On Audits, Payouts, and Corporations

For Project Vulcan Phase IV, the promised audit and payout schedueld for last May has been cancelled and we'll pick up properly in November. Corporation factories are building structures and such so there is no worries that the corp (i.e. me) has run off with your money, just a bad spring and early summer makes it so I don't feel it necessary to do an incredibly late audit followed by another one in November.

Also, the corporation is abandoning capital ship construction and focusing on structure production. I just don't have the cycles for jumping multiple loads of minerals (mostly freaking trit) into low sec for building ships that take weeks to sell.

As part of that I sold off a lot of my remaining capital ship and component BPOs since I don't intend to go back to that world (it was fun, but not easy) and the upshot is that I have a lot of liquid ISK again.

There will be a payout at the end of this week once I get my own non-corp related house in order.

Personally, I took leave of Aideron Robotics (and FEDUP alliance) last week. The alliance is still very much beholden to its null sec space (null sec space and structures own you, not the other way around) and I just don't want to do that game. I feel like I need to change things up and re-invigorate myself in a new direction. That being said, FEDUP is an awesome alliance and I wish them the best of luck in their future endeavors.

In the meantime, I'l just floating in the general population of Gallente Militia, trying to figure out what to do with my life. Last weekend I just roamed a bit and looking for something to shoot threw myself into a lopsided fight against a Worm only to find his friends joining in to help kill me. Fair's fair, I would have done the same thing.

I think this coming weekend I just try throwing up a fleet and seeing what happens. Probably need to see if I have any voice coms to use!

Stay tuned.

Capital Domination

There was someone selling a Minmatar Lif FAX capital in our militia Discord channels the other day for an unbelievable low price so I decided to buy it despite not ever flying a FAX nor having the Minmatar carrier skills.

I have the Caldari Carrier skill from when I skilled up for my first capital way back in the day, the Chimera. Later I picked up the Caldari Dreadnought skill for the Phoenix. In recent years I decided to skill up for the Thanatos and Moros to align more easily with Gallente armour doctrines and currently own Thanatos and Chimera.

I bought the Lif mainly because it was a steal at that price but I want to move it to another station to sell if on public markets instead of in the Fortizar, but lacking the skill to sit in the beast makes that difficult without asking a corp mate. So I decided to pick up the Minmatar Carrier skill book since I've still got billions from my share payout in May and cross training is always fun. While I was picking that half billion ISK skillbook, I decided to complete the collection with the Amarr Carrier skillbook as well. This will give me the ability once trained to fly any of the carrier and super carrier ships properly (I have the Fighter Bomber skills from when I owned a Wyvern).

I think after November's payout I'm going to drop for the Minmatar and Amarr Dreadnought skill books too just to round out the combat capital ships. Excepting Titans of course. I'm not that space rich.

Carrying the Team

Ever since CCP released the first details of their plans for capital ships back in the fall, I've been struggling with how carriers are going to fit in. 

In the old meta it was pretty straight forward: Dreadnoughts did the damage and carriers did the reps in capital fleets (excepting Slowcat type fleets where carriers did both damage and reps). In smaller situations, a dreadnought still did just plain DPS and a carrier still primarily did remote reps. Its not overly complicated and it worked well for the most part, ignoring the issues with Slowcats.

The new meta has a lot in common with the old: Dreadnoughts will still do damage while the new Force Auxiliaries will provide the remote reps. But where exactly does that leave carriers? I was pondering this question in fleet the other night and a couple people suggested that this was just the two-weapon platform doctrine found in all major empire ship lines sub capital ships taken to the next level, almost exactly like the progression of the Gallente ship line.

Frigate: Incursus (turrets) <=> Tristan (drones)
Destroyer: Catalyst <=> Algos
Cruiser: Thorax <=> Vexor
Battlecruiser: Brutix/Talos <=> Myrmidon
Battleship: Megathron/Hyperion <=> Dominix

So the theory presented goes that the Dreadnoughts will provide the big direct damage like they always have while the carriers can provide flexible damage and support via the new fighters and their attendant abilities they will have available. That sounds good on paper but my concern is that capital ships are a lot less mobile than sub-caps and much easier to tackle, thus giving me the concern they will be too easy to kill while not providing much value to the fleet as a whole now that they can't remote rep or drop into triage mode for beast-tank.

Admittedly a lot of how this plays out depends on how carriers are changed to reflect their new support/DPS role. Fortunately some information has come out of EVE Nottingham and the CSM Winter Summit that we can start to apply to the problem.

I'm going to pull from two sources, an image gallery on Imgur.com put up by SebFerraro with pictures from EVE NT and an article written by Chance Ravine on Crossing Zebras titled "New Carriers Have Raised the Bar, the Ceiling, and the Floor".

* * * * *

All the fighter types.

 Behind my Hel’s modules (yes, behind) was a second set of controls that corresponded to my deployed fighter squadrons. A toggle let me switch between Hel controls and fighter controls, though I was told this setup was for small monitors only, and that the fighter window would (hopefully) be unpinnable and/or a hotkey could be set for module access swapping.
Each fighter squadron had two or three abilities (an auto-fire F1 attack, a defensive/evasive F2 movement, and a long cooldown/low ammo F3 super attack) that differed by fighter type. The Hel supercarrier could launch a maximum five squadrons, with a no more than 3/2/3 each of light/support/heavy fighters, respectively.

New control for fighters

Notice the icons on the fighters showing, I assume, the five different types.

Using the new Tactical Camera, you’re playing EVE at a level that feels more removed and more powerful than anything a single ship can deliver. You can of course just select all your fighters and spam attack (F1) commands at various targets, but you’d be doing yourself a grave disservice. I instead found myself positioning squadrons with Homeworld-stye movement commands in 3D space, then activating navigation maneuvers to help them survive as they reached their final targets. I launched capital-sized torpedo attacks on impulse, but that’s mainly because they were super overpowered in this particular test build.

Tactical camera

On the left, the fighter launch bay

These issues won’t just affect them. The entire EVE community will be judging how good of a job CCP did with their new carrier paradigm, and with these ships tanking left and right at the hands of unpracticed owners, the initial sentiment will most likely be “these new carriers and supers suck.” It’s going to take time and patience for pilots to master fighter squadrons by internalizing the deep control now available to them. 

