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Balancing: Leading up to Dominion.
Alright, so pre-Dominion for the large part, there were a lot of problems, Carriers were ~okay~ but still sucked a bit, Dreads had a role that was so niche that they were a little pointless, ‘motherships’ really didn’t have a role, and Titans were making subcap fleets pointless literally everywhere because of their constant AoE doomsdays.
Balance was needed, majorly. Before Dominion was even conceived, Carriers and Dreads had already had their hit points multiplied by 5 to the levels we see today. That was the first in a series of changes. Before that change, they had so little EHP that if you managed to break its tank, the target would die very quickly.
Even towards the end of the pre-Dominion era, there were still no real ‘pantheon’ Carrier fleets, there simply wasn’t the need to be able to tank such high damage.
The real balance change of the Dominion expansion was changing the role of Titans, and giving a new role to ‘motherships’ (which would be renamed to SuperCarriers with the release of the Dominion expansion).
CCP had recognized that once again players had outgrown and surpassed their expectations and built more Titans than was viable for grid-wide AoE doomsday devices to exist in balanced gameplay. Hence the Doomsdays we see today. The new targeted doomsday would boost Titans, being able to kill capitals at will, but also boost sub-capital combat – removing the ever looming threat of a Titan being dropped on you and ruining everyone’s fun.
SuperCarriers were to be changed too, taking on the capital killing role and providing a new level of escalation and risk in capital combat alongside Titans. So here’s the important part: In order for a Titan to kill a capital using a doomsday device it needed to do massive damage, whilst still being tankable if you fitted for it. As we all know, it wound up being 3 million HP in a single shot. It also meant that Titans and SuperCarriers needed to have their EHP buffed significantly so they wouldn’t be running around murdering each other in 1v1s at top belt and such.
Along with this, the Dominion sovereignty system was introduced and was entirely hitpoint based, with the intention that Dreads would take the primary role in sov warfare whilst being supplemented by sub-capital support.
History: Dominion Changes Released.
Targeted Doomsday – I’m going to start with this, because it’s super relevant, and a lot of people probably don’t realise why. The damage done by a doomsday wasn’t picked from the air! As I mentioned in my previous section, it was selected so that a capital COULD tank it if fitted to do so. It also dictated the EHP that Titans and Supers would need as ‘capital killers’ to survive on the battlefield without killing each other hilariously easily.
CCP has traditionally stayed away from AoE damage (and other stuff) in lowsec (examples of this are bombs, and the old AoE DD, and warp inhibition bubbles). However, with the new target-based doomsday, this was no longer an issue, and Titans being able to doomsday in lowsec was now on the cards. If you were wondering why that change happened with Phoebe’s release in 2014 – now you know! Also, doomsdays could be fired at any ship, regardless of size.
Supercap EHP – Believe it or not, on the initial release of the Dominion expansion made no changes to SuperCarriers. This was due at least in part to a bug with fighter bombers causing them to hit perfectly regardless of a target’s size and velocity that was discovered on the test server just prior to release (the same bug existed with Shadow fighter bombers when Incursions came out, but only briefly).
This meant that Titans had been boosted, and Supers had not, and I remember seeing a killmail with some poor guy in a Wyvern dying to two Titans in a single volley … and yes he was fitted, it’s just the way killmails were back then! That didn’t last long and within 2 weeks SuperCarriers also got their changes.
Titan Guns – For the first time since the release of Titans, it was now worth fitting capital guns to Titans. Depending on the hull, Titans would receive a 100% bonus (or 125% in the case of the Leviathan and the Ragnarok at the time – note: the Leviathan was changed recently following the re-balancing of capital missile based weapons). This meant that Titans could effectively do Siege Dread level damage, without having the tracking penalties of the siege module.
Carriers – The Triage Module’s duration was reduced by 50% (to 5 minutes) to make it less of a suicide button. You didn’t want to jump in and be stuck for 10 minutes. This was pretty much the beginning of the triage meta.
Dreads – No real changes to Dreads, still stuck with a 10 minute siege timer at this point. Siege module also still gives a massive tracking penalty to guns, and severe explosion velocity and radius penalties to missiles. Dreads are pretty much still only able to shoot other Dreads, Supers and structures at this point in time.
Meta & Mechanics: Dominion – CCP Edition.
CCP’s intended role for super capital vessels was to be ‘capital killers’ they wouldn’t be huge in number, but would be highly effective at massacring Dreads and Carriers when used as a final chain in fleet escalation. With the possibility to also use them offensively against sov structures.
The bottom line was simple, they were meant to be aggressors. With the number of Supers and Titans in the game at that point, this was a very viable role for Supers to take, and comparatively exciting for pilots like myself. At this point, I was becoming bored of EVE and I thought I’d reached endgame. Suddenly the possibility of being able to jump in and destroy people’s hard earned capitals using a single massive ship rolled around and I was hooked again.
Meta & Mechanics: Dominion – SpaceNerd Edition.
