The War on War Declarations

I've never liked the War Declaration mechanic in EVE.

I mean, I understand the original intent behind war declarations. CCP wanted players to have the ability to fight over resources in the tightly controlled space of high sec so they gave corporations the ability to declare war on each other, removing the obstacles of CONCORD or sentry gun interference and removing any potential security status penalties.

CCP had visions of groups with roughly equal size and skills clashing in battles over moons and asteroid belts.

And this can still happen! But its vastly in the minority. Instead what the players use the mechanic for is basically extortion and seal clubbing.

Groups of veteran PvP players go around and declare war on groups of carebears, asking them for ISK or lose their ships / structures / etc, and if they have the nerve to stand up and try and fight, are bashed in the head via station games, blingy PvP ships, and more experience.

Not to mention the groups of players that just war dec everything they can and sit in trade hubs camping gates all day, using the mechanic as a way to bypass high sec rules.

Its a shitty mechanic that allows the experienced and strong players to prey on the newer and weaker players without consent or reasonable recourse and it sucks and I think it drives players away.

And now we have evidence from CCP indicating that it's true:

CCP Larrikin pulls up activity data for players of corporations that have wars declared against them and it shows considerable activity drops in all activities during the war. They also show that the low activity continues after the war ends. Brisc Rubal noted that the numbers here were so stark, it would justify immediately removing war decs as a mechanic and promising a fix after the fact. The CSM in general were surprised at how stark the numbers were and noted it was clear this mechanic was having a significant impact on player recruitment and retention.

A comment was made in that summit that perhaps those numbers suggest removing war decs immediately. I wholeheartedly agree.

The concept is flawed, built for a style of gameplay and environment that no longer exists. Get rid of it.

* * * * *

OK, now that its gone and the wailing and gnashing of teeth has died down, the game does need some mechanic to deal with competition over the actual things worth fighting over in high sec that should not have absolute safety. Not asteroid fields or trade hub jump gates (both of which already contend with suicide ganks), but rather structures.

I propose that once declaring war against corporations is gone, we replace it with the ability to bribe the NPC government agencies to look the other way while a structure is attacked. The owners of the structure can be attacked too, but only in that system. This would give casual / noobie / pacifist corps an option besides the "hire mercs or learn how to fight" (which really is "watch you get scammed or die horribly to experienced PvPers"). Or of course, what they do now, which is log out and stop playing.

Now that proposal is not fleshed out, its an off-the-cuff idea thrown out to show that I think a radical rethinking of high sec PvP needs to be done, and radical actions need to be taken. EVE desperately needs something.

Time is running out.

ECM - Here We Go Again

Oh look, a new dev blog about balance changes (EVE still does those?):

Everyone's favorite form of E-war has been due for an update for a very long time.
As a victim, watching your ship die while jammed without anything you can do about it feels bad. As an ECM user the system doesn’t feel great either when you get unlucky and miss a lot of jams. We would love to improve both sides of this coin by giving ECM more consistent behavior while also toning down the helplessness that comes with being jammed.
At the same time, we feel it's important to preserve and even improve the role ECM plays as one of few disruption tactics for logistics and other forms of support.

Ugh. ECM up again? Ok, let's see what they try this time...

To start us on a path towards a healthier balance for ECM, we are making one critical change to its mechanics: while jammed, you can always lock the ship that is jamming you.
This change will dramatically increase the feeling of agency and control for the victim. Rather than sitting helplessly while jammed, you will always have the option of fighting back. It will be up the ECM user to stay out of range, abuse tracking, or otherwise avoid retaliation.
The downside here is that in the short term, balance for ships focused on ECM may be a bit out of whack. We are looking at some small buffs to fitting and tank for ECM ships with this release to help them survive against return fire, and long term we hope to be able to increase jam strength to make ECM more consistent across the board. Your feedback will be critical in ironing out those changes going forward.

To give credit where it is due, this is an interesting take on the old beast. It will give pilots something at least to do while that 20 second timer is counting down and shooting at the ECM ship seems like a decent action option.

Of course, the value of that option varies dramatically depending on your engagement envelop versus the ship jamming you, and gives an inadvertent nerf to short range and/or fragile jamming ships. Poor Kitsune.

But its still a chance based mechanic which really doesn't fit well with a lot of the rest of EVE's ship mechanics.

If I were given control, I'd argue for breaking remote sensor dampeners into two, the current remote sensor dampener that reduces lock range when range scripted, and move the lock time increase mechanic to ECM modules, perhaps making them break lock when first activated and then while on the target it makes the target's lock time longer. You could even increase the effect the close it is to optimal. No randomness, no restricting of options, just causing disruption.

I'd also consider getting rid of stupid racial variants (talk about complexity for the sake of complexity only) but if that would not fly, you could increase or decrease the effect based on whether its a matching racial type or not.

Anyways, we'll see how CCP's milquetoast approach goes.

Assault Frigates - Squeezed Out of the Meta

The main problem with Assault Frigates is nothing to do with the ship class itself directly, but more a problem with the overall meta and realities of EVE Online.

* * * * *

How many things can you do in a ship? Off the back of my hand, you can:
- do damage
- tank damage
- heal damage
- do electronic warfare
- tackle
- scout
- hack
- transport stuff
- mine
- probe

Lots of stuff right? Most of those roles have a cheaper tech I version and a more specialized tech II version. But the first two, causing and absorbing damage, tend to be extra overloaded, even if we break the "causing damage" into two for short range and long range damage, and another 3 for small/medium/large ship sizes.

Take for example the Gallente line of ships:

Small short ranged damage: Incursus, Comet, Catalyst, Enyo
Small long ranged damage: Tristan, Algos, Ishkur, Hecate

Medium short ranged damage: Thorax, Deimos, Phobos, Brutix, Proteus
Medium long ranged damage: Vexor, Vexor Navy Issue, Ishtar, Myrmidon

Large short ranged damage: Megathron, Hyperion, Megathron Navy Issue, Kronos
Large long ranged damage: Dominix

I've taken some liberties classifying the ships as obviously the role of ships is largely determined by how they are fit and many of the ships can fit in both roles. And I'm ignoring specialized ships that cause damage as well as performing another role like Command Bursts or Interdiction.

