With all this talk about power projection and apex forces, the conversation always lands on supercapitals. They drop on top of you, murderize everything on grid, and jump out without any threat from anyone, save another capital blob.

I have no problems with supers being incredibly strong. You shelled out a lot of time any money for that ship, so getting plenty of use out of it is perfectly fine.

What's not fine is the lack of counter play. From a game design standpoint, counter play is: "if my opponent does A, he has the advantage, but I can do B to try to take the advantage back". Unfortunately, when the only counter to A is more A, whoever has the most A wins.

Capitals have always held a distinct advantage over the myriads of subs in the area of ewar immunity. The idea was quite simple when it was implemented. How could a single tracking disrupter possibly affect something the size of a city? It was then decided that with all their redundant systems, capitals ought to be immune to ewar.

What happened, as a result, was that capitals no longer had to fear one of the main forms of counter play. They removed B from the equation, so the answer to A became more A.

That being said, your incredibly expensive ship shouldn't be counterable by a kid in a Scorpion, but how about 5 of them? 10? 20? 50?

I propose replacing the outright immunity to ewar with a sensor redundancy score. Each ewar effect successfully applied to the ship would knock a few points off the score, but the ship itself is unaffected. When an ewar effect times out, the points come back. If at any point the score reaches 0, the ship's immunity is removed until the score climbs back up again. With a single value, you can simulate the effects of multiple overlapping systems being knocked offline one by one until the ship as a whole is exposed.

This modification still leaves the capital with a unique niche and advantage, but allows a coordinated group of reasonable size to still present a threat. The counter to A would again be a reasonable amount of B. It makes bringing a contingent of sub-capital escorts to pick off some of the small ships an option worthy of consideration.

This also provides a possible answer for what the SoE ships are actually good at. As science vessels, a certain amount of redundancy in their sensors is to be expected. (Though, admittedly, it would be far less than that of a capital ship.) It gives the Nestor a unique roles as a slightly more robust logistics battleship. It at least makes more sense than a ship maintenance bay.

+1 for feasability, +1 for originality, but -2 because I couldn't find where you were whining over your most recent lossmail and asking for nerfs to whatever killed you.

Good idea, but what caught me more is how everywhere they call nestor useless ... after his last changes i think nestor is perfectly fine ... it was designed as wormhole vessel and as one its perfect for its role ... i dont see any reason why should be nestor changed to fit into 0.0 roles ... you have black ops wormholers cant use, so why shouldnt wormholers have ship designed specially for them? why should be everything only about 0.0?

Supported. We even have certain mechanics that can support this theme. For example; Deep Space Transports have a built-in "immunity" to two warp disruptors or one warp scrambler. A Titan could have +20 warp disruption immunity or somesuch (which would not step on the toes of a HIC).

I'm going to assume this post is about suppers and not capitals in siege/triage. I like the over all idea except they need to keep their warp cor immunity or (yes it will step on the toes of a HIC). lets say its strength is +20 that would mean i only need 3 dedicated frigs with scrams to hold it down and i would much rather through 10-12 cheap scraming frigs over a HIC

I'm going to assume this post is about suppers and not capitals in siege/triage. I like the over all idea except they need to keep their warp cor immunity or (yes it will step on the toes of a HIC). lets say its strength is +20 that would mean i only need 3 dedicated frigs with scrams to hold it down and i would much rather through 10-12 cheap scraming frigs over a HIC

I'm going to assume this post is about suppers and not capitals in siege/triage. I like the over all idea except they need to keep their warp cor immunity or (yes it will step on the toes of a HIC). lets say its strength is +20 that would mean i only need 3 dedicated frigs with scrams to hold it down and i would much rather through 10-12 cheap scraming frigs over a HIC

