If you read this blog you know that I'm pretty much as casual as you can get as an Eve player: one main night a week on average I log in and PvP my heart out. I'm also pretty far removed from the workings of FCON alliance leadership not to mention the NC's leadership.
In other words, I 'm a grunt who gets once a week in the trenches snapshots of the state of the NC for the past months as the war with DRF / PL / NC. / Ev0ke developed.
So how did we go from fighting tooth and nail for O2O-2X in Geminate in February to writing obituaries in the beginning of June? One simple truth, my friends, and I'm going to say it loud and clear:
There is no counter to a super cap fleet except a BIGGER super cap fleet.1
The NC was out blobbed on the field, pure and simple. Not by sheer bodies but by number of super cap pilots in the warzone. As soon as Pandemic Legion entered the conflict with their supers in the North American timezone, and the willingness to use them, all subcap and sub-supercap ops were vulnerable to a hot drop and the NC became terrified to use their own supercaps in retaliation due to spies and fear of getting whelped.
Without the NC super fleet, which became effectively stood down from that point forward, the long slow failure cascade began. Unable to easily destroy or reinforce SBUs, enemy deployment towers, stations, TCUs, IHUBs, etc, and with the enemy able to do so, the advance was simply a matter of time. And with each station taken a few more players were knocked out of the fight, a few more decided to say "screw this" and moved back to empire to regroup.
By the time Goonswarm and TEST weighed in on the NC side to defend Tribute, the psychological and emotional state of NC leadership appears to have been broken beyond repair. Analysis paralysis, fears of spies everywhere, blue ball frustrations when FCs decide to not jump in, failure to adequately lead pilots into battle safely, etc it was all very morale breaking.
Blob wars often go like that: the out-blobbed only seems to shrink making their chances or winning smaller. Its a little ironic that the NC, which was often pulled out as the poster boy of blobbing and why its bad, was killed by a blob of a different sort.
(Its hard to measure concretely, but its worth noting that the Anomaly Nerf and Jump Bridge nerf bothwent down during this period and possibly created some bitter vets on the NC side who simply stopped logging in. I know of a couple personally.)
1 - Supercarriers are BROKEN, CCP; get on with the balancing already.
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Kirith - my understanding is that SC damage to subcaps is minimal at best (of course you have aggregated damage from dozens of supers but that's aggregate damage). Did they bring such balanced super+subcap fleets that your leadership really couldn't get enough pilots to make it a fight, or was there a higher-level lack of desire to lose internet spaceship pixels?
ReplyDeleteThis isn't pointed at you - but leadership who chose not to fight even at the subcap level, or failed to do so successfully. It's not like they had enough Titans to DD your entire subcap fleet in one volley, or did they?
A supercarrier can launch 20 Orge II or 20 Warrior IIs, etc. A supercarrier has hundreds of thousand effective hitpoints, a powerful ECM burst. Titans doomsdays work on battleships, cruisers, etc in some (many?) cases.
ReplyDeleteSimply put, your average sub-cap fleet (hell, cap fleet) when hotdropped by 20-40+ supercarriers and titans dies while taking none of the enemy ships with them.
Add to that the enemy subcap fleets and titan jump portals and you have a recipe for disaster.
The shiptype of supercarriers is not broken. The amount of production, isk income, and alliance income for very little effort is broken. That's they so many powerblocs have the huge supercarrier fleets. If the statistics of QEN continued at the current speed atm there should be over 2000 supercarriers in the game. CCP started with the few 0.0 nerfs recently to get that fixed, removal of sanctums in every shit place, longer respawn time, faster onboard scanner to find them (hunters love that), additional isk sink for alliance with jb changes and i guess there are a few more incoming.
ReplyDelete@Forlorn
ReplyDeleteI would tend to disagree, really there is no weakness to the Supercarrier. It has a weapon system (fighters) that works great against the only sub-caps that would be a threat (battleships), and a weapon system that works great against other capital ships (Fighter-Bombers). Adding another Supercarrier to the mix makes the pair of them exponentially better able to defend themselves. And all that for a month and a half of extra skill time over a normal carrier. Damage wise they are much more efficient with their damage than Titans can be.
Good to hear things from your perspective m8.
ReplyDeleteFundamentally this is the exact reason why I decided to bail on Null Sec Alliance bs and simply have fun again in Eve. How many times does one person need to watch this happen around them, watch friends give up and stop logging in, watch everything you've built destroyed and fall into enemy hands? The number is different for everyone, for me it was 6.
Best of luck to you and all my friends in m3.
Rixx is right how many times have we seen this. I'm counting 3 so far.
ReplyDeleteIRC, CVA now NC
Start of well, fight like lions, super/cap blob arrives and whelps beyond our ability to counter. Switch to bombers, retreat slowly while calling all to arms to die. Post less and less CTAs as the system falls. Give up and wait for them to leave.
The NC is showing parallels to CVA in that when poked their personally owned supercap fleet melted into the night along with the conviction we can win with only the enemies resolve the major stumbling block to their success. Both CVA and the NC sold many more supers than they kept and as the rest are all personal assets after a few pastings you are much less likely to risk 20 bil of your own cash in fleets.
Obligatory "U Mad?".
ReplyDeleteExcept your right, its insane what a supercap blob can do. There is simply no counter. It's basically turned into nullsec for the rich and famous. After the latest changes, plus the threat of being removed from my home on a whim of another rich alliance, I am glad I got out when I did.
One word describes what I think of the whole thing "ridiculous".
thank god wormholes are so much more balanced. requiring true to god tactics over just massively blobbing your enemies. regardless what ship classes. frankly kirith you might want to suggest something along the lines of whs to m3, good isk coupled with good pew without haveing to worry about hundred man blobs(or supercaps at all).
ReplyDelete