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.

Missing the Forest for the Trees

I'm going to try and avoid most of the tempest in the teacup over the fighter changes targeting the 1% reaping rewards in their carriers and supercarriers while ratting. Instead I'm going to point out something that should be obvious but seems to be ignored in all of this.

Capital ships should not be efficient platforms for ratting. Period.

What I mean by this is that it never made sense to me how rats never escalated or disengaged when faced with a superior force. Wormhole drifters at least were made smart enough to escalate when faced with capital ships forcing wormholers to invest more capitals in risky w-space to reap the rewards offered. And the new Blood Raiders shipyards also escalate to match the force arrayed against them. But regular anom rats? Plink away at ships orders of magnitudes larger with sub-caps while ignoring fighters ripping them to shreds.

One will argue, and often do, that the investment in a capital ship demands that ratting be easy and rewarding. The risk, they posit, comes from losing the ship to other players. Which is bullshit and we all know it. Null sec space with its intel networks, immediate local, and nearby allies means that ratting carriers dying is by far the exception and not the rule. Obviously if it was a real risk fewer players would be doing it so much and so successfully.

Besides, investment should never be considered a strong balance factor because once the investment is paid, the payout and its duration over time far outstrips it. This has been true when super Dramiels with snake implants were untouchable, it was true when Svipuls were dominating, and it was true in any other case where time/ISK investment were far outweighed by the advantage gained.

If CCP is going to allow carriers and supercarriers to be used for ratting, I think they should make it as difficult as ratting in a battleship successfully. Have rats target fighters with prejudice; have deadly capital rats spawn with capital warp scrams; or have the rats run away from the carriers. Anything to make the reward scale appropriately with the risk.

And anyone complaining that the current reward from carrier ratting is matched by high sec incursion running, I'll point out another obvious fact: two wrongs don't make a right.

Carrier Fighter Skills

Previously:
Carrier Testing
Carrier Fighters
Carrier Modules and Bonuses

In the last post of my Carrier series I'll quickly go over the carrier specific skills that were added/changed from prior the release.

Before the Citadel expansion, there were two relevant carrier skills, Fighters and Fighter-Bombers. The former unlocked and improved Fighters and the latter unlocked and improved the heavier supercarrier only Fighter-Bombers.

Upon the expansion your skill level in the Fighters skill was maintained but the skill no longer directly unlocked any of the fighters. Your skill level in Fighter-Bombers was transferred directly to the new Heavy Fighters skill.

Fighters - Allows operation of fighter craft. 5% increase in fighter damage per level. Doesn't allow you to use any fighters but is the blocking skill to all other skills in this post.

Light Fighters - Allows operation of the two light fighters types, the general purpose Attack fighters and the Space Superiority figthers. 5% increase in light fighter velocity per level.

Heavy Fighters - Allows operation of the two types of heavy fighters, the Heavy Attack and Long Range Attack fighters. 5% increase in heavy fighter damage per level.

Support Fighters - Allows operation of support fighter craft. 5% increase in support fighter hit-points per level.

Fighter Hanger Management - This skill is surprisingly important. It gives a 5% bonus to Fighter Hangar size per level.

First off, the base carrier fighter hangers range from the smallest at 55,000  m3 of the Chimera, 60,000 m3 for Archon, 65,000 m3 for the Nidhoggur, and 70,000 m3 for the Thanatos. That seems like a lot of room until you look at how much space each squadron takes:

Space Superiority Fighters (800 m3 per fighter x 12 fighters / squadron) = 9,600 m3
Attack fighters (1000 m3 x 9 fighters) = 9,000 m3
Support Fighter (3000 m3 x 3 fighters) = 9,000 m3

Just putting one of each squadron type in a base Chimera, for example, takes up over just half the hanger space. Ideally you want to be able to put out three squadrons of attack fighters or three squadrons of space superiority fighters depending on the scenario so without spares you want to use 9600*3+9000*3+9000 (can only have one support squadron in space for a carrier) = 64,800 m3. That only works for the Nidhoggur and Thanatos out of the box and that pretty much precludes the hope of having any spares to replace losses being available in your hanger.

Having Fighter Hanger Management trained to IV gives a 20% boost to that base size which gives the following hanger sizes:
Chimera: 66,000 m3
Archon: 72,000 m3
Nidhoggur: 78,000 m3
Thanatos: 84,000 m3

As you can see, it makes a large difference to the capacity and gives the carrier pilot more options in terms of what fighters that they can carrier with them to battle. This effect is also important on the larger hangers of the supercarriers with the larger heavy fighters with their larger volume per squadron (6 fighters per squadron x 2,000 m3 per fighter = 12,000 m3 per squadron) and larger number they can launch at a time (5 squadrons at a time, max 3 Light fighter squadrons, 2 support fight squadrons, and 3 heavy fighter squadrons).

