| Author |
Thread Statistics | Show CCP posts - 0 post(s) |
Anthar Thebess
REPUBLIKA ORLA
C0VEN
57
   |
Posted - 2013.02.28 12:43:00 -
[1] - Quote
I play in games for a long time - and i see something in eve that i already saw few times in my "player life".
At some point there is something uncontrolled, unstoppable - brining a loot of fun to a wining side ... but at the end brining death to a game or at least leaving it with minimal player base.
It usually begins with "I win button".
For some time this fun - but at some point even "wining" side gets boored, and game begins to leak players faster and faster every day.
As far as know - eve had already few times this kind of "issue" but each time it was "managed" in some way.
With upcoming skill changes more, and more players will move to the capital ships - this is fun , but it can be also stab in a back for this game.
As already big fleet engagements are mostly :
- follow your anchor
- lock broadcasted target
- press f1 for primary
- press f2 for secondary
...We are approaching something more "fun" - slowcats - already growing , and growing on numbers , but still in "somewhat manageable numbers".
Simple calculations - i didn't check them : http://evenews24.com/2012/08/08/ask-dr-fit-what-is-a-slowcat/
"
- Bouncers max range: 120km GÇô 2300 volley
- Gardes max range 60km GÇô 2400 volley
- Wardens max 140km GÇô 1800 volley
(...)
Having a 50 carrier fleet (...) achieve would mean a 120K volley, every ~4 seconds."
And of course the main thing - all of them are controlled by one fast tracking ship.
Now , after those few months (from 08/08/2012) the typical slowcat fleet grew to 100-150 carriers , and more pilots are on the way.
So lets talk about 150 slowcats ... shield ones ( after skill changes - they will be quite easy to get):
- Immense Tank - med slot based
- Immense DPS - low slot based
- Immense Remote Repair - we are talking about carriers after all
Will eve become.
- Jump to cyno
- Drop your sentries
- Assign to me
- Now rep fleet
400-500k alpha every 4 seconds.
Yes this will be fun - but for how long.
How long it will take for people to get bored?
And slowcats are only small part of the issue:
- BLOB!!! - fun as hell - 30% TDI
- Titan bridge - bigger bloob - 10% TDI
- Slowcats - additional 100 players on grid ... and over 1000 new sentries ....
Will CCP find solution for this - or do you see one?
|
Anthar Thebess
REPUBLIKA ORLA
C0VEN
57
|
Posted - 2013.02.28 12:51:00 -
[2] - Quote
But changing from the armour carrier ( preferred now) to the shield one - will be at minimal effort.
If you look on skills - they are more "pilot friendly".
Additionally the main issue is with slowcat concept.
Carrier sentries - can shoot a frigate within a second after showing on the grid - how? As the drones are controlled by a T3 fast locking cruiser. |
Anthar Thebess
REPUBLIKA ORLA
C0VEN
57
|
Posted - 2013.02.28 13:10:00 -
[3] - Quote
Cebraio wrote:There are also counters to slowcats.
- You can try to damp/jam/kill the target caller
- You can use smartbombs and bombs to destroy sentries (Destroying enough T2 sentries will at least make these fleets costly and will reduce DPS while pilots redeploy and reassign.)
- You can bring slowcats
- ...
- You can bring Titans and supers
Slowcats actually require more work for the average F1 fleet member, so I don't see a problem with that aspect.
Kill target caller - small signature heavy tanked T3 Cruiser - repped by carriers?
Damp/Jam - yes but just having few target callers negates this approach.
Smart bomb? 150 carriers against smart bomb BS fleet.
Typical smart bomb bs have 50k ehp tanked 80-90k This makes 5 BS dead every 4 seconds, and carrier can have few hundred sentries on board.
Slowcats against slowcats , dreads will do much better - but still this will lead to TDI 10% BLOB.
-Supers , yes this solve this ! Why i didn't think about this.
Let the only true solution be "BRING BIGGER SHIPS!!"
To be honest - big fights are super - but not on TDI 10%.