Blap Titans – Naturally, EVE nerds did what EVE nerds do. We broke stuff. The likes of Raiden. and NCdot. fitted their Titans for maximum tracking. They’d sit 8-10 of them on the edge of a POS forcefield and fight the CFC of the day. The subcap fleet would follow primaries, Titans would sort by transversal and completely decimate Drakes and Maelstroms a volley at a time. As one of the Titan pilots I have to say it was pretty broken. There are some videos around, probably one of the most well known is this:
Here’s some other examples of blap Titans in action!
Sov Staple Vs Capital Killer – Due to the massive resistances and EHP supercapitals were now capable of reaching, SuperCarriers now effectively became EWAR immune pantheon Carriers. Because of their raw EHP, it effectively meant that they could not be ‘alpha’d’ and therefore their tank became infinite, the only restriction being the N+1 number of people you could get to fly them.
It became obvious very quickly that not only were supercapitals a viable offensive tactic, but they could also be used to defend the new sovereignty structures with tremendous effect. The desire to have the biggest N+1 blob further encouraged the formation of massive coalitions (N3, CFC being the primary two based off of supercapital mechanics). Once these coalitions began to take their modern form, huge numbers of capitals became the meta for taking and defending their space, and so SuperCarriers were produced in mass quantity.
Other coalitions such as the DRF disbanded after the fall of the old Northern Coalition (Not NCdot – there was a coalition of a similar name that occupied the northern part of the nullsec map). The reason being that they arguably never considered the CFC to be a threat. Its members saw no need for such a huge coalition to exist, effectively – they stepped out of the supercapital arms race.
The result being for the remaining intact coalitions; that thousands of supercapitals were built for defending and taking sovereignty, rather than for killing other capitals. This in turn created a problem, because there were once more too many ships in game for them to fulfill their original intended role.
With the later suggestion of Aegis sovereignty mechanics, it is the owners of those very supercapitals that now needed a new purpose for their ships. As opposed to those like myself, who have always used supercapitals for the purpose CCP intended them for (killing other capitals). This is not to say that what the coalitions did was wrong, because in EVE – it doesn’t matter if something is intended or not, it only matters that it is effective.
The WreckingBall – This was a fleet doctrine employed by N3 coalition. The primary issue with jumping Titans to a single cynosural field was bumping out of repair range on jump-in. The solution to this was simple – use ‘Slowcat’ Carriers to form a ~40km diameter sphere, then jump Titans into the middle of it. Any bouncing Titans would simply hit the Carriers and come to a stop, thus preventing excessive bumps and keeping everything in RR ranges. It effectively allowed the coalition to maximize the use of the N+1 tanking ability of Slowcats and SuperCarriers, whilst safely managing Titans to headshot enemy Dreads off the field.
The tactic was only used a few times, and was only countered by the bloodbath of B-R, a fight which proved to be immensely not fun for most parties involved. This was likely the tipping point for CCP to bring capital balancing to the forefront of their developmental efforts, and also likely the reason that the jump changes of Phoebe were released so far in advance of other changes (Aegis Sov, new capital roles etc). As a supercapital pilot, some of those changes were hard to swallow, but the reasoning behind them is sound. To counter a fleet doctrine like that, you have to have a game-breaking non-fun number of people, and that’s just wrong.
Balancing: Dominion
During the time after the Dominion expansion, several changes were made to capitals as minor tweaks to make them work better with the Dominion mechanics.
The Blap Titan Nerf – As I pointed out previously, blap Titans were pretty broken. Hitting pretty much anything bigger than a cruiser without a need for tackle was horribly broken. CCP responded to this in several ways; by reducing maximum locked targets to 3 on all Titan hulls, and placing a hard signature radius-based penalty on the damage achievable by the Titan’s weapons on smaller ships (with the exception of the Leviathan). Scan resolution was nerfed significantly, and capital weapon tracking was also heavily nerfed across all capital weapon systems.
So that Dreadnaughts weren’t also penalized by this change, CCP removed the tracking penalties from siege modules in order to minimize any negative effect the tracking penalties to capital turrets may have had. Along with this, the timers on siege modules were reduced from 10 minutes to 5. This effectively allowed blap Dreads to replace blap Titans. This was a much more balanced mechanic, Dreads could not receive remote assistance whilst in siege, and therefore could be countered with capacitor warfare. In essence, the nerfs to capital tracking meant that targets needed to be tackled for Dreads to ‘blap’ them, and also that the ships doing the blapping were actually killable. The Moros also lost its unique drone bay with this change.
Lowsec DD – Since the removal of the AoE DD, the question was raised relatively quickly regarding the use of the new doomsday in lowsec. It came about with the Phoebe expansion (whilst still running under Dominion sov mechanics remember), and since then Titans have been able to use their super-weapons in lowsec. This immediately resulted in a lot of station-gaming Carriers getting hazed over the following months.