Overall there is a decent balance between cost of a ship, its damage potential, its tanking potential, and its flexibility. For example, the decision of taking a Tristan frigate or an Algos destroyer is based on whether you want a cheaper ship with more speed or a more expensive ship with more damage and tank.

So here's the problem with Assault Frigates. They are supposed to help straddle the divide between Tech I frigates and Tech I cruisers by providing more damage and tank than frigates while still being faster and more mobile than cruisers, but the advantages of being smaller and more mobile are outweighed by the fact that cruisers are 50% to 66% cheaper than assault frigates while having better damage and tank (most of the time). In other words, they are not worth the ISK for the upgrade over Tech I frigates compared to cruisers. Meanwhile Tech I destroyers offer damage and tank upgrades over frigates for a modest price increase, and Tactical Destroyers offer a huge boost in damage and tank and capabilities that is worth the large price tag vis a vis cruisers.

Do Heavy Assault Cruisers suffer from the same issue? After all, they are positioned to be the stepping stone from Tech I cruisers to Tech I battleships, and are in competition with Tech I battlecruisers and Strategic Cruisers. To a large part, yes, HACs suffer from the same squeeze but get a little relief from the price of battleships only being ~25-35% cheaper than the Tech II cruisers, as well as having enough module slots to make up for some of the shortcomings.

Also, while both assault classes have a bonus to reduce micro warp drive signature bloom by 50%, giving them some unique advantages over their competitors, the advantage for frigate classed ships is not very noticeable while the cruiser class in certain situations and fits can boast a decent gain.

The end result is that Assault Frigates are at the bottom end of the usage profile for ships in EVE. How do we address that?

CCP has three options:

1 - Leave them Alone

There is nothing that says that Assault Frigates have to be worth it in the game at all. CCP could leave them alone and concentrate on balancing the existing ship classes that do see frequent or moderate use. The downside is that it would leave a decent concept languishing and CCP still needs to update them for art assets and code changes regardless, unless they choose to simply remove them.

2 - Lower the Build Cost

If Assault Frigates were closer to the cost of Tech I cruisers they would be able to compete with them more. It would be a trade off in damage and survivability of the cruisers for more speed and agility and smaller signature of the assault frigates without adding in the huge extra cost.

3 - Increase their Stats

Another option instead of lowering the cost is to make the cost more worth it by simply making them deal more damage and/or have even more tank. This approach is the least appealing because if you increase the abilities of the assault frigates to make them worth the 25 million ISK, you run the risk of obsoleting Tech I cruisers completely if they can't compete at all with the upgraded ships, and even making them obviously preferable over destroyers and Tactical Destroyers.

4 - Give me a Unique Ability

I mean beyond the current unique ability that reduces MWD sig bloom by 50%, which as I discussed has less value for a small sig ship compared to a larger cruiser. The trick here is finding an ability or set of abilities that makes the ship class have a unique role or niche without butting into the role of an existing class. For example, longer range on warp disruptors/scramblers or some immunity to stasis webifiers and they start to look better than interceptors. Another idea bandied about was having their MWDs immune to being shut off by warp scramblers but that runs the risk of making them near impossible to catch without a specialized counter webbing ship.

Whatever CCP decides to do (if anything) they will have to be careful in the packed meta that assault frigates live in not to push something else out in the shuffle.

The Fine Line of Strategic Cruisers

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about Strategic Cruisers and how they fit into the meta going forward.

Currently they can perform in several roles better than the Tech II ships they emulate: heavy hitting cruiser with small signature better than a heavy assault cruiser, super tanky cloaky recon, super tanky e-war combat ship, etc. As well as being about to do other things like command boosting, nullification warping, fitting cloaks, and so on.

The idea was that the Strategic cruiser would be unable to do these roles as well as the dedicated Tech II versions for the same price magnitude but could be re-configured as needed by the owner. That didn't hold up so well as the prices fell and the risk-reward ratio for the tech III cruisers proved to be higher than the competing tech II versions.

What do I mean?

In EVE, a combat ship can be evaluated into a single number, a risk versus reward ratio. In other words, you want to maximize the reward side of the equation while minimizing the risk side.

For a pure combat ship like a Heavy Assault cruiser, this primarily comes down the the reward being its damage delivery potential on a target versus its risk of how likely it is it be caught and destroyed. While HACs have a higher reward value (i.e. more damage) than a strategic cruiser, the latter has superior signature and tank thus lowering its risk value by more, giving it a better overall ratio.

Cost plays into this ratio as well, increasing the risk as the price of the ship increases. But since a fully fit strategic cruiser is in the same price bracket as competing tech II ships, the ratio still evaluates better for the tech III ships.

In comparison, while the Tech III Destroyers easily outclass Tech I Destroyers, i.e. have much larger reward value, the risk part of the equation balances out the ratio because they are a different price bracket, and when compared to price-parity Tech II Destroyers we find they are in different roles and thus we do not need to worry about the risk-reward comparison.

CCP is faced with the question of how to balance Strategic Cruisers such a way that they are still good for pilots to own and use but don't replace Tech II cruisers in the same role. As I wrote last week, CCP have made or are going to make the changes required for Strategic Cruisers to actually be as flexible and strategic as they were originally envisioned to be, so there is a chance here for CCP to role-change the ship class out of competition with Tech II cruisers and into a new unfilled role of Multi-role Combat Cruiser.

Let's hope CCP gets it right!

Strategic Post

One of my favourite things to do for blogging these days is to notice some announcement of a change from CCP or someone saying something, and then dig up an old post of mine where I say the exact same thing.

