed boost makes heavys useless also. They have said during the test of the DDA that it is impossible to reduce drone cycle time.
Support carrier would work well as
CHA, SMA, 7.5% racial ewar, 15% racial logistic drone repair amount.
Assault carrier
10% drone damage and HP, 10% drone mwd velovity , resist bonus caldari/amarr rep bonus gallente/minmatar

If you are in null sec with capitals, fighting capitals, then you would have triage carriers to rep.
Without a speed bonus fast ships will take your drone for a ride then blow them up very quickly, heavies can't go 20k without getting destroyed.
The idea behind racial ewar bonuses is that it makes the ships unique to each race, like auto cannons, or beam weapons.
A 10% damage increase gives sentries the ability to do 900 dps before DDAs.
There is no gap between BS and caps, they have mentioned that there are removing the battleships V requirement for capital ships. This thread would make an interesting new battleship, and then a new type of t2 battleship. Capital carriers are fine, supers need a little bit of a look, but that is another thread.

Well, it would take just one eight highslot smartbomb equipped battleship to destroy the flock of drones that you have, and that will be hard to come up against unless they have fighter sized HP. Not suggesting that they be switched out for fighters, just saying that their survivability will be quite low.

Perhaps a hitpoint bonus for drones with the escort and support carriers, rather than the assault carrier (since of course it is built primarily around brawling and the sort.)

tbh.... we have carriers and supercarriers

we dont need a 'drone-superbattleship' or 'mini carrier'

now, a mini dread with no jump drive and 1/2 the dps of a sieged dread would go down a treat!

I am not suggesting that the extra hitpoints be given to the drones that the assault carrier would use, but rather the escort and the support carriers, which would be using (for the most part) other drones rather than heavies and sentries for the most part.

I support this idea, adding Light Carriers would create more ship roles and further diversify combat.

Some tentative names I came up with late last night for the possible three classes of carriers that are considered the primary ones.



Assault Carriers:
Amarr: Rapture
Caldari: Shrike
Gallente: Chaos
Minmatar: Thunderstorm


Support Carriers:
Amarr: Saint
Caldari: Albatross
Gallente: Hermes
Minmatar: Gale


Escort Carriers:
Amarr: Disciple
Caldari: Songbird
Gallente: Asag
Minmatar: Gleipner

Any ideas for the slot layout, bonuses, and other statistics that would be prevalent on these hull designs?

escort carriers should be about 2 times as big as a BS
have bonuses to range of small and medium RRs ( this makes the small RR modules useful)
be allowed 10 drones at a time, but not fighters.
the tank should be a bit more then a BS but much less then a capital.

basically, its a small carrier that can't ( or won't) use large or capital reppers, medium and small RR are worthless ATM, giving this ship a bonus too them might help, say, 400% range and 100% amount. ( small rep range is super small)

BUMP

Loius Woo, i do really like your more streamlined proposal if the original escort carrier proposal. being:
capital burst only remote reps
large local reps
small SMA
no fighters
bonuses to drones
more than 5 drones out at one time

i think it covered several areas very well and was a well rounded idea. Then someone threw u an idea of a family of mini carriers and u went to town on them, even to the point of changing your initial well developed idea for the support carrier for the worse (imho).

keep the support carrier with burst only reps, keep the small sma for refitting on the fly, dont use fighters, have drone bonuses to help drones apply damage or effects sooner (its the major annoyance of drone boats)
and if/when a CCP dev does grace us with their presence, see if its at all possible that it can have some auto repair for drones in the dronebay. after all, drones do get their shield hp back after being in the drone bay for a while.

keep the purity and elegance of this design, dont try and brainstorm some crazy family of mini carrier class that will be seen as a really big and dev-expensive project.

soz i just re-editted my post there! lol! but gives u some more interesting things to consider!

we have one, its called a rattlesnake.

To be quite honest, their needs to be a niche filled between battleships and carriers, as well as possibly adding a ship in Eve that is purely drone focused (not fighter or fighter bomber, but drones), and the escort carrier and it's offshoots would definitiely fill those roles quite admirably.

I don't believe it matters how many threads the topic has, just so long as a DEV see's the idea eventually.

Fingers crossed for ya.

If I may be permitted to post my Light Carrier proposal that I wrote oh about a little over 4 years ago. Yes having more drones out on field is not a good idea at all (this was when I was just starting out, still a rookie). But I do honestly believe using the Tier battlecruiser hull as a base for the Light Carrier has merit (each racial Light Carrier list the battlecruiser hull they're based of or should be a variant of). Still yes there are many flaws with the proposal. So here it is.

Another good side effect of light carriers could be that there will be no more Guys who uses there Carriers for ratting or missions.

