Gramtar
GoonFleet
GoonSwarm
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Posted - 2009.09.16 06:39:00 -
[1]
Interesting concepts for supercapitals. What remains to be seen is what the role of dreads and carriers are vis a vis the new sov claiming device/thingy/whatever we shoot. After all, capital killers are not much use if there are no capitals around to kill. Some things to remember:
1) We use dreads today to siege towers and shoot other capitals
2) Most capital fights occur when a POS is exiting reinforced mode
Therefore, whatever the new thing is we'll be shooting at gates to claim sov:
1) Needs a reinforced mode to give defenders an opportunity to defend it at a later date, and both sides the time needed to prepare their players to be somewhere at a specific time. If you can outright kill the sov-claiming thing, why would anyone ever engage outside of their own prime time? Because they want "good fights"?
2) Since everything else in a system - cyno jammers and beacons, jump bridges, outpost/station access, and CSAA operation - is all dependent on sovereignty, all those other things will be a secondary target to an attacker. Serious attackers will go directly after the sov claiming device/tower/whatever it is. If this doesn't have a lot of HP - by a lot I mean something like 3-5x Large tower shield HP - then people will just shoot them with subcaps.
Now, you could radically change the role of the dread (by removing tracking penalties and improving scan res) to make it a subcap killer, in the same way the Titan is becoming a cap killer. However, that seems to make the game more "dumb" to me. It would simply become a matter of whoever brought the biggest guns to the fight winning - not very fun or challenging.
So, to help me appreciate these new capital ship killers, I need to understand under what circumstances there's going to be capital ships to kill. What is the role of the dread? Today while sieged, it does 10x the dps of a T2 gank BS against a large tower. We use them because we typically have to shoot several such towers in one go. Sometimes a lot more than several. If a system only had 1 or 2 large POS, we would probably just use BS and not put a 1.8 billion isk ship at risk.
What is the role of the dread in Dominion? I ask this because, like the last time POS and sov was revamped, one of the goals I'm hearing about is to "make small gangs relevant". As we know, unless CCP was referring to afk station services shooting for 12 hours, that goal was never realized. For me, when I hear that same goal echoed, I think - if a small gang can take or disrupt sovereignty, what role does the Dread still have?
When it comes down to it, the two ideas are completely at odds. Dreads - expensive, immobile, set pieces doing large amounts of damage to solo stationary targets - and small gangs running around trying to accomplish...something. I don't see how the two can live together.
My hope is EVE doesn't become solely a timezone war - your enemy shoots your crap in his primetime and you shoot his in your primetime and everything grinds along until one side takes a day off and there's a winner until it starts all over again.
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