[ZGG] A Capital Debate: Introduction
A Capital Debate: Introduction
Kirith Kodachi has, on his blog, posted the first in a series on what he thinks the future of capital ships is within EVE Online. Go read the first part, it is a great primer for the state of capital ships at this time.
This is something that I've pondered myself for the last year (at least) because its been clear from the sub-capital rebalancing that has happened that a lot of roles that capital ships had have been migrated to sub-capitals OR have at the very least overlapped.
For purposes of this post WH and industrial Capital Ships are not under consideration.
The Roles That Were
Capital Ships, now, cannot enter high sec space and thus are consigned to a life within Low or Null Sec. A very important thing to remember is that Carriers and Dreadnoughts can dock in stations whereas Supercapitals and Titans cannot.
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| Capitals Assemble! |
I'm not going to rewrite up what Kirith has written already so well but in summary:
- Carriers are simply the Swiss Army knife of capitals.
- Dreadnoughts are the hit-man of EVE; have a target with lots of hit-points, call in a dreadnought.
- Super carriers tend to be used for a 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 suffer from a multiple personalities; is it a support ship, combat fire power ship or even a logistics/booster ship.
Of course the cost of the ships varies hugely, a billion or two will set you up with a basic carrier or dreadnought. Whereas you'd need at least 20 billion just to get a Super Capital hull and those wanting a Titan will be lucky to get much change from 150 billion.
The roles Capital Ships have have evolved since the Dominion expansion was released in December 2009 when sovereignty structures appeared These structures had huge amounts of HP and thus required a lot of fire power to be ground in order to capture or destroy.
Sub-capitals just did not cut the mustard any longer. Since then those with the most capital ships have been able to carve up the Empires we see in EVE Online today.
Winds of Change
With the changes sovereignty coming to Scylla (Summer 2015) the huge HP of sovereignty structures changing with the introduction of a new capture module. Obviously this will be available to most ship types, including capitals, but no longer will the fire power to grind structures be needed. Of course support and combat ships will be needed but the typical role of capital ships will, again, change.
Another change to capitals will Carriers and Super Carriers will not longer be able to Assist their drones/fighters to sub-capitals. No longer will we see a fast locking ships focus firing on targets using assisted drones/fighters to apply huge alpha/damage.
So how will these changes affect Capitals.
Roles To Be
I don't have clairvoyance nor any type of source at CCP so I really have no idea what is to come but I know what I'd like to see happen to Capital ships and that will be the subject of the remainder of the A Capital Debate series.
Over the next few posts I'll layout how I see each Capital ship as it currently is and what changes could be made to expand use or fit the ship in with the way EVE Online appears to be heading.
Source: A Capital Debate: Introduction