Eventually, we’ll see the true power of fighter squadrons unlocked. Maybe it will be a natural progression of cumulative player skill. Maybe some Korean StarCraft pros will be conscripted into EVE by rich alliances and handed the reigns to a supercap fleet. Maybe Chessur will down 100 dreadnaughts with a solo (read: linked) nano-Nyx setup. Who knows? 

Regardless of the who, the how is looking extremely promising. If CCP can implement fighter squadrons into EVE Online correctly, they will have created a new paradigm for not just what a capital ship is, but what a capital pilot needs to be.

 * * * * *

My feeling is that if the carriers have the ability with light fighters to clear off tackle on themselves, there is a potential for a good carrier pilot to survive on the battlefield and really fill that flexible support role as long as they can keep up with all the things to keep track of like multiple fighter squadrons, local modules, fleet comms, and situational awareness. Dear god, that will be insane.

However, should a group of carriers prove to be able to work in conjucntion, there is the possibility that they may end up dominating the battlefield over both capitals and subcapitals. I

Its a fine line to walk, I look forward to what's coming.

As a side note, this convinces me more than ever we need a small Assault Carrier class to ease players into this game play paradigm.

Refitness - Comments

Last week I posted about the upcoming proposed limitation on refitting (i.e. can't do it with a weapons timer) and there were some comments I wanted to address directly.

Talvorian Dex said:

Easy solution to logi... implement a stacking penalty to incoming logi reps, similar to what happens with webs or target painting. Done and done.
Leave small-gang or WH combat refitting where it is.

Interesting, but does he mean in addition to the weapons timer limitation for refitting? If not you're still left with the problem of capitals and super capitals refitting at will to tank as needed or do pure damage when desired. If not, and he's proposing wormholes get special rules, I think that is an awkward compromise.

As for the stacking penalty, there is currently no mechanic that acts upon another ship that stacks with the sort of exception of webbing which naturally stacks based on order of applied webs. If you do the stacking wrong for logistics you could completely make logi useless in almost any scenario.

FriendlyManagement comments:

There is an extremely easy way to let WH and small gang pvp to remain potent and fun and at the same time remove the slowcat doctrine. The answer is to only allow refitting while in TRIAGE, SIEGE or BASTION mode. This literally fixes all the problems. With the introduction of FAXes we'll not longer have massive blobs of massive dps dealing and remote repping carriers and this change would mean only ships who cannot receive remote reps would be able to refit.
Lots of people in the community are writing stuff like this blog which kinda goes "Oh yea it's not the best change but it'll remove slowcats so good enough". No. We have a simple and elegant solution to this issue and anything left is imo frankly unacceptable.

Since a single ship can service many and taking turns in triage mode is pretty standard already for carriers, I don't see how this is going to impact anything in the problem space of multi-defense-offence mode capitals. And I never said it was good enough, I said CCP will probably go ahead with it.

Rob Kaichin responds:

[...] The combination of Reps, Refitting and DPS will die with FAXes, which aren't even mentioned in your post. CCP must know this, since that's exactly what the FAXes were intended to achieve. Even so, there were more thoughtful changes which could've been implemented to nerf Slowcats: let Capital Repair modules impact Drone control abilities. -1 drone per capital RR would strip 2 drones (40% of the firepower) from an Archon.
Instead, CCP is flailing around in confusion. They're going to remove Slowcats with FAXes, but to make doubly sure they're aiming to remove the idea of refitting.

I agree Force Aux and triage changes will severely hurt the slowcat doctrine. But the problem of capitals refitting to tank the damage the best at all levels of defense (and then switching back to combat damage when no longer in danger) still exists. Its not just slowcats; its all capitals.

Refitness

Let's go back to that Capital Dev Blog from October for one of the more controversial aspects, namely that combat refitting is going away:

You will be unable to refit while you have a weapons timer
The incredibly talented and endlessly creative players of EVE Online have taken combat refitting to its extremes. With some capsuleers refitting during combat from maximum shield resists, to max armor resists, and finally maximum hull HP to ensure they last as long as possible. Currently if you're shooting at carriers in a large group, whichever carrier you're shooting will refit to maximum tank to ensure that the remote repairs of its fleet-mates are most effective, while the other carriers fit to provide maximum remote repairs. Bring jamming support to counter this? They will refit ECCM on the fly. 

The Swiss-army knife nature of refitting capitals makes trying to balance them impossible. Anything you bring to fight them can be countered in seconds.
After the Citadel expansion, no ship will be able to refit while it has a weapons timer. The fittings you chose before the battle began become a lot more important and counterable. It is not impossible to refit...but you will have to wait out your weapons timer and, effectively, be out of the battle while you do so. We're considering adding a weapons timer to triage & siege modes...but we'd like your feedback on that.

These two paragraphs definitely hit a nerve in some circles as its a direct attack on a certain style of PvP, one that the practitioners feel is more elite. But before we get there let's look at how we got here.

In The Beginning...

Now, I don't have inside knowledge here so this is all speculation and assumptions but I feel it holds up.

When capitals (dreadnoughts and carriers) were being conceived back in Red Moon Rising expansion the developers envisioned creating ships that were not simply bigger and badder super-battleships, but true multi-purpose and extended deployment combat support vessels. Carriers especially were envisioned as a multi-role command centre of deployed fleets, providing command link bonuses, fighter assisted combat support, and extra combat ships and modules with a fitting service to allow pilots to reship on the fly from the close-to-front line carriers.

In other words, refitting was intended to be a Strategic ability as opposed to tactical and this role the carrier (and subsequent super carrier and titans) did adequately well to various degrees. It didn't fit the conditions to be a tactical ability so well because the sub-caps that were the intended consumers of the functionality would not survive very long on the battle grid.

But Then...

Like all things in EVE, the massive capital proliferation across all of New Eden changed the equation and soon fleets of capital ships became the norm instead of the rare exception.

It turns out capital ships like carriers have enough hit points to survive in the line of fire long enough to make use of another carrier's refitting services and smart players were quick to pick up on this fact to start to exploit it, as described in the above quote which I will quote again for emphasis:

Currently if you're shooting at carriers in a large group, whichever carrier you're shooting will refit to maximum tank to ensure that the remote repairs of its fleet-mates are most effective, while the other carriers fit to provide maximum remote repairs. Bring jamming support to counter this? They will refit ECCM on the fly. 

The problem only gets compounded when you bring in the massive hit point numbers of super carriers and titans.