The latest entry to this hobby is this dev blog on Strategic Cruiser changes:

The short version of the plan is that we want to address a few key issues with the current Strategic Cruiser design:
- Rigs in their current state lock T3 hulls into a specific set of bonuses and prevent T3 Cruisers from achieving the goal of a “strategic” ship that you can adjust from day to day to meet your needs by changing subsystems
- T3 Cruisers overlap too much with other ships (especially Heavy Assault Cruisers and Recon Ships) and their dominance can reduce ship variety
- Many of the subsystems and subsystem combinations are underpowered and rarely used
- The current state of T3 Cruisers is unsustainable from a technical graphics perspective
To solve some of these issues we are currently working in the following directions:
- Condense the available subsystems into a smaller number of more powerful and useful choices.
- - The current plan is to have four subsystem slots with three choices in each slot
- A general rebalance of the T3 Cruiser class which would include (among other things):
- - New faction-specific build components sourced from WH space
- - Dual tank bonuses for the Loki
- - Some power reductions to long range combat alongside the nullification subsystem
- - An increase in signature radius and mass
- Allowing rigs to be freely removed from Strategic Cruisers without destroying them

So way back in May of 2012 I wrote a post titled "Strategic Cruisers Are A Failure" in which I pointed out that the concept of Strategic Cruisers had failed:

The concept is simple: you can pick what role / bonuses / slot layout your ship has AND you can change it whenever you want. The first part is part of the reason the ships are so ubiquitous but the second part has pretty much failed miserably. Most of the time, you use a tool like EFT or Pyfa to determine what setup you want for your Strat Cruiser including the 5 subsystems you want, and then you buy that setup, put it together, and most likely never change it again.
If you want a Strategic Cruiser for a different role, e.g. a probing cloaky ship instead or your sanctum running missile spammer, you are more likely to simply buy an entire second ship rather than just the mods to switch your current ship. My hanger, for example, has three Strategic cruisers in it: one for PvE, one for cloaky probing, and one for pure gank PvP.
What is the reason for the failure of the ship class to live up to its potential? There are several:
1) Rigs. When you put three rigs on a ship, they are usually to compliment its main role or main method of tanking (or sometimes both). However, changing the subsystems of a strat cruiser can vastly change its role and/or optimal tanking method, most likely making the installed rigs sub-optimal or useless. Since you can't just remove rigs, only destroy them, it makes players committed to a single setup once the rigs are installed.
2) In Game, Setting Up Ships is Tedious. While some big improvements to fitting a ship in game have been made over the years, the fact of the matter is that it is downright tedious and intensive to explore ship setups and tweak it to how you want. There is no easy way to compare stats of two ship setups, removed mods are assembled so don't stack and litter up your hanger, your hanger modules are not in a nice tree to browse like they are in the market, and unless your hanger is well stocked or you are in a market hub sometimes you just don't have the modules or charges you need for a quick setup change.While out of game tools help a lot with some of these deficiencies, the fact of the matter is that its easier to setup a new ship with brand new purchased items than it is to swap out subsystems and modules of an existing setup unless you don't want to use that setup ever again.
3) Too Limited. Many of the scenarios where having the ability to change the capabilities of your current ship on the fly would be useful are the same scenarios where you do not have the ability of swapping subsystems and modules: deep in enemy space, wormholes, during a long roam, etc, any time you are far from your home base. Even if you have the subsystems and modules available, since you have to be docked at a station you still can't use a POS hanger or capital ship maintenance bay to to the switch anyways. So no jumping from Sleeper-farming PvE ship to hostile-fighting PvP ship in wormholes and no switching from forward-scouting recon ship to damage-dealing tackle ship during an offensive in null sec.
* * * * *
So what is the answer to make Strategic Cruisers live up to their full potential? Easy; address these three problems in some manner and you will go a long ways to getting there. Introduce a method for removing rigs (i.e. only in station and for a cost), introduce more ship-building-theory tools and module hanger organization tools into the game client, and allow swapping of subsystems outside of station environments.

 So what has changed in the 5 years since I posted that?

Well, in reverse order, citadels and mobile depots and even POS structures have been added/changed to allow Strategic Cruisers the ability to change sub systems so those inaccessible systems where swapping was impossible no longer exist. The ability to save fits and apply them with a click of a button have made changing ship setups trivial (and throw in multi-buy and multi-fit as important quality of life changes as well). And now as of this change posted in the dev blog, rigs can be removed without destroying them.

All three of my reasons of failure have been or are being addressed. We'll have to see if the ship class becomes more strategic with this rebalance.

Rewards Drive Activity

All games come down to a simple equation when game designers are trying to get players to do something:

Rewards Drive Activity.

In more words, if a game designer wants a player to engage in a particular activity they have to offer sufficient rewards to make the player want to do the activity. The main job of a game designers is primarily one of balancing rewards to encourage the desired activity.

The challenge comes from the fact that rewards can be divided into two very different classes: tangible and intangible. Tangible are very easy to understand and measure; they are explicit rewards given to players as part and parcel of the activity. In EVE, examples would be ISK bounties, Loyalty Points (LPs), standings increases, items... anything that can be objectively compared to other rewards regardless of the player receiving them. For example, if I do Activity A and get 300 LPs and another player gets 400 LPs, I can objectively say she was rewarded more than I was.

Intangible rewards, however, are more complicated and are almost always subjective. Doing an activity like mining that Player Charles enjoys because he likes the zen-like nature of being in space alone with the rocks could be considered very rewarding by him, while I find it mind-numbingly boring and thus the reward being far below the threshold that would make me consider doing it.

Enjoyment of an activity is only one example of an intangible reward. Others include prestige in being known for an activity, power over other people, the joy of trolling or griefing or helping other players, etc. The intangibles are as diverse as the playerbase and thus very hard to plan for.

Ok, so what's my point?

POS moon mining had a very tangible reward (moon goo) and an intangible reward that it required very little overall player participation over time to operate and generate income. Refinery moon mining has the same (or similar) tangible reward of moon goo but a very different intangible reward that it requires a team effort working together to generate the income.

