Many people believe the proliferation of super caps is harming the game. And there is more than a pinch of truth in that. Super cap blobs are all too common. This has seriously hurt capital warfare as people don't want to drop dreadnoughts as they may get 30 super-carriers counter-dropped on them. But dropping 40 dreads onto a titan CAN be fun occasionally.
The issue is that the counter to super caps is MOAR super caps. Is this right? Or should super caps need protection? Think the current aircraft carriers of today, they always are surrounded by a support fleet of destroyers and the like. You need to protect the big, expensive shiny from all threats. But what are threats to supers in Eve Online?
Torpedo Boats!
How about a new tech two battlecruiser, the torpedo boat which is able to equip a special type of torpedo launcher. Was it Wing Commander II that had special torpedoes for taking down capital ships? Phase Torpedoes or something?
The ship should have a terrible lock time. I mean seriously bad. If you ain't locking a super, don't bother.
The ship should have a tank like an Ibis (well not that bad, but worse than a tier 3 BC).
It manoeuvres like a brick.
The ship has limited module slots, 3/2/2 or something bad like that.
They should be next to useless against anything smaller than a sub-cap.
The torpedoes should have crap range. 30km or so.
Even with the above, the ship should make any super capital pilots pants turn brown.
The idea here is to make a ship that is paper thin, useless against anything but super capitals and has a big delay in firing its first volley. As well as the crap scan resolution (the interference from those uber powerful warheads cause havoc with the sensors) the weapons should fire at the end of the cycle time with the cycle timing being upwards of 30 seconds.
If the super(s) has a suitable support fleet then these BC's will be useless. A single tier 3 BC should be able to alpha these with no worries. Drop a hundred of these and if the enemy fleet has 20 or so tier 3 BC or BS, then the supers will be safe and the defence fleet will get a lot of kills. The torpedo boats will die quickly to any decent support fleet given the time it takes them to fire. But if they are allowed to fire, the results will be devastating to the poor super pilot.
Just an idea.
Would need to be unable to target structures otherwise POCOs and structure bashes would be over briefly!
ReplyDeleteExcellent point. Would need to be restricted to supers only.
DeleteIt might have been useful a year ago... But the biggest super cap fleets have also the biggest coalitions in the game. CFC and HBC cannot easily be outblob'ed with either cap or subcap.
ReplyDeletenot a bad one, but sounds very eh, too easy to die. a single tornado to blap, that would be like frigate tank xD maybe give it the option to be cynoed in? i like this though, ccp might consider since they're all in the 'lets remake ships' mood atm.
ReplyDeleteIt's somewhat funny when I see in print an idea I was just considering. I'm going to differ in some of the details, however. See, I don't think you need an entirely new ship. You just need a specialized weapon.
ReplyDeleteCall it the Capbuster Launcher. It's a launcher that will fit on a frigate (and other ships too). It holds one capital missile, and reload is a fitting action (dockyard work).
With only one shot it's passing stupid to put it on anything larger than a destroyer. But it makes a swarm of frigates much more of a concern to a titan.
It's an interesting idea but I think the balancing of it would be a little problematic. Too powerful and nobody will put their supers in a position to be bombed, not powerful enough and the opposition just beings their own super blob, in both cases the proliferation continues.
ReplyDeleteSomething about carrier groups in RL is that there is a huge operating and logistical cost involved. Fuel, maintenance, crews to launch the planes, fire crews, intelligence crews, basically everything a mobile base would need to operate effectively. That, and the fact that there are effective weapons against them are why we don't see many carriers and they operate from a battle group.
There is no associated cost with supers in EvE beyond isotopes and a little liquid ozone. Repairs are free if they come from modules, there are no maintenance costs (maybe some nanite paste for repairing heat damage once in a while), maybe a little stront if you want to repair in a hurry from a triaged carrier. Other than that, it's very cheap for a pilot to operate a super.
So in addition to your idea, I think the cost to own and operate supers needs to be ramped up. Maybe have them use fuel blocks like a pos or make capital links and reppers require charges to run, or make capital refitting take a lot of time and/or isk.
-Baljos Arnjak
The other problem with this and similar ideas I've seen running around is that it is an insta-gank against freighters and ORE capital ships.
ReplyDeleteWhile it might be funny, it's not something CCP is going to let fly.