yes i was referring towards PvP... not that they got used much before either in all honesty

So the fighter damage is still as low as it was before, and there still is this huge imbalance between fighters, meaning firbolgs are the best and everything else is crap if you do not rely on a certain damage type.

Look at Navigation Computer vs Damage Amplfier for example. 30% velocity Bonus and 20.5 % damage increase for the TII variant. And usually you fit more DDA than navs.
So why should it be fair if for example Firbolgs do 22% more damage then Einhejri and Einherji are 22% faster? Or that Firbolgs have 16% more damage than Templar, and Templar are 16% faster? Damage is more valueable, you should cut the difference in damage in half.


And as already mentioned in the last thread, fighters do significantly less damage than on tranq. Now carriers lost the support ability and also get a dps nerf? That still doesnt make much sense.

What was the reasoning for lowering the thanatos dps bonus (from 5 to 2.5%)
Why not up the dps to 4% per level same as the resist bonus on archon and chimera, then you wouldnt have to choose between 20% more resists or 150-300 dps more.

I don't think that 3 fighters will withstand a lot of pressure.

I mean that i don't think that some small **** with 15k EHP will last long if it's far away from the safety of a hangar.
Your tackle squadrons will get shot down in no-time.

why would you give a bonus to range and not a bonus to strength? unless this takes you out of smartbomb range, which im pretty sure none of these orbit in smart bomb range to begin with, this bonus is worthless?

the only worthwhile one is MAYBE the point range from the thannatos.
25% extra range on jams or webs or neuts really means nothing. a bonus to strength would actually give you a reason to fly these particular support fighters with their racial carrier, as it stands now, this range bonus does nothing to encourage you to use your races support fighter.

Except you have 2 dedicated DPS fighter tubes and 1 dedicated support fighter tube.

You can't use 3 DPS wings at the same time.

This has been debunked already.
You can use 3 DPS Squadrons at the same time.


On the Nid:
Yeah, no, you're not going to go 2km/s anymore.
The "old", as in: the current, Nidhoggur gets up to 1800m/s hot with HG snakes and double Nano pre links.
It's basespeed is getting nerfed significantly, this alone will cut 300m/s. It's mass is getting increased significantly, this will put it down by probably another 100m/s or so. So, with skirmish links, you'll probably go 1700 or so HOT, and we all know how fast heated propmods burn out, especially if you have to cycle it three times in a row just to actually get to topspeed...

Unless the math I've seen is wrong, the archon will both outdamage AND outtank a thanny/nid.

I like the fact that you're taking away literally every reason there is to fly a carrier for those that can afford supercarriers.

There's nothing distinctive or better about carriers in this patch except that they're somewhat cheaper and proportionally crappier and oh here's a bonus to ewar effects on fighters that will get within range anyway and make the bonus pointless.

Hey Mates,

We've tweaked the bonuses & stats a little. We've upped the damage bonus of the Thanatos and Nidhoggur up to 5% per level, and brought the amount of shield/armor a little closer together between the Archon/Thanatos & Chimera/Nidhoggur.

Let us know what you think :)

THIS,
the resi bonuses are plain out ********..
They dont scale at all with the dmg boni of the other races, also
specially considering that Chim/arch have mroe slots for theyr racial tank to start with..

how can ccp not do simple math and overpower two races ??

I like it, that should make the different carriers more balanced among each other.



If that is the case (I didnt test this that much), than that would be a seperate problem of balancing survivability of fighters. The balancing of the races among each other should not be based on such a different problem.

I do not think there is much of a difference in the survivability against small guns.

I cant login right now to check the numbers, but I think the Thanatos with the largest bay can fit 87 fighters, so the chimera with the smallest one should fit 68. Additionally both have 27 already in the tubes. So in total its 114 vs 95.

If the extra tank does not matter because you can just kill the fighters, then carriers in general have the problem that they cant do **** because you can just kill the fighters. In that case the few more fighters wont make a real difference. Thats what I mean with seperate problem.
The 2.5% shield/speed bonus per level wont make much of a difference either.

The change to 5% dmg is good. No need to fear carriers stepping into Super's terrain anyways. While the skillbonuses of the Nid / Thanatos now get the same damage than Aeon / Wyvern, the latter can field 5 squadrons at once and - which is way more important - can field heavy fighters. Nidhoggur should be a viable choice now compared to the Chimera, on the Thanatos I'm not sure yet.


So, right now with the added damage, it looks like this:

Shield: Chimera, the tanky one, Nidhoggur, the DPS one. A good tradeoff in my opinion.
Armor: Archon, the... better one, sadly. I'll explain why.

Carriers main use will be: DPS. After stripping them from their logistics role, all they can do is apply pressure with their fighter squadrons. While on shield setups, the midslots are used for tanking and the lowslots are used for damage, on armor the lowslots get used for both, tanking AND damage. Thus, the armor carrier that has the most "effective lowslots" is the better one.
In case of the Archon, it has 7 lowslots and 1 "imaginary" or "effective" lowslot through it's hullbonus: 20% resistance on Carrier V, which is very close to an EANM - thus the "effective" lowslot.
The Thanatos has 6 lowslots and 1 effective lowslot in form of it's Fighter Damage Bonus, being slightly above a T2 DDA.

My suggestion would be now: Take away one Highslot from the Thanatos and add it as an additional lowslot, bringing it to 8 effective lowslots aswell and thus on par with the Archon.
If fitting for maximum tank, the Archon would still win and be the tanky choice, as it's having one effective lowslot that is not stacking penalized and will thus reach higher overall resistances. If fitting for maximum dps, it's the other way round, the Thanatos now has the advantage because one of it's effective lowslots is not stacking penalized. When fitting for a balance between dps and tank, they'd come out roughly equal.
They would be differenciated through their High- and Midslot layout though, with the Archon having more "offensive" options - a utility high is usually used for modules like Nos, Neut, Smartbomb, Fighter Support Unit, etc. etc..
The Thanatos would be more versatile however, being able to fit an additional Drone Nav Comp for example, or go for a light shield tank with a maximum dps / mobility setup.

Overall, the move of one high to one low on the Thanatos will put it in line with the Archon and making it NOT the worse choice every time. It would make it an interesting choice instead.

Maybe this could also be adapted to the Nyx and resolve the issues with that one.

What do you guys think?