I like the idea, in fact i stated something similar in a forum post the other day. Though i only stated it for the sake of warp strength. So along those same lines I've always thought BS should have +1 warp strength standard, Carriers/Dreads +3 and Supers +6 or something similar. I've always thought it to be slightly dumb that a t1 frig can perma-hold a carrier. I actually like that you took this a step further and suggested other forms of e-war as well. It would definitely make supers much more vulnerable in low-sec which I think is a positive. As it stands right now, to tackle a super really needs not only 1 hic but atleast another 2 sitting on a titan behind it because hics are so vulnerable to neuts/ecm/drones from a super or any of it's support fleet. IMO it's kind of dumb only one type of ship can hold down a super.

edit: along the same lines i think it would be cool if carriers were given + tackle strength for its own warp disruptors. How is it feasible for 1 or 2 hics to hold down a super but not 5 archons?

I like the idea, in fact i stated something similar in a forum post the other day. Though i only stated it for the sake of warp strength. So along those same lines I've always thought BS should have +1 warp strength standard, Carriers/Dreads +3 and Supers +6 or something similar. I've always thought it to be slightly dumb that a t1 frig can perma-hold a carrier. I actually like that you took this a step further and suggested other forms of e-war as well. It would definitely make supers much more vulnerable in low-sec which I think is a positive. As it stands right now, to tackle a super really needs not only 1 hic but atleast another 2 sitting on a titan behind it because hics are so vulnerable to neuts/ecm/drones from a super or any of it's support fleet. IMO it's kind of dumb only one type of ship can hold down a super.

edit: along the same lines i think it would be cool if carriers were given + tackle strength for its own warp disruptors. How is it feasible for 1 or 2 hics to hold down a super but not 5 archons?

Seeing as how CCP is now banning for use of ISBoxer, I don't see this being very common. However, if they can alt+tab between 5 to 10 alts and successfuly ewar the super with all of them without buying the farm, more power to them. That kind of skill is worth rewarding.

seeing a minotaur riding a unicorn, that's spearing an elf, that's firing arrows at a werewolf, who's trying to chase a cow, which jumped over the moon to escape and smacked into a flying pig, which was somewhere off the edge of the world, which was all lit up by the lights of Eldorado, where its citizens were battling the undead for control of Pandora's box, which was guarded by a Phoenix, which was feasting on the dead corpse of an Eve Pilot...

Basically, it's very unlikely...

I propose replacing the outright immunity to ewar with a sensor redundancy score. Each ewar effect successfully applied to the ship would knock a few points off the score, but the ship itself is unaffected. When an ewar effect times out, the points come back. If at any point the score reaches 0, the ship's immunity is removed until the score climbs back up again. With a single value, you can simulate the effects of multiple overlapping systems being knocked offline one by one until the ship as a whole is exposed.

This modification still leaves the capital with a unique niche and advantage, but allows a coordinated group of reasonable size to still present a threat. The counter to A would again be a reasonable amount of B. It makes bringing a contingent of sub-capital escorts to pick off some of the small ships an option worthy of consideration.

This also provides a possible answer for what the SoE ships are actually good at. As science vessels, a certain amount of redundancy in their sensors is to be expected. (Though, admittedly, it would be far less than that of a capital ship.) It gives the Nestor a unique roles as a slightly more robust logistics battleship. It at least makes more sense than a ship maintenance bay.

Seeing as how CCP is now banning for use of ISBoxer, I don't see this being very common. However, if they can alt+tab between 5 to 10 alts and successfuly ewar the super with all of them without buying the farm, more power to them. That kind of skill is worth rewarding.

Indeed. I am talking about supers and not sieged/triaged capitals.

As for the warp strength I put down... see it as a place holder. It can be +30 or something.

And no, it won't step on the toes of the HIC. The HIC is a single ship that can point any one ship by itself regardless of its warp core strength or how many warp core stabilizers are fitted.
It is (sorta) like the difference between a regular frigate and an Interceptor. Both can do the same thing (intercept and warp disrupt)... but one can do it MUCH better.

