A lot of people are vocal about their dislike of titans in Eve. Having never been on the wrong end of a Doomsday or right end of a titan Jump Bridge, I can't really say I have any strong opinions about them.
I've heard it said that there are too many in game and that the Devs never intended for the proliferation of Titans to occur like it has. There are what, 180 or thereabouts now? It seems like every 0.0 alliance has at least one if not two. I think the major knock against them is that they make defending a Sov 3 system with a cyno jammer very easy: bubble up the inbound gate and doomsday the incoming enemy fleet a few times.Or is it that they can jump bridge freighters making massive logistitics easy and relatively safe?
On the other hand, it seems like every other week you hear of one being destroyed in some part of Eve or another. Are they balanced right in terms of risk versus reward? Are they too easily destroyed?
Should titans be changed? If so, how?
I open the floor to my readers.
Posts
Maybe add a delay to the use of DD's, so they cant't be used too frequently. Thus giveing an attacker a chance to attack a defending titan even if part of their fleet is destroyed. Or make it so that a DD damages the titan itself if used to quickly, giveing the pilot the choice.
ReplyDeleteto answer you requires that both things ( according to an Titan pilot I know and have Cyno'd through) the DD does damage the titan but albeit to a small degree... and the max time between usage is 45 ish minutes. So there is a delay and there is damage applied. Now as far as balance the only balance I think that should be brought to the game is the elimination of cloaks on all but Cov Ops ships. Hide the titan in a POS for safety...cloaking unbalances the risk and doubles the reward for th titan pilot.
ReplyDeleteforgive the absolutely horrific english above...my point still stands remove cloaks from all but covop ships and the balance is shifted towards neutral.
ReplyDeleteI believe that titans can by balanced by doing 2 things. First is to completely remove dooms day device. It is too overpowered and too effective in fleet fights. The logistics aspect of a titan, coupled with the ability to jump bridge ships into a fight and the ability to give all ships very nice bonuses makes it an asset to any fleet. If you must replace it, make it something that would make your fleet invulnerable to 10 to 15 seconds. This way a titan is ineffective on its own, but requires a fleet to be useful.
ReplyDeleteSecond, I feel that there needs to be a balance to the capital ships. I own 3 capitals, but the fact that fleets can largely be composed of such ships without any true support makes it too powerful for the smaller alliances who can't afford so many caps. Right now its just a numbers game on who can fly the most capitals at the right timezone. Introduce a new bomber frig (not the stealth bomber, it has already achieved a nice niche). This bomber frig won't be able to use covert ops cloak, but will be able to fit 2 bonused capital siege launchers but with the caveot that their range is no more than 10 km. This way they will be unusable to hit a POS.
With 1/2 the damage of a dread this would be an effective counter to all the capital fleets we see flying around. A capital fleet would have to have anti frig ships accompanying them much so you have better mix of fleets., The fact that the sig radius of the capital torps would make it useless against battleships and smaller, and thus this ship would be ONLY useful for killing capitals.
@manasi, i never realised there was such a delay between DD bursts haveing never seen nor piloted a titan, kind of makes my post pointless :)
ReplyDeleteBut it does raise the question, is the question do titans need changing or should it be do doomsday weapons need changeing, maybe give them a range like normal waepons?
I'm not in that end of the pool and probably won't be for awhile, but to be honest, the idea of one player pulling a trigger and wiping out alot of other players seems...well, just not very much in line with the game. And I agree with the above poster about support ships. All the EVE movies show ships of various sizes, but thats not really the way it works in these large fleet battles now is it?
ReplyDeletebeing in an alliance that fields multiple titans I . granted their really not used that often for dding. the majority of the time their just used as a logistics platform to move freighters/caps(yes they can bridge caps)/other ships quickly and efficiently. So at this point I dont believe there is a real problem with them. As for the dd I've never been on the field when ones been fired but ive seen the aftereffects and they sometimes will kill just as many friendly ships as hostile if not planned correctly and this is the leveling point for the dd you gotta know WHEN to fire it rather than just randomly firing it. at this point and time i believe that the titan isnt overpowered as the only time you can get large quantities of them together is through cross alliance cooperation(49- with the dd of a fully fit carrier) we wont see cap fleets dieinng to dd yet but thats not too far off. the titan is ideal for breaking up blobs on grid and multiple titans are VERY effective at doing this. remember its actually quite easy to dd proof a bc and up(and many t2 ships can dd proof as well) and plus even with the number of titans in eve right now i have only seen 3+(not counting the 49- demonstration) titans in system once and that was in our home systems. I have yet to see our alliance field more than a single titan at any given time and their rarely used for fleet ops besides getting ships to location. so I truthfully dont see what all this hubbub is about with titans their not overpowered their filling their intended role too the letter.
ReplyDeleteThe problem isn't 1 titan, you can easily make your ship dd proof against that. In fact there was a very famous flycatcher (caldari interdictor) that was able to tank a DD and thus enable someone to kill a titan. The problem is a lot of alliances use triple DD (thats 3 titans doing DD at the same time) to effectively decimate a force that is attacking. This was used heavily by both sides in the war down south. Other alliances have started to use this tactic, making systems pretty much impenetrable as long as you have people in the various timezones. DD in their current incarnation are game breaking and make fleet fights very boring because no one wants to lose 100+ ships to 3 ships pushing a button.
ReplyDeleteand then thats why you dont put 100+ ships on the field in a situation where you can get triple dd hehe. there are many ships than can double dd tank and even triple dd tank without too much trouble. but then im not usually on the receiving end of that kind of onslaught im on the side dishing it out so I therefore have a very different view than the one on the receiving end. but then why shouldnt alliances be able to hold their space effectively?? granted this kind of stagnation can be difficult to deal with but i believe nothing should be done about the titan till they fix sov warfare as a whole. depending on how they implement the new sov mechanics will change how effective the titan is.
ReplyDeleteI believe titans are OK for what they are, I would've rather seen titans be mobile stations however(like a mobile outpost you can plop down temporarily acting as a base of operations and resupply on the front for example)
ReplyDeleteThe problem I believe with titans is that it costs nothing to have one, besides fuel costs(like any capital) and the account/character costs. I think having a supply cost(similar to the fuel costs of POS) for (assembled) titans could help.
@Manasi: I agree that having cloaks on capitals is a little goofy, particularly since it doesn't actually gimp you grid/CPU wise. If it would do that (such as instead of taking x cpu/grid it takes x% of cpu/grid) cloaks on huge ships would be more balanced perhaps.