This will appeal to different players as some like the solo POS Silo tending whereas others will enjoy organizing and participating in the group effort to mine the moon debris field. CCP weighed the intangibles and decided that making more players be involved and feel their reward was more important than the fewer players that currently are involved and feel their reward. And that's OK as long as CCP has planned for all of that, which I think they have.

The real question is if the latter approach is rewarding enough to drive enough players to that activity to maintain the current prices of Tech 2 modules and ships.

The End of Passive Aggressive Income

Yesterday CCP introduced the final of the trio of new Upwell structures that will replace Outposts and Player-Owned Starbases: Refineries.

Refineries will come in medium and large sizes with prices between that of Engineering Complexes and Citadels. Like the earlier Upwell Structures they will have docking and tethering ability as well as the whole suite of standard structure features like storage, fitting, insurance, repair and corp offices. They will be able to fit the same set of basic Standup modules as Citadels and Engineering Complexes. As we continue to add more features to the basic Upwell framework both before and after the release of Refineries they will gain those upgrades as well. The benefits of the larger sized Refinery will primarily come from increased defenses, more generalized rigs and increased docking capabilities, with all the core Refinery functionality available in both Medium and Large versions.
Refineries are intended to be the hub of resource collection and resource processing operations. At launch these operations will largely revolve around reprocessing ore, mining moons, and reacting advanced materials together to create composites. In the future we will continue to look for opportunities to tie more resource collection and processing functions to these structures. For instance, mining buffs and support roles provided by the structure are not out of the question over the medium-term, and we are interested in investigating the possibility of shifting the sov mining upgrade role from Infrastructure Hubs to Refineries eventually.

What's really interesting is the new mechanic that will replace current moon mining:

Here’s a walkthrough of the process currently planned for the new moon mining system:
1. A refinery that is deployed close enough to a moon can fit a special moon drilling service module. Fitting of this module will only be an option if no other drills are fit to other Refineries around the same moon, so only one structure can mine each moon at a time. This service module gives the owners the ability to designate how large of a fracking operation they wish to begin, with larger chunks taking longer time to prepare.
2. The moon drilling module begins blasting a chunk of the moon away from its surface and dragging it towards the structure. This process takes between one and several weeks depending on the choices made by the structure owner. Observers can watch the chunk move through space as a way of estimating when it will reach the Refinery.
3. Once the chunk of moon rock has completed its journey into space, the Refinery can use its drill module to detonate the chunk into a minable asteroid field. The exact time of the detonation is controlled by the owners of the Refinery within limits. If the chunk is left unattended long enough it will disintegrate into the asteroid field on its own.
4. The new asteroid field that appears with the explosion of the chunk will contain new types of valuable ores that will yield moon minerals when reprocessed. The composition of the field will depend on the composition of moon materials available in the moon. The field will generally remain far enough away from the Refinery structure that you won’t be able to effectively mine it from docking range but close enough for a pilot controlling the Refinery to be able to cover the friendly miners and/or attack uninvited guests.
5. Once the chunk has exploded, the drilling module can begin fracturing a new part of the moon to start the process again.
The time scale for this whole cycle will be controllable by the owners of the Refinery, within constraints. Longer cycle times will mean more ore generated in each explosion.

This is a fascinating and fundamental change. Let's call the POS moon extraction technique "moon mining" and the Refinery technique "moon fracking".

Moon mining can be an extremely lucrative activity for a corporation or alliance to engage in, but tends to be a) mostly passive and b) run by a small number of people in the organization. Once a POS is setup and the moon extracting modules running with the correct silos connected, the operation becomes one of moving extracted materials around, setting up reactions, transporting to market, and ensuring fuel levels of the tower are maintained. Overall, not a lot of people required.

Moon fracking, on the other hand, still has the setup of the Refinery and onlining of the module, but the actual resource gathering step will require a mining fleet in order to gather the extracted moon minerals from the newly formed asteroid field. Suddenly the operation has to leave the safe confines of a force field and venture out into space to get those valuable ores. Suddenly the process requires other people working together. Suddenly its possible to disrupt a moon mining operation without having to reinforce a tower.

This dramatic shift means that one of the pillars of a successful alliance / coalition, i.e. a dependable income stream that is difficult to disrupt without a large scale attack, is now more exposed to outside interference and requires more members of the organization working together to accomplish what a small number did before. This will make it easier to topple organizations from without (attacking the miners) and from within (low participation).

If I were in a large coalition right now, I'd be making plans on how to put the incentives in place to get pilots into these moon fracking cleanup fleets.

CCP Its Time - Structure Changes for the Overview

I really really like a lot of things about the new structures (i.e. Citadels and Engineering Complexes).

I feel that these items have opened up space customization and player housing in a way that Player Owned Stations and Outposts failed to do adequately. The latter came closer for sure, but the limitations (only certain null sec, only one per system) put them out of range of a large portion of the playerbase, and the former, while available to all areas of space, are just awkward to own, utilize, and share.

Upwell structures combine the best of both worlds: something you can dock in, live in, deploy anywhere (even more so than POSes), and easily share with anyone. They have quickly become ubiquitous across space giving small groups to massive alliances a place to call home.

However, there is a dark side to this propagation: Overview Glut.

Look at the image above. Prior to Citadels, there were two dockable celestials on my overview. Upwell structures appear on the overview if you have permission to dock at them OR you are on the same space grid with them. But in both cases they look on the same on the overview so you can get into the situation where two structures are on the overview and one you can dock at and one you can't and you need to look at the name and know which is which or you need to warp to each one and see what happens.

On top of that, even if every structure on the overview are ones you have access to, there is no easy way to distinguish at a glace or with a tab preset any of them of the same size in any manner except reading the names. For example, look again at the image above and find the Astrahus owned by my corporation Aideron Robotics. While its easy to distinguish the Azbel and Fortizar from the Raitaru and Astrahuses, one needs to scan every one of the former and know the name to find the Kirith's Grand Emproium Astrahus. And to complicate matters every structure automatically gets the system name pre-pended so you can't even scan the column's first letter/word easily. There has to be a better way.

