The ALL CAPS Ship Blog

Over the past few months capital ships have been through quite a few changes.  This blog aims to bring all of that under one umbrella and explain where things are headed in Dominion 1.1.

Motherships -> Supercarriers

The biggest news is that Supercarriers will make their long-awaited debut on Tranquility. Intended to be the heavy hitters of capital ship PvP, Supercarriers will feature the following changes from their previous incarnations:

• Fighter Bombers: the only entities capable of firing the advanced new compact citadel torpedoes, a full wing of these little monsters is capable of doing twice the damage of a sieged Dreadnought. With max skills, 20 Fighter Bombers will do 8000 DPS; 10000 DPS with the Nyx. They cannot be delegated like normal Fighters so you'll have to stay on grid to keep them on target.

• Hit Point boost: ‘Super' capitals they shall now be. There's no point dishing out the punishment if you can't take it.

• Jump Range increase: advances in quantum flux hyper-spatial mechanics n' stuff now allows these ships to travel along the same jump routes as Dreadnoughts.

Here is a nice shot of some Fighter Bombers on patrol over a lush and prosperous Minmatar Retirement world:

Seeing as how these ships are now all about killing things, we've removed their ability to fit the Triage Module as well as their capability to use Clone Vat Bays. The removal of the Clone Vat Bay components will also reduce the construction costs of these ships slightly.

There are still a few ideas on the drawing board for these beasts, but for now we look forward to seeing them dusted off and causing many tears.

Titans

Since Dominion, it's been good to see Titans coming out of the force fields and being used as more than a mobile stargate or giant smart bombs.  Since everyone likes data, I asked CCP Diagoras to do some work and here is some interesting stuff:

Number of ships killed by Titans (final blow / rookie ships, shuttles and capsules completely filtered out):

November 2009 - 6,450

December 2009 - 406

The doomsday change from an area of effect weapon to a single target weapon is obvious in that entire grids of ships are no longer being wiped out.  What is more interesting though are the types of ships being killed:

So, to help things further along, we've made some adjustments to the Ragnarok & Leviathan to ensure all the titans are doing similar levels of damage, which they currently are not.

*It's %@&ing Vertical

Dreadnoughts are staying pretty much the same except for the Naglfar which we're returning to the turret-based bonuses (5% Damage & 5% Rate of Fire per level) implemented back in Apocrypha 1.3.  Combined with the projectile ammo changes introduced in Dominion, this should make the Naglfar less horizontal.

Signature Radius Changes

We have changed the signature radius on all Control Towers and POS structures to a minimum signature radius of 2000.  This is so that all capital weapons are capable of doing full damage to their intended targets.

Dreadnoughts will receive their own signature radius bump, a 75% increase, which puts them in the same range as other capital ships.

State Module Changes

We have added a mass multiplier (x10) to Siege Modules, Triage Modules and Industrial Cores. When these modules are activated, the mass of your ship increases exponentially, making it much harder for other ships to move or bump.

To make the Triage Module a bit more tactically useful, we have reduced its duration and fuel consumption by half.

XL Turrets / Citadel Torpedoes / Citadel Cruise Missiles

XL turrets have been adjusted slightly to ensure their damage is balanced and to give the short range weapons a bit more range.

We've also changed several things with the Citadel Torps / Missiles in order to balance these weapons with their turret counterparts.  Their new explosion radius', along with the aforementioned signature radius increases, should ensure they are doing the damage they are supposed to.

We are also adding faction Citadel Cruise Missiles as well. They will receive the same 10% damage bonus that the current faction citadel torpedoes receive.

Big Pew Pew

Hopefully these changes will go a long way toward enhancing your billion-ISK ship experiences.  We're always watching to see what changes and improvements can be made so please continue to provide constructive feedback. I'll now leave you with one of my favorite charts:

-  CCP Abathur