Also, @Lugh Crow-Slave,

i see that you often mention how the Nid/Thanny would be the better carriers as they would simply kill off the Archon/Chims fighters and thus win. First of all, this would only be true in a 1v1 carrier dogfight.
Second, it will not always boil down to this. There are so many variables, ranging from highslot modules to fighter layout (How many interceptors do you carry, how many support fighters, how many light fighters - An Archon with a full rack of interceptor fighters would wipe out any Thanatos' mixed fighterbay with ease), that you simply can't claim this point to be the truth.
There's also a thing called micromanagement, which you can see already when 2 droneboats fight each other. Usually, the droneboat that has it's drones close to itself - and in scoop range - is at an advantage, as taking drones (or: fighters) out of the combat that are being shot is a lot more easy that way.

Now add in other ships aswell, such as 2 rifters on one carrier's side and suddenly the whole outcome of the fight would be different. You couldn't imagine this now, 2 rifters helping a carrier making it suddenly beat another carrier, that simply isn't really possible right now. On April 27th, it is.

My proposal to fix this is very simple:

Don't allow supers to use support fighters. They'll get their superweapons instead. Carriers will be the only platform to use support fighters.

5 midslots make for a good tank in your eyes? One goes for the propmod, without that you might aswell selfdestruct. Now, if you fitted an MWD, you'll probably want a capbattery aswell, or maybe a capbooster. So, from your 5 slots, 2 are gone. Now you can fit a CSE and 2 Invuls, wow, what a tank... It's one weak ass tank.

support fighters are mostly useless, so there still would be no reason to use normal carriers. I would suggest to dissallow light attack fighters on supers instead, while increasing the light fighters effectiveness against subcaps (just generally too low at the moment) and decreasing the effeciveness of heavy fighters against subcaps

Supercaps would still be very good against large subcaps, as heavy fighters do insane damage to subcaps, but the anit-subcap focus would be more on the carrier.


To the slotlayout problem:
I think the main problem just is that right now you want to fit either tank or dda. You dont want scram, web, painter, or any of that stuff on a carrier, thats what the rest of the fleet is for. You want dps with your fighters. And here lowslots are just better, because you can fit dda. In midslots there are only navcomps, where you cant use too many (and they compete with FSU with the penalty anyway), and tracking links. Which are super weak right now (assuming its not a bug that they work at all). In my test they gave a 5% damage increase against small and fast targets... thats really bad comparing it with DDA, and also tracking enhancer for the low slots have the same effect but BETTER. Around 7% in my test.
Carriers jus need something good for midslots, than the problem is solved. On Tranq this was no problem, as tracking links had a real effect.. maybe just make them useful for carriers again?

I'm not sure but i didn't notice that FSU reduce ROF below 5 sec. In fact i think FSU extending cycle right now. Used Firbolgs.
So we lose DPS with each FSU. Maybe I'm wrong

No, you are right, the bug is already known.

It would be an interesting idea. Carriers do seem to lack a role they're good at, but the role of using support fighters seems a bit... weak. I'd prefer if carriers would be the definitive anti-subcap capital, but supers have them beat by far.

Carriers do lack a defined role. They get bonuses to support fighters but are only allowed to launch one wing of them. Doesn't really stand out.

So the tracking links now officially help fighters against smaller targets since they have a bonus on explosion radius and explosion velocity. Thats good.

Tracking links are -3% / 3%, tracking enhancers are -5% / 5%. Thats not so good.

1. Why are tracking enhancers so much better without any downside? They even have lower fitting requirements and dont need cap (not that this matters much). This only increases the lowslot-imbalance of carriers further.

2. why are the values so extremely low? All similar modules have much higher values. For example missile guidance computer has 8.25 velocity bonus and -8.25% radius bonu, and additionally a flight time bonus and a missile velocity bonus, and can be scripted. Guidance enhancer only have 6%, but also affect missile velocity, explosion radius, explosion velocity and explosion radius. Tracking enhancers/computers also have values between 7.5% and 20%.

There's 2 answers for the Enhancer being better than the comp.

Answer 1, the likely one: They ****** it up, and it's supposed to be the other way round.

Answer 2, the good one: It's intended. They compete with DDAs for slots, and as such the DDA will often be the better choice, as it gives 20.5% dps, which is 20.5% better dps even to targets that are sigtanking like a boss. Tracking enhancers would only start being good when shooting frigs, sooo... the enhancer would never get fit, except for shield gank ratting carriers maybe (Thanatos). This way, depending on some math n **** and different targets, the Enhancer probably has the chance of giving better benefits than a DDA, but only on small, relatively fast targets, while the DDA would be the better choice for shooting sitting ducks.


I wish for answer 2, as that would show that CCP did some math and was aware of this situation.
I fear it is answer 1, and they are not aware of the situation, and tracking enhancers will never get fit to carriers after they "correct" it.

PS: I can't do the math right now whether or not 5%/5% ODTE would outperform a DDA in some cases. If someone wants to do it to prove or disprove it, please do so.

Short answer: no it cannot.

That would require a drf roughly four times larger than a citadel torpedo, and that is pretty unlikely.
We do not know the drf, but guessing I would place it around 3-4, which gives a maximum damage increase of about 7%-8%.
Which is consistent with my tests that showed roughly the same number.
For the 3%/-3% of the computers, this results in 5% damage increase, which is also what I measured.

A DDA is ALWAYS much better. Also a second DDA is always much better. A third DDA is still better, even though not by much.
Only the forth DDA might perform worse against small and fast targets, due to stacking penalty. (the forth DDA is still better than one tracking comp).

looks good. 2 tank carriers. 2 dps carriers. nice nice

wat?

Thats a good idea, something like that is probably the only way to make ewar fighter useful.
Loosing 1/3 of the dps is simply not worth some ewar, when there are cheaper specialized ships that can do the job better. You also wouldnt remove 2 guns from a Machariel to fit a dampener or something like that. So giving the ability to launch support fighters that do not compete with damage, is probably the only way.

Yeah, seems like the only thing to do.. still sucks having to fork out another 100mil and 12 days just to be able to use the same thing I could use before.

So I'm in a thanatos with 4 FSUs.

I can't even keep WEB drones on a cerberus MWDing because they're so slow.

They last until the MWD wears off, then it outruns them webbed.

Again with the fighter speed guys, come on.