I have several proposals.

1. Apply corporate standings tags to structures just like we do to pilots in the overview. This would quickly distinguish corporate structures from alliance structure from friendly structures from neutral and hostile ones. Yes, this does not mean you have access to docking at that structure but it would simply looking at a glance on the overview. And besides, someone blue on the overview doesn't mean that they won't shoot you either.

2. Indicate accessibility in a new column. Either a new overlay icon on the regular icon (like a tiny green check mark) or a new column (with check mark). This would be an optional column and could be placed anywhere is the column order.

3. Grey out structures not accessible when on grid with them. Yes, you can see them and everything, but some sort of indication that they are not accessible would simplify life immensely.

4. Provide option to see ALL structures in overview. Right now you jump into a system there is a second you see all structures before the ones you don't have access too and are not on grid get greyed out and removed from overview. It would be nice for scouting purposes (and home defense) to be able to bring them up.

CCP its time - make the overview great again!

Putting the Faction Back Into Faction Warfare

Last month I wrote a piece detailing how citadels are negatively impacting the warzone in a post called Game of (Citadel) Thrones:

All of this means that if an attacking force gets a Citadel to stage from, all the home field advantages of the defending force are lost: the attackers have the same ease in restocking and reshipping for participating in the attrition warfare. Worse: the attackers have the luxury of making multiple pushes over any period of time that they can muster pilots and fleets for, while the defenders only need to slip up once to find themselves on the cusp of losing their home station.

At that time I declined to offer suggestion as to how to address the emerging issue but last week I made time for an interview on my podcast with Scylus Black of Templis CALSF alliance, part of the Caldari Militia, who is running for CSM and I wanted to help out. During that interview I asked him ideas for addressing the impact Citadels are having on Faction Warfare and he wisely deferred promising to consult with the Faction Warfare community if elected for ideas.

But I'm not running for CSM so I can be an armchair developer. So let's get to work.

The Problem 

To reiterate, the issue is that citadels circumvent the main faction warfare mechanic that provides a benefit to owning a system, namely the station lockout of the opposing militia. This removes the defender's advantage in a system assault where the attackers anchor a citadel and de-incentivizes assaulting a system where the defender is living out of a citadel stronghold.

My Proposed Solution

I went over in my head many different options but ultimately there seemed to be shortcuts to circumvent all of them by using neutral dummy corporations to own the structures instead of militia. There seemed to be no subtle way to address this issue, and I'm a big fan of subtle solutions. But I'm not opposed to bringing out the sledgehammer when required and I feel this is one of those times.

So I propose we extend the station lockout mechanic that currently applies to NPC Stations in faction warfare systems to anchored structures in said systems.

What this means is that if your militia does not own the system, you cannot dock at a station or citadel or engineering complex (or in the future, drilling platforms). Yes, not even structures that your corporation/alliance owns. Yes, this is a huge deal, but it returns to the forefront the concept that owning a system in faction warfare *means* something tangible AND important. It means that losing a system is a significant blow to your militia if you have assets there. Yes, you could drop militia to become neutrals and get access to assets but that is not a trivial step to take and you cannot do other militia related activities while in that state. Its a non-fatal pain in the ass and its what made faction warfare system assaults/defenses feel so important to the pilots involved.

HOWEVER, there is a downside to this approach! Militias still need a way to operate even in a limited capability in a system owned by the enemy and by locking out all structure we once against will see attackers forced to use Player Owned Stations as forward operating bases to stage out of, but we know CCP's long term plan is to get rid of these archaic bug laden boondoggles.

So the second part of my proposal is a new special citadel class structure which I dub Astrakamp that has the offensive and defensive capabilities of a Raitaru engineering complex (maybe less) and can be bought from the militia loyalty point stores and, most importantly, is exempt from the station lockout mechanic like current structures are now.

Militias could use it as a forward operation base in lieu of a POS without having the durability of a full blown Astrahus citadel. This special structure can be fine tuned for balance between attacker and defender without seriously impacting other parts of EVE because while other non-militia entities could choose to use it as well but really why bother when you can get a full-blown Astrahus instead?

With these two changes you make ownership of a system in faction warfare important again without pushing the use of POS mechanics as forward operating bases, and introduce a balance lever specific for faction warfare, i.e. adjusting the properties of the Astrakamp to find the right balance between system offense and system defense.

Am I Good Or What?

Back in 2010 I wrote a post on the back of some MMOs like Dungeons and Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online going "Free to Play" speculating on how EVE might make the jump as well. 

Wild Speculation Time
So if I was an evil soulless marketing demon in charge of turning Eve Online into Eve Online Unlimited (with new and improved space lazors!) and I had the tools listed above available to me, this is how I would do it.
1) Remove subscription fee. People will think they have more money to spend on the game and end up spending more. Plus you bring in hordes of new people eager to try the game out.
2) Give the skills for Tech 1 frigates and weapons away for free, but they still need to train them. This is the free to play basic and allows people to potentially go anywhere and participate in the end game without spending a dime.
3) Take all other skills off the NPC market. Move them to a item shop where they must be purchased in micro-transaction style with "CCPoints". Rank level 1 skills are cheap (e.g. 50 cents), middle skills like battleships around a couple dollars, and the capital skills up to $10. So a character in order to get Tech 1 battleship with tech 1 weapons can do so in about $30-40 dollars (about 3 months of playing time in subscription model) but to get to tech 2 levels requires a lot more money. Training time remain to "gate development".
4) Also in item ship are purchasable skill points (1 million for $20), limited ships that can't be built like the Alliance prizes at premium prices to keep them special (e.g. Freki for $50), decorative items like please yachts, unique anchorable "starbases", special hanger environments, etc etc etc. Some stuff useful in war, others just ornaments.
5) You could even go so far as having alliance level purchases by allowing players to pool CCPoints and buy different station models for outposts, stargate skins to denote borders, etc. Obviously very expensive and no help in alliance warfare. E-peen items on a group scale because its easy to get a few hundred players to throw in a couple bucks each... time and time again.