Nice idea in principle, but the problem is that current game mechanics won't allow it. I am referring to stacking penalties. They apply to offensive modules in the same way they apply to local bonuses.

ECM does not have a stacking penalty because of its unique nature, but all other e-war does have stacking penalties. The first 7 modules have decreasing strength on target, then modules 8+ have no effect at all.

Nice idea in principle, but the problem is that current game mechanics won't allow it. I am referring to stacking penalties. They apply to offensive modules in the same way they apply to local bonuses.

ECM does not have a stacking penalty because of its unique nature, but all other e-war does have stacking penalties. The first 7 modules have decreasing strength on target, then modules 8+ have no effect at all.

Overall, I think this is a great idea. Except for one minor problem: ECMs.

The system would be well balanced for all forms of EW except for ECMs, namely because while everything else has a 100% chance of working as long as the target is within range, ECMs only have a percentage chance of working. And that chance is astronomically low against a supercap's sensor strength. Even if one rebalanced their sensor strength to a lower value (or the inverse, giving ECM modules an extra bonus when used against supercaps), you still have the percentage chance.

i.e. if each ECM has a 50% chance of working, and this is a very optimistic value, you would need twice as many ECMs to overcome the EW threshold, on average, as you would sensor damps for example. For 25% you would need four times as many, and so on.

Man this forum is neverending in posts from incompetent people crying out for CCP to make the game easier for them.

First if you are fighting a supercapital blob with subcapts they are pretty much as good as dead. This is not if or maybe but a proven fact just few weeks ago NC. lost 4-5 /7-8 supers to a 200 man CFC fleet. Kadeshi fielded some 10 Supers and lost 2 to PL/Laserhawks fleet etc..

Supers are currently super underpowered that the only place they have any more value is in really massive fights or here and there being able to assign fighters.

Also people who know jack **** about the topic should really not be making suggestions about the topic.

I would like to point one thing out, in that if you are trying to EWAR a super carrier, your doing it wrong (Except for neuts). You would be better off taking those 15 EWAR ships, and jamming out it's drones. Bombers already have a tough time hitting anything except a capital or a painted/webbed battleship, just imagine a tracking disruptor on each on.

With all that said, I do like the idea of a +xx strength to it's EWAR immunity instead of being flat EWAR immune. But, I feel that if this change were to be implemented, that new cap modules be introduced that increase that EWAR immunity level. That would only be fair because it would allow the super to choose between awesome tank, or being able to push past the EWAR and actually do something.

Perhaps ECM and ship sensor strength need to be reworked.


Instead of ECM having a chance hit, it instead will always hit, but will remove a set number of sensor points (sensor strength) from the targeted ship. Certain ships will be bonused to ECM, as usual.
All ships will have their sensor strength rebalanced to factor this in. Weaker ships, of course, having weaker sensors.

Certain ships will have significantly high sensor strength, mostly capitals.
Specialty ships, like Marauders in bastion, will essentially have their sensors set to infinity symbol when in bastion, to show they're completely immune.

Falloff will not longer effect ECm chance to hit, but will instead effect efficiency.
So if your ECM typically removes 5 sensor strength, it would reduce over fall off, but unlike most turrets/modules, max fall off would not be half, it would instead be 1, and anything past fall off would be 0.

Sensor strength would also effect max locked targets, with a certain number of points representing a target lock.
So, if you have 100 point sensor strength, with 10 max targets, if I take away 10 sensor strength, you lose one locked target.
This way, you can have some sort of effect, even if you don't have enough ECM to completely block the target.

ECCM modules would essentially stack on more sensor strength, requiring more ECM to lock you out as a whole, but also more ECM for each individual target lock capability.

This would not only allow ECM to be a bit more useful on non-bonused ships, but you could also be able to tactically reduce ECM to your ship by increasing falloff of the ship ECM'ing you. Thus reducing the amount of effective ECM.

So not only can you negate ECM with ECCM, but you can also negate with pilot Skill.