Why not CCP "negate" the slowcat concept? Rather than force "big bigger guns"?
|
Anthar Thebess
REPUBLIKA ORLA
C0VEN
57
|
Posted - 2013.02.28 13:38:00 -
[4] - Quote
Wacktopia wrote:"Are SlowCats worth it?" What do you mean? Are you referring to their performance vs price or is this a stealth nerf thread?
The result of which means it is a tricky tactic to counter if executed correctly.
Generally the tactic vs drones is to destroy the drones because most ships can only field a flight or two of the ones they are using to kill you. On a carrier this is true but only with Fighters. The disproportional volume of fighters vs sentries is so great that a carrier can carry 4000 sentry drones.
A wave of bombers, for example, would normally be enough to wipe out field of drones and would be an effective tactic were it not for the above fact.
I'm not entirely sure where I stand on this one but I think that perhaps if something were to be done then perhaps if fighters were made to be 2x the volume of a heavy/sentry drone and the carrier drone bay reduced accordingly [20 Fighters | 40 sentries] then it would mean that aoe-blapping the sentries was potentially a viable tactic. But, like I say, don't know how I feel about this.
Any change will be connected to nerf of the slowcat doctrine.
"The disproportional volume of fighters vs sentries is so great that a carrier can carry 4000 sentry drones. "
That is one of the reasons why big number of slowcats is so unstoppable. If you kill the drones - they have plenty more.
As for the bombing - have you tried?
When carriers are not moving - they can instantly scope drones - and redeploy them few seconds after bombs explode. |
Anthar Thebess
REPUBLIKA ORLA
C0VEN
58
|
Posted - 2013.03.01 08:09:00 -
[5] - Quote
All of you have some point.
But bombing / smartbombing is not effective way - why?
Like someone stated - carriers can have thousands drones on board.
So when enemy starts to drop smart bomb battleships - kill them till you have drones, deploy t1 till all BS are dead, and then redeploy new group of T2.
Void bombs? We are talking about Carriers and usually 2xCCC T2 and 1xCCC T1
Destroyers taking out drones? They hit up to 140km - you are not talking moving near them?
Like i sad i don't want eve to be "BRING BIGGER SHIPS" - yes you can bring 150 titans and DD slowcat fleet.
|
Anthar Thebess
REPUBLIKA ORLA
C0VEN
58
|
Posted - 2013.03.01 14:30:00 -
[6] - Quote
I'm not saying carriers are bad, they grate.
I'm talking about the slowcat concept.
For me it is breaking game mechanics - because after all capital fleet able to lock, and kill a frigate every second.
Giving ability to control ~1000 sentry drones to a single ship - do only i see a bit of nonsense here?
Why the need of bandwidth , drone bay if you can do something like this.
I think removing the ability to give assist on drones would be interesting solution.
Or maybe limit this by additional skill?
10 drones assisting / lvl
Just remember that the biggest slowcat time is about to come - as the shield slowcat will have much bigger dps on sentry drones than typical armour carrier.
|
Anthar Thebess
REPUBLIKA ORLA
C0VEN
58
|
Posted - 2013.03.01 14:59:00 -
[7] - Quote
Xearal wrote:Ewar is also a good counter for this.. drop a bunch of scorpions with ECM bursts in the middle of those drones and they won't do anything anymore.
To stop a drone from attacking, you need to either jam the attack caller they are assisting, or the drones themselves, yes, carriers hae immense Sensor strength, but it's not the carriers you need to jam, all you need to do is jam those drones ( yes they can be jammed ). A bunch of ECM burst scorps in a blob of sentrycarriers will stop those sentries from shooting.
Then as suggested, bring in a pile of dessies and begin sniping them. And to make sure you do it right, T1 fitted dessies, and offgrid some carriers with spares.
After the burst you will be locked under 1s and receive about 120-150k alpha strike.
|
Anthar Thebess
REPUBLIKA ORLA
C0VEN
64
|
Posted - 2013.03.15 12:35:00 -
[8] - Quote
Heh we did this ;)
Still it is a bit larger issue.