Then today, there is a dev blog titled "INTRODUCING CLONE STATES AND THE FUTURE OF ACCESS TO EVE ONLINE" in which CCP outlined their plan for moving to a free to play model:

When we launch later this year there will be two clone states available:
- The Alpha Clone State is the new base state for all clones and it will be available to any character in New Eden at any time. Clones in the Alpha state will be able to train and use a specific set of skills including tech one Frigates, Destroyers and Cruisers for your faction along with essential weapons and modules. Alphas will also train skills at a reduced rate compared to Omegas.

- The Omega Clone State is obtained by augmenting basic clones using neural expanders and cerebral acceleration technology, granting unlimited skill access. Omega clone state will behave exactly as your subscribed characters do now. 

Your clone state will be determined by your account status. Characters on subscribed or PLEXed accounts will be granted Omega state, while Alpha state will be given to characters on any unsubscribed account.

So while my idea is not quite exactly what CCP has proposed, it has the same idea: allow people to play for free with a limited set of skills and items, and they have to pay to get access to the more advanced stuff.

The big question is whether or not the game is ready to welcome new players trying it out for free with open arms or loaded guns....

Optimal Range

EVE circa 2006

One day long ago some developer deep in the bowels of Fortress CCP decided that the minimum distance an object could be that one could choose to warp to was 150 km, the reasoning of which has been lost to the sands of time. (Note: Minimum warp distance is 50km as you can choose to warp to 100km to an object 150 km away.)

We don't know the exact reasoning for this selection but we do know the outcome. When I started back in 2006 Sniping Battleships, especially Megathrons, dominated a lot of the large fleet warfare because their optimal range was in the sweet spot of ~160 km: close enough to do considerable damage but far away enough to make getting tackled or bubbled difficult. Remember, this was the age of Next-To-Impossible probing so unless you had things in the right position to begin with, or the enemy was unlucky/bad, catching the sniping battleship fleet was a challenge. The big tanks (especially in the age of Arear of Effect titan doomsdays) and long range damage projection were more useful than the low mobility.

Things changed.

Probing mechanics changes which made probing out an enemy fleet on grid within seconds instead of minutes a reality, so suddenly a sniping fleet stood the risk of getting bubbles within 10 seconds, forcing them to move close under that magic 150 km number in order to prevent the on grid warp of enemy interceptors and interdictors. They also had to avoid getting too close to prevent a fast tackle from crossing the distance quickly, but at the same time had to avoid getting too close to 150 km or else the threat of the enemy burning away and warping back became a possibility.

While the low mobility of battleships was starting to hurt, the advantage of the big tank to survive an AoE doomsday or two evaporated as the weapons were changed to single target lances instead of grid sized smart bombs. The meta quickly adapted to advanced cruisers and cheaper battlecruisers and sniper battleship fleets became a footnote in history for the most part.

Fast forward years to now and once again the game is radically changing.

Grid sizes have grown by an order of magnitude, micro jump drives and jump field generators are changing the mobility of the fleet around the grid, Citadels and new capital designs promise to expand the combat area across hundreds of kilometers.

That 150 km range used to represent "pretty far away" in old EVE, a universal constant that allowed the stitching together of the extremes of the grid of the day. Now its barely a hop skip and jump of the grid now. The question has been raised on twitter and in the CSM if the distance still makes sense or if the developers should look into making it larger.

I think there are some definite advantages to increasing the distance to 250 km or farther. I realize that it could lead to an increase in a sniping meta but at the same time I think it increases the utility of micro jump drives and the larger ships that use them, as well as carving out a larger space for the new carriers to operate not with impunity but rather with some room to operate and make use of those new weapons and abilities.

CCP, its time to try out larger minimum warp to distances. Perhaps expanding it can create a niche for the old battleship to shine again.

The Small Gang and Solo Meta

Celebrity PvPer Suitonia has a blog over at https://suitonia.wordpress.com and has been posting occasionally over the past year on serious internet spaceships topics like how powerful Off Grid Boosters are (tldr: stupidly so) and why the Svipul and Confessor Tech II Tactical destroyers are overpowered compared to the Jackdaw and Hecate.

Today they posted a piece titled "The Top 5 Most Oppressive Things In The Solo/Small Gang Meta Right Now" which are, in order:

1. The Svipul
2. Rapid Light Missile Launchers
3. The Orthrus
4. Remote Sensor Boosters (aka "Insta-locking")
5. Links

I strongly suggest you read that post (and other posts on that blog) as the 5 things they listed are things I have noticed as problems in our area of space as well. Shadow Cartel and Sniggwaffe Svipul fleets are virtually unengagable by anything other than another T3 dessie fleet (too tough for regular destroyers, too fast for cruisers), and Rapid Light Missile Caracals are fracking annoying as hell with their range and damage. We don't see many Orthrus ships in my fleets, but insta-locking Svipul gate camps are stupid.

I asked on twitter if on-grid links was still as troubling and they responded:

I don't think On-Grid links are the final solution to Links, but they would certainly be an improvement, especially to lowsec
At least you would be able to separate ships from links by going to different celestials, and they would be actually risked.

I definitely feel off grid links are overpowered and need to be removed, but I'm unsure on grid links are still going to be a problem as there are a lot more options for dealing with ships on the grid than there are hidden off grid far from the fighting. Although, on second thought, the large grid sizes we have now could allow linking from afar to still be annoyingly powerful and relatively safe. We'll see once off-grid boosts are killed.

That Tactical Destroyer rebalancing can't come soon enough!

UPDATE: On twitter CCP Fozzie clarified my pondering on grid sizes and links:

@kirithkodachi @Suitonia "Defined range aoe links" is probably a better term than "On-grid links". They won't have unlimited range on grid.