Generic feedback:

Also please make fighters load into tubes instantly when docked.
Fighter voloume is terrible. I mean, the thanny hanger at max is 87.5k m3. That's 500 wasted for a start..... but moreover that's 87 drones, or slightly over 3 flights of DPS drones (3 flights would be 81k m3). That's quite honestly not even close to good enough.
Fighter EHP is questionable anyway, but exceptionally poor coupled with the volume.

I only mentioned the thanny as that was what I was in at the time and has the biggest bay :)


The damage is really crappy too, needs more ammo in the heavy rocket salvo. Like 2-3 times as much tbh and omfg make it auto repeat toggleable.

ed: unless the FCU are still buggy?

Yeah, the speed is criminal too. 951 m/s for firbs with 4 FCU. That was what I'd actually hoped was bugged, but no, offlining them made them slower still.

A freakin' hyperion would outrun them.

Its kind of an issue when the webbing fighters can't keep up with a target they have webbed and moreover the fact you need to pull drones to re-arm them.

I've bitched about it repeatedly in slack, the speed is a non issue if we didnt need to pull to reload and webbing drones could actually sit on a webbed target without burning a cooldown.

I covered the fact their vaunted "long range" is a nonsense too, but I was literally the only voice. No-one gave a crap. At least I tried. The argument is with the range comes trade offs, which is not wihout merit, it does need a drawback: except the drawbacks are currently so severe it is completely unusable.

Drop at 0 or GTFO. More likely, don't drop at all and warp to anom....

Havent seen this mentioned yet. What about the cost of fighters now that we need twice as many if them as before? Are their material costs going to be reduced?

Lights and heavys will carry over but what about bpos for the new fighter classes prior to the changes?

Please add a hotkey for all fighters to attack one target. if there is, i couldnt find it/it isnt working on SISI. Secondly, i really hope there is an icon that will indiciate which squadron is attacking what target. Again, on sisi it wasnt there which made things very confusing.
Lastly, the cooldown cycles for the fighter modules is just bad all around. please remove it. or make it shorter or give us back the ability to rep fighters. I can understand the cooldown on the rocket volleys but the MWD?!? that needs to go. Anyone else in agreement with me here?

Last I heard shield supercaps were better in almost every way. Higher EHP, able to fit an entire rack of primary tank without sacrificing damage mods, more mobile. Even with a full slave set in a Aeon still has less EHP than a Wyvern, and a much lower burst tank, if both are using 2 drone damage amps. Without Slaves they only have around 2/3 the EHP of one.

Did this change in the upcoming patch so that armor and shield caps and supers have roughly the same EHP without implants? Or are you just spouting nonsense?

Thank you, i'll try it out on SISi tonight

Welp, that fixes it. Thank you.

I have Fighters, Light Fighters, and Support Fighters to 4 right now. If I wanted to get the T2 versions I would have to put in 3 months (96 days)? That does seem steep, especially when T2 capital guns will only take 1 7x skill (<30 days)

And a Titan is just as disposable as a Dreadnought too, right? That's why they get used so often? The useless ship here is not the Capital, it's the Supercapital.

And a Titan is just as disposable as a Dreadnought too, right? That's why they get used so often? The useless ship here is not the Capital, it's the Supercapital.

I'm not sure how you expand on that logic to the point of absurdity, but whatever floats your boat. I never suggested that T2 should be 100% better than T1.

If you want to cut grass with a katana, you can, but you can do the job better and cheaper with a scythe. I don't really find it necessary to spell out all the substantial differences between Titans and Dreadnoughts. If you want to use your Titans just like Dreadnoughts, go right ahead. Cut grass with a katana... You'll find that the Dreadnought does the job better for a lower price. Additionally, the Titan is clearly more specialized in other ways. For day to day use, however, the Dreadnought is essentially a perfect ship. And for day to day use, a Titan is essentially useless (mostly for meta game reasons).

The differences between Carriers and Supercarriers are less substantial, but that depends a lot on the strength of the new utility modules available to Super Carriers. Still the differences are much more akin to a Vexor versus an Ishtar. Given the choice, I'll use an Ishtar most of the time. Supercarriers are basically T2 Carriers. I don't plan on using Carriers very much after the patch - I'm planning to convert them all to Fleet Auxiliaries. For everything else, I have an Aeon...

My bad, was supposed to be 20 times not 200

If you look at the capital focus group logs. https://focusgrouplogs.tech.ccp.is/capitals/2016-03-31/#17:16:52

Larrik states that he agrees T2 fighters should only require lvl 5 Fighter and lvl 4 light/support/heavy fighter skill.

without triage carriers are useless. So they need to be more powerfull now.

Speaking of Scarrier/Carrier balance - maybe role bonus + Light fighter dmg for carriers? So carriers will be stronger against subcaps. Just thinking.

Heavy fighters at least can really crank out the deeps. Several thousand damage per hit. Are they as good as current fighters? No not really if you want to talk about ratting or whatever but they're quite effective in pvp where they can smush subcaps quite quickly. Do not expect to see these fighters being especially well balanced for a good year or two though.

Many might not know this but one of the focus group members outright quit the team on the basis of the removal of afk carrier ratting, citing it as an essential component of EVE pve because pve is so horribly bad and that it isn't a problem because going afk carries its own risks and darwins law kicks in eventually. Apparently the new fighter mechanics turn money making back in to a second job and was deemed unacceptable.

Carriers can do some decent dps, because the drone damage amplifiers still do not have a stacking penalty.

Since it is still not fixed, and CCP is ignoring all complaints about carriers having not enough damage, maybe this is on purpose to allow carriers decent dps, if you are willing to sacrifice tank.

Exactly. There's a reason T3 fleets are so popular, and the reason isn't that they have amazing DPS.

yeah and feed enemy with cheap fighters

edit: But i'ts good that carriers have big fighter bay so they can launch another group of fighters and after 5 mins (or so) fighters will finally reach enemy and feed them more

Yep. I thought ccp will fix Drone interfacing and add stacking for DDA, so it's + and - dps. And then we'll see what carriers can do. But something went wrong :)

You can pre-position fighters where you want them and burn away at the same time. Sure, probably won't see peopl 1000km away, but 100+ is neither impossible not unrealistic. It merely requires you have someone hold the target in place. Even at ~100 it's not too problematic if your target is stuck in siege or triage.