So as part of the ongoing War on Logi CCP decided to open another front on ship refitting by making it illegal while the pilot has a weapons timer. To clarify, from EVE's Helpdesk:

Also known as Weapons Flag, this flag becomes active when you activate any offensive module (weapons, stasis webifier etc.) upon another player. Some non-targeted modules, such as smartbombs or Bastion Modules, will also cause a weapons flag when activated. Regardless of the Security status of the solar system, having an active Weapons Flag will prevent you from docking in any station, jumping through stargate, ejecting from or boarding another ship while in space, and storing a ship in a corporation or fleet hangar. This flag lasts for 60 seconds, starting from the moment you open fire, and will renew each time you take further offensive action – meaning that you will have to wait a full 60 seconds after the last offensive action before being able to dock, jump etc. (even if you lose your ship).

In other words, in order to refit at a Ship Maintenance Array on a capital ship you will have to do pretty much nothing for 60 seconds except take whatever abuse the enemy slings at you.

On The Other Hand...

At first I thought I was all for this change but the guys on Down the Pipe podcast had a fair and balanced discussion about the issue despite most of them being strongly against it. They felt overall that it was a step in the wrong direction even though they agreed there was some argument that the Slowcat Doctrine of massed remote rep carrier fleet was definitely a problem. They argued that the more common use case (or possibly more common to them) of a small engagement with a handful of capitals using refitting as a skill differentiator/force multiplier was a case of good complexity and allowed extremely skilled players to get an advantage over merely average or even good players in PvP.

While I was not 100% swayed to their position against the weapons timer for refitting purposes, I was placed firmly on the fence on the issue. I still think the stated issue in the dev blog of capital ships refitting to match any need on the fly is a problem and simply reinforces the axiom that "the only counter to a capital fleet is another capital fleet", but I now share concern that the small gang refitting capabilities add a level to the game that we should try to preserve.

At The End of the Day...

I suspect its not going to matter and CCP will enact there weapons timer limitation if only because it a direct arrow at the heart of the logistics problem facing the game today. CCP may see it as the larger problem of massed carrier blobs needs to be addressed for the health of the game for many pilots even if it hurts the elite game play for fewer pilots.

The Capital Changes are On The Horizon

Check out the video from Uriel Anteovnuecci showing the new Force Auxiliary capitals from Duality test server.

Carriers to Force-Aux: What Will Be the Transition?

(Nov 13, 2015) UPDATE: Dev post FAQ states:

Q) Will we allow pilots to exchange their Carrier for Force Auxs? #1 A) Yes, but we havn’t determined the mechanic for this yet. 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. 

* * * * * *

After Monday's post talking about my thoughts on the pre- and post-Citadel capital battlefield, my friend Stalence of CalMil alliance Templis CALSF contacted me and mention that at EVE Vegas there was mention that CCP is looking into ways to convert Carriers to Force-Auxs as players desired. He wondered if the same process could apply to blueprints so that my spare Archon BPO could become an equivalent Amarr Force-Aux.

This is not the first time I've heard that it was suggested that current carrier pilots would have some way to choose to keep a carrier or get one of the new ships in exchange, but I really have a lot of trouble seeing how the heck that would work out. There are a lot of factors in play as this is not a straight up conversion of one class to another like the tiericide and ship balancing usually is.

For instance:

1) How would you pick one over the other? The presence of a Triage module was suggested, i.e. if one is fitted then it becomes a Force-Aux otherwise it stays a carrier. Seems clunky and might confuse returning players after the patch who go looking for their beloved Chimera and find some other ship instead.

2) If the ships have a disparity in price (i.e. raw price) will players get reimbursed the difference for switching/not switching?

I assume that if the slot layouts change on a carrier or are different on an exchanged Force Aux, the existing bad modules would be inactive until refitting. And all the drones would either go in the Fleet Hanger or to the player's home station (or put in redeemable items?).

Overall its doable, but it seems very clunky. Personally I think it would be better just to leave the current carriers alone (barring stat and layout changes) and let the market take care of the transition to the new Force Aux. Yes, that means there will be a couple weeks where no one has capital reps but I don't think that would be such a big deal. If it is a deal-breaker, just release the blueprints for the new ships 10 days or so before changing carriers.

Personally, I am going to want to have both ships on hand most likely so unless there is a strong financial reason to convert my Thanatos if CCP offers some sort of auto-exchange, I'll keep it and buy the new Force-Aux when it comes out.

The Capital Battlefield - Followup

I had planned to write a longer post that consisted of Friday's post describing a fictional battle involving new Citadel era caps followed by explanation and analysis but work was crazy last week so this post will have to be the followup to the ficiton.

Basically I'm trying to fit into my head how the changed capital ship meta will play out, not only for writing and "hey I'm an Eve pundit!" purposes but a less altruistic purpose as well: I build capitals and I want to know if I need to abandon some lines prior to the changes (which I will refer to as Citadel Changes or Citadel caps for simplicity's sake) to sell blueprints to get some invested ISK back before prices tank.

In other words, I'm trying to speculate if I need to sell some of my blueprints, specifically the carriers. I've built and sold 55 carriers (52 Archons, 1 Chimera, 2 Thanatos) prior to reworking my business to sell a mix of Archons and Moros, and during that time I made approximately 15 billion ISK. The constant demand for carriers is pretty high because in the current meta its, as the dev blog so accurately puts it, "My First Capital" for almost every player moving into capital ships.

But CPP wants to change the dynamic. Carriers will no longer be the obvious choice for the first capital, nor will it be the necessary capital that richer players always have on hand for various combat and logistical purposes. As the dev blog says:

Time to reimagine and clarify capital roles. Currently, players choosing 'My First Capital' almost always chose a Carrier. They provide more utility than a Dreadnought through the use of fleet hangars, ship hangars, damage, and repair abilities.
We are going to level the playing field.
All capitals will now get:
Fleet Hangars
Ship Hangars
The ability to provide refitting abilities to their fleet-mates
We want both Dreadnoughts and Carriers to be a valid choice for 'My First Capital'. We're going to split off the remote repair role from the Carrier and instead they will focus on fighters and support abilities.
Their repair role will go to a brand new set of capital ships.

BOOM! That's a huge hit to carriers. Based on the current meta, it would effectively kill carriers as a viable ship because the damage role is easily the weakest of the ones they currently fill. Rough estimate, a carrier kitted out for damage with ten fighters does about the DPS that two, maybe three battleships can do. No Big Deal.