Awful idea, there is a good reason why there is no stronger sub-cap than the BS.
And i have to disapoint all of you guys, there won't come that one imba ships which will kill everything else, with its tousands combined roles (large dmg, logistic, mining?, ecm?) in one ship. It would just break the game, so as supercaps broke the game with their combined roles of different ships.
Think about a ship whichs fills out a real gap, logistic carrier which can fly with battleships isnt one it, you got logistics cruisers for sub-caps which are strong enough and you got carrier/motherships for caps.

From what i have gathered, the op wants it to do everything a carrier can currently do without a triage module and no jump drive, less training time and a smaller price tag

I more saw it as "I dont want to invest in a carrier" it is a gimped carrier. What new role will this fill?

You're trolling, right? Ships aren't balanced around their cost.

but capital abilities,

do your hull ideas not boost these modules?

Minmatar Escort Carrier: Squall Minmatar Escort Carrier skill Bonus +1 Drone per level +15% range per level of capital shield transporters

Ship bonus 75% reduction in activation cost and powergrid of Capital shield transporters

If this informationis no linger valid then is should be removed from page one.

Support Carrier
Retain bonus to fit capital repair modules
Receive NO bonus to repair amount or range.
Nerf capacitor so that the ONLY way to run the capital repairers is with capital energy transfers from real capitals.
So is this to be removed also?

Basic rules for new designs:
1. BS is stongest sub-cap.
2. 1 ship, 1 role.

If it is more about reps and less about capital then just drop the ability the ability to use capital all together and give the t2 version a decent bonus to large rep amount, but no reduction to cap, that way it still needs energy to be effective. Another thing it would be easier to make the t1 hull a battleship that requires advanced spaceship command, make the escort carriers skill the t2 book, much how recon ships have split ships, less new skills in game and still helps close the "gap" to capital ships

1. I accept that you never have been in 0.0 and thus can't understand the problems of (s)caps over the history and currently.
2. Marauder is a carebear ship with utility slots for salvager and tactor beams. Large remote repper got a too short range to be used in regular fleets. Neutrs/Nos make it hard to fit full damage and full tank. So there is nothing with multiple roles. There drawback (omg they got one!!!): They got no sensor strength.
3. Vindicator has the role of a blaster boat, blaster (as you dont konw) only work on a very short range, thus they need something to pin down their target, since it is a faction ship it has a special bonus, the one to is the bonus to web strength. It is far away from being a heavy tackler, it is still a slow moving, slow locking bs. 2 roles? Nope.
4. Blackops are weaker (no dmg dealer) than usual bs, and got the roles for 'jump bridging' cloaked ships or jumping on their own. I fail to see here where you see 2 roles, but yes they are broken, people say so...or got it fixed can't remember?
5. BS is stronger than any hac, you just can fit hacs to kill bs, so as you can fit t1 fr to kill a bs, then it still depends on how the bs is fitted. This is eve. Eve is not designed that one ship can kill all other kind of ships which are 'weaker'.
6. The reason why not everyone is flying a bs is because a bs is only good in hp and dmg. To make sure it is not the only ship being used it has drawbacks: It is damn slow, has no tackle or logistic role and got a hard life to hit fast targets.
7. I never said that bs's are the best ships in every situation.
8. Your idea is to make a slow ship with more hp than bs, dmg around bs and a logistic role etc., not?
9. Try to read and undertand the posts from people who are giving you feedback.

Basic rules for new designs:
1. BS is stongest sub-cap.

Hey I don't like that it seems to have more than one role. Perhaps if you split the roles more cleanly between the tech one and tech two versions so that each ship has one clear role and not several unclear ones. I also think that BS's should remain the kings of HP and Damage combat and so perhaps you should nerf some of the drone damage or something to make them a little less damage than BS's. In the case of the notional T2 "Assault Carrier" perhaps make that one more like a true BS in terms of tank and agility and get the drone damage to about what a good BS would be doing and it can be just like the rest of the BS, but with a drone focus.
Either way, I think the idea is not very good because I believe that CCP have a core philosophy in ship balance that this idea would be violating...but since I am not CCP I cannot be sure.

I've read alot of these ideas for "Mini-Carriers" and quite a bit I see "Bridging the gap between BS's and Carriers" as a big supporting argument. Just so those people know, there already is a pretty strong carrier line to follow, it starts with cruisers (Osprey, Augoror, Exequror, and the Scythe) and builds into their T2 counterparts. From there you go for Fleet Command ships, being a good Logi Pilot is gonna take some time anyways so don't worry about the training time. When you get the Command ships you train for Black Ops BS's, it takes even longer to be a good FC so practice up on that long wait. When you get to Black Ops, Lo and Behold!! You have Racial BS to 5, jump skills, logi and FC experience and are ready to be a capital pilot.

TL;DR - Already a well established skill tree to get you to carriers and be well and able to fly them, this gets a resounding no.