Also I noticed that fighters have now resistances... thats nice, but I think the profiles got mixed up. Templar has kin and expl, while einherji has em and therm for example. Shouldnt it be the other way?

I think the carrier balance issues are because of three things:
1. Balancing both light and heavy fighters based on supers.
2. Unwillingness to give carriers equal or greater bonuses compared to supers.
3. A desire to keep carriers at similar damage potential to what they have now.

The fact that supers can use 2 heavies at the same time as their 3 lights complicates matters. That's a huge advantage that significantly affects balance concerns, but normal carriers don't have that ability. They're stuck with their 3 lights, and without damage and possibly speed bonuses rivaling or surpassing supers, they can't do their job.

It seems like someone wants to keep carriers around their current fighter damage potential, but how often are fighters actually used? Not often in PvP because they're not viable, and only a portion of the time for PvE. A lot of that is because of how fighters work and their cost, but the changes don't seem to be addressing that enough to make them attractive. It seems like dreads, supers, and titans are receiving quite a bit of versatility and potential utility roles while carriers are losing theirs and being left with a narrow focus on something they're not even good at. Unless they get more general damage output, they're not going to be a viable option in most situations due to the drawbacks of fighter speed and the ability to kill them.

But the fighters are still very unbalanced among the races. Could you please comment on that?
Are the Gallente fighters simply supposed to be better than the rest, while minmatar are the worst, with caldarin second best and amarr third?
Or do you really think that a speed bonus equals a damage bonus of the same percentage? Because it really does not. Thats why nav comps have a much higher bonus than damage amplifiers, and damage amplifiers are still fitted much more frequently than nav comps.

Fighters maintain drone differences. Amarr/Minmatar are faster but do less damage, while Gallente/Caldari are slower and do more damage.
Mobility of fighters (like drones) is such a huge part of their gameplay (and getting into range to apply that damage) that we do think the speed bonus equals the damage bonus.

Participated in mass test in a Thanatos.

Constantly having to click on the special attack buttons of each squadron is not much fun.

CCP would you mind addressing our concerns re. the role of carriers in this upcoming expansion? Some of us feel that there's no reason to use them over supercarriers now that they're losing three of their main advantages (ability to use normal drones, ability to triage, and ability to dock).

Carriers are much less expensive than supercarriers. They will cause damage for as long as they live in a battle, much like BC's can help a BS fleet, even though they are volleyed off the field in a battleship face-off. Let the guy bring a Drake, if that's all he can bring ;)

That said, I liked your idea of giving carriers a unique support role, by dis-allowing support fighters on supercarriers.

sending fighters to a certain point in space.

Wait a second what? I knew about the first two proposals but Carriers are losing their ability to dock?? What the hell.

No, Supercarriers are gaining the ability to dock. Which means that Carriers are losing one unique advantage they had vis-a-vis Supercarriers. The argument is, now that you can dock a Supercarrier, why bother to fly a Carrier?

I still think thats only true for pve, and basically the other way around in pvp.
More tank is always better in pvp, and in my opinion more valueable than damage. Look at the old carriers, it was archon all around, and chimera when you wanted shield.
Nid was never used, and Thannatos nearly never.


edit:
the t1 should also be seeded... at least they were the last few days. maybe check another system?

Chimera looks to be able to get the most brick and still field 3 dmg mods.

Also, there is skill injectors in the redeem Q that should be enough to train for T2 if you are resonably skilled already. Number seems to vary, but 8-24 i have seen over the various test server runs.

I think my fit was NSArray, 3 FSU, 2 invul, 2 amps (EM/Therm), 3 extenders, DC2, 3 Dmg amps, 3 shield extender rigs. All T2. That gave 2 hours of cap, 3 mil ehp in EVE. I cant seem to log in to confirm atm though.

You know what, i never even thought to try and cram that in, neither on the armor ships. Good point, will try that later on.

More hp is also good against subcaps. And you are not going to use carriers only against subcaps. You will apply your dps only against subcaps because it sucks against caps, that is true. But that does not mean that there wont be any other caps on the field.
If you escalate a fight to carriers, there is a significant chance that it will be escalated further.

You are probably refering to the problem that supercaps overshadow carrier, so you assume that once it escalates, carriers are useless anyway. Is this correct?
I am still hoping that this will change, and carriers are actually supposed to be useful in cap fights. Just not against caps, but as anti-subcap support.

Carrier now are better against smaller subcaps than dreads, you might still want a few carrier on the field. The dps of HAW is better, but carriers actually do have a range and application advantage now. The only big problem that I see is that supercarriers can do everything better.

There is no pretext of carriers being balanced. They've spend most of this time getting the mechanics working. While it's important to have some amount of balance to test the mechanics, a lot of the balancing has to come after everything is working.

Archon and Chimera are still way to good compared to thanny and niddy.

I don't count any more that you will make thanny and niddy also good for fleet combat, or better for solo combat than amarr, or caldari carriers.
Consider then making them unique.
(i will burn in hell for this) Make thanny dps much bigger, or increase application. Make thanny the ultimate PVE boat
Niddy, reduce EHP even more, remove additional fighter bonuses, increase fleet hangar a bit, reduce align speed, and offer 7.5 LY jump range and farigue reduction at lvl 5 skills


This way you will make all 4 carriers unique and give them a role.
Archon - armor king, fleet ship
Chimera - shield princess , fleet ship
Thanny - dps king, tormentor of the rats, and home defense fleets "i win/whelp button"
Niddy - logistics king, desired by many to move ships, and equipment all around the eve, useless in combat, but this is not his role.

I do understand your thinking regarding Buffer fits - My concern is that if carriers are released in their current guise, Archons and Apostles will be all we see, as no carrier is especially good at anything, less DPS for a good tank is a pretty decent trade off.
N+1 continues to rule capital engagements - Nothing changes..

It won't matter that one carrier has a better damage bonus, if it can't survive long enough to take advantage of it.

I agree - So we may as well just delete all carriers and be done with it.

As per my ideas a few posts back, I want ti try and see carriers have a roll. Give the Thany and Niddy a reason to be fielded.

Honestly though, if you are right and carriers are indeed not intended for capital fights, why are they even still in the game. Any group fielding carriers against subcaps is going to find themselves at the mercy of any dreads the subcap group drops in. So what really are carriers meant to be for?