In addition, the skill unlocks the use of the carrier-only modules Network Sensor Array and Fighter Support Unit, so all told its pretty much mandatory to have it trained to at least level IV before undocking.

* * * * *

That's it on carrier basics. Hope you find these posts useful.

Carrier Modules And Bonuses

Previously:

Carrier Testing

Carrier Fighters

Now that we are clearer on the types of fighters there are, let's enumerate the bonuses given by the ships themselves and the effect of available modules.

Carriers

Thanatos:

5% bonus to Fighter damage

2.5% bonus to Fighter hitpoints

5% bonus to Siren warp disruption range

Nidhoggur:

5% bonus to Fighter damage

2.5% bonus to Fighter velocity

5% bonus to Dromi stasis webification range

Chimera:
5% bonus to Scarab ECM optimal range

Archon:
5% bonus to Cenobite neutralization optimal range


Supercarriers
Nyx:

10% bonus to Fighter damage

5% bonus to Fighter hitpoints

Hel:

10% bonus to Fighter damage

5% bonus to Fighter velocity

Wyvern:

5% bonus to Fighter damage

Aeon:

5% bonus to Fighter damage

Revenant:

5% bonus to Fighter damage (for Amarr carrier level)

5% bonus to Fighter weapon explosion radius and explosion velocity

5% bonus to Fighter damage (for Caldari carrier level)

20% bonus to Afterburner velocity bonus ( I assume this applies to the heavy fighters.)

As you can see, the Gallente carriers get the beefiest fighters while the Minmatar versions have the fastest. The Caldari and Amarr carriers may not have a lot of fighter bonuses but they get resistance bonuses allowing them to tank better.

Modules

Note: when a range is given it indicates the variance between tech I and tech II. There are meta modules, officer modules, faction modules, etc.

Network Sensor Array - a carrier/supercarrier only module. High slot, active. Give +2 to max targets, 900% scan res bonus, and 50% to sensor strength.

Drone Damage Amplifier - Low slot, passive. 15%-20.5% bonus to damage.

Drone Navigation Computer - Mid slot, passive. 25%-30% increase in maximum velocity.

Fighter Support Unit - a carrier/supercarrier only module. High slot, passive. 5%-6% bonus to fighter shield, velocity, ROF, and shield recharge rate.

Omnidirectional Tracking Enhancer - Low slot, passive. 13.4%-20% bonus to falloff range, 6.7%-10% bonus to optimal range, 4.4%-6% bonus to explosion velocity and explosion radius.

Omnidirection Tracking Link - Mid slot, active. 10%-15% bonus to falloff range, 5%-7.5% bonus to optimal range, 5.5%-8.25% bonus to explosion velocity and explosion radius. Can be scripted.

The last part of this series will be about carrier skills and should be done in a day or two.

Carrier Fighters

I talked earlier this week about my testing with a carrier and its fighters, but I realize for the average player there is still a lot of confusion about the basics of getting into a carrier so I'm going to go over the types of fighters there are in the game, and next week I'll talk about the specific carrier skills required for using and managing fighters and I'll enumerate the fighter specific modules a carrier can fit these days.

First let's talk about the kinds of fighters there are now. Note: all fighters come in Tech I and Tech II variants except the faction Shadow Heavy Fighter.

Light Fighters: Attack - Dragonfly, Einherji, Firbolg, Templar

There are two kinds of light fighters, the first being referred to as Attack and they descend from the original fighters we had before the changes. They are "general purpose attack craft" and have a squadron size of  9 fighters and their main weapon does decent damage but has trouble tracking small fast targets. They have a MWD to move from point to point quickly, and a limited ammo Heavy Rocket Salvo which are short ranged Heavy Missiles and pack a punch as I highlighted in my last post on Carrier Testing.

Light Fighters: Space Superiority - Equite, Gram, Locust, Satyr

The second kind of light fighter is for engaging other fighters and drones and destroying them. They fly in squadron sizes of 12 fighters and have main weapons that do very little damage to player ships but are "apt at destroying fighter and drone craft". The have "Evasive Maneuvers" afterbunrer instead of a MWD which makes them hard to hit for a short period of time and a space "Anti-Small Craft Tackle" (which I'm going to call a Drone Scram) which "disable[s] small craft drive systems" making them easier to kill for the fighters.