Of course, that's not the end of the blog, only the beginning. We start to see more of the vision with this image that follows the above quote immediately:

Force Auxiliary is still a bad name

So we can see much clearer what the vision is intended to be. Much like every faction has two types of combat ships, for example Gallente with blaster boats and drone boats, capital ships will have two combat lines (guns and fighters). They will be supported by new logistic capitals that steal the role from Carriers.

This at first seems to make sense but on closer inspection it leads to the question of how it will actually work in practice. Even if we suppose that the game designers lowering the price of the carrier to reflect it losing the remote repair ability, we're still talking a price tag over a billion most likely. How will a ship using fighters give more value than a dreadnought with its capital guns? To the dev blog once more!

We are completely re-imagining fighter game-play. 

 Squadrons

The carriers of the Citadel Expansion will launch squadrons, made of up to 12 fighters of the same type.
These squadrons act as a singular unit. Carrier pilots give orders to an entire squadron. You lock an entire squadron as one unit, except instead of Shields, Armor and Hull, the number of fighters remaining in that squadron are shown.


Carriers & Super-Carriers will launch up to 5 separate squadrons at a time. We are intending on introducing 3 classes of fighters, these will replace all existing fighters and fighter-bombers.
Light Fighters Optimized for anti-Fighter combat and light damage roles
Support Fighters Optimized for Electronic Warfare tasks including (but not limited to) Stasis Webifiers, Warp Disruptors, Neutralizing, Tracking Disrupting, etc.
Heavy Fighters Optimized for launching waves of bombs or torpedoes, able to do tremendous damage to capitals and structures.
The number and types of squadrons a carrier or super-carrier can launch will be limited.
Management of fighters ready on the launch decks will be an important consideration for carrier pilots. It takes time to swap one squadron of ready fighters out for another, or re-arm your Heavy Fighter Torpedo squadrons.

I see someone else has been playing World of Warships! The paradigm here is very similar to how carriers work in the naval game: squadrons are groups of planes and you give orders to them to carry out with some oversight from you. Once they need to reload they fly back, get serviced, and can be launched again.

So we start to see a picture of how this is going to play out in EVE. Dreadnoughts/Titans will be the close range damage dealers that focus on direct damage, while carriers play the more flexible damage dealers with longer range (but slower time to target) and non-damage support roles (i.e. Electronc warfare). Indeed, if carriers maintain a number of their high slots that are no longer needed for Triage module and remote repairers (side question: can they still do remote cap transfer?), those high slot modules can be used for the new Capital Energy Warfare modules and provide capital level capacitor warfare.

The fallout of all of this is that while new carriers might have a role in the Citadel capital battlefield, the fact remains its going to be a vastly diminished one. Any capital  ship can move your subcaps and stuff around in the ship and fleet hangers; any can provide refitting services; and Force Auxiliaries will cover remote repair.  I expect that demand for Carriers will drop drastically in Citadel leading to a price fall as the current glut of Carriers will cover any demand for a long time. Conversely, demand for the new Force-Auxs will drive prices up very high until capital producers can meet demand. Also, don't expect to see any ME10 blueprints for these new ships for at least a year if not longer.

I'm guessing that the required components for Carriers lowers to reflect their diminished role in the game and thus prices will come down even harder, and that Dreadnoughts will require some new components for the hangers but I expect CCP will balance the other component requirements to keep them at the current price point.

Since Force-Auxs are very specialized even compared to Dreadnoughts and Carriers, I'm hoping they shape up in the 800 million ISK range since they only do really one thing and since they can't make spider tanks anymore they should die far more often than pre-Citadel remote repping Carriers do.

I'll probably keep my ME10 Thanatos and my Archon BPO that I'm currently ~140 days from having at ME10. I'll be selling my other Archon BPO though and saving that ISK for a new Force-Aux BPO when they become available.

If CCP does not release the Force-Aux BPOs prior to nerfing the Carriers, there will be about 10-11 days of no Capital remote reps. What hijinx can occur in that window?

The Capital Battlefield

"Siege is green, siege is green."

In space the mighty Moros and Revelation Dreadnoughts activated their weapon systems to maximum damage mode and targeted the quiet infrastructure hub just kilometers away.

"Carriers, maintain perimeter patrol," the fleet commander instructed. The four Thanatos pilots launched their light fighter squadrons and sent them to opposite direction of the grid. The fighters were loaded out for killing any surprise sub cap ships that warped in at range to scout the fleet.

"Local spike!" someone on comms announced.

"Cyno ship get ready."

"Roger," the Dominix pilot replied.

"Enemy fleet on short scan, looks like Cerbs and Basis!"

The Heavy Assault Cruisers arrived on the grid with a smattering of pops, only twenty of them supported by 5 Basilisk logistics and a Rook Recon cruiser. The supporting friendly sub-cap fleet, a kitchen sink assortment of a few battleships, battlecruisers, cruisers, and frigates, about 30 all told started to move in the direction of the hostile fleet but they were almost 100 km off. Flares of heavy missiles started to streak from the Cerberus cruisers towards the ships.

"Carriers, get your fighters on those logi!"

The carriers' fighter squadrons converged on the distant Basilisk wing, trying to break the reps and weaken the enemy fleet's ability to absorb damage.

Suddenly the call went out, "Red cyno up!" and the hulking form of ten Moros Dreadnoughts appeared in support of the Cerberus fleet. The fleet commander watched in anticipation for any sign the mighty war engines were entering siege mode. Then he saw it and smiled.

"Light the cyno!" the fleet commander ordered. The Dominix pilot, sitting on pins and needles waiting for this command, hands shaking from adrenaline, moved his mouse over the icon and pressed it. "Cyno is lit!" he cried.

The enemy Moros began firing on one of the Thanatos carriers and its hitpoints dropped dramatically as its shields were metled away. "I need reps now!" Booms reverberated over the grid as friendly capitals arrived, 7 Dreadnoughts consisting of various Revelations, Moros, Phoenixes, and Nidhoggurs, an Avatar Titan, a Wyvern Super Carrier, and 4 Caliban1 Force Auxilliaries.

The newly arrived Calibans dropped into triage mode without needing a command and sent the streams of hit point restoring beams onto the beleaguered Thanatos just as she was entering structure. The Wyvern pilot fired his remote neutralizer weapon into the middle of the Basilisk wing to disrupt their cap chains and sent his light fighters in support of the carriers' fighters. The Titan fired its Pike dooomsday and sliced two enemy dreadnoughts in half, and then targeted the next enemy Dreadnought with its capital lasers.