I'd like to hear from CCP Larrikin regarding Devs thoughts on the role of Carriers in the coming meta.
Probably won't though because Devs are taking a lets wait and see approach, as they have no clear vision for carriers. Just lots of micro management crap (with 2 over sized UI's to deal with) leading to less than desirable damage and application.

What started out with good intentions, removing the ability for invulnerable remote repping Archon fleets, has degenerated into carriers with no real role on a capital battlefield.
The over riding presumption being, carriers will be an anti subcap platform with no role or defense against other capitals is somewhat demeaning to every carrier pilot who has wasted his or her time training carrier skills.

The "opportunities" team was able to find 5 mins to "waste" answering concerns of players in regard to something that is not going to have anywhere near the impact on TQ these changes will bring.
Is team "game of broken carriers" so up against it they can't address some of the player concerns?

OK so now carrier have no triage so there wont be good at logi roll right.

Now they are useful for what?

Can someone please tell me what can a SOLO carrier kill? because with fighters alone YOU WONT BE ABLE TO KILL **** !

you guys are too pessimistic.
Carrier were super broken a few weeks ago, but they really got better.

I tested ratting few fays ago and it was fine. Damage was lower than before, but application better, that evened out.
Fighters targeted by rats was not a big problem since they are fast, have good regeneration, got a little more hp, and usually are not targeted anyways (only did one haven though; if you actually tested it too and got worse results please report, but only recent tests).

In pvp they are great for killing smaller stuff. You have lower damage, but better burst and application. Many small ships can be simply alphaed with a rocket salvo. Even a little bigger ones can be quickly killed.

You just have to get used to the fact that carriers are crap against big and tanky targets now. Because then neither the burst nor the application are useful.

My main problem with carrier is still that supers are so much better at everything, taking the role of carriers away.

It has changed indirectly through tracking comps.

They started with a laughable 3% on explosion velocity and radius. Not its 8.5% on the T2 variant.

[quote=Marranar Amatin]


Carriers need a defined role - Not just gimmick light fighters that require more squads than a single carrier can field to be effective (against a T2 cruiser).
N+1 will still be the meta for fights, except now they will be static fights due to lack of effective mobile logistics. Any thoughts of dynamic, tactical, strategic or emergent game play have been denied by design.

Devs have done a half decent job of ensuring - Nothing changes in capital warfare, except the usefulness of carriers.

Good intentions with no imagination = CCP design ethos.

Could you give me the fitting of the ships that you tried please? I want to test that myself. So far I had very good results against smaller ships, but maybe they were fitted wrong...

I used common every day fits.
Mach, Cerb, Raptor, Tengu
nothing special, the fits used were the same fits I use on TQ for PVP, with the exception of the Tengu which is PVE fit (to run shipyards). Raptor was more for fun, orbiting a squad of fighters at 10K doing 8K m/s, just watching the fighters trying to get in range made it interesting. I also used a Rattlesnake but it was a little hard to judge - Half the squad of fighters was dead before getting in range.

What space are you doing these havens in?
Guristas space is pretty easy (nothing new there), sansha not so much, bloods were a pain.
What fitting and carrier are you using? I used a Thany with reasonable active tank, as I would if there was a risk of getting hotdropped and i needed to survive long enough for help to arrive.

I will try to do a few tests with compareable ships. Or maybe I can just meet you on sisi and try to shoot the same ones?




I tried serpentis and blood raider.
Serpentis obviously was a little better, because you can use dragonfly there, which are just much better than the crappy templar that you have to use in blood raider space. (seriously, fix the fighter balance already, you should not be able to sort figters from best to worst that easy)

Carrier was a Thanny with 2 low slots and the rig slots for tank, and the rest for damage: 4x DDA, 3x tracking link, 2x drone nav comp, 4x FSU, 1x networked sensor array.

Obviously you are not going to tank a hotrop for a serious time, but my pve thanny on tranq cant do that either. No pve fit is meant to tank a hotdrop for a long time, that risk is the price to pay for good ticks, and I think thats fair. High risk, high reward.

How did that happen? I tried carrier vs rattlesnake and the carrier tore the snake a new one. A Gecko couldn't hit the fighters and light drones and/or missiles (that character has pretty bad missile skills though) didn't do nearly enough damage to kill half a squad of fighters before they get in range. You might kill 1 fighter, but nowhere near half the squad.

Well a Gila is much different than a Rattlesnake. Faster and much better tracking drones would reasonably cause issues for fighters. As for a VNI with Geckos, just don't see it happening. I guess I need to test some more, but when I tried that the Geckos had major trouble tracking the fighters.

Why shouldn't it be possible to move fighters in and out of the fighter bay while tethered? It's bad enough that (it seems) you can't swap them out when your bay is full

ok this is new they were working yesterday (and while tethered) i could even take fighters out of other ppls fleet bays to do it


If how much they should carry is balanced to be the bay's capacity minus enough space to swap fighters, then the capacity needs to be lowered and proper swapping implemented. The current version is poorly implemented, because it's currently possible to just abandon fighters then scoop them into the fighter bay once the new ones are loaded into the tube, making it annoying either way.

Huh, it wasn't working for me. I'll check later but if it was working at some point I'm sure it'll work when it goes live.

I'm not sure, but I believe the tackle ability prevents heavy fighter MJDs, considering it already acts like a scram and stops MWDs.

F1?

And "Q" is working fine. Also Shift + R, Shift + Alt + R now working aswell.
Can't understand why many ppl have problems with ratting, wrong fighters perhaps. Some ppl still don't know that there are 2 types of light fighters.
Also I tried to kill Domi and Gila today, with simple but pretty tanky fit. Domi destroyed within 30 sec and Gila was on armor after 1 shot and 1 rocket salvo (it's 1 sec). Gila with mwd and 1 nano can't run away from fighters. I used Thanatos with 1 DDA 4 FSU 2 DNC and 1 OTL with tracking script. It was just stupid test but carrier isn't worthless

Miss 'Assassination' Cayman - I don't know what happened in my previous tests but the velocity ability is pretty effective. Bombers are like ducks in a shooting gallery once hit with it.

I don't envy whoever has to figure out the balance, but I also don't think they're getting it right.

I don't know if this got brought up early but it looks like they are reducing base material needed for all caps, So if carriers look like sub-bar state right now against sub-caps they might introduce Tech II carriers to overcome its downsides ? I don't know...