Support Fighters - Cenobite, Dromi, Scarab, Siren

These are basically e-war fighters and come in small squadron sizes of 3. They all have a Microwarp Drive like the Attack fighters but no main weapon. Instead they have an electronic warfare function that differs depending on which faction they belong to. The Amarr Cenobite has energy neutralizers which suck cap at the rate of just over what a Small Energy Neutralizer II can do (module takes 5.5 GJ /sec, each fighter does 6.0 GJ / sec (8.0 for tech II) but times three fighters. The Minmatar Dromi has a -15% stasis webifier (-20% for tech II) on each fighter (compared to -50% of a Stasis Webifier I). The Caldari Scarab has a 1.6 strength omni ECM (2.3 for tech II) on each fighter (compared to a 3 on a ECM I module). And finally the Gallente Siren has a warp disruptor with 8 km range (16 km for tech II).

Heavy Fighters: Heavy Attack - Cyclops, Malleus, Mantis, Shadow, Tyfing

Like Light Fighters, Heavy Fighters come in two varieties. The first is Heavy Attack and are the old super carrier fighter-bombers upgraded for the new mechanics, flying in squadrons of 6. They are basically hard hitting general purpose fighters designed for anit-capital and anti-structure combat and as such their main weapon does a lot of damage but has tracking issues against fast moving targets, and their special weapon is a torpedo salvo which hit super hard on caps and structures but virtually nothing to anything smaller. They also have a microwarp drive like the light variety.

Heavy Fighters: Long Range Attack - Ametat, Antaeus, Gungnir, Termite

The second Heavy Fighter is designate for the Long Range Attack role and also comes in squadrons of 6. Their main weapon does less damage their their short range counterpart but can reach out farther. For example, the Gallente Heavy Attack fighter Cyclops has a blaster with an optimal range of 4 km (+5 km falloff) while the Long Range Attack Antaeus has a railgun with 30 km optimal (+12 km falloff). In addition it also has a special attack that is effectively like a Stealth Bomber's bomb launcher but I can't confirm exact stats on the micro bombs that they launch. Finally, instead of a MWD they are fitted with a Micro Jump Drive that takes 10 seconds to spool up (increasing their signature by 150% while doing so) and then sends them 100 km forward like a normal MJD.

Heavy fighters can only be used on Supercarriers and Large and Extra Large Citadels.

Carrier Testing and Learning

The radical changes to carriers means it feels like starting from scratch in how to use them and what all the skills enable/boost. This weekend during a quiet moment with the wife napping I launched onto SISI server and did some testings.

Setup

My skills were not up to speed with my Tranquility training but I quickly got them up to Fighters III which allowed me to install three squadrons of Firbolg Is in the launch tubes of my Thanatos carrier. The modules installed on the carrier that affect drone/fighter performance are:

2 x Fighter Support Unit Is - Bonus to Shield, Shield Recharge, Velocity, and Rate of Fire (stacking penalties apply)
Omnidirectional Tracking Link I - Improves fighter firing stats
2 x Drone Navigation Computer Is - Improves fighter speeds (stacking penalties)
Drone Damage Amplifier II - Fighter Damage Increase

In order to test the damage application of my three squadrons I fit up a shield buffer tanked Rokh battleships with the following:

3 x Large Shield Extender IIs
2 x Adaptive Invulnerability Field IIs
Damage Control II
3 x Large Core Field Extender II rigs

Movement

My first tests were about how fast the Firbolgs would move around the grid, both at normal velocity and MWD velocity. I found that the normal speed was about 1792 m/s and MWD speed was ~9700 m/s but the MWD only lasted about 20 seconds and had a 40 sec cooldown between activations. The end result was that my fighters were travelling about 250km/minute.

Damage

Once I engaged the target Rokh it was destroyed within 52 seconds and required 4 salvos of the Rockets to complete the job, leaving 4 more on the fighter squadrons.

My next test will be with better skills and Firbolg II fighters, and hopefully can involve some logi ships to see how the burst is.

Trying Out Carrier On Sisi

I logged into Singularity the other day and played around with the new fighter mechanics. Here are some screenshots and my initial thoughts. Click for fullsized screenshots.

I docked at an Astrahaus citadel and when I undocked the model was gone but all the lights were still there!

The tether which I assume gives some protection while near the Citadel. You can see the effect on the ship and the icon in the buffs bar.

Why yes, that is a permanent Quafe SKIN for my Thanatos.

