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Proposed Changes: Citadel.
Doomsdays Vs Superweapons –The Doomsdays of old will be laid to rest, interestingly – doomsdays will now take on more of a tactical role (other than the tactic of volleying Dreads off the field heh). This will allow for much more interesting and emergent gameplay to occur around supercapitals, both on the side of the capital pilot, and it’s opponents. Rather than explain each one in detail, I’m going to be lazy and link the dev blog: [LINK](I don’t see much point in rewriting or re-wording it, though I’ll delve more into this when I discuss numbers and balancing – and my visions for the future of capitals given what has already been announced.)
Removal of Remote Reps from Carriers/Supers (N+1 Issue) – The N+1 issue, as discussed previously, is the concept that given a ship of extreme EHP (Titans, Supers, to some degree Carriers), it cannot be killed if you have enough people remote repairing it – essentially, you have an infinite tank, only limited by the number of people you can get in fleet. The concept really has no particular definitive ‘weak link’ to break. The weak link effectively is the strength of a Force Auxiliary’s tank whilst in triage. This is explored in further detail in my balancing notes later on.
Removal or Instant Refitting – Another contributor to the N+1 problem, the ability to immediately refit depending on the situation has produces emergent gameplay, but with so many capitals now in EVE, the spider tanking archon blob is effectively being neutered.
That being said, the proposed changes state that you would not be able to refit with a weapons timer (60 seconds). Which I don’t think is as bad as some people seem to think. I’ve noticed a lot of wormhole people crying about not being able to refit their Dreads in wormhole escalation sites – but you don’t get a weapons timer by shooting NPCs, which is really a non-issue.
This change simply means that you have to stop shooting stuff (or stop repping something that’s shooting stuff if you’re in a logi role) for 60 seconds before you can refit. On the flip side, it may be worth considering removing this restriction for Force Auxiliaries – without the N+1 tank, it’s likely that the capital battlefield will become much more fast-paced as a result.
Force Auxiliary – TL;DR – Triage 2016 edition. Very little information has been released thus far about Force Auxiliary ships that sets them apart from current triage Carriers; which leaves us free to speculate, and for focus groups to push their ideas onto the playing field, my section on balancing in the following section covers many of the issues and concerns associated with their role in the new capital battlefield.
Interaction with new structures – Though this is balancing report has a focus on capital ships, the interaction with structures can’t be ignored. It has been stated that when reinforcing a Citadel, regardless of size, it should take about thirty minutes. At this point, we know that after you hit the ‘DPS ceiling’ any further DPS you attempt to apply won’t actually make the grind go any faster. This means that as an initial DPS fleet, you won’t be having your entire fleet on the grid in all likelihood, unless you’re already in a fight on the grid. (Ex: If the DPS ceiling is 30,000 DPS, and you already have three Dreads on the field, there’s no point in sending any more.) This will be discussed as a form of tactical gameplay in the balancing section on this topic.
Balancing: Citadel, talking numbers.
DPS Scaling: The Doomsday DPS Cap. – For this, it will be my first brush with the subject of DPS scaling on the capital battlefield. The Titans and SuperCarriers of Dominion were designed to be capital killers, but ultimately, their niche role was damage dealing. For a long time, with very few exceptions, Titans have been lacking a role – their DPS doesn’t really apply as well as SuperCarriers do when in combat, they have much less versatility when it comes to sub-capitals, and they can’t viably remote assist each other.
In essence, Titans were (are) a bit useless next to their SuperCarrier counterparts, in addition to being more risky to field for a variety of reasons (bumping out of rep range, them bumping other ships on jump-in, their greater value over SuperCarriers etc). As a supercapital FC, fielding Titans is pretty much a huge liability, and incredibly annoying to have to account for.
So, why not boost Titans so that they do more DPS than Dreads? Otherwise, why not just simply field a Dread?