With the patch release just around the corner, it seems unlikely that any meaningful change will be introduced at this late stage.

I don't foresee carriers falling into a place where they are both playable and useful for many years (now occupying a place next to the Rorqual).

I'm calling it now: time to extract! There are plenty of alternative ships out there, including dreads, which require less investment, function well and result in less enlightenment of my family with the new words I utter while fighting with the interface.

Kinda makes me sad the way they have implemented features and haven't really smoothed out the edges for carriers. I do think that another tube would be beneficial for e-war, I have had trouble on sisi for my fighters keeping up with targets which I think needs to addressed. So far I have been disappointed, mostly due to the fact I spent the last 2 months training for a carrier :P,

I do think that the buffer tank on the archon is decent for my uses, I have tried making a rep fit but it seems kinda slow on the cycles but I haven't really tested the ancillary armor reps. I do live in wormhole so I don't have to worry about supers only issue is if they escalate to dreads I'm toast, I've gone toe to toe with a dread and man they hurt, which is to be expected.

I think the only things that need to addressed is throwing on a dedicated support drone tube so you don't lose 1/3 of your dps, fix fighter speed to make them able to apply their dps, and maybe tweak dps a bit.

At the end of the day unless you give carriers a role to fill, they are basically useless, you are better off using dreads especially if the engagement is gonna be drawn out, CCP has a week left hopefully they can ease our pain and have carriers fixed :P

As of right now I dont think there is much that they can do before the release in 7 days if I'm correct, I mean theoretically they could do a big update to sisi a few days before the update but with fanfest around the corner its looking less and less that carriers will not be polished in time, I mean adding another tube would be a band-aid but the issue I have been having is my support drones not keeping up with anything, so speed of fighters in general would be a big push towards making ewar fighters possible, If my dromi drones cant keep up to web stuff than whats the point of using them when you are sacrificing 1/3 of your dps same with the disruptor drones , haven't really used other drones, I tried testing the jamming drones and from what I have seen they can't jam for ****.

Another thing that needs to be addressed is the drone bay which I totally forgot, either it needs to get bigger or fighters need to get smaller, your basically putting your dps out there to be diminished as soon as they die which is a no no for extended fights where if you cant kill the target fast enough due to dps dying your dead especially if your in a buffer tank.

I completely agree, I have no clue why there is even a fleet bonus on a carrier. Maybe it was a weird place holder they had because they couldn't think up something. ATM though its looking more and more grim for the fate of carriers, I mean I am completely new to using carriers so I could be wrong with the whole change, just my opinion since I haven't seen many wormholers post about their thoughts.

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Adding an Ewar bonus to Carriers achieves nothing - Your still giving up 1/3rd of your Dps to field 3 easily destroyed, slow as a wet week fighters.

I see that as a logical step forward, only issue I see is the ships that use mid-slots will have trouble deciding between tank or e-war but at the end of the it gives the players more flexibility in their fittings, which I think can work out it would be a lot better than that Fleet bonus.

Yeah about Haw's - Interesting concept, until you are Haw fit and Dreads that aren't land on grid - Then you die a nice slow death with no way to refit to defend yourself - Devs thought that one out nicely, suicide Dreads are nearly as bad as Carriers.



Devs like adding new things (which is good) but really just don't think their usefulness through very well.

Dreads and Carriers both got PG and CPU nerfed, yet Every new Capital module has high CPU and PG requirements.
Try fitting a triple extender buffer fit (recommended for buffer tanking) on a shield carrier

No, the shield resistances are still the same on every ship:

Base shield resistances (EM/Therm/Kin/Exp): 0 / 20 / 40 / 50

Jeez its starting to look more and more grim when it comes to the update. Its gonna be a squeeze for them to address all these issues.

Random question for you. Mainly relating to the static blob meta.
What if they removed the stationary penalty from Siege & Triage? (& Bastion to match as a result also but irrelevant to caps)
So they are about being local tank rather than remote tank, but don't lock you into a single place.
They would have to be vulnerable to webs & tackle if that was the case obviously, but since CCP now have the ability to vary resistances to different things like that, they could actually do that.

I know it doesn't solve the carrier problem still, but it solves the stationary blob at least. Which means Carriers can be mobile with FAX escorting them.

Cheers, was an interesting thought brought on by the comments about stationary meta. I think increasing the warp range has to occur with carriers the way they are. And isn't the lock range cap going away, or are they just giving carriers & citadels a special exception to that.

Hmmm, What if fighters could short warp on the battlefield only? Avoids them being too fast when chasing something, they warp to 100 from their target then fly the rest of the way or something like that. While we are on mobility ideas.

The fighter speed seems ok once they are inside that range belt for chasing things, but getting across the battlefield seems the issue?

Then they can also warp back to the carrier at the same range for recall, so not instant recall, but not wait 10 minutes either.
Interdiction immune to get through bubbles could be a possible.
Makes interceptors and the like really matter for locking down fighters to kill them to prevent warp.
Might be restating an idea mentioned in the thread but didn't think I'd seen it yet.

Yea, but that's not a bad thing if that's by design that carriers have trouble engaging frigs & fast cruisers.
If they needed a warpable BM that'd be even more balanced, I was just thinking warp to target like a super MJD warp really. No friendly needed.

If the carriers can project from a far safer range, that's not so much an issue though. It's really only an issue when carriers have such a short effective range because of the fighter travel time.

, bumps

the thanatos has a significantly weaker tank compared to all other carriers and does not get compensated adequately for it does have a larger fighter bay but I don't think that is enough
increase its base armor hp and consider changing its fighter hp bonus to damage

also consider increasing the nidhoggurs fighter speed bonus to 5% to set it further appart since it also has more then a million ehp less tank then the chimera does

support fighters are only a t1&t2 mod with very large range and not worth using(except for siren) over a fighter that does damage the carrier bonuses towards them also seem just useless and should be changed to strength bonuses

PS: where is the FAX thread?

They'll cost 1/6 what they do now for light fighters and 1/4 for heavies. When the patch hits all existing fighters and production jobs will turn into 6 or 4. Just don't try to buy fighters on patch day because it will probably cancel all sell orders and jack up the price for a while before people relist them.

Agreed. I know they wanted us to use them more like ammo, but not even titans pay nearly that much for ammo unless they use doomsdays quite a bit.

I think you're a little off on the price increase for hulls though. I haven't done the math for all races, but a Thanatos would only cost about 8% more, so probably more like 20% for the others.

