A question for (all of) you: Do you think that being able to deploy with a guarantee that you won't lose anything is healthy/good for the game? Not even high-sec makes that promise.

One big issue I am concerned about is:

With new scramble strengths and Capital Warp Disruptors & Scramblers where does this leave heavy interdictors?

Heavy interdictors were newly re-balanced and this seems like it is going to take them out of use almost entirely.

One big issue I am concerned about is:

With new scramble strengths and Capital Warp Disruptors & Scramblers where does this leave heavy interdictors?

Heavy interdictors were newly re-balanced and this seems like it is going to take them out of use almost entirely.

I'm donning my unnecessary etymology hat for this post....
In naval parlance, it refers to a vessel with a supporting role, which is not armed for combat. It makes a lot more sense than "logistics," which typically refers to moving goods, troops, or equipment, not healing. "Logistics" is what Jump Freighters do.

What about the rorqual? I was really hoping it was "capital" enough to get some attention. It has beem over three years now since a dev told us change was coming.

CCP plans on removing the Rorqual from the game. That's why it was not part of the Capital Balance. This is also why they removed the compression BPCs that were unique to the Rorqual, then they removed compression from being unique and gave it to all areas of space, regardless of skills. Then they made the clone bay useless by letting everyone get clones regardless of Standings.

The writing is on the wall for the Rorquak, CCP plans on deleting it, just doesn't know how to openly say so. This is why they repeatedly state they don't know how to approach it. They "it" is actually the pilots who use them.

Give it until summer and CCP will finally break the news that they will be removing it from the game. It's roles will be replaced by a service module or new anchorable in the Citadel system that will provide system wide boosts equal to the Rorqual or better. This will help get rid of the Rorqual and make the Industrial crowd want to get Citadels built in the systems they are in.

It's coming.. Or some form of this... You watch. System wide mining booster module thing will come and that will be the final bullet for the Rorqual.

Yes that is an option. One possibility that has been raised is that on patch day, any carrier with a triage module fitted will be turned in to a force aux. But this is still very much something we want to get your input on before we nail down the final plan.

Maybe some backround first, since people will poke at that anyway at some point (you can skip that of course):
I am still too young to fly caps myself, so it is mostly a picture from outside - what I do like to fly is logistics, so my interest are mainly carriers or now force auxilliaries, as that will maybe end up beeing what I eventually will fly. The uni obviously has not a lot of caps. If we fight battles on that scale it is usually us bringing Neuts to take those dragons down (at most we have a few triage carriers or dreads).
So the only time I see supers or titans, is when they jump in and driveby our triage carriers and end the fight doing that.

That may result in bias, so that might be useful to start. Now my thoughts on that topic:

Titans and supers don't seem underpowered from my perspective - if they are basically the - "I win"-button in those fights. But that might just be perception.
Now you buff titans with AOE doomsdays. Subcaps can maybe evade that but triage carriers and sieged dreads won't, because that is what triage and siege do, right?
Now you reduce the HP of caps and introduce plates, also you stop carriers, from beeing able to refit. Now put that into perspective:
Now:

• A driveby titan appears
• Case 1: our triage carriers manage to refit in time and actually survives
• Case 2: our triage carrier is too slow and dies - End of the fight

After Changes:

• A driveby titan appears
• Case 1: our triage carrier can't refit anymore, it's HP is reduced - dies in a fire - End of the fight
• Case 2: wait no there is no Case 2...

Well... sounds... nice

To explain it in a bit more general terms - what is wrong with combat refitting? It just makes individual players and their actions meaningful - if the fit is fixed it is more n+1 than before.
It was also unique to capitals - you can perform better in sub caps by manual piloting (increasing and decreasing range, change transversal, you can't do that with capitals) but in exchange you can refit, because you have enough buffer, that this works.
On top of that, combat refitting is something individuals do, while making doctrine fits is usually done by the Leadership, wasn't there something about: "Line members should matter more" (fleet warp changes - anything rings a bell?)

It just seems like you remove a feature for no reason at all. I mean refitting does nothing in n+1 terms. You can't make someone refit his carrier better, by bringing more carriers to the field this just doesn't make any sense.

And dreads - well before you actually needed sub cap support to hit things with your guns. So it makes interactions and synergies possible means, more roles in a fleet. Now you give dreads just guns that track better but have worse dps, making them more standalone - do you want that?

All in all, I was kind of ok with the dreads and carriers as it was - triage and siege mean, that you can neut them out in those vulnerable phases and kill them before they get out of that. They might be powerful in this state but also weak. So kind of balanced. And again, I didn't see supers and titans that often...

Does this mean that optionally replacing existing carriers with force aux carriers is on the table?

One thing to remember about dread dps with the new guns is that, while 1-2k dps doesn't sound like much, dreads are significantly more mobile and tankier than battleships, so if they had more dps than battleships against subcapitals, why would you fly anything else? Cost would be a factor, but as is well known, cost can never be a factor when it comes to balancing ships e.g. titans. Also, dreads will have longer range with these new guns than battleships, which is something else to keep in mind, balance wise.

Let people build them from scratch. Ships are always being rebalanced or changing roles, and so their is no precedence for converting once ship into another. Carriers are still going to be useful ships.

I've seen example of where CCP has changed skills to a completely different and useless role from their originally intended purpose and their was no reimbursement or replacement for those.

Manufacturers should be the first ones to build and seed new items onto the market.

This is not realistic, what you propose is a 4-5 day window where there are NO capital class remote reps. It takes 4-5 days to produce these (basic cap production times), during which time all Citadels and capitals would be completely vulnerable to attack. Having the ability for carrier to fit a triage to them on patch day means you have dedicated pilots, who likely wanted to be cap logi, available. This also means that only those who can fly them, get them.

How about adding a new class of weapons, which are designed to be used by sub-capitals, against capital ships only?

These anti-cap-ship weapons would be ineffective against sub-cap ships, and consume a lot of power - perhaps even draining the ship's capacitor completely after each round of shots - thus, making ships which are equipped for anti-cap-ship work much more vulnerable to counter-attack by normally-fitted sub-cap ships.

There could be such weapons for each class of sub-cap ships, even down to the lowly frigs. This would allow even relative noobs to seriously participate in taking down a super-cap. Note: I'm not suggesting that a single frig should be able to take down a Titan, but, perhaps a hundred of them should be able to do so, if specifically equipped with anti-cap-ship weapons.

This would also give capital ships more reason to fit those new anti-sub-cap weapons, and makes sub-cap support for caps even more essential..

Maybe you should read the blog before posting rubbish.
Triage modules will be fitted to the Force Auxiliary. They will replace the Logistics Carrier.


ITT - people jumping to conclusions and solid proof you can't please everyone.