Well, Titans can do Dreadnaught level DPS, and can be remote assisted, and they’re not likely to get alpha’d by enemy doomsdays (unless you forget to pay your sov bill, and uncle Laz comes to visit). So that argument is pretty much a no-brainer. So, how do you make fielding Titans more appealing than fielding Dreads, given their other drawbacks?
The obvious answer is to boost their DPS to make them more effective on the battlefield. But that too has its own problems. Let’s assume a fleet fit Moros does 12k DPS, and assume that as a benchmark. Using the DPS argument, Titans would have to do significantly more, let’s say 20k from their guns alone. Excellent, they’re now more worth fielding than SuperCarriers!
Here’s the problem: a Titan’s doomsday does 3 million damage with a 10 minute cycle, that’s 5,000 DPS. It also comes with a lot of risks, 30 seconds of being stuck, then another 9.5 minutes of being unable to jump/cloak. Why would you risk firing a doomsday, if you can do 20,000 DPS with your turrets, and do the same amount of damage in 2.5 minutes? You wouldn’t… firing the DD would be stupid… and you can’t up the DD’s damage because then you break its own balancing vs. normal capital ships… and you can’t make capitals more tanky to avoid that, because then you break the capital/sub-capital balance.
Throughout my theorycrafting for capital balancing, I’ve come to term this as the ‘Doomsday DPS cap’. It has been a major problem that I had for a long time been unable to solve. At this point, you may be able to see where I’m going with this… If the Doomsday is no longer a Doomsday… and it’s a Super-Weapon, used not really for DPS, but as a tactical weapon… it removes one hugely significant limiting factor for DPS scaling among capital ships.
At which point, the concern with DPS scaling will now be balanced around the tanking and remote assistance abilities of Force Auxiliary class ships. So for example, if Titans were to have their DPS boosted, you would also probably want to strengthen Force Auxiliary ship’s tanks balance it – possibly by giving the triage module some form of bastion-like resistance buff effect.
Force Auxiliaries Numbers and Balancing Ideas – With the removal of remote repair modules from all currently existing capital ships, the N+1 tank becomes a moot point. The tanking ability of capital ships, as CCP Larrikin has pointed out, comes down to the amount of DPS a Force Auxiliary can tank whilst in triage.
If, for example, you have 5 Force Auxiliaries in fleet – the ones out of triage can be repaired by the ones in triage, so their tank is effectively dependant on how many ‘triage green’ Force Auxiliaries you have. Therefore the logical solution is to primary the ones in triage – and unlike with the N+1 issue of the current mechanics, they’ll actually be killable. That said, how strong they are (or not) is going to play a huge part in the scalability of capital and supercapital fights (and weapon balancing) in the future. (Ex: If a Force Auxiliary can be easily killed by a SuperCarrier with DPS alone (no neut pressure), then they’re going to get destroyed extremely quickly in even small scale capital fights unless they’re given much stronger tanks than current triage Carriers have).
Based on this, I would propose modifying the triage module to be more like the current bastion module, therefore increasing the ship’s local resistances when in triage, whilst not providing any advantage when the ship is able to be remote assisted (i.e. when out of triage). The tank increase from a resistance buff also provides more ‘wiggle room’ for ‘small scale’ capital fights to involve slightly more pilots. Numbers wise, I’d like to see a Force Auxiliary able to tank in the region of 50,000 DPS (max deadspace fit tank) provided it’s not under neut pressure.
That being said, so that the ship is still killable by sub-capital ships – it should be just as susceptible to capacitor warfare as current Carriers are. The idea being, you can either kill a Force Auxiliary with capital DPS, but if you want to kill it with sub-capitals, you should probably bring some geddons/bhaals or something. It’s also worth pointing out that sub-capitals should potentially be able to tackle a solo Force Auxiliary indefinitely due to its minimal defenses. It’s also worth considering making the triage module use cap, not much; maybe 3k/cycle… this would allow sub-capital fleet to neut the Force Auxiliary to bring it out of triage, dropping its resistances and tank and making it as easy to kill as a current regular Carrier. [NOTE: Capital cap boosters may break this, more thinking required – need to find something to make Force Aux vulnerable to sub-caps – Eveline Vos / #Tweetfleet Slack]
Regardless of what is decided upon, I’m of the firm belief that Force Auxiliary ships should be able to handle a lot of punishment in triage, whilst still being killable without having to have capital level DPS on field given the right circumstances.
