Originally by: Crovan

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I'm going to be very honest (and hopefully constructive) here.

CCP, you had this coming. Not to say that the flames are justified, but the anger over the castration of capital fighter-based ships is totally on you guys. I read the dev blog again (and then once more), and I can see the concern that you guys are dealing with. Carriers are pretty nasty pieces of work in the right hands, and motherships even more so.

The urge to nerf that which is perceived as being too powerful is a natural part of the game design cycle, right? In this case, though, I think what we are dealing with mostly is a problem of perception. Carriers and moms are perceived as being too powerful, when, in fact, they have their own unique weaknesses and problems. Honestly, my first impression was that this proposal came from someone who has 1) never flown a carrier in a TQ engagement and/or 2) does not have significant experience in a fleet utilizing carriers in a large conflict. These two points are why I was so adamant months ago about devs playing the game on TQ like the rest of us.

First, for the claim that carriers/moms are death machines/solo pwnmobiles, this is simply unfounded. I would very much like to see the research done to demonstrate this fact, or is it simply the result of enough people griping on the forums? Fact is that a carrier/mom is pretty easy to get away from unless you do something wrong. Jumping into a place like Otou or another known mom-camping area without a scout falls into this category, by the way.

Second, carriers and moms are vulnerable, so long as you are competent and have a fleet to back you up. While lowsec motherships are much more difficult to take out, x13 has demonstrated that it is possible. To be honest, my suspicion is that low-sec capital camping is the real impetus of this change. In 0.0, a lone mom or carrier mucking around and camping is just begging to get ganked.

In my opinion, the recent interdictor changes made motherships a great deal more vulnerable in 0.0, and I think the recent streak of mom kills supports my assertion. The problem then, returns to lowsec. How about, instead of nerfing the ships that people have trained for months for (and spent billions on), something else gets added to even the odds a bit? Why not allow the stargates/sentry guns limited scrambling ability, or have an aggression counter preventing cynoing out after aggression, the same way sub-capitals do. Either of those give a potential attacker time to neut down a mothership below jumping capacity, and generally discourage gatecamping in one. The only way to avoid a well-organized gank would be to have a significant support fleet of your own, which is exactly the aim of this blog.

There is also the suggestion from the days before the bubble boost/supercap nerf of having a capital scale scrambler that is capable of scrambling another supercap. If these things could be held down more easily, it reduces their viability as solocamping deathmachines, but keeps their ability to defend themselves and provide fire support for a fleet intact.

The assigning/launching limitations simply would not work in the heat of the moment. It's already hard enough to get fighters assigned in a timely manner, and sometimes it is just better/easier to warp the capitals in and use them as additional rep support.

Also, Zulupark, congrats making it to the design team and good luck. My honest thought, though, is that nerfing these ships is not the answer. I would take a closer look at why the mechanics of the game allow the problems that you are trying to solve, and addressing those.

I would be honestly curious to know what the issue being solved here is, at a more specific level than what we have been told. I also can't be bothered going through 70 pages of flames for it, so if it could get added to the dev blog or Wrangler's post, that'd be swell.

-Cro

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