When you get to Black Ops, Lo and Behold!! You have Racial BS to 5, jump skills, logi and FC experience and are ready to be a capital pilot.

There is something on these forums that is fascinating:

People don't want new ships added to the game.

When incarna was deployed there was this massive 'riot' of people complaining that the core aspect of the game (spaceships) was neglected and so on .
And everytime someone makes a thread for a new ship class everybody freaks out and says it sucks before even considering things and trying to work out reasonnable stats and roles. The immediate reaction is that it would break the balance of the game altogether and its gonna be a super powered imba ship for missions runners. And that is just sad.



> This is a Features and Ideas thread. nobody is pretending to be devs and have knowledge about what would be balanced or not.
It's just an idea for a new ship class that is currently lacking and could be a lot of fun to fly. Which would add even more diversity of gameplay.

I just got through reading the entire post (I skimmed some of the trolls) and I can't believe what OP has to put up with.

2 Cents
In order to get Dev attention, I think the simplest proposal is often the best. I think substantial amendments have been made to the initial "Light Carrier" idea and is something I generally think would be good to implement. However, breaking the initial idea into several other ships becomes a bit of a development nightmare, simply because balancing becomes somewhat theoretical until the ships can be brought to Sisi at the very least. So, IMO, to keep Dev interest, I would only be in favor of a single (4 racial) light carrier (details to be hatch by CCP).

All in all, this is a legitimate post in Features and Ideas.

I like the idea of a high sec carrier. I support it having limited use of fighters for defense.

Why?

Because fighters are cool. It adds a bit of immersion for those of us that RP in our minds if not in actions. I like the idea that I am sending out a wing of pilots to defend my ship or that of a fleet mate.

bump

We dont need 'escort' carrier!

However, highsec ship with ship maintenance bay without RR or combat capability is needed (and not an Orca ofc, something that doesnt need large SP investment in mining and industry to fly).

Why?

If you add RR to it, it will either have capital remote repper, with its low range, or normal reppers bonused for range, and due to EHP then it will be _massively overpowered_ logistics ship.

And if you want drones, just get a Domi.

Christ this thread. I can't read all of it, I skimmed.

These mini-carriers are supposed to "provide combat support to roaming BS fleet forces" - I don't know where you live, but when was the last time you saw anything larger than a battlecruiser in a roaming gang? 2010 roaming RR BS gangs don't really happen anymore, the game has moved on.

STUFF
STUFF
STUFF.

I did read/skim. Though it is hard to get stuck into reading a thread when half the posts consist of you telling people that they can't read and that they're dumb. Really winning hearts and minds there bro.



No, I think the reason that roaming fleets don't use BS is because they're slow and they can't catch anything, and we have battlecruisers that aren't slow and can catch things, and we have tier 3 battlecruisers which have battleship level damage while being far more mobile. We have Tier 2 battlecruisers capable of putting up with a ton of abuse. HACs, T3s, faction cruisers, buffed assault frigs, etc. There are so many better options for roaming.

We have logistics cruisers for support, these ships are so good at repping that they're used as support for mainline battleship fleet doctrines. They fit large reps, they can rep from far away, they can perma-MWD, they're practically immune to bombing runs... And you think the reason people don't take battleships out on roams is because we don't have a big slow logi-BS that only uses logi drones? Logical rebuttal? When people say these ships don't have a role, this is what they mean. They mean that there are ships that exist which people would choose over your proposed ships, because they have more advantages

You complain that there's too much of a gap between subcaps and carriers in terms of training, ignoring the fact that a logistics cruiser skill set is needed for triage. Ignoring that jump skills can be trained for a jumpfrieighter. Ignoring that there's an entire race of subcaps that specialize in using drones. Ignoring the T2 battleships that require racial battleship 5. Yep... I can't do anything fun for 120 days while I train all these carrier skills.

You complain that there's no learning curve between subcaps and capitals. There isn't a gradual slope from subcap combat to capital combat because they're fundamentally different ships. One can use gates, the other can't and it jumps instead. Introducing slow logistics battleship with drones isn't going to make anyone feel more comfortable about the transition. There is however a gradual slope in the effectiveness of a carrier and what you can practically use it for. I'm training for a carrier because I want a ship that can jump far which I can use to ferry my subcaps around between deployment areas. For this I need minimal barebones carrier skills and the ability to fit cap rechargers for reaching jump-cap. Next I can develop drone and combat skills, go on capital ops, shoot and rep POSes, train fighters and assign them to my alt for ratting, etc. Thirdly I can choose to develop my carrier skills, train triage and join slowcat fleets, support subcaps in combat. Develop my skills more and I could drop on smaller gangs solo, do even more eliter pee vee pee. Max out my carrier skills and have a deadspace fitted wormhole carrier, make my own rooks and kings video. There is definitely a learning curve

I read through most of this thread, and i have seen a lot of points bounced around. If you cut out a lot of the bickering, there is a lot of good and interesting stuff. i like some of the ideas from the half dozen or so perspectives i could see. I like the the lions share of the concept, but i think i have a more balanced, and potentially more implementable proposition, because lets face it, as it stands i do not think CCP would be willing to implement this as is. It does not mesh with current gameplay trends or current development goals (IE ship rebalancing being a major focus)

As for my take. I think the concept of a "between battleship and dreadnaught/carrier" size ship is interesting, but it has been done, so lets look to those first to see the most logical way to have this idea be implemented and developed in actuality.