High Angle-Velocity Weapons
At this point, the numbers we’ve been given are as follows:
Before we put on our tinfoil hats (I can see you nerds in wormholes wearing them already… please take them off) let’s think about what happens if they have too much, or too little DPS. Well, if they have too little DPS, the obvious problem is that nobody is going to use them. But also that turret based capitals would be completely non-compatible on a mixed capital-sub-capital battlefield, similarly in a way to what we have now, with Carriers and Supers being fielded in abundance in comparison to Titans. On the flip side of it – doing too much DPS will result in the return of the old ‘blap Titans’, which while hilarious if you’re a Titan pilot – is no good for the game at all.
When looking for balance with these DPS numbers, we have to take into account multiple factors. Firstly, we don’t want the old blap Titans back, but also – we don’t want these high-angle velocity guns doing enough DPS to be effective against capitals – that’s what the normal capital guns are for (though this can be made more flexible by for example upping the raw DPS tanking ability on Force Auxiliaries if needed I guess). Even so, there needs to be enough of a DPS difference between the two types of capital weapon for people to want to use each one for their intended scenario.
That being said, I would support the DPS being proportionally different for Dreads and Titans. Titans have fleet hangars, potentially allowing them the option to refit. Dreads cannot do this so well and would likely be stuck using their chosen gun for the duration of a fight. On balance however, Titans can’t dock so easily to change out their fits. Even so, I think bringing the DPS of high-angle vs conventional capital guns closer together on Dreads than on Titans wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.
Now we’ve considered these factors, we must also consider applied DPS – yes – a Dread with high-angle guns and the proposed numbers will only do 2k DPS, but it will be able to hit at capital-turret range (40-50km ish). So whilst an overloaded polarized Vindicator may do the same DPS, it’s not going to be blapping stuff at 50km.
Finally, let’s consider the scale of capital combat these ships are likely to be used in. 2k DPS on a Dread doesn’t seem like a lot, neither does 4k from a Titan. But, if you have 20 of them, being shot is really going to suck, especially with Titans, which will not be sieged and still be able to receive remote assistance. I’d say a Dread doing 3-4k would be perfectly reasonable, but the inevitable scale that the players of EVE would undoubtedly use them in would make them broken, and would also render sub-capital combat a little pointless.
For that reason, I quite frankly could not support DPS numbers for high-angle weapons exceeding 3k for max DPS Dreads, and 5-5.5k for max DPS Titans (3 damage mods). Even that may be a little much, and in honesty I’m not sure any more than the Dev Team’s current proposed numbers would result in a good balance.
SuperCarrier & Titan General DPS (excluding superweapons):
There’s been much debate over the years about how to bring Titans to the battlefields of EVE. Varied suggestions include reducing cost significantly, or making them harder to kill (Dominion). We’re now at a stage where a new approach has come along; giving them a new role.
Primarily however, Titans and SuperCarriers will remain in DPS roles, now with extra EWAR abilities. This balancing segment refers to the DPS of Titans and Supers with 3x Damage mods fit, and assumed capital weaponry is being used (FiBos and capital guns).
Starting with Titans – they’re about to lose a reasonable amount of DPS off their damage that can be applied to capitals (i.e. the doomsday device being changed). It would be nice to be able to give this DPS back to Titans, and maybe a little extra in the form of DPS buffs. Currently, a Leviathan will pump out 13k DPS with its launchers, and 5k with the DD – putting its total damage at 18,000 DPS. This isn’t really much more than a fully damage fitted Nyx. I’d propose bumping this up to the 20k area, with slight variation between the racial types. (example: blasters > Citadel torps > autocannons > lasers – in this order because of range/tracking/DPS application). This will give Titans a decent bump over Dreads.
