I recently read “ARCHONS ONLINE: THE DEATH OF THE SUBCAPITAL” written by DaBigRedBoat and was surprised on the number of points that I actually agreed on. Most important is the issue of capital proliferation and at the root of that issue is the fact that the isk faucet flows too strongly and the sinkhole is too small. For the coalitions, even losing a titan is more damaging to image than it is to the wallet. “Already been replaced” is no joke as the major alliances have such a large abundance in isk. Too much is being produced and not enough is being destroyed. Let us consider some ways to address this issue before diving deep into Dabigredboat’s opinions on the Archon itself.
A phrase uttered by James Carville as a campaign strategist of Bill Clinton. That is by far the largest issue. Everyone worth note from as far up as the Mittani as a coalition leader, to myself as a lowly low sec resident has stated that there NEEDS to be a bottom up way that corporations, alliances and coalitions make their money. The top down model relies on factors such as passive moon income, cartels, renting, and almost always ensures that any time any of those factors becomes threatened, Eve Online turns to Tidi Online. And while I love Tidi as a great innovation (you post tidi players are spoiled, really) it is only a temporary solution. Even if cramming 10,000 people in a system would not be an issue, the problem exists in the form that wealth comes from the top down and that ensures that the huge grand battles hold monopoly over the effect of small gang warfare.
God I hate small gang warfare… said no pvper in the history of Eve ever! I’ve had my share of pvp experience, both large coalition nullsec fights but also the small and medium sized groups where specialty roles that I prefer flying really shines. While everybody loves being part of the huge battles, its relevance needs to be curtailed a bit so that small gang warfare likewise has its place. The huge battles require hundreds of people to agree to log on at a certain hour, put a certain amount of time in organizing everything, then you are required to stay for the long hours under TiDi and so on and so forth. That whole scenario can be, and is a lot of the time fun. You get yourself pumped up, trade dirty jokes with your teammates, share questionable links that would jeopardize your relationship and just over all enjoy the atmosphere.
The problem arises when you do this time and time again. People get burned out and people end up even unsubbing. Eve becomes an unpleasant job. Let’s be serious here, who ACTUALLY enjoys sitting in 10% Tidi, waiting for your guns to cycle and hitting F1 for five hours again and again and again?
The question is, why do people agree to do this? The answer is much more obvious than you may think. People enjoy being part of battles that MATTER. They make a DIFFERENCE in the Eve universe and you get a sense of ACCOMPLISHMENT. If people JUST wanted to pvp for the sake of blowing ships up, you can join RvB and plenty of people do. But the attraction of Eve is the whole “Butterfly Effect” and “Causality” stuff we saw in the older trailers. So the question remains, how do we get players involved in battles that matter without it always having to be some 5 hour commitment riddled with Tidi?
Before I go on I want to apologize that I’m about to use some references to history and/or military tactics. There’s always one guy that accuses me of using “big words” like “the” and “maybe” and even antiquated nomenclature such as, but not limited to “perhaps”, in order to “seem smart on the internet”. To set the record straight I want to let everyone know that I am in no way more intelligent or qualified at anything than that individual or any other individuals that may be persuaded to anger by video game articles posted on an online video game news paper. Moving on…
Right now small gang is hard to come by. It does happen, and it’s fun, and it can be quite effective in certain scenarios, but at the end of the day how much does it matter? If you ask me, not enough. Less experienced students of military history often fall victim to paying attention to the big set piece battles while ignoring the innumerable skirmishes that predated the event. I can give no better example than the East Roman Empire (ERE), often incorrectly referred to as “Byzantine” due to Hieronymus Wolf, a well intentioned but misguided humanist that popularized the term. At a time when most if not all other nations from France to Persia to China, relied on a small core elite of nobility to cat herd their peasants into battle formations in between harvesting seasons, the ERE fielded a professional standing army complete with university educated officers and a war chest that dwarfed any would be rivals.
Even though the numerous political infighting that at times broke into civil war, the East Roman army was often able to hold the border against countless opponents from the Rus, to the Arabs, various Germanic and Turkic tribes assailing the large territory from both east and west. Any real historian would consider the ERE as the natural progression of the Romans starting from its days as a Republic and would count its years from around 509 BC, until at least 1453 AD. Even without the variety of offspring the Romans left behind, we can say that this civilization, entity, whatever you will, had existed for over two thousand years in an unbroken line of succession. Not even the Chinese (though they try…so hard) can claim this. Some other people who like to call themselves historians and prefer the term “Byzantine” prefer to divide the ERE into a whole other Empire. In case we have some of those people in the audience too stubborn to see past their mistake, we can count the “Byzantine Empire’s” years from the 300s (AD). Even so that gives this entity over a thousand year reign.