This is a great response because it gives us some insight into how they plan to tackle the issue, as well as opens some speculation on other things they can do with links, such as versions with different ranges, scripting to increase link effect at expensive of range (or vice versa), possible E-war affecting links, falloff, etc.

Tech III Destroyers and the Current Combat Ship Meta

On the latest High Drag podcast Random and Fintarue got into a discussion about Tech III Tactical Destroyers and how the meta of combat ships is a little broken right now. I'm going to dive into a small investigation of the current "small" combat ship meta and discuss how things can be changed.

Definitions

The ships we are going to be looking at are combat ships that are cruiser sized or smaller which are: Tech 1 combat frigates, navy frigates, pirate frigates, Tech II assault frigates, Tech 1 destroyers, Tech III Tactical destroyers, Tech 1 combat and attack cruisers, navy cruisers, faction cruisers, Tech II assault cruisers, and Tech III Strategic cruisers.

We are not looking at specialized ships at these hull sizes such as attack frigates, interceptors, interdictors, etc as they have roles away from purely offensive damage and defensive. Attack cruisers we will consider as they are less differentiated compared to combat cruisers and have some role overlap with the other vessels we are looking at.

There are four main factors to consider for combat ships: offensive, defensive, maneuverability, and cost. 

Offensive covers not only raw DPS, but factors such as alpha, range, lock speed, tracking, neutralizers, auxiliary ewar like jams and tracking disruptors, and tackle modules.

Defensive covers local tank, whether it be active or passive or speed, and takes into consideration the ship's signature.

Maneuverability also considers speed but also agility and warp speed.

Cost simply refers to the ISK price to replace the ship and its modules when destroyed.

Status

I roughly evaluated the ship classes on a scale from 1 to 10, one being the worst and 10 being the best (for Cost, worst is highest cost). I threw the values into a chart:

And then made a graph (you guys love graphs I hear):

Now its a little skewed because I classed all the cruiser sized ships as maneuverability 1 because I'm not super familiar with the differences between a Vexor, Vexor Navy Issue, and Vigilant, and Proteus for example, but the glaring sore point on the graph is that for the high maneuverable ships, Tech III destroyers stand head and shoulders above the others and the cost differential between them does not make up the difference. And as noted elsewhere in podcasts and blogs, Assault ships, which had a niche as a hard hitting but costly alternative to Tech I and Navy frigates, are completely squeezed out by a ship that hits harder, has more tank, had equal or better maneuverability, for a slightly higher price tag. And I can even see why the Tactical destroyers can be preferable to some cruiser alternatives... has anyone seen Ruptures since the Svipul came out?

Conclusion

Sad to say, Tech III destroyers need a balancing pass, but as Random and Fintarue said, Assault ship definitely need some love as well to distinguish them from destroyer alternatives. 

Tomorrow we'll talk about ideas for the struggling assault ships.

Goodbye Fleet Warp, I Hardly Knew Ye

Last week on the o7 show it was announced that some major changes are coming to fleet warp mechanics:

As announced on the o7 show we are making some changes to fleet warp. Fleet Commanders, Wing Commanders & Squad Commanders will no longer be able to warp to anything a fleet member couldn’t warp to on their own. This includes –
- Probe Results
- Bookmarks
- Any private deadspace item (missions, etc.)
Commanders will still be able to warp their fleet to other fleet members, and all other ‘public’ objects.
The goal of these changes is to encourage more individual fleet member participation and reduce the speed at which fleets can get on top of targets (e.g bombers).

This will have an immediate obvious impact on how fleets operate in the short term, and a less obvious impact on fleet dynamics as a whole in the long term.

First, the short term. As a small gang Fleet commander in low sec, I admit I don't make very much use of fleet warp mechanics for no reason other than with a small group of pilots I work with on a consistent basis, I don't need to worry that people don't warp to where I specify. To assist with the smooth operation of the fleet, I try to give clear and concise instructions multiple times to avoid any mistakes.

But other FCs may operate differently, either out of personal choice or necessity. A large fleet with lots of newer players or inexperienced PvP Pilots can use fleet warps to ensure pilots don't warp in at the wrong range or to the wrong celestial or bookmark. These changes will make the herding of cats more hazardous and fraught with mistakes. Even if a person only makes a mistake 1 out of 100 times, a fleet of 200 pilots is going to have 2 pilots going off the reservation every time.

Another advantage of fleet warping was that it made all the ships in the warp travel at the same warp speed of the slowest ship class in the warp. With that gone, its another factor to play into sending your fleet at a target where you must be concerned parts of your fleet do not arrive too much sooner than others.

However, let's look at the long term implications of this change.

The death of the Sniper Battleship fleet really started with the "New Probing Mechanics" of Apocrypha. Prior to that, getting a warp in on a target enemy took far longer and a lot more skill. After Apocrypha, getting warp ins on enemies took merely seconds meaning often battleships were still locking and aligning when the other fleet landed on top of them. This forced engagement ranges shorter than 150 km to avoid on grid warps as much as possible but this in turn allowed smaller and more mobile ships the ability to fight at range. The battleship simply became too big and too slow to compete.

But now? An FC can no longer both probe and fleet warp the ships onto the enemy in one smooth motion. At the very least, the person doing the fleet warp has to put himself in harms way to warp to the probed target and then wait while the fleet warps to him. More likely you will have two pilots, one doing the probing and another leading the fleet. Plus the mistakes that can occur when ordering the fleet to warp the prober at the right range and angle.

Does this mean the return of the sniper battleship fleet doctrine? I don't think so, mainly because there have been a lot of changes over the years that impact that class of ships and simply giving them a reprieve from insta-probing fleets landing on them does not address all of them. But its interesting to watch the outcome nonetheless as the big Null Sec doctrine masters apply their trade.

Overall, I see why CCP is making this change, its part of a pattern of taking control from centralized actors and moving it to individuals so that the emergent gameplay is not dictated as much by a handful of people. Drone Assist, fleet warps, and soon I am willing to bet off grid linking.. its all part of a design to give player skill and training more of a factor in a group's overall success.

