Ishina Fel
Caldari
Synergy.
Imperial Republic Of the North
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Posted - 2007.10.21 15:16:00 -
[1]
Zulupark, I'm sorry, but this is a bad idea.
I know what you're trying to do. Nowadays, fleet fights get less and less fun because all that happens is two parties dropping their blobs of capitals on each other. It bypasses gatecamps, it bypasses travel time, and frankly, it owns. Now what you are trying to do about it is changing the amount of ownage.
The problem with that is, the other two factors are still major factors. To make people give up the convenience of just being able to jump in from several systems away at a point they designate, at a time they designate, without having to go through gates, you'd have to take away a LOT of the ownage factor. So much, in fact, that it threatens the role of carriers altogether.
The change you are proposing right now, by the way, is not enough, if the above was what you intended. If we assume a mixed blob of carriers and dreads being dropped on the target, then the carriers assign fighters to the dreads, and everything is as before - with the difference that you now bring a few more dreads. The one major difference there will be is that carriers NOT used in a capital blob will be much easier prey than they are already.
Another point: CCP has been fighting hard to get carriers out on the frontlines, away from the POSes where they were sitting safely and assigning their fighters to everyone and their granny's alt's Ibis. You are now proposing to shift the focus of fighter deployment from carrier self-use much further towards assignment. This will, once again, give a major incentive to use the carrier at the POS, safely away from all combat, since the carrier itself has become just about unable to fight for themselves.
I think it is a good, but futile idea to try and bring capital ships a bit closer to other ships in terms of game mechanics. As we see here, they are extremely hard to balance because they operate by completely different mechanics (in terms of travel, in terms of cost, in terms of how their modules work, in terms of siege and triage modes and so on). It's as if you are trying to make a bicycle march in step with a group of soldiers.
Summary:
Shifting carriers towards a primary fighter assignment role will
-make carriers hide at POSes again
-not change much at all about capital fleet blobs, with the exception of more dreads and less carriers being used
-not change the fact that triage mode is still described as "press this button to sacrifice your 1 billion worth ship and its 1 billion worth fittings to make some of your friend's 100 million worth ships live a few minutes longer"
Consructive:
I believe that siege modes in general are a very clumsy tool. If dreadnoughts were not forced to enter siege mode, they could be used outside of POS sieges and capital blobs, and would leave the player in control of their own ship more. If carriers were not forced to enter triage mode, they would be readily used for logistics, instead of trying to be solopwnmobiles because doing logistics is an automatic ship loss. Of all ships, the Rorqual's industrial core mode makes still the most sense, because it is an out of combat application, and is tied to its assembly lines, which cannot be modified by fitting.
However, all other siege mode roles could much more elegantly be solved by ship fitting and bonuses. Let dreadnoughts fit 8 weapons instead of 3 - it'll look cooler too! Give carriers a direct logistics role bonus. That will make people understand from the moment they buy their ship what it is meant to be used for. The current carrier says "I have x-hundred dangerous fighters! But if you want, read the small print about where to read about where to go to read about a sometimes possible logistics use." Of course few people will buy and fit them for a logistics role.
Just get rid of siege modes, and remodel the affected ships to work similarly as they do now, or are intended. It'll make them much closer to normal ships in terms of game mechanics too.
Buff room for large link addresses in sigs plz :( |