Point being, and I’ll get us out of the rabbit hole here, these guys knew what the hell they were doing for better or for worse. And what they knew to do best military wise is skirmish. The Arabs would form up a “major blob” and try to take some town in Anatolia. The ERE would send numerous smaller raiding parties to the now defenseless Arab holdings and burn their fields. Come next season, the Arabs are now short on supplies. Now they have to put off the big siege for another year.
Right now in Eve we have “the siege” part where you pile all your numbers and resources into one system and if the server holds we have a tidifest and someone wins. These battles are slow, they’re based on a timer and rely completely on a very one dimensional way of doing war.
What we don’t have in Eve is the “burning the fields” aspect. We have the siphons yes, we can beat on a poco or two and hope nobody brings a blob to stop that, but there is no spontaneous “burn the field” mechanic in Eve which is why small gang doesn’t matter very much.
Remember reading about how we need replace the top to bottom income format we have now with one that is bottom to up? This goes hand in hand with making small gang relevant. Eve players should be able to form up a five or ten man gang, go into the enemy sov and “burn their field.” I imagine an Eve where before you have the major climactic battle over a single system, you have days of small gangs skirmishing with one another, striking the other’s income source in frigs and cruisers and that success or failure affecting the outcome of the major battle finale. I imagine a front that isn’t limited to one system, but that spreads over several adjacent systems and deeper. Eve shouldn’t be JUST about how many people you can pile into a single system, it should also be about small gangs outwitting one another, the thrust and feign, the duel of the squadrons. I don’t think there’s a single pvper out there that would disagree.
But how do we implement this? CCP needs to add factors that contribute to the “farm and fields” concept. The siphon unit is a great first step and it should be one of many structures in Eve that can be destroyed without a reinforce timer. I wrote an article before Christmas that spoke about a “peasant” which can be understood as a mining structure that can be attacked and destroyed without an RF timer. We need more things that the players uses to attain wealth at the low level which goes up to the alliance. And these things need to be attacked and defended by small groups of players as opposed to this and that R64 moon that requires a full dread fleet with capital presence. Get all that squared away and I promise your product will be better off CCP.
Oh hi Mr.Boat. May I call you Bigred? We’ve never met before but I hear you’re quite the eccentric fellow. I’m sure you’ve never heard of little old me so I hope you don’t mind my playful jab. I sincerely mean what I say in the nicest way possible and it’s all coming from a good place. Please please don’t send those frightful trolls to muck up my comment section! They cause me such terrible fright, I know not how i’ll sleep the nights!
Seriously though I read your article and I expect my N3 readers will really want me to hammer you hard on this, talk about how “Goons are shit, they blob” etc. Truth of the matter is, you’re a content maker, one of the butterflies in Eve that’s flapping its wings and causing hurricanes. If one person starts yelling, than the other side starts yelling and no sort of mutual understanding exists. At the end of the day we may hold our own opinions but we still want a functioning enjoyable game. The fact that you do what you do in Eve means you care. We wrote our articles and that means we care. The fact that our readers read our words and commented means they care. So why can’t everyone take their “CFC or their “N3” hat off and consider things objectively. The portion I wrote above was for all of us as Eve players and the portion I am about to write is likewise for us all. I don’t have a horse in the race, I’ve had good experiences with GSF guys as well as GENTS and RZR. I’ve had my share of interactions with PL, NCdot and Nulli as well. Let’s begin with the root of all knowledge, the question. I can admit my ignorance on some levels and I think that’s a good attribute I carry.
Your major claim seems to be that the “Archon can do everything” and you back up this argument by referring to its roles as a Logi Ship, Damage Dealer and Support. Just because you can fit a warp disruptor or a target painter on an Archon, does not make it that sort of “support ship” anymore than me fitting an armor repper on a Typhoon makes it a logi. It’s faulty reasoning plain and simple. Concerning it being a Logi ship, well of course. That’s what carriers are made for. How can you even take that away? That’s like complaining about a Rapier for its web bonuses.
The major complaint really boils down to the damage capability. 300 Archons can insta pop sub cap off the field. Well of course. 300 of anything can do a lot of damage. I can get 6,000 Alpha with my bomber comfortably. What’s that times 300? Even if we remove drone assist, do you think it’s that hard to have people lock up the name at the top of the list and pull the trigger? Is that going to allow enough time for your sub cap fleet to catch reps and not die? No, no it’s not.
There’s nothing wrong with the Archon’s attributes. Take its drones away? Difficult to believe a carrier wouldn’t have drones. Nerf its EHP? Why? It’s comparable to a dread. You can’t take any of those things away without turning it into an over priced coffin. It fills a niche role.
You put this link in your article as proof of how over powered the Archon is.
“In the same fight, over 1200 sub-capital ships failed to kill anything other than a few disconnected capitals while taking heavy losses. Before the dreadnaughts entered the battle with titans following shortly after, no capitals died.”
Are you sure? I counted at least 4 PL Archons alone nevermind a few other carriers.