Away From Keyboard Gameplay

One of the thoughts to come out of the discussions about Faction Warfare plex farmers and  warp core stabilizers discussions that I want to explore further is Away from Keyboard (aka AFK) gameplay.

EVE Online is chock full of passive activities or partially passive activities that require limited player involvement, from mining to manufacturing to plex running. Some of it can be considered true AFK gameplay, others simply passive gameplay.

For the purposes of this post, AFK gameplay is defined as an activity where the pilot is required to be in game and engaged in the activity but the player is only partially engaged and could be doing other activities either on the computer but in different applications, or away from the computer entirely and only checking in occasionally.

This definition embraces activity as varied as autopilot movement through high sec (set destination, hit autopilot, come back hours later), asteroid / ice mining (checking in every few minutes to move ore / ice to hauler), mission running / ratting where a pilot warps in and launches drones, sitting cloaked in a system, etc. And of course, it includes faction warfare defensive plexers who only half pay attention to their ship orbiting the button.

In all these examples, the in game pilot is required to do something (even if its sit there and keep the ship running in the case of an afk cloaker) but the player is free to do anything else out of game. In some cases the player could stay at the keyboard and make the task run more efficiently (e.g. warping gate to gate and not relying on autopilot, or actively running a mission instead of letting drones do the work) but there is common property that runs through AFK gameplay: often the task is repetitive and boring and the player would happily do something else out of game rather than be stuck in game. In some cases, like afk cloaking, there is virtually nothing to be done.

So we need to ask a few questions: is this gameplay beneficial or at least non-harmful to EVE? And secondly, what can be done about it?

Is AFK Gameplay Harmful?

To be blunt, yes. In every single instance, you want players when they are logged in and doing an activity to be engaged in what they are doing and invested in paying attention. Having gameplay boring enough that players would rather do something else, in some cases sacrificing reward, is bad design.

Is There Anything CCP Can Do About It?

This is where things get more convoluted. In some cases it makes sense to change mechanics to make the gameplay engaging and requiring the player to WANT to be involved in it, but at the same time you don't want to make the gameplay frustrating or needlessly repetitive which may drive players away. If you go too far the other way, make it less boring by taking less time, you possibly skew the entire balance of the mechanic. For example, market differences drive a portion of the economy and if mass transportation of goods is allowed to discourage people from afk autopilot hauling, you could destroy a market trader career.

Other things could be easily addressed with a mechanics addition or change and not disrupt any vital economic or balance issues, like AFK cloaking, but beg the question if addressing the gameplay is worth the backlash of the players who utilize it.

A more current events example is faction warfare plexing (ignoring the whole warp core stab thing) where a defensive plexer is potentially faced with 10-20 minutes of button orbiting that may or may not get interupted by a hostile that the player then runs from. If we make the effort more intensive than simply orbit, e.g. require shooting at a rat or using an entosis link or some hacking minigame, than the fallout of that could be players stop defensive plexing and move on to other non-addressed AFK gameplay, perhaps depleting faction warfare of some pilots, and thus possibly fewer pilots in space. Depending on your point of view, this might be a GOOD thing (fewer pilots in low sec that avoid fights means less time hunting runners and more time finding fighters) or it might be a bad thing (less deplexing means home systems more vulnerable to attack means possibly less stability and investment in militia low sec HQ systems which possibly means less fighting pilots living in low sec). ALTERNATIVELY, you could make deplexing less time consuming thus being less attractive to going AFK while doing it, but then you run the chance of the risk-vs-reward dynamic becoming to tilted to reward and flooding the market and destroying the LP conversion rates... and so on and so forth.

In other words, since many things are interconnected, sometimes quite strongly, CCP can't simply go from one AFK gameplay mechanic to another and change them to make them less attractive to AFK gameplay, even in some cases where we strongly would like to remove boring gameplay (and let me tell you, orbiting a button is boring).

This is all not to say that CCP should never try and fix things. Don't be ludicrous! All I'm saying is that addressing them needs to be done carefully and with an eye to the knock on effects.

For now, we're faced with a number of AFK gameplay mechanics.

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?

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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.

At Long Last - Overview Moderization

One of my pet peeves with the EVE UI has been the overview icons. I first brought it up in October of 2010 when I suggested a more refined ship icon classification system:

Then a few short months later in March of 2011 it seemed as if CCP was listening to me and we saw these icons on SISI for a short build:

Imagine my excitement! But alas, it did not remain and soon we were back to the horrible squares.

After three and a half years of waiting I got back on my soapbox and pleaded with CCP to do something with the overview:

I took to twitter to pester some devs and got this reply from CCP Arrow:

So there was hope! And at long last, CCP Arrow delivered in a Dev blog yesterday title UI Modernization - Icon Strategy:

Fellow capsuleers,
EVE developers have been quite busy in the past few weeks working on gameplay features, which is good because that‘s what they are supposed to do! But concurrently, various members of these teams have also been working on a cross-disciplinary project called EVE UI Modernization.
Our latest efforts in this project is to deliver on a promise we identified as one of the principles of the EVE UI: a holistic icon strategy where we make all things in EVE that have a uniquely defined role, function or purpose have their own distinctive icon. This plan needs to be taken in steps because it covers pretty much everything in our client, from item icons to UI icons and will take time to fulfill. The long term goal is that in the foreseeable future we will no longer see the same item icon for two different modules or other things. For now however, we are starting with UI icons only and the first thing we want to tackle is icons displayed in the Overview and in-space environment.

What I was hoping for was a simply a rework of the ship icons to convey more information to a pilot at a glance. What CCP Arrow and his compatriots delivered was a conprehensive overhaul of how things appear in space. For example:

To say I was floored as well as extremely happy would be an understatement. I have some minor concerns about the ship icons and how easy it will be to distinguish them on the overview when all is said and done, but I like the direction and the desired outcome. 

I look forward to seeing it in game. Good work CCP Arrow!