"They're doomed," the fleet commander mused.


1 - Made up place holder name

More Thoughts about the Capital Changes

The biggest single change in all the announcement was that not only was the carrier class being divided into a logistic platform (Force Auxiliary, a terrible name BTW) and a combat platform (Carrier), but that capital remote reps would only work effectively in triage mode (of which only the former new ship can use). Previously a ship could drop out of triage and receive reps while still handing them out, but now remote repping fleets of carriers happily throwing the healing hitpoints on each other is dead.

The main target of this change was the dreaded Slowcat fleet doctrine, where a large fleet of remote repping Archons would land on the field and dare an opponent to try and kill a single carrier. Only a sufficiently large dreadnought fleet or titan fleet with the alpha strike to kill an Archon outright can hope to challenge it.

I don't believe there will be unintended consequences in low sec from this change. Carriers were rarely used in an offensive manner for their fighters, so I expect the new Force Auxiliary (ugh) capital to take its place in the hangers of mid to large sized groups in low sec when extra repping power is needed, usually as part of an escalation of a sub cap fight where one side wants to fight outnumbered but lacks the bodies for a regular logi wing.

The real question is what will the role of the new carrier class be? With dreadnoughts getting sub-cap capable weapons, will the fighter-only aspect of carriers give them any advantage over a dreadnought fitted for sub-cap warfare? Will carrier be a mid-level between battleships and dreadnought, or will CCP try to carve a separate niche for the carrier apart from pure DPS? The model of carriers/super-carriers fitting their fighter squadrons for particular role intriguing and might give capitals a form of non-DPS warfare options, but there is a very thin line between useless and overpowered when it comes to capital dynamics in warfare.

Will super carriers get a role in low sec under this change? Will low sec entities have the money and fortitude to build XL citadels with super capital docking facilities? If so, then super carriers will appear in low sec more. If not, I expect them to continue to be rare. Part of that question hinges on if the new area of effect weapons work in low sec, and if so, are they effective for low sec sized combat.

Need more details!

Capitalizing the Changes - Followup

Last spring I wrote two tentpole posts describing the current state of capital ships in the then-proposed Fozzie sov implementation and some ideas for revamping combat capitals to revitalize the line. The tl;dr summary:

There you have it, my vision for capital ships in the post FozzieSov universe. Instead of four classes of ships with multiple overlapping roles you have six ships with specific and interesting roles:
- Carrier : Logistics Platform
- *New* Jump Bowhead : Space Trucking
- Dreadnought : Capital DPS
- Super Carrier : Mobile Assault Base
- Titan : Anti-Capital DPS
- Mothership : Jump Portal Generator

To clear up, I proposed splitting carriers into a logistics/fighter platform and moving the fleet hangers/ship bays to a new ship, and splitting titans into a anti-capital brawler and a new mothership with the jump portal generator. Super carriers I went completely new direction as a mobile base with force field and stuff. Overall I thought my proposal was pretty extreme.

Well was I ever wrong. 

At EVE Vegas CCP unveiled their proposals for capitals and the overall effect of these changes make mine pale in comparison, with much wider radical mechanic changes that changes the capital warfare complexion entirely. The concurrently published dev blog titled Reworking Capital Ships: And Thus It Begins! lays it out. Here are some snippets:

All capitals will now get:

Fleet Hangars

Ship Hangars

The ability to provide refitting abilities to their fleet-mates

[...]

We're going to split off the remote repair role from the Carrier and instead they will focus on fighters and support abilities.

Their repair role will go to a brand new set of capital ships.

Force Auxiliary Capitals

Four brand new massive internet spaceships! Force Auxiliary Capitals will take over the remote repair role from Carriers. They will be the only class able to fit the Triage module and the only capital class with bonuses to remote repair modules. They will have limited combat abilities of their own, being unable to fit any guns or launchers. However, we will be giving them a drone bay for self defense. They will never be the damage dealers of the fleet, but instead, they will become the new logistics backbone.

[...]

Effective capital-based remote repair will be limited to Triage only

Remote-Repairing Carrier & Super-Carrier fleets will be a thing of the past. The N+1 nature of these tactics encourages enormous blobs and currently the best counter is to bring an even bigger group of your own capitals.

[...]

You will be unable to refit while you have a weapons timer

[...]

No capital will have complete electronic warfare immunity

[...]

All titans, supers, carriers and dreadnoughts will have their HP re-balanced. The Hel and Nidhoggur will no longer be the black sheep of the family, and will have equivalent HP statistics. Titans and supercarriers will be receiving a cut to their total EHP.

[...]

We are completely re-imagining fighter game-play

[...]

We have a wide range of super-weapons we're looking at for the Citadel Expansion. We had several requirements for all our Doomsdays -

All Doomsdays should be fun for both the Titan pilot and the target

There should be clear counter-gameplay to all Doomsdays

They should be visually impressive

The targeting skills of the Titan pilot are much more important. So are the piloting skills of any target.

[...]

Super-carriers won't be left out however! Fighters by their nature can be fighting hundreds of kilometers away from their upercarrier. The super-carriers special weapons compliment this. Building on the Remote ECM Burst, supercarriers will be getting a whole range of remote EWar AOE weapons. The exact details of these weapons aren't finalized, however we're exploring a bunch of option for these, such as:

Energy Neutralizer Effect

Target Painting Debuff

Stasis Webifing Debuff

Tracking Disrupting Debuff

Sensor Damning Debuff

WOW, lots to take in! 

I'm surprised to see they are dividing carriers along the remote rep and fighter capability line as I didn't think CCP was brave enough to tackle the slowcat doctrine with such a large nerfbat. But I welcome this change immensely! It does raise the question if dreadnoughts and the new combat only oriented carrier will overlap roles a bit too much, but I suspect (hope?) that dreadnoughts will be superior at bashing heavy targets and carriers will be superior for fighting sub-caps.

The addition Fleet and Ship hangers and refitting abilities to ALL capitals is a bold move and made me frown until I read that ships could not refit with a weapons timer. One of the most powerful abilities of current carrier is the ability in the middle of a fight to switch from maximum-remote-repping to maximum-tank when you are being primaried by the enemy fleet. I've done this in the last BMTHOKK event and its quite powerful. I'm sure enterprising Fleet Commanders made use of this ability in other unique ways. Well, no more. 