An example of the three types of fighters that carriers can use: anti-fighter attack craft, general purpose attack craft, and Ewar craft.

The new fighter control panel can be undocked from the modules and placed wherever you want, like on the other side of the HUD.

I found it was fine for my testing combined with modules and you switch back and forth using the small button on the lower left. You can give orders via the three buttons which can apply to all squadrons or only some of them depending on what ones are selected via clicking on their icon.

All three types attacking Mordu's Legion battleships.

There is lots of room in the fighter hanger so I was able to quickly swap out the anti-fighters and Ewar fighters for more attack fighters. Their biggest damage comes from the rocket assault.

See the curved position lines for the objects in space on the tactical overlay? Very unique method for dealing with positions and ranges in 3D space and makes it easy to see the range to things. The numbers on the fighters in space correspond to their spot on the HUD.

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.

CCP Its Time - Improve Drone Interface and Assault Carriers

Once again I delve into the depth of this awesome dev blog from October last year about the changes coming to capitals in 2016, specifically about carriers and fighters:

Carriers, Super-Carriers & Fighters
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've commented before how the new carrier gameplay with the "overhead" tactical camera and controlling squadrons of fighters instead of individual fighters was reminiscent of World of Warships and their carrier gameplay, and I think this is a good direction to go in.

But it does highlight two glaring holes that CCP has not publicly addressed, one I suspect they plan to very soon and one I fear is being ignored.

1) The Drone Control interface is woefully out of date.

The current interface for controlling drones of any ship class, capital or sub-capital, was terrible ten years ago, its completely unacceptable now in 2016. And seeing the plans for the fighter interface begs the question if they plan to port these changes down stream to the smaller ships as well. I should hope so because if its not on the radar for updating soon then I might have to go shoot some monuments.

Can the new fighter controls, where you control a squadron instead of individual drones, work on sub caps? I think it can if you downscale it to controlling the drones separately, the big win is being able to send drones into space and assign them tasks and recall them at will without FUCKING RIGHT CLICKING. Sorry, lost it there for a sec. Teaching my son to play EVE and everything about fighting rats is straight forward until I have to explain how to launch drones and get them to fight. "Right click on the drones in space area... no, the other click... and choose engage target...don't forget to recall your drones!"

CCP, its time.

2) The gap between battleships specializing in drones and full blow capital carriers is too big.

I've argued for this last year in a blog banter. Think about it: you are specializing in drones, working up through Tristan, Algos, Vexor, Myrmidon, Dominix, controlling five big Ogre IIs or 5 Warden IIs in a hull around 200 million all fit, maybe a bit more. And the next step is a hull 5-6 times the cost that can control 10 Fighters (or 15 if you're insane with Drone Control Units) but has all the mobility of a log. And includes new mechanics such as jumping, triage module, ship maintenance hangers, etc, etc.

The jump in price and functionality is too big. Its a barrier to natural progress and prevents fighter gameplay from seeing wider use, creating an environment where a lot of people never (or hardly ever) experience it because its too risky / difficult to learn and a few people master it and use it extensively. This will only be compounded by the new fighter mechanics and interface (which might be mitigated some if drones undergo a similar shift).

So I propose a new capital ship class that I call Assault Carriers similar in size and function to the Orca: hull price point about 500-700 million ISK, can use fighters like carriers (albeit fewer in number), no jump capability, can go into high sec, etc. This would make the jump from drones to fighters less severe, get more people used to the mechanics of fighters (both on controlling and receiving ends).

CCP, its time.

Force Auxiliaries - The Path Forward

We finally got a glimpse on how the transition from the current Jack-of-All-Trades carriers to combat carriers and support Force Auxiliaries (aka Force Aux) is going to go down. From a dev post  by CCP Larrikin: 

We're seeding the 4 Racial Force Auxiliary skills in February, along with skills for Light Fighter Squadrons and Support Fighter Squadrons. 

Any character with Tactical Logistics Reconfiguration, a Carrier and Force Auxiliary skill (of the same race) injected when the citadels expansion launches, will have the racial carrier skillpoints refunded as unallocated skillpoints. These skillpoints can be reallocated instantly as the player desires. 

If you start training the Force Auxiliary skill after the patch tomorrow, you can reallocate your refunded skillpoints right back into your racial carrier skill so you can fly both ships. Or spend them on anything you like! 

There'll be a dev-blog going into more details about our transition plans for Carriers, Force Auxiliaries and a bunch of other stuff, coming out later this week.