Archon KIllmail
Archon Killmail
Archon Killmail
Archon Killmail
You see an over powered mechanic in the game. You see something happening a way you don’t want it to happen and that’s inherently unfair. I don’t mean to be harsh but that’s a gross presentation of entitlement and a self centered nature. And this mentality has been presented before in the past concerning other aspects of the game. Whenever the GSF has hit a wall on the battlefield, there’s always a cry to CCP to change :something: from titan tracking that was only brought up when Raiden held the north, to supercaps, or whatever else the GSF is having issue with.
You know what I see from the killboard link above you used? A side that’s willing to risk 40 + titans and even more super carriers and carriers, and a side that won’t escalate beyond Domis. A side that values quality and a side that focuses on quantity. My question is why?
I think the major issue stems from the GSF military doctrine mentality. Lock, Alpha, Cycle Target. Dabigredboat, you present this beautifully with your almost exclusive attention to alpha strike damage. And what does the GSF do? You try to mimic N3’s Archons with a ship that’s cheaper and does everything worse than the Archon
Dominix Killmail
So your answer to the Archon, is a worse Archon. Your answer to beating N3 is “how can we do the same thing but cheaper and more of it?” And because you can’t do that, the reasoning you console yourself with is that the game must be broken. Does this seem reasonable? You can’t rely on numbers to win every war for you and you need to get ahead of the curve with your doctrines. There’s more ways to win battles than alpha-ing your way through the battle with superior numbers. And you have talented people that should be allowed to develop better methods than complaining about it on a coalition information dissemination site.
The last three major conflicts the GSF was part of, in no particular order were the wars in Tribute, Fountain and against -A- and its allies. When the then HBC lead by TEST invaded the south west and Catch with PL, the CFC was called in to help. -A-‘s territory was taken and they almost ceased to exist. In Tribute, the CFC used out dated doctrines and were held off for months by a combination of Black Legion, NCdot and Nulli Secunda while Solar assaulted the region from the east. “Because of falcon” occurred and the little alliance split off. No one expected such a small group to stand up to the CFC and “not winning fast enough” although often mocked, was presented front and center throughout the conflict. NCdot and Nulli felt so bad about losing, that they evicted the Russians out of the Drone Regions and built a rival coalition to the CFC. With losses like that who needs victories?
Lastly, the Fountain conflict is often held up as a sign that once again the CFC has defeated the “pubbie scrub lords of BoB” but let’s look at the facts. TEST’s leadership changed right before the conflict and their survival rested solely on on N3’s willingness to commit. They didn’t, they were awful allies but then again TEST wasn’t in a very stable position to sacrifice much for either.Is this time different? Perhaps. It is at least different enough that the CFC will have to do something more creative than what had been done in the previous conflicts. Things had been looking badly for the CFC for much of the war, but thankfully for them, EMP and TEST has provided the token victories needed to churn up the morale.
The GSF has played this game beautifully and it’s an absolute pleasure in my early time in Eve going through the history and seeing how the expansion happened. The CFC is by far the most well run coalition with unrivaled logistics and a level of dedication to intelligence and diplomacy that would be the envy of many real world governments. Unfortunately they’ve hit a point where everyone in 0.0 is forced to either be for the CFC or N3. It’s the Cold war except with spaceships and someone turned up the heat. Just about every entity in 0.0 has either been co-opted into the CFC or has been alienated. There is a definite need to escalate now, something the CFC refuses to do. Why?
Where’s the boots and where’s your accountant?
Almost a year ago, on February 16th, 2013, the Mittani announced on his website that everyone’s getting a carrier. Whatever happened to “A boot in every hanger!” Remember that? CFC has existed for far longer than N3 as a coalition. They hold some of the richest territory in Eve and plenty of high end moons. They have an infrastructure the N3 lacks and probably will lack for quite some time. Yet there’s this aversion to risk even a fraction of what N3 risks on the field. If N3 can put 300 Archons on the field, why can’t CFC put 300? What possible reason is there for that? Is it a money issue? Do we tinfoil hat about RMT? Is it an SP issue? It’s been almost a year.
Actually is there any reason the CFC doesn’t bypass Archons all together by dropping supers and titans? You know how many titans it takes to alpha an Archon? Just one…just one. Put the supers on the field with projected ECM and jam everything. DD carriers as fast as you can recharge, use your superior numbers in sub caps to mop up the rest. Why isn’t this being done?
So you see Mr. Boat, the issue isn’t so much the Archon itself. Perhaps we can make them a bit more expensive. But that won’t really make much of a difference. At the end of the day the issue is the CFC’s refusal to escalate and relying on poor doctrine choices. You guys have all the tools needed to deal with Archons and enough talent to go around. I’d rather we use CCP’s time and resources to implement some of the “farms and fields” concepts rather than nerfing whatever FOTM doctrine the CFC is having trouble with.
Please stop the complaining, it’s lame.
– Seraph IX Basarab