Subcapital Doomsday – The Titan’s superweapon was also useable on sub-capital ships, much to the disgust of DHB WildCat – who used to do a lot of solo roaming in relatively shiny ships. Eventually he, and many others got sick of the ‘Titan dangling a cyno maller on a string’ tactic… and stopped roaming in bling fitted ships – which was indeed a shame. There’s probably some youtube footage of it still around, including someone trying to doomsday Garmon’s Mimir in HED-GP. This of course was horribly broken, and was removed.
Super DPS and Damage Application Balancing – The initial planned numbers from the latest test server build for Dominion release was that most SuperCarriers would put out 10k DPS (12.5k for a max skilled Nyx). Remember this was before the existence of drone buffing modules such as DDAs. By the time the changes to SuperCarriers (about 2 weeks after the Dominion expansion), the numbers had been changed to 10k for a Nyx, and 8k for all other Supers. This was simply due to the fact that the DPS scaling was a little broken, Supers were simply doing too much damage to Dreads. It’s also worth remembering that at the point in time where this change was made, siege modules still had a 10 minute duration.
For a fair while after fighter bombers were released, they were a little broken. If you put dual webs and painters on a target, you’d hit anything battlecruiser sized and above for full damage. That was eventually changed so that it’s pretty impractical to shoot any subcap with fighter bombers, even when tackled became a waste of time.
Subcapital drone removal, New Drone modules, Drone skills – A fair while after the release of Dominion, the decision was taken to remove conventional sub-capital level drones from supercapitals. Leaving them with only fighters, and fighter bombers. Many considered this to be a nerf, especially in lowsec – given the popularity of ECM drones to fend off enemy HICs, and light drones for chasing around annoying frigates. This was the first step along the line to making supercapitals what they are today.
Later, CCP introduced drone modules – Drone Damage Amplifiers, Omnidirectional Tracking Computers and Enhancers, Drone Navigation Computers etc. To compensate for this, CCP had to reduce the base damage of SuperCarriers. This was done so that 2x Faction DDAs would result in you having slightly more DPS than before. The balance of course being that you’d have to use two low-slots to do that, sacrificing capacitor power relays, I-stabs or tank mods to increase your DPS. It also however allowed SuperCarrier pilots to do MORE DPS than pre-patch if they fitted for it. This ultimately made the way you fit your ship important.
Along with the new modules came another important change; fighters and fighter bombers had not previously been affected by drone skills such as drone interfacing, drone durability and such. CCP elected to change that, improving the performance of fighters with skills such as ‘Drone Sharpshooting (drone tracking). This significantly increased a SuperCarrier’s ability to deal with sub-capitals, arguably to an even higher level than they had been able to in the days of them being able to use conventional sub-capital sized drones.
As ever, this alone would have resulted in imbalance. And so, CCP halved the number of fighters/bombers SuperCarriers needed to launch to field a ‘full flight’ doubling the build cost of fighter-bombers at the same time. This resulted that a full flight of Fighters/Bombers would have roughly the same total EHP post patch, as they did previously, despite them being half in number. This halving in the number of drones on field was also aimed at reducing lag, which would become a serious issue if 100 SuperCarriers launched 20 fighters each. This change was also significant for another reason; CCP rebalanced the drone bay, which previously did not allow SuperCarriers (other than the Nyx and Hel) to carry full flights of both fighters and bombers. Many pilots, including myself considered this to be a very subtle boost to their gameplay.
Assigned Fighters: SkyNet – It didn’t take the EVE community long to figure out that you could fit up a Carrier for full damage and tracking and assign the fighters to another ship in system whilst sitting virtually risk free at the edge of a POS. The random occurrence of this was generally tolerated, though as it became more widespread it became more of an issue.
Some of the most hilariously broken results could be had by using SuperCarriers as SkyNet assigning platforms – and you could even assign those fighters to a Carrier; which of course could be full tank fit. One pilot in particular pushed this to a new level. It turns out that if you fully damage/tracking fit a Revenant, and assign all 10 of its fighters to a Carrier… your Carrier would do approaching 8,000 DPS… and was capable of single volleying Ishtars… Naturally, fighter assign was removed – though mainly for its pervasive use in faction warfare areas – much to the disgust to some who had used and abused the mechanic for so long.
Power Projection, and Mobility – Pre-Phoebe was the days of Sniggerdly’s ‘Mr Blue’ [Twisted Girl] dancing around lowsec along with the like of Corvin Banik dropping their Nyx on everything in sight. No matter where they were in EVE, they had midpoints to PL staging – it was like everywhere was next door. With their escapades, along with the rest of the alliance, PL ended up spending 1.1 Trillion ISK on isotopes alone in 2013.
I’m going to skim over this somewhat, it’s fairly well known that the ability to move such heavy firepower across the map so quickly was broken. Though if I’m honest B-R was almost an excuse; yes – change needed to happen, but B-R wasn’t really the cause of it – though it was arguably the nail in the coffin for the longevity of pre-Phoebe jump mechanics.
Really, the problem was that there was that there was no limit. Not only could you jump Supers over distance, you could also get super/capital backup pretty much anywhere quickly, which ultimately negated any hint of the local capital superiority we see now.
Part 3 to be published tomorrow.
