J'Rela
Black Lotus Heavy Industries
Ethereal Dawn
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Posted - 2009.09.17 10:04:00 -
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Having faced Titans in battle, flown alongside them, and piloted one myself, I think I might have a bit to say about Titans, and especially the changes being made to them and the goals CCP has in mind.
The most important problem with the Titan is that you never see it. That's a shame, considering how big and pretty they are, but there's a reason for it.
Titans rarely leave POS shields. Titans don't linger on the battlefield. Titans almost universally mount cloaking devices and usually have a (number of) "safe" cyno(s) on standby.
Why is that?
It's been suggested that the problem is that those pesky Titans are allowed to leave. We should lock down their drives if they dare to engage in combat so that they can be more readily destroyed, right? right?
Wrong.
The problem is actually that it's possible--easy, rather-- to stop them from leaving. The problem is that their only refuge is in escape. The problem is that if they engage the enemy there is a very real chance they will die, and that there will be nothing that the pilot can do to prevent it. Making them self-immobilising and drastically repurposing their primary weapon will only exacerbate this problem.
Instead of players worrying about three or ten or twenty Titans arriving on the battlefield, we will face a situation where there may be none. This would be a pity. A lot of hard work went into creating the Titan art, and to building the ships in game. A solution that makes them even more virtually unplayable than they are now is unacceptable.
So, what's the solution?
It isn't to nerf the Titan further. Don't get me wrong, I love the Death Ray idea and that's some sweet concept art, but replacing the single unique combat function the Titan has with something that can actually be done by a sufficiently large fleet of Battleships does not thrill me, and will not be sufficient to entice most Titan pilots into action.
There are problems with Doomsday Devices. They're not supposed to be anti-capital weapons, but we are reaching a threshold where they may be usable in that way. There are solutions to that without drastically repurposing the device. For example, you could limit the effects of repeated firing. Crank up the damage, but make them miserable against capital ships by locking out additional shots on the grid for several minutes. While we're at it, make them scriptable for that focused-fire effect, but don't lock out the Titan's drive.
Do you know why many Titans are nano-fit? Why nearly all Titans mount a cloaking device? Why Titans never stay on-grid after a shot?
They can't take the heat, so they have no choice but to get out of the kitchen. Titans need a respectable tank, and I don't mean "pretty great for a battleship unless it's supported," I mean "respectable for a ship that's on a publicly-posted hit list with less than three hundred entries." If it can't tank a dozen siege-mode dreads, it isn't close.
If you give them that tank, Titan pilots suddenly have options. Give them secondary weapons (i.e. Capital guns with siege-dread like effectiveness) with solid DPS and now they have a reason to stick around, perhaps to risk the enemy forming and dropping a fleet that could defeat them. A Titan could follow its own doomsday device by engaging nearby damaged subcapitals and quickly destroying them, could form a viable part of an attack force against a POS, Station, or (insert new Dominion Shootable here,) and need not fear its pilot having no options but to watch the agonizing destruction of their massive glass phallus.
You'd actually see more Titans dying this way, not less. And they'd go down the way they deserve to go down -- kicking and screaming in epic battles against overwhelming odds, not silently dying because their agression timer hadn't expired when the pilot logged out.
You want to see something used? Expand it's uses.
End of Line.
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If violence never solves anything, you're not using enough.
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