Supercapitals need buffs not nerfs.

The glaring flaws in your alarmist and badly thought out rant article:

* There are already at least 50 classes of ship that specifically counter supercaps, they're called subcaps and they're immune to all forms of supercap weapons
* Supers never die not because they're too strong, but because they're too weak. All it takes is a few subcaps to show up and you're dead. The only way a supers gets used is with 100% safety, which means no fun for anybody.
* The idea that supercaps are concentrated in the hands of "the few" is nonsense, there are thousands of super pilots and anybody can buy one
* The real problem with nullsec is something completely different. The HBC has more supercaps than anybody else, so what's stopping them fighting the CFC? Clearly it's not a lack of supers -- it's a lack of reward and/or vested interest in technetium.

so you don't actually have any clue what you're talking about

I see

Nullsec, long the public face of EVE Online, is broken.

Upon a time nullsec was about the clash of interstellar kingdoms, and the trial of wills. But it has become about risk avoidance, wallet bloat and planned PvP combat. It has been turned into NullsecDisney-«; the very theme park version of EVE that the present lords of nullsec railed against in the not too distant past.

I guess the current nullsec landlords find that EVE as theme park isn't such a bad idea if you're the ones selling tickets and collecting rents.

Happily, an elegant solution (i.e., one that displays the qualities of unusual effectiveness and simplicity) is available.

http://fiddlersedge.blogspot.com/2013/03/nullsec-is-worth-saving.html#comment-form

How's the technetium over there?

I guess the current nullsec landlords find that EVE as theme park isn't such a bad idea if you're the ones selling tickets and collecting rents.

* The real problem with nullsec is something completely different. The HBC has more supercaps than anybody else, so what's stopping them fighting the CFC? Clearly it's not a lack of supers -- it's a lack of reward and/or vested interest in technetium.

**** was too much work, it wasnGÇÖt fun anymore. We had friends for strategic reasons not because we actually liked them. Internal politics was ****. Running a space empire was ****. Being on call for EVE 23/7 was ****

No, nullsec has turned into a 'blue doughnut' because everyone's too sick of grindy sovereignty mechanics to get into a major war. Any potential gains would be outweighed by the sheer tedium of logistics and grinding and alarm-clock ops. And they're busy trying to rig the CSM elections, too.

anyway removing supercaps is just as dumb as buffing them again

let's not try to steer the topic away from "i'm wrong" because well you think that subcaps are immune to supercaps and that supercaps aren't concentrated in the hands of the few when given the numbers available (1-2k titans, 3-4k supercarriers, 500k active accounts) we can figure that only 1% of players own supercaps, and it doesn't help that players who do get supercaps tend to join whatever entity is the flavor of the month

Okay, so what do you propose to do so that people actually have incentives to risk their supercaps willingly outside of "oh **** I clicked jump instead of bridge" or "oh **** I didn't align and a hostile dictor bubbled me".

Some players are simply more powerful/knowledgeable/useful than others. Either they have a big shiny ship, or they have 15 accounts, or work hard to organize others. Those players are free to move to whatever team they want, and so when one team starts winning what happens? They all join, and we end up with stagnation.

Stagnation is not the end result of supercaps, it's the end result of people's ability to swap between corporations with ease and their desire to be on the winning team. Supercaps are an easy scape goat, a proxy for the real problem: Nobody likes to lose, so the best players* (and there will always be players who are better than others) will always gang up on everybody else. That's the reason random lolcorps can't get a start in nullsec.

There is no easy solution. The best we can hope for is CCP will mix up the pot and we'll have 5 years of settling down into the new equilibrium.

* If you dislike the idea that some players are inherently better than others, then go find a different game

The solution is to make super pilots more self dependent, and less able to be rescued if they make a bad call.

* Give supers & titans the ability to defend themselves against poorly prepared subcaps (this is the main reason they don't get used)
* Add a mass limit to cynos, this makes it harder to subcap blob a tackled super and harder to drop more supers to save some idiot tackled super (this is the reason most sov bloc supers don't die even when they are facing a very well prepared subcap fleet)
* Give supers and especially titans a 50% DPS increase, to make them worth using on structure bashes (right now people will use dreads if there's even a 1% risk, but if there's a 1% risk and a 50% faster structure kill they'll bring out their supers).

Er... according to both side's killboards, they're pewpewing each other anyways. Maybe not on the terms you or I'd like to see but let's be honest here. Propaganda aside, it simply is a major pain in the butt to grind sov and I (hate myself for saying this) feel for the average HBC/CFC grunt that has to do it in otder to get anywhere in this stalemate.

The cards are on the table now with the next expansion. There's not going to be any rework of the sov mechancis. It's now up to the coalition leaders to figure out something to do with it. SOLAR&pets will not be able to hold out forever and then what?

It's then either having a go at each other properly or loosing pilots to boredom because quite frankly, WarGames/Thunderdome will kill it for a lot of people. There is no point and no thrill in shooting inanimate sov objects and there is no point and thrill in showing up to prearranged fights, with prearranged doctrines and probably prearranged outcomes to keep the enlisted happy.

It's the nullsec version of everyone gets a cookie. Don't forget though that the days of coaltions held together by friendships are long gone, these are entities created out of strategic necessity above anything else.

Give people a cookie and they want to keep it and they will come for more (especially when there's the internet spaceship version of cutting throats involved) - it's the way we work.

Yes, resources - or much rather concentrating the important ones in one area - are a problem too and yes the force projection that will kick any newbros in the nuts with DDs and fighterbombers while being insulted in local is a problem as well. However these are problems from to long of a period of peace&blue rainbows, CSM inbreed and getting fat and lazy on the riches of moon goo.

The one thing that can fix nullsec faster than anything else is nullsec themselves, period. Offline everything and have a go at each other in a massive free-for-all armageddon. Sort out the new order on the ashes of the old trash later.



CCP will have to step up their game eventually but again, the cards are on the table. It's not gonna be this summer. Hats off to anyone who is willing to stick out another year of boredom at the minimum.

Link to a blog where there is a link to a blog.

Is there any content in this thread or is it just a daisy chain?

I'm fully comfortable with the fact that some players are inherently better than others. However, it seems you're not - "abloobloobloooooo I can't use my super because somebody will bridge 50 tempests on top of me and murder me for kicks, naturally such peasants shouldn't stand a chance against me"

Sounds a bit like you don't like working for a specific employer anymore and think it's up to your boss to change your job description.

A poorly prepared subcap fleet won't manage to tackle, let alone kill, a super or titan - if they don't have neuts and dictors/hictors, they won't kill it, period. Mass limits for cynos are dumb. You have no idea what you're talking about if you think people use dreads to bash structures other than towers, since supercarriers and titans can kill a structure in less time than a dread's siege cycle and be out of there.

Don't opine on sov warfare when you're obviously clueless about it~

A well prepared subcap fleet should always win. Right now they don't. Supers bail each other out when they get in trouble, and that's one of the things that has to stop. If you just remove this safety net, people (in large coalitions) will just use supers even less. Offer the super pilots more ability to defend themselves against a poorly prepared gang, in exchange for not getting support from their supercap buddies when they get in trouble. I think that's a trade super pilots will take, and it will mean more dead supers and more opportunity for super pilots to drop on drake fleets (providing a challenging fight for everybody). What's not to like?