When I first heard about the new Carrier changes at EVE Vegas I was excited to see a new game mechanic added to the game. It looked like a cool way to participate in Fleet Battles.
The truth however is VERY UGLY. The New Carriers and Carrier Modules and Fighters are so beyond Game Breaking I can't understand how they got past the test server.
From the first time I experienced Solo PVP I fell in love with the Balance. It wasn't just a game of "Whoever has the most ISK and buys the biggest ship wins." Instead there were counters and things a pilot could do avoid or even exploit the larger ships.
This balance allowed Small Ships to be a valid choice because they weren't always beaten by just buying something bigger. This made EVE a Chess Match about knowledge, skill, and execution. It set the game apart from all the others because there was a solution to almost every problem. Every ship had a counter.
These new carriers do not have a realistic counter. You cannot speed tank them, sig tank them, tackle them, or anything else as a solo or small gang pilot.
There are those who would say you can hot drop them and maybe they are right, but any pilot with even a fraction of a brain can avoid that easily, especially if the carrier is at/near a Citadel.
A year or two ago we saw the rise and prevalence of the Instalock gate camp. Which was a bad mechanic that made it impossible for the games fastest ship, the Dramiel to escape when done properly. This change was made worse by the Instalock Svipul that I made popular with my article about it and how powerful it was.
Despite still being broken, and most EVE pilots doing it wrong, finding an unescapable Instalock camp became a rare and accepted bad part of the game.
These new carrier changes however do not require a small gang or fleet to work properly, they do not put the pilots at reasonable risk, and they most definitely are NOT Balanced.
A single pilot with a large bubble can effectively shut down a choke point and lock off an entire region of space from Solo and Small Gang Pilots.
To better describe this I'm going to quote a post on the EVE Forums that describes it perfectly...
Milostiev:
To put bluntly, it lowers your time to find a potential escape, to the point where there is just ~blap~.
All you need is a large bubble on the gate, but an instalock ceptor buddy will work too (large t1 bubble is far better).
Let's say you jump in, and you meet this situation, you are in a frig.
1000k away a carrier, t1 fighters on the gate, 3 wings, large bubble up.
You've got 4s from the moment of decloak to find a way out, before you get blapped.
You can't go to range, the fighters have at least double your velocity under the 20s mwd and they apply just as well with and without their mwd on.
So you try to go back to the gate, and prey he lags a little, because even with 3.7km/s (without overload) and over 5km/s with overload, under 3s align time, you still need time to accelerate.
Making it worse, you are mwd-ing right towards the fighters, because that's where the gate is.
And that's how you die.For t1 cruisers it's even worse.
You can't tank them unless you have a very specialized buffer fit with logi's.
You can't jam them all because it takes time to lock each and everyone of them, by which time they will have applied 1 salvo (partial or in full).
And you can't drop them because you are in enemy space, far from your own ppl, and probably came fro a wh.Most nullsec regions have 4-5 chokepoints and many constellations have 1 way in and out, a single carrier on the gate and it's a guarantee you won't get out in full, or in, in full.
Certain constellations have 6-7 .... even 10+ large bubbles on the grid itself, with 60+ km from the gate, the closest you can possibly warp out (a 20s delay btw between acceleration, exit of bubbles, warp).Solo roaming, or small gang roaming, has been hugely hit by this.
This would be overpowered if it only effected Cruiser and up size ships, but frigates? How can that have ever been considered acceptable?
But it's not just frigates, the single most difficult to hit, fun to fly solo ships left in the game are just as powerless.
In the following Video you will see me flying a Taranis Interceptor with it's Afterburner running. Low sig and virtually impossible for anything but another Frigate or a Destroyer to track.
I could have jumped to safety but I thought to my self "If I run my AB and get in tight I can kill this Confessor easy while avoiding any damage from the fighters."
As you are about to see I was very wrong:
Watch Full Screen
Rubbish. Carriers have counters. Unsurprisingly, however, the counter is not a solo frigate and nor should it be. Kill the fighters and the ship is totally defenceless.
Unfortunately killing the fighters isn’t an option unless you have multiple people and logi. Even then you may not kill them.
The Interceptor should never be a counter to Carriers, but it should be survivable enough to avoid Fighter damage unless scrammed and webbed (and target painted).
Based on the comments I’ve received here and especially on YouTube, there’s a group of people who believe that “because it costs 3 billion ISK” it should be able to wipe out everything cheaper with ease.
This shows a lack of understanding of how the game works. EVE is about balance. Big ships are more powerful, but should struggle to apply DPS to smaller ships.
Danger is what makes the game fun. Being able to keep people out of your space doesn’t make the game more fun, it makes it more carebearish and boring.
Why not just add Alliance Controlled Stargates? and Wormhole Jammers? Maybe prompt every person at the start of the fight if they consent?
Give me a break, EVE should be Dangerous, but there should always be a “Correct Move.” For carebears the correct move is to use a scout and POS up when neutrals come. In this case, the correct move is “too late your dead” and “go buy a carrier and sit 1000km off a gate somewhere every night,” both are lame.
It seems to me that most of the advocates of this broken mechanics are combat anomaly grinders.
Mission Success! Looks like CCP is going to Nerf the NSA and will likely nerf Fighter tracking soon! Ideally this will mean slower Lock Times and Less Reliable Damage Application to Small Ships! https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=484374&find=unread and https://www.reddit.com/r/evecapitalfocusgroup/comments/4jvyy9/discussion_tracking_and_capitals/
It’s a capital. Períod. Capital…
You really think that a frig, a ship, thousand of times smaller, have the way to kill that…
No way, just now the things become balanced. It’s a carrier, a capital ship suposed to launch small frigs, not drones. If you don’t want to die in a gate stay in home, if you come to explore, lose your ship (and pod) it’s a very strong possibility. Deal with it. Or don’t leave your station.
That’s probably one of the worst posts I’ve seen. You just sit out there with your ball and don’t let anyone play. PATHETIC I’m new to Eve though So I guess there’s little babies that just want to win… BooHoo I paid a lot so everyone can go *^%$%$@# themselves. This game should be a Chess match and from I’ve seen a lot of it still is. I haven’t seen a Cap sitting on a gate except once and I’ve been working on my Dscan skills for just this purpose. I hope more people learn that and You can just sit on that gate all day long and suck your big finger. hahahahaha If you comprehended anything said in the OP I don’t see how you could disagree on what’s been said. If you can’t find the right solution to escape or kill something then you deserve to die but to have NO solution is just bad game mechanics. IMO.