This effectively, with the possible exception of the Revenant (since the DDA nerf is now doing ~22k DPS) would make them the highest DPS dealing ship class in the game. On balance, I’d propose some form of penalty – for example extended weapon timers for Titans. Possibly to two minutes, or maybe even more. This would mean that whilst full damage fit and dealing 20,000 DPS – if they start to be primaried it will be 2 minutes before they can refit to full tank.
SuperCarriers, however, remain far more flexible than Titans, simply being able to pull a FiBo squadron and launch a flight of Fighters, rather than having to de-aggress (dropping their weapons timer) in order to refit high-angle weapons to deal with subcaps. I don’t particularly think that SuperCarriers need a DPS buff however; their current damage output is about right – plus they have the ability to use their new EWAR abilities in addition to utility high-slots for neuts and smartbombs etc.
It is worth considering that any and all DPS changes must be balanced with the numbers and statistics on the Force Auxiliary logistics capitals, and the effect that will have on interactions with and fights over new structures.
Titan Damage Based Superweapons: DPS & Damage Application
Pike – As a reminder; the Pike class doomsday is a weapon fired in a straight line and does not move. It will fire a continuous beam that inflicts constant damage to anything in its path over the course of 10 seconds in the form of damage pulses. When fired, this weapon will neutralize capacitor in any ships in its immediate vicinity.
So what do we need to look at when balancing something like this? Well, the width of the beam for a start, the damage it is capable of and how well that damage is applied. It has already been stated that this device is intended for use against sub-capital sized ships. We’ve also had it clarified that damage application will be based on the signature radius of the target.
So let’s talk numbers. My thoughts on this have changed several times since I first applied myself to the task – but here goes nonetheless.
I’m thinking somewhere in the ballpark of 125k damage (12.5k per second), where full damage is applied to a ship with a signature radius of 700m or more. This would mean that you wouldn’t hit a battleship for full damage, even less so if it has skirmish links. You would however still apply decent damage, though likely not enough to kill a tanked fleet battleship. You would however do enough damage to kill one if it was MWDing or attempting to MJD (though if it was MJDing it’s not likely going to take the full 10 seconds of damage). Battleships are less mobile, so it’s a little unfair for the ‘death ray’ doomsday to be instantly fatal to them, it should however be nasty enough so that it’s definitely something you want to avoid being hit by.
On smaller ships, this encourages AB tanks rather than MWDs, you would easily kill a MWDing cruiser hull for example, this is balanced because they’re faster, and you’re a lot less likely as a Titan pilot to be able to hit a MWDing cruiser that’s noticed you’re about to murder him. On frigates, again you’d hit them with enough damage to kill them if they’re MWD fit – and you’d have to be pretty lucky to hit them provided they’re not burning straight at you like crazy morons.
With respect to capital ships, the 125k damage caused by this superweapon will hit them perfectly, though 125k damage isn’t really a big deal to a capital ship – which is pretty close to what CCP would be looking for when thinking about superweapons designed to shoot sub-capitals.
Regarding the warm-up timer, I’d say probably about 10-15 seconds, which allows people to see the spool-up, react to it and try to get out of dodge. Any shorter and the majority of pilots are going to get hazed simply because they would have to react so quickly.
As for the beam’s width… 6-12km depending on your level of superweapon skill? This would mean that it’s about as wide as the front of a Titan, is also a wide enough area so that you don’t have to be a special forces level marksman to hit stuff at 200km, but is also narrow enough to allow people caught in the middle of it to get out of dodge if they’re paying attention.
Sickle – Short recap on the sickle: A beam that slices through space dealing damage to all ships in its path. Will also be subject to signature radius based damage application, will have a short warm-up timer to allow people to get out of the way. When fired, this weapon will neutralize capacitor in any ships in its immediate vicinity.