As I had suggested, Super Carriers are getting a big role change. I had considered proposing an expansion of their remote projected effects but worried it might be too overpowering in some cases. Apparently CCP is braver than I! Instead of making them a defensive bastion they are making them a support capital with lots of projected electronic warfare. I approve. This almost makes me want to consider getting back the Wyvern, but I need to see if they can dock in stations first.

The changes to fighters and fighter bombers to make a unified and flexible class of weapons is very exciting. From CCP's viewpoint there will be fewer "objects" to keep track of since it will treat each squadron as a single object, but players will feel like they have more control over what those squadrons can do and are doing. Almost like aircraft carriers in World of Warships... hmmmm..... 

And the new Force Auxiliary capitals... I'm not sure they are going to work. If, as CCP states in the blog, "the bar to killing capitals is limited to what a single Force Auxiliary in Triage can tank" is true, then using them in combat might not be viable in scenario where forces can escalated into massive amounts of DPS. If DPS scales infinitely while repping power flatlines, then players will min-max and abandon the losing proposition to maximize the winning one. In other words, players will just double down on damage if rep can't keep up. I could be wrong.

We have time to digest all the implications of the changes, but I'm very excited for the future of capital warfare. 

Thought Experiment: Allowing Capitals to Go To High Sec

Some capital ships can enter high sec, and some cannot. Freighters and Jump Freighters can, Rorquals cannot. Orcas, barely a capital really, can. Carriers and Dreadnoughts and Super Carriers and Titans cannot. Its not a technical reason for disallowing certain capitals, after all they are capable of transversing stargates in null sec and and low sec. Heck, some capitals are gransfathered in from back when capitals were allowed to be manufactured in high sec, the most famous being Chribba's Revelation in Amarr system (Note: these grandfathered caps may NOT be used in any offensive capacity be decree of CCP). Its purely a game design decision at this point.

The Veldnaught in Amarr

However, its worth asking the question if the game has changed enough to remove the restrictions.

Pros

Here's why I think it could be a good reason to allow combat capitals and Rorquals to have access to high sec once more.

1) New Content for High Sec - All those high sec players who refuse to go to low sec or null sec can now explore what having these super large ships is like. It will also give high sec wars another level to escalate to, and new targets for suicide gankers to stalk.

2) More opportunities for new missions / exploration content - With high sec capitals available, the developers can explore new high level missions and exploration sites that are designed around capital gameplay.

3) Interesting logistic questions for low sec / null sec organizations - Allowing capitals to jump into high sec and travel through it could pose some interesting choices for groups. Do they spend the fuel and jump or travel through relatively safe high sec? Then it opens up the question if war declarations to prevent your opponents from using high sec in this manner is useful.

4) Stabilize capital markets - With capitals able to go into high sec, the market would flourish there in relatively safety and prices would stabilize and standardize. 

Cons

1) What do you do about capital manufacturing? - If you allow manufacture of all capitals in high sec, it will destroy the low sec manufacturing industry (including myself) and probably hurt null sec manufacturers. If you don't allow it, why not? It seems just as arbitrary as not allowing capitals into high sec and excludes content from high sec, etc.

2) Escalation of high sec war declarations to capital blobs - I mean, you already have the problem of high skill point and rich players dominating combat in high sec, but allowing capitals would only exacerbate the issue ten fold.

3) Destroys logistical hard choices - Just like allowing jump freighters into high sec massively simplifies a lot of logistical issues, allowing all capitals into high sec could simplify fleet movement for groups.

4) Diminishes regional markets for capitals - Less of a concern but still worth thinking about, maybe we want volatile isolated markets with wildly different prices. Stabilization might be bad for the small time producers (like myself).

* * * * *

Outstanding Questions

1) What do you do about cynos? I mean, if you allow all capitals to jump into high sec, do we still want the cyno prohibition? Or is it outdated?

2) Would the Rorqual make the Orca obsolete for serious mining operations? Do we care?

3) What would 50 titans doomsdaying the momument in Jita look like?

Your thoughts?

Capitalizing the Changes - Part 2

Yesterday I laid out the current situation facing combat capitals in the proposed FozzieSov sovereignty system. It can be summarized thus: the new system takes away the niche of structure grinding from capitals leaving them adrift in the changed meta.

So today I'm going to lay out my ideas for changing the four combat capital classes of ships to adapt to the new sovereignty mechanics as well as the new meta in low sec, wormhole space, and perhaps beyond.

WARNING: This post is not for the timid.

BRACE FOR IMPACT!

Rationalization

One of the most striking features of Tiericide for the sub-capital ship classes has been how the amorphous blob of ships of various power levels was transformed into ships with defined roles.

This has two benefits: first it prevents ships from being obsoleted by better ships with the same role but superior stats (i.e. the old tier method), and secondly it makes the ships easier to balance when they have a specific main role they are supposed to accomplish as opposed to jack-of-all-trades multi-role. There are downsides too, such as pigeon-holing ships to specific roles and limiting player inventiveness and counter-expectation fitting, but overall I think these concerns have proven to be insignificant and the health of the overall sub-capital meta is extremely good right now.

Capitals, on the other hand, with the notable exception of the Dreadnought, are multi-roled ship classes with many of them overlapping roles with other classes, especially in the direct damage department. For example, all four have considerable direct damage applications, every one except dreadnoughts can do warfare linking, and both carriers and super carriers have bonuses to logistical modules. Yes, there are marked differences between the classes and the exact best application for each varies, but the fact remains that its a muddled mess that is hard to balance and find appropriate roles for in light of a structure-grinding-less future.

With all that being said, onward to my ideas.

Proposal

Let's start with the easiest and work our way to the hardest. Or another way to think of it, the least radical proposals to the most.

Dreadnought - this ship class needs no changes in my mind because it hits the sweet spot in several dimensions. It has a specific singular role and it does it exceptionally well, its not an insurmountable barrier to entry to any area of space, it has applications in null, low, and wormhole space. Even a blob of dreadnoughts does not guarantee success against all comers as the slow tracking weapons and lack of mobility limit their effectiveness on smaller targets. This ship class should be the starting point of any refactor and rebalance as an exemplar of capital ships done correctly.

Carrier - This one is a hard one because despite having many roles, the carrier class overall is in a decent place especially since drone assist has been identified as a problem and is being addressed. That being said, a class that is good at so many roles squeezes out other class from being in some of those roles. So in the end I think its time to break up the carrier's abilities to make the class more focused and leave room for another class to take over some of the roles.