If you want to go that way...
There are many ships who are more suitable for tackle purposes...

Also where are you getting the materials to build a Thanny for 900 mil? I've never seen a build price estimate below 1.28 or one on firesale cheaper than 1.05 bil.

Sorry your right, I was comparing an ME 9 BPO on TQ with an ME 0 on SISI.

It is somewhat odd how they are doing this - At ME 0 on both servers a Thanatos will have 50% less armor but requires 6 more armor plates. Overall there will be 4 extra parts required to build a Thanatos but of course the nice juggling act Devs did with components (makes no sense as far as attributes the ship has) means it is going to cost substantially more to build.
With an end result of, less EHP, less effective DPS and application, disposable DPS, far less chance of surviving even a moderate sized fight involving capitals AND worst of all, its 100% reliance on Triage Fax's to even be deployed.

Build costs being equal - Forget carriers just bring dreads

Can we get even a cursory "yeah we can't answer your questions" from a dev on this team?
Surely 2 mins wouldn't be too hard to swing for a "This is how it is" response.....

A capital ship - Any Capital ship, that can't be useful and competitive in a capital ship fight isn't worth fielding.

They have actually balanced Carriers out of the new structure meta - So it matters little that nulsec Citadels get a manufacturing bonus. All they will be building is Dreads if Citadel shoots are the goal.

As for Fax's - Ok, Guardians will do a better job but isn't that in itself just really poor design? Add to that, Guardians means Armor is all that will ever be used - 2 complete lines of Capitals left out in the cold, right where they have been for years now.


A 2 billion isk + carrier, with disposable fighters (@ around 250 mil per flight - 3 squads) that may or may not be able to kill a 500 mil isk battleship - Really isn't worth fielding.

R-isk vs Reward - Carriers suck - By Design
-- - -- - -- - --
Devs can't respond in this thread - They know carriers are bad and don't want to admit their plan all along was to make them next to useless.

How about we just drop the pretense and simply remove carriers - It will save A LOT of negative feedback over time. Although, Devs are great at ignoring customers and just doing their own thing - So negative feedback probably won't be an issue, they just continue to ignore paying customers.

How few subs is enough to keep the servers up?

as for carriers, i am still extremely disappointed. not a word from CCP Larakin. all the isk I have invested in my fighters is going down the drain. I took a chance and trained for the t2 light fighters but it doesnt look like im ever going to get to/want to use them. the lack of regular drones on cariers gives them a stupidly small engagement profile and even then they do dog **** for damage against anything large enough for it to track and hit.

DEVS PLEASE ADDRESS OUR FEEDBACK- EVEN A LITTLE BIT

I feel like they hopefully have something up their sleeve, maybe something big they aren't telling us about, I would say give it time, and pray that it gets fixed.

I've been bringing up those issues for weeks.

Yeah they have become rants;
I want this change, I've spent over 100 hours on SISI with my characters trying to make these changes work for me and maybe others who play the same way as me.
I've spent HOURS responding in threads - Saying what you just said above (even including fits I used etc), leaving myself wondering if anyone actually reads the stuff others write or simply skim it and respond as if they did.

The most frustrating and annoying thing;
The lack of ANY sort of input from Devs is just so fukin annoying.
This whole "reveal at Fanfest", is just crap - Like this, that simply shows a screenshot of an Erebus that is supposed to represent some new faction titan.
NB; Faction carriers might go some way to explaining why current ones are so bad - They need development room for the more expensive factions ones.

As for "giving up on support fighters" - That is EXACTLY what CCP wants, if you don't care why should they bother putting in the effort to make them useful. Your helping CCP do lazy ineffective work and get away with it.

Dunno why not. You can MJD bombs and ships (and drones I think). No real real reason why not on the MJD for fighter squads.

Fighters won't follow a target that actually blip warps on grid, because warp breaks locks, or did last time I bothered to test. However if fighters also would warp on grid to chase a target (like a fancy MJD) that would be awesome, land them at a fixed range from their target which isn't quite in weapons range and you still allow people to run away, or lock them and shoot them before they attack, but you allow carriers to actually project to their lock ranges properly, rather than having shorter ranges than dread HAW's.
It's the same issue Heavy Drones have always had, made a hundred times worse.

So after flying a Nyx for a while I have to ask: Are the long range heavy fighters supposed to track like lights and hit like a truck from 45km? With a set of Termites I was doing obscene things to small ships that made light fighters seem useless by comparison.

Are Fax's coming out this week? If so, where is the thread talking about it?

When are the dread changes going in effect?

no threads discussing them?

So I decided to try a Ninazu using its new found Warfare links bonus and set it up with Armor links (seemed logical as it is supposed to be an armor logi boat).
My advice - Don't do it. 1.8 second cycle time on remote reps is ok, until you try to keep capacitor up to them. With all 5's, you'll need 2 capital cap boosters perma running (have 36% cap after one triage cycle and use 36 cap charges to get back to at least 80%)
With less than perfect skills (remote reps at 4, everything else 5) you will be using 3 cap boosters and still be close to no cap at the end of one triage cycle (low cap alarm screaming at you).

T2 capital remote reps do 4,813 per cycle each (in triage), so around 9,600 HP every +-2 s, a T2 Auto cannon fit Nag using Hail hits for around 22K HP every 3.2 seconds - Your going to need 3 fax's to keep reps up to one carrier that is being shot by ONE dread.
Interesting point (probably a bug) I let the nag drop siege, re-initiated it and didn't lose lock on the carrier.

Devs have done a wonderful job at breaking the OP status of self repping carriers (which is a good thing), sadly they broke triage carriers (new fax's) at the same time. You'll now need all 5's in skills, +5 cap and shield or armor implants and a darn big lucky streak to survive any fight in one of these. As for applying logistics to even a small gang, bring as many fax's as you can muster - They won't last long and can't rep a great deal individually so more will always be better.

N+1 is still the number one rule for any capital fight, so make sure you have plenty of blues and a reliable batfone network.

Their resistances effectively got nerfed though since they need slots for plates or shield extenders that would previously have been hardeners.

Maybe don't run triage? You know, maybe run the Pantheon layout instead with some normal carriers in the mix?