Slowcats have tons od EHP , we can incap their drones, do what ever is needed to kill them without our looses - but then "unexpected" enemy arrives.
Time dilatation.
100 slowcats against 300 subcaps ... and we have TD 10%.
TD 10% place us in very bad situation - why?
Like the Pandemic Legion high command stated
"Until CCP fix the TD - no one can do something to our coalition. 3 hours in game is about 10minutes in TD 10% - so enemy have 10 minutes to kill capitals while we have 3 hours to get reinforcements on place"
So how to say it - "long live the blooob"?
As sad as it is - this is true.
We done it few times already - we dominated all initial battlefields - we where killing their capitals for a whole 1-1.5 initial hour of a battle (but this is about 6 minutes in a TD 10%) - and during this 1 -1,5hour every possible ping is send - and you have on place 500 additional ships - that without TD - should never be there in a first place, and each time those ships where able to "save the day"
So thank you CCP for next "successful" add-on to the eve. Your plans where good , but the effect is quite sad.
Long live the BLOOB! TD 10% will always help you to win.
|
Anthar Thebess
REPUBLIKA ORLA
C0VEN
66
|
Posted - 2013.03.15 13:14:00 -
[9] - Quote
Why black screen?
This can be solved in many different ways.
To be honest - im not happy from TD - now i loose 90% of my time in a battle to achieve my goals.
How can it be solved? I posted somewhere some solution ( not the best one ).
Separate timer for a TD system and after (before) jumping by gate or titan - you have choice :
- wait the diffrence
or
- cancel the jump.
Is this perfect?
No.
But much fair and anty bloob.
Now you just send "few" pilots - and if it will escalate we will ping for new ones to login. |
Anthar Thebess
REPUBLIKA ORLA
C0VEN
67
|
Posted - 2013.03.15 14:15:00 -
[10] - Quote
baltec1 wrote:
Jump umpteen people into system to cause tidi. Destroy target assets. Bug out before enemy fleet can enter system.
No - this is not working this way.
TD is in favor of bigger coalitions - as it allow them to save assets.
The TD actually prevents the major assets to be destroyed.
Ok you catch enemy with their pants down - but TD kicks in. You begin to pop capitals you do this for 6 minutes ... but wait , in the real world, and for the rest of the eve over an hour just passed.
How much capitals , repped by other capitals , you can kill in 6 minutes?
How much frends you can call to help save your assets if you have more than an hour?
You could say - bring your reinforcements ... what for?
Let say that we battle for over 30 minutes now in TD 10% - this is 6 hours in a Real Life.
6 hours!
Now ask yourself simple question how much damage you can do to a capital fleet within 30 minutes ... and how many people , big coalition can call to "HELP" within those 6 hours.
This is a game not a work. |
Anthar Thebess
REPUBLIKA ORLA
C0VEN
67
|
Posted - 2013.03.15 14:25:00 -
[11] - Quote
Yes TD allow any one from every point in eve to be on each battlefield that they need to be - as long they where ping, they have JB/Titans and few hours to sit and watch the slow motion battle.
Even if you logged 3 hours after the battle begin - you still going to be on time - as for the people that started the battle only 18 minutes passed.
|
Anthar Thebess
REPUBLIKA ORLA
C0VEN
79
|
Posted - 2013.03.18 11:47:00 -
[12] - Quote
Not exacly.
Because in order for this timer to kick in some other things must occur.
Of course always there will be a way that game mechanics are going to work for you.
But then in both sides in order to achieve something have to commit their forces.
While sitting on alts in TEST i noticed how much this thing is now abused.
We are talking about 6-7 fleets up for an op.
2-3 fleets actually do something rest are "place holders" if something will happen - they are already up, FC and few pilots are already on place to call the rest and help the fleet that send distress call.
Only i see the nonsense- that the "backup fleets" are 10 regions away.
|
| |
|