Currently, a carrier can do a lot of things: Combat via fighters and drones; space healing via logistic modules and ship bonuses and Triage mode; moving ships and modules in the Ship and Fleet hangers; allowing in-space fitting changes via the Ship Maintenance Array; and most rarely providing warfare link boosting. In my experience, players first set out to get a carrier for its hangers to allow them to move their assets from base to base, and later on as the player becomes more of a  veteran than move to using carriers for combat roles, most usually in the uber-logistics triage mode supporting a fleet. Alternatively, experienced null players use fleets of carriers in remote repping mobs with hordes of drones as a powerful but slow moving combat fleet.

I'm proposing that carriers are rebalanced only for space combat and space healing roles and the other roles are removed. *Waits for uproar to die down* Yes, I realize that is a huge change but the jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-a-few is crowding out other ship class possibilities from flourishing or even existing. This means removing the role bonus for Warfare link modules (its mostly useless anyways) and removing the ship maintenance hanger/array and either removing the fleet hanger (with a boost to cargo bay size and/or fuel bay) or shrinking it.

Concurrent with this proposal, I think the cost of the carriers should drop by about 25%, a new capital class ship that has a Ship Hanger and jump drive should be introduced (kind of like a Jump Bowhead) for players to maintain the ability to move their stuff, and my super carrier changes coming up next are also implemented.

(I considered going even further and removing combat capability from carriers and making them pure capital sized logistics but I'm not sure that is completely necessary.)

Super Carrier - Ever since CCP turned these monsters from Motherships into Super Carriers they have suffered a series of nerfs: no more non-fighter drones, reduction in number of drones in space at once (with boost in Fighter Bomber damage to compensate), jump range reduction, jump fatigue... and now, one of the things they are still the best at, structure grinding, is going away under the Fozzie Sov system. Poor supers!

I think its time to acknowledge that we don't need another pure damage dealer on the capital scale between Dreadnoughts and Titans. Instead I think its time to take this beast back to its Mothership roots. I envision a ship that a fleet uses as a rally point in extended battles, a mobile defensive base where pilots can reship and regroup without having to put a POS in system.

To this end, I say that the class keeps the large ship hanger, maintenance array, and fleet hanger. It should keep its Fighters and Fighter Bombers, but lose the warfare links (there are better ships for that role) and the bonuses to remote repping modules. Instead give the ship a unique module (or cool Tactical Destroyer like mode shifting) where it can enter "Depot" mode which allows it to project a POS-like force field (20 km radius?) with boosted resists and lots of hitpoints. However, when in Depot mode the ship is immobile and cannot jump, and the cycle for the mode is 30 minutes long (i.e. short enough to not be a major time commitment and long enough to pose a serious risk). Also, while in Depot mode it can still use its fighter bombers and Remote ECM burst. I would think that there would be restrictions much like Deployable mobile structures about where it can be deployed to prevent exploits like activating it right next to a gate to make the gate effectively blockaded or on a station undock, etc, and I think the ship should not be able to receive remote reps or cap while in this mode.

I can see this class becoming a focal point for fights as fleets attempt to use it to resupply in a pitched battle and the opposing force moves to try and destroy them while they are locked in place.

"What happens if someone plops a fleet of these on grid together?" As long as the restrictions on where Depot mode can be activated includes "Not Within 30 km of another Depot Super Carrier" I don't see any issue. Its no worse, IMHO, then the current situation when someone jumps in a Super Carrier fleet except that their utility is currently lower under FozzieSov with fewer targets to grind.

Titan - Much like the Super Carriers, the Titan class has received a number of nerfs over the years as CCP realized that massed fleets of these ships were capable of widespread devastation with very little in the way of reasonable risk, the occasional Asakai or BR- battle notwithstanding. Today the class stands at a relatively decent position in comparison to carriers and super carriers, even under FozzieSov as its dual roles of  Line Breaker (with its Doomsday and large racks of capital weapons and damage bonus) and Jump Portal still have useful applications.

However, the Titan class presents a problem in that its roles are mutually exclusive (i.e. you can't be both a jump portal pig on the back line launching fleet of battleships or whatnot to battle AND a front line flagship breaking apart carriers and dreadnoughts) and the second role, that of jump portal platform, presents a significant advantage to forces that have that at their disposal compared to forces that do not have one at their disposal. This disparity is evident in null sec and low sec; in null sec alliances with Titans have more tactical flexibility to maneuvure their sub-cap fleets (prior to Phoebe they had a lot of tactical flexibility as well but that's been reduced), and in low sec the divide is even more marked as a corporation or alliance with even a single Titan can dominate a region of low sec against alliances without that asset. Black Ops Battleships with the Covert Jump Portal Generator does address some of this divide as its much easier to obtain a 1 billion Tech II battleship than it is a Titan, but since the power versus cost investment ratio of the ships you can send through the Covert Cyno is significantly lower, e.g. a fleet of battleships with tech 2 logistics versus a handful of Stealth Bombers and Recons.

To that end, I think its time to break the Titan class in two: the primary main class keeps the doomsday and capital weapons and bonuses but loses the jump portal, clone vat bay, warfare linking and bonus to fleet members. As a result, I think the cost of the Titan in this version as a Super Dreadnought should be dramatically lower. In conjunction, a new capital (not super cap) ship class is introduced which we'll call the Mothership class which will fit the clone vat bay and the jump portal generator. This will be more expensive than a dreadnought but less expensive than a Super Carrier, will be able to dock, and have virtually no offensive or defensive capabilities.

This smaller ship class would bridge (HAHA Pun intended!) the gap between the small-medium corporations that do not have anyone with access to a Titan and those that do, lowering the barrier of entry to hot-drop/counter-hot-drop gameplay and the interesting emerging outcomes that spawn from that facet of the game.

* * * * *

There you have it, my vision for capital ships in the post FozzieSov universe. Instead of four classes of ships with multiple overlapping roles you have six ships with specific and interesting roles:
- Carrier : Logistics Platform
- *New* Jump Bowhead : Space Trucking
- Dreadnought : Capital DPS
- Super Carrier : Mobile Assault Base
- Titan : Anti-Capital DPS
- Mothership : Jump Portal Generator

These more focused classes will be easier to balance and provide a more gradual progression of power and expensive from the sub capital classes.