Personally I have always found Triage to be a death sentence in combat, its fine if your doing a tower save, but in combat your just asking to die. Having been in fleets where you are LOOKING for a carrier to go triage so you can focus his ass down because now he cannot get any reps from his friends, it usually means your dead. This is even more compounded by the fact that CCP just did nerf cap reps, means that triage is even more deadly to you.

Is this the end of combat Triage? Maybe, some people will still try it, and lose there ship accordingly. Only time will tell if the FAX are good/bad/meh.

What link? Is it something new as there is no link to reduce cap use aside from the armor links which I was using for the tests.
Just to be clear though - the cycle time reduction I have been referring to is a Triage trait, which is different to the warfare link.

Triage module gives a 70% cycle time reduction to remote reps - It gives no bonus to remote cap transfer, which is a somewhat useless bonus for those Fax's to have as they don't have enough cap to share it with anyone.. And out of triage, they'll just die so won't get cap either.

My comparison was made using a nag to shoot a carrier that was being repped by a new logistics capital.. A Ninazu was unable to rep enough to save a Thany from a lone nag. The buffer fit carrier died helplessly in under 5 minutes (Fax ran out of cap with the Thany at 10% armor).

NB; Larger cap charges? You already need to fill your cargo hold and 3/4 of your fleet hangar with cap charges just for ONE triage cycle.
Issue is not only the cap charges but the volume of them - Higher value cap charges = Higher volume, which the fax's and carriers just don't have to carry them.

CCP have gone out of their way to make Fax's and Carriers as difficult to manage and use as they possibly could. They took some really good ideas and just broke them. What could have been some very positive changes, has turned into Devs finding new ways to punish players with game mechanics and inefficient modules.

Can't really say I am surprised though - It is easier to come up with this sort of thing that it is to use imagination and add an aspect of fun to game play.

On a happy note - If this is how it is to be, there are 3 more accounts can go inactive as I will no longer need them.

because its the damge output is going up like 200%? lol mabe not 200% but enough to insta kill battlecruisers cruisers and destroyers lol

Well, guess we'll get FAXes as is. No discussion or feedback going on about them, eh? (I hear there's some only on reddit, but I am unable to locate said threads.Focus group only?)


Also: is the Capital Ancillary Shield Booster final? Because if it is, it's going to be the "de facto" standard for FAXes. It boosts nearly twice as much as the T2 Capital Shield Booster, uses less cap than the T2 when not used with charges, and even uses considerably less fitting resources.

Thats great and all.....How do the fighter changes effect the current blueprints? will material costs change, will they produce several fighters per run instead of one?

Theres been no information on that front, frankly its quite concerning especially considering the large isk investment needed for ships of this size...

So we lose the materials that weve put into fighters allready? Sounds like a completely fair change

So one of the main reasons for the carrier change was to nerf the slowcat fleet and remote repping carriers and turn a capital fleet into being no more invulnerble than what a fax can tank.

I totally get the nerf to carrier capital repping and range but you actually nerfed it so much now that a large t1 remote shield booster is better (in all stats) than a capital module.

large = 8 sec cycle 492 gj cost and 520 shield boost

capital 16 sec cycle 2400 gj cost and 960 shield boost

or converted its 984 gj vs 2400 gj every 16 sec and

1040 vs 960 shield boost.

The capital module does get a little enstra range thougth.

but I "think" the capital module should have been 8 sec cycle also.

(also triage module for fax gives 75% reduction in cycle, should be 50% then).

So. without sentries. how do carriers hit a control tower?

They don't

But they can hit Citadels just fine, and POS's are going to be slowly phased out anyway.

Why would you bash a tower in carriers anyway?

Start a fight? Dank goo isk? Someone has a staging tower where you don't want it?

Irrational hate of semi-spherical force bubbles?

Truth be told - You wouldn't, carriers aren't designed to engage any structure bigger than a mobile depot.

Dreads are the go to capital if you want to do anything really. Better tank, better dps and application, same price as a carrier but with everything a carrier doesn't do going for it.
Even keeping a carrier as a suitcase was taken away, so there is no need or role for carriers now.

I stupidly forgot to put the triage mod on one of my carriers so now have 2 useless limps of pixels in one hangar.

I didn't see if this was covered, by why do carriers have such a small cargo bay? Capital cap charges are 128m3 so any carrier will have a limit of under 10 without using the fleet bay. Meanwhile dreadnoughts got a cargo bay increase to over 2000. How am I suppose to XL ASB shield boost my carrier with such limitations?

Caldari Support fighters are a joke. 1.5 omni strength for ecm with only 3 fighters per squadron. Did you know that heavy ECM drones have a strength of 2? On top of that the Chimera gets a bonus to ECM optimal as if the strength wasn't insulting enough.

They need to boost CPU of Chimera and Nidhoggur because both can't go active tanking without going faction/officer fit.

First of all, not everyone will use T2s given their high cost and skill requirements, so a lot of people will have 5 strength. It's also total, not per fighter, and unaffected by skills. That means every squadron of fighters has 5-8 sensor strength and no more.

Have you tested that recently? The patch notes for the 28th say "Fighters will now correctly shut down their targeted abilities when successfully jammed by ECM effects."

Given how much people complained on the forums about "unbreakable walls of logI", I can't help but think this might be intentional. Reliance on cap boosters will mean that capital reps on field will have a finite duration. If...IF this is intentional, it's certainly an interesting way to address it.

I hate to say it, but at the moment pyfa is bugged and doesn't consider stacking penalties on DDAs or FSUs...

Where are you getting that idea? Carriers are a fair bit more expensive than before, about 1.3b-1.4b to build.

Can someone explain to me the benefit of scriptable shield hardeners especially to carriers with their tight CPU/PG, they requires more CPU/PG and they suck more than normal ones. Am I missing a point here or what ?

Exactly what I'm thinking, deadspace hardeners (Pith X which is much better) around 30 mill except EM one which isn't that costly either. I think I'm gonna skip scriptable hardeners totally.

I like the new carriers.

I can shoot subcaps with a carrier.

The same isn't as easily done in a dread. I also enjoy the idea that carriers will now be a lower priority target when on field in a mixed capital deployment. Also, finally, use a carrier for what its designed to do - alpha enemy subcap logi, kill HIC/DIC etc.

ITT:

"On grid with my carrier are several ships that are really nasty and can **** me up, AND a Guardian, the most tanky and lowsig Logi out there.

I should try to kill the Guardian."