This weapon has several important differences from the Pike that we must consider when looking at its possible numbers. The obvious one is that it moves, so unlike the pike, any damage it’s going to do to your ship will be in a single hit, rather than over a 10 second period. The fact that it’s moving means that it’s also going to be much harder to aim and hit targets, plus – if you’re using this weapon, the chances are your targets are going to be moving, too! (otherwise you’d probably use the Pike weapon instead).
For this one, I’d propose that the weapon is more lethal to ships, but has a much narrower beam. Let’s say a maximum of 3-5km in width. The idea would be to create a weapon that wouldn’t likely hit many ships in the target fleet, but those it does hit would be destroyed, or at least seriously damaged.
Despite this, I do think that this weapon should not be able to kill anything smaller than a cruiser, which means any small tackle you’re using is still going to be safe from the sickle doomsday. Even if you hit the target, it shouldn’t be an immediate I-Win multi-tool that works against every target.
I would propose damage application numbers that allow the sickle DD to potentially kill T2 cruisers and above (that aren’t max tanked, or have specifically high resistances to the type of Sickle DD fired at them – Example: Firing a Leviathan’s Sickle DD vs. Ishtars w/ high kinetic resists). I’d also like to see battleships destroyed by this kind of weapon. So damage is going to have to be up to 150k, whilst doing maximum around 90k to ships with signature radii around 200-250m. If you did 150k damage to anything with a sig radius of 275m or higher, you would hit a standard AHAC for 87k damage – normally enough to kill a T2 cruiser (Ishtars normally have 80-90k EHP).
Essentially, this weapon would be more deadly, but easier to evade and more difficult to aim.
Cap Overload – Quick reminder: The Cap-Overload superweapon is to be a targeted doomsday fired at a single ship. It will deal damage based on the target’s current capacitor capacity. The more capacitor it has, the more damage you’ll do to the target, with splash damage affecting ships that are close to it. Unlike the other new super-weapons however, the AoE effect is described as a ‘Smartbomb’ implying that signature radius will not factor in the damage application of this weapon.
An interesting weapon; clearly designed to be fired at capital ships to damage them (but not massively), and prevent their support from being too close to them without risking taking a large amount of damage. Ultimately a tactical weapon to stop people grouping up on their capital backup.
For this, as it’s dependant on cap, we’re effectively looking at applying damage per unit of capacitor. I’d propose a ratio of 1:1.5 (so a Carrier with full cap would emit a blast of 90k damage within a 10km radius). This would still result in the weapon being primarily used as a tactical weapon, rather than something to kill entire fleets.
Essentially, you’d be using it as a deterrent, forcing a sub-capital fleet for example to keep its distance from both friendly and enemy capital ships. Which is also a good point – you could effectively use cap-overload on a friendly vessel being swarmed by enemy sub-capitals. It would be pretty funny to MWD a fully semiconductor’d friendly Archon (cap capacity) into an enemy blob and fire the cap-overload DD at it though…
The Current DD – Something most people seem to have forgotten – the current DD is staying, but reportedly having its damage drastically reduced. So, to what degree? Well, if Supers are getting a HP balance, the DD needs to be balanced too… otherwise it’ll become even more effective as an alpha-DPS weapon than before… which I’d imagine is something CCP would be keen to avoid.
Despite that, whilst people are still able to use downtime as a method of escaping and moving capitals safely, the need to alpha supercapital ships with doomsdays as a matter of balancing still exists. We’ve already been told that supercapital ships are having their HP nerfed substantially, and I would propose balancing the current DD alongside that. So for example – if max EHP on an Avatar w/ links etc is currently 45mil, and it’s only 30mil after the patch, then you’d nerf a max skilled DD’s damage from 3mil HP down to 2mil. Seems like a pretty simple way of balancing it.