This tells us that players who have no interest in carriers going forward can switch their skills to the corresponding racial Force Aux skill just by buying the skill book and injecting it prior to Citadel. You won't get your money back for the carrier skill book if you plan to never train that again but hopefully you got your money out of it.

That answers the question of how will players quickly ramp up to the new triage platforms, but it does not answer the question of whether CCP plans to allow players to get an automatic upgrade (read: replacement) from the current carriers to the new Force Aux.

There are three obvious options for an automatic upgrade:
1) If you have the Force Aux skill injected and you are sitting in your carrier when the expansion comes, your carrier becomes a Force Aux.

2) Any carriers with triage module fitted become Force Aux.

3) Combination of 1 and 2: any carriers with triage module and owning character with Force Aux skill become Force Aux capitals.

I'm sure there are other ways to do an auto-upgrade, but the other option is to simply allow the market /industry to deal with the issue. After all, carriers can be reprocessed down to capital components which can then be used to build the new ships. The turn around for the first Force Aux would be a mere ~10 days. Surely that's a blink of the eye to any EVE player with a capital.

Of course, this leads to another line of questioning: is the build costs in terms of components going to change for carriers since they are losing a significant function in the Citadel expansion? And are the Force Aux going to be comparable to current carrier build costs or lower? If carriers drop in build price significantly, there could be a rush on reprocessing carriers prior to the patch to extract as much wealth from them and rebuild at the cheaper price point post patch.

Personally, for my capital building enterprise I plan to put on hold any further Archon builds after the current one in progress until after some of these questions are answered more fully.

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.

Warship Wednesday - Carriers

Finally we finish out the review of ship classes in World of Warships with the Carrier class.

Click to embiggen.

The Battleship-Cruiser-Destroyer dynamic mostly models a rock-paper-scissors balance played out over a 2 dimensional map. It could be fun and engaging by itself but there is room for more gameplay if you go up into the sky. That's what carriers do, they open the air above the ships to gameplay in the form of plan squadrons.

Carrier vessels themselves have no main armament, and limited secondary armament. They tend to be slower than cruisers, turn poorly, and have low armour and hitpoints compared to ships at their tier level. What they do have are three types of plane squadrons that they can launch and direct anywhere on the map to engage the enemy and scout ahead.

The three types are:

Fighters - Can't attack ships but can attack other aircraft including the little scout plans some battleships and cruisers can launch. Also can be used for scouting in a pinch.

Dive Bombers - Attack craft that, as the name implies, dives in and drops a heavy bomb on a target. Hits can cause fires as well damage, but the damage tends to be lackluster.

Torpedo Bombers - Attack craft that launch a wave of torpedoes, one per plane in the squadron, in a straight line. Hits can cause a lot of damage just like ship launched torpedoes, and can cause flooding.

The plane squadrons are launched one at a time from the carrier and the player can direct the squadrons individually or grouped to any location on the map using a unique satellite view, even setting waypoints for the squadrons to lead them around enemy ships whose Anti-Aircraft firepower can kill planes in the squadrons and lower their effectiveness. A carrier has a loadout of squadrons available and may not include one of the two types; one loadout may include one of each type and another possible researchable loadout may have two fighters and two dive bombers for example. Typically higher tier carriers have more squadrons to launch and control. Its also worth noting that carriers get aircraft of their tier level so higher tiers have planes that do more damage/fight better/fly faster.

Carriers typically play back behind their own lines, trying to avoid being seen and targeted by any enemy ships. The targets for the bomber squadrons are primarily battleships and enemy carriers, although they can go after harder to hit cruisers and destroyers in a pinch. I once even drove straight at a destroyer to attack it with secondary weapons to defend a cap point once (he died).

There are significant differences between USN and IJN carrier squadrons, as well as all the stat differences which you can look up elsewhere: American carriers have 6 planes in their squadrons while Japanese carriers have 4 planes, but to compensate the latter tend to have more squadrons and have less servicing time after planes land to get more ammo and replacement planes.

The strategy for a carrier pilot in a match depends heavily on his load out, the presence of friendly carriers and their loadout, and any enemy carriers and their loadouts. A fighter heavy loadout will do more Combat Air Patrol (aka CAP) for friendly battleships and stay closer to the front lines while a bomber heavy loadout carrier can send their squadrons on a looping path around the hostile cruisers and destroyers to attack deep at the enemy rear... as long as hostile carriers are not doing serious CAP.

The end effect of carriers in the game is that all ships need to be aware not only of where the enemy ships are, but what's going on in the sky above them and what wings of death are heading their way. This makes the game extremely dynamic and at turns glorious and agonizing.