Firstly, as far as training and such this is the equivelent of a destroyer or battlecruiser. CCP is planning on at some point changing those skills to be racially iterated as opposed to a generalized spaceship command skill. A ship of this size category would be an excelent flagship for the expansion that realizes that change. as such a ship class of this size should definitely have more racially inspired fluff. More on that later.

Secondly, the Orca is roughly that size in game, and although skill requirements are a bit different (industrials don't follow quite the same progression) i think the Orca is the best ship to make a comparison to because freighters and jump freighters are far to specialized. Orcas are very versatile and are used for a variety of tasks outside their intended scope, including mobile exploration and wormhole bases. I am sure people reading this will be familiar with at least some of the nuances and capabilities of the Orca, so i won't go into any more detail, but will revisit the concept in a moment.

Thirdly, the CCP development plans cleary lean towards all ships having clear roles in Both PVP and PVE. some ships will be able to perform in one or the other environment exclusively while most ships will have a certain element of crossover between PVP and PVE, but maintain their intended role fairly uniformly.

Combining these three conepts; Standardized racial training and flavor, Orca like size comparison and clasification, and the need for a clear role that has potential in PVP and PVE, limits our choices and allows us to develop the idea into something that may actually get designed in game. That stated, I believe some of the features and ideas proposed in this thread are more appropriate than others.

I can honestly say that fighters will be something that CCP probably would not put on a sub capital ship. I understand that like the orca, this is a hybrid between the two, but fighters just don't seem to be a reasonable addition, but i could be wrong. This does deviate from the initial concept as a mini carrier, but i honestly think that allowing the concept to eveolve away from that focus will honestly be an improvement. Aditionally, i feel that this ship class, as presented, lacks any sort of racial flavoring. Both Carriers and Logistics manage to clearly show their colors, so to speak, and the same should be true of this ship class. Also, using a Sub cap as a spring board for a capital is fundamentally unachievable as the differences between the two make it equivelent to putting training wheels on motorcycle. Finally, this ship class does not have a very clear role, according to the CCP's new convention, and it needs one.

This still leaves us a ton of options to work with though, and to narrow it down we should really settle on a role. Considering the initial idea, I believe a support role is in order, although other ships of this size category could be developed in different roles at a later date. Given its size (comperable to an Orca), its role, need for more racial flavor, and need for a unique purpose. i would honestly recomend giving it a bonus to racial warfare links, and allow it to fit all three varieties simultaniously. I rather like the idea of a Massive drone bay, even without fighters, and would definitely keep the +1 drone per level, if not increase it to +2 and keep the increase to drone effectiveness as well perhaps making one a static role bonus and the other level dependent. If being used in a logistics role, massively bonused repper drones work rather well and are frankly more interesting. A set of ships like this is far more colorful and interesting than just a mini carrier, and if it has both a corporate hanger and a large (greater than 500,000 M3) ship maintainance bay would see a large amount of use in both PVE and PVP. It has easily forseeable usefulness in several roam and gate camp fleet compositions, and potentially even SOV warfare fleets. In PVE it would perform far better than the Orca for more combat oriented Exploration and wormhole scenarios. If designed in a manner similar to this, it would also fill a role that no other ship is filling, and therefore not be the "bigger" or "smaller" version of some other ship.

I may actually develop this idea a bit further, but for now i will leave it as this and see what feedback i get

When the last to pages are mostly bumps, it's time to stop bumping...

When 21 out of 30 threads on the front page are sticky, bumping is about the only way to comments coming

So basically a cheap carrier for people who are too lazy to train for capitals & too stingey to buy one? Sure, I can get on board with this. Say hello to 1000-man escort carrier fleet doctrines that produce so much lag that our enemies can no longer defend their space.

Make them pirate carriers, so that cost makes them prohibitive instead of cheap. :)
Don't see it hs usable, sorry. Still needs to be able to jump, etc. Imagine this....

Fine. The OP was horrific. Bring back something like a battlecruiser version of a Guardian Vexor. :p

well, the difference between this and current carriers and supers, is that the assault carrier would not be allowed to use fighters/bombers (mainly because they can just assign them to other fleet members and then keep the carrier at a safe spot) so think of something like a rattlesnake or a domi but no guns or launchers, and with more drones