In terms of their effectiveness against non-supercapitals, I’d guess that CCP’s intention would be so that you’re still going to be able to kill a Carrier, or a Dread if they’re not fitted for tank – but I would strongly advise against being able to volley a Force Auxiliary whilst it’s in triage (i.e. possibly having a resistance bonus to boost its EHP as described earlier).
The ‘Hand of God’ weapon & its effect on fleet maneuvers – Quick recap: A bubble-like effect fired from a Titan into space that produces a spatial anomaly that effectively teleports ships within its zone of influence to a random spot in system. Effectively allowing a Titan to ‘swat away’ a subcap fleet.
The main things we’re looking at here is the diameter of the so-called ‘bubble’. You’d want it to be big enough so that it would move an entire fleet, rather than just a few ships here and there… and with the size of modern fleets, I’d say probably a 15km radius would be about right.
The effects of having this kind of weapon ingame are quite interesting. When we consider fleet-based PVP for example, normally logistics ships will fly in a separate group… and you don’t want either your fleet teleported without logistics, or your logistics being teleported without your fleet ships (TL;DR – Having your fleet split is the worst thing that can happen). The obvious solution is to have the ships fly in a single group, rather than in two separate groups. In the majority of cases, the current meta of keeping your logistics separate was generally to keep them out of harm’s way as best as possible, whilst still being able to provide repairs to the fleet. This makes logistics ships more vulnerable, and killable – arguably mirroring what is occurring with Force Auxiliaries replacing Slowcats. Ultimately, this is about spacing, encouraging subcaps to fly closer together, and keep their distance from capitals. With new super-weapons designed to murder sub-capitals that choose to fly in close knit groups, it means that whilst flying close together would generally be an advantage, you would need to be paying attention and disperse quickly in the event someone fires a Sickle or a Pike DD effect in your general direction
Capital Interaction with Structures – With the release of new structures into the game and the new capital role being centred around them, it would be exceedingly unwise to ignore them when balancing capital mechanics and weaponry.
The primary mechanic I want to discuss in this section revolves around the DPS ceiling, which means beyond a certain point when shooting a Citadel, your weapons will do no more damage. In essence, regardless of your DPS, you’ll require at least 30 minutes of time on grid to reinforce one of the new structures. The DPS ceiling will vary by the Citadel’s size (if I recall, it was 30k DPS for a large).
Now, the DPS ceiling needs to be high enough to encourage the use of capitals, whilst not making it completely non-viable for sub-capitals to complete the same task. The question was asked of me several days ago: ‘If the DPS ceiling on an XL Citadel was 50k DPS, why would I send Supers over Dreadnaughts?’ … Well, you wouldn’t. You’d send 4-5 Dreads. The point is here that Supers will no longer be the ‘go-to’ ship class for any one particular task.
“ Look at this from the other side’s perspective. 5 Dreads jump in and start shooting your structure, you man the structure and use it’s bouncing DD to kill a Dread, and damage another – a Carrier on field lights a cyno and two more Dreads jump in and continue the siege. Your Citadel will be in RF before you kill all of them. You decide to send in SuperCarriers at range along with a small tackle team to hold the targets down. The Supers launch their bomber squadrons and send them straight towards the Dreads – whom know they’re going to die quickly. A subcap fleet bridges in through the enemy Carrier’s cyno and starts firing at the bomber squadron, you counter with your own subcap fleet, and a Titan, firing a ‘Hand of God’ superweapon at the Carrier with the cyno up. The enemy subcaps are forced to either disperse or get teleported off grid, leaving your bomber squadrons to kill their capitals. “
This scenario is just one very small scale example of the new range of mechanics and tactics opened up to us by the proposed changes. Structures will act as a catalyst for this kind of fight, capitals being used as the baseline for DPS, sub-capitals for support and the major part of the fight, and supercapitals for escalation, huge damage and tactical EWAR.
Think of a Citadel as a player built arena, where you invite other people to ‘come at you’ alongside all the benefits it gives you in terms of being a market hub, docking your capitals/Supers etc.
Part 5 to be published tomorrow.