Capitalizing The Changes - Part 1

What is to become of capital ships?

Dominion sovereignty is a beast that requires millions of hit points per structure be ground out in order to take control or systems and stations from your enemies. This put upwards pressure on fleet size and ship size in order to maximize time efficiency that, when combined with a maturing demographic with more skill points and ISK to utilize as well as the realization that a super cap blob is in effective immune to being defeated by anything else except another super cab blob, pushed null sec alliances to create large standing fleets of capital and super capital assets in order to be competitive in null sec warfare. In contrast to the downward pressures we've seen in many changes to ship balance over the past couple years, this upward pressure had not been addressed up until the Phoebe changes came into effect last fall which severely limited the tactical and strategic power of capital ship fleet movements.

And now the Fozzie Sov changes proposed for this summer will remove a major motivation for having these fleets as sovereignty warfare will no longer require grinding millions of hitpoints, thus the only remaining upward pressure will be their opponents capital fleets, and like a table with two legs removed (strategic/tactical flexibility and maximization of firepower required) the upward pressure will wobble and eventually topple. If your opponent never needs a capital fleet to attack your sov, why would you expend resources to maintain your own capital fleet?

So back to the opening question, what is to become of capital ships?

CCP Fozzie and others have stated many times that capital ships severely need a turn through the rebalancing machine to turn the classes into something that is more properly integrated into the overall EVE ship meta. But what exactly does that mean? What role should capital ships have?

Note: I'm only talking about the four combat capital ships: Carrier, Dreadnought, Super Carrier, and Titan. The industrial capital ships (Rorqual, Orca, Freighters, Jump Frieghters, and Bowhead) are outside the purview of this discussion and have little effect on it regardless.

Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock

In any game your ultimate goal is to have a circular balance between choices: choice A is superior to choice B, and choice B is superior than choice C, but choice C has some advantages over choice A. We see this in classic games such as chess and Stratego where there is a distinct hierarchy in power of the pieces but the weakest piece has power to rival the most powerful in certain scenarios (e.g. pawn promotes to Queen, Spy kills Marshal).

We also see this balance in modern computer games like World of Tanks where the five classes of tanks all have advantages and disadvantages when compared to each other:
- Light tanks are most mobile but weakest guns and armour
- Heavy tanks have big armour and guns but slow
- Medium tanks blend mobility with guns and armour but have less mobility than light tanks and less firepower/armour than heavy tanks
- Artillery has big guns with long range but super slow and no armour
- Tank Destroyers have big guns but lower armour and mobility

In order to be successful in World of Tanks all five classes need to work together in a coordination fashion, leveraging the strengths of the other classes and covering their weaknesses.

The current 'balance' such as it is in EVE for capitals seems more to be the latter with carriers at the bottom and Titans at the top (but no spy to bring down the marshal). Of course, its not as simple as that so let's take a closer look at the classes before we propose any radical changes.

Fleet Inspection

Carriers - Eventually almost every long term player owns a carrier. At one time it was the most efficient and practical solution to moving your stuff and other people's crap from point A to point B. It probably still is even with the Phoebe changes to jump range and the addition of jump fatigue because nothing compares to 1 million meters cube of assembled ship carrying capability, 40,000 meters cubed hanger for stuff, ability to jump, AND can dock at stations.

But not only are carriers great at moving stuff logistics, they also have considerable combat capability. They are one of only two ship classes that can use Fighters which can chew up battleships, and they are the pinnacle of space healing Logistics as they can use capital sized versions of the repair and cap transfer modules AND have the ability to go into triage mode which makes them even better at the role with super lock speed and longer ranged and more powerful reps.

Carriers are simply the Swiss Army knife of capitals.

Dreadnoughts - On the other hand, you have the counterpart to carriers which has two modes: damage dealer extraordinaire, or it can go into siege mode and be the "MORE DEEPS" damage dealer extraordinaire but with the risk of being immobile for five minutes.

Dreadnoughts are the hit-man of EVE when you have a target with lots of hitpoints. When battleships are not doing the job fast enough, you call in some dreads and they go siege green for a cycle or two and usually that's enough to take out almost any target not receiving active reps. It has to be a very specific type of target too, i.e. on that is not moving hardly at all because those capital guns do not have tracking or explosion speeds worth talking about.

Unlike carriers, Dreadnoughts do not do anything else.

Super Carriers - They are just like carriers except bigger, right? WRONG! They share some similar characteristics such as the bonus to logistics modules range, a large ship hanger for moving assembled ships, a large fleet hanger for moving other stuff, ability to use fighters, and all on a larger scale than the ubiquitous carrier, but it comes with a few other traits that turns it into another class entirely.

For one thing, no triage module so the effectiveness of its space healing is a fraction of what the carrier can accomplish. Secondly, it cannot dock so the ease of use of its carrying capacity is severely downgraded compared to the smaller carriers. Third, instead of fighters the super carrier class usually has Fighter Bombers which are better suited to striking large immobile or super slow moving targets for tonnes of damage whereas fighters are more capable against smaller targets. Finally, super carriers represent a massive investment of capital, more than 15 times that of a single carrier, so their use has to be carefully managed or one slip up and its gone as every hostile in thirty systems will come shoot you if you get caught to get on the killmail.

What this means is that super carriers tend to be used for the specific role similar to dreadnoughts where they jump in, use their fighter bombers to assassinate a large slow or immobile target, and then jump out.

Titans - This ship class suffers from a dual personality. On one hand, it has a capital-ship-only doomsday weapon and a fierce array of capital sized weaponry (for example, the Ragnarok can fit 6 turrets and has a 125% bonus to Capital Projectile Turret Damage per level of Minmatar Titan skill). But on the other hand, its more often used for its ability to fit a Jump Portal and sling fleets to destinations light years away on unsuspected (or suspecting as the case may be) targets, not to mention its warfare linking bonus which is less often used but still is a support role mechanic as long as off grid boosting is a thing.

To add a little to the confusion is that Titan's sport huge ship maintenance arrays (5 million m3), large fleet hangers (100,000 m3), and clone vat bays which seems to imply that its to be used in a logistical manner for moving war materiel from deployment to deployment.

So is the Titan a front line combat vessel, or a support vessel?

* * * * *

So that is the current state of capitals and the reduced role they face in light of sovereignty requiring no structure grinding on any scale. Next post I'll discuss my ideas for revamping combat capitals into a more holistic design that will fit into the new realities going forward.