Motherships no more

[Dr Zaius]

It looks like motherships are finally going to get some love. Thank goodness! It looks like CCP has been listening and is going to implement the changes suggested by players.

According to the latest dev blog, there will be no more Motherships in EVE. In their current form, Motherships are simply a gigantic waste of time and money. A normal carrier costs about 800M ISK in today's market while a mothership costs 18-20B ISK. For what? A few more fighters? Motherships are a giant "kill me" magnet. Not only are they incapable of docking, making them very vulnerable in day-to-day operations, but they also don't receive any bonuses over a carrier and don't have much more staying power.

With the Dominion expansion, Motherships will be replaced by Supercarriers. While they will lose the ability to use siege modules and clone vat bays, they will receive a healthy boost in HP, enabling them to stay on the front lines. They will also be the only ship in EVE able to field Fighter Bombers -- a new type of fighter specifically designed to hunt and kill capital ships.

As a bit of extra goodness, Supercarriers will be cheaper than Motherships because the build requirements no longer include the clone vat bay stuff.

 

[avl90]

It seems to me that there is a need for a more accessible (cheap/reasonable to train for) base of operations ship in Eve - something that would allow ships to refit, offload cargo and so forth. Is that what motherships used to do? Are there ships that do this role well now other than stuff waaay too expensive to bring into nullsec?

If a base-ship along these lines is very expensive it will only get used in safe areas, where either locally allied outposts or npc stations are available anyhow.

 

[Dr Zaius]

Due to their cost and the limitations mentioned earlier, I've rarely even seen Motherships used in EVE. The people who do use them have access to huge amounts of ISK, but even then they are rarely seen in fleet battles. The carrier is a much more practical ship for logistics support.

But I can see people starting to bring SuperCarriers into fleet engagements. It will be interesting to see just how potent Fighter Bombers turn out to be.

 

[avl90]

Is the carrier the cheapest ship that allows other ships to refit?

 

[pward]

Is the carrier the cheapest ship that allows other ships to refit?

Orca lets folks refit. Should be cheaper at ~600mil (last time I looked), but much less staying power in a combat op.

Small tower and corp hangar array would also let folks refit. More logistics involved with the fuel and setup time, but an indy can haul one to a moon and get it setup with just a bit of work. Call it ~300 mil for the tower, array, indy and some fuel? (And I haven't even glanced at tower and array prices recently, so that could be way off.)

 

[avl90]

This is essentially the problem... nobody is going to want to bring a 600 million isk ship out into hostile nullsec, the rewards just aren't there to counter the risk. I could be wrong though.

 

[Dr Zaius]

This is essentially the problem... nobody is going to want to bring a 600 million isk ship out into hostile nullsec, the rewards just aren't there to counter the risk. I could be wrong though.

I'm not sure I follow you here. Are you talking about the need for a ship that allows refits during big fleet ops or what?

 

[avl90]

I'm talking about an affordable support ship for corporations that don't have sov in nullsec to make forays out there for an afternoon of complexes, ratting, mining or whatever it is they want to do. The ship would be like a small mobile base of operations, enabling them to replenish their drone bays and refit different modules without having to travel back to empire. It would be useful if it had a large cargo capacity and a enough pg to fit a cloak.

 

[Dr Zaius]

Sounds like a carrier would be better suited for that task than an Orca. For starters, the carrier has a lot more staying power and brings a not inconsequential amount of firepower to the fight. It also has the ability to provide logistics support in the form of remote reps of various sorts.

That said, any small corporation that comes into 0.0 without permission, regardless of whether they are looking for wormholes or complexes or whatever, is going to get destroyed fairly quickly. 0.0 alliances will usually kill off intruders unless they are just too difficult to catch or completely uninteresting. But if a capital ship shows up, that's going to be reported and a gang will show up fairly quickly to deal with the intruders. Even a small group of carriers will get hammered. And it will be hard to keep such a fleet a secret since someone will have to light up a cyno in order to get the fleet in. That will draw enemies quick as everyone wants to be in on a capital kill mail.

Low-sec is somewhat different. There, a small gang with a carrier might survive if they are careful and use scouts. Even still, as soon as pirates spot that carrier they are going to call for friends. Even worse, they might post it in local and then you'll have all sorts of unwelcome visitors looking for you.

The truth is, it's hard to use capitals in small numbers unless you already have a formidable fleet and the carrier is just there for support. The problem is that they draw a lot of attention.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to be able to go on walkabout with a supercarrier in low-sec and just rabble rouse and scare the hell out of people! :bite: But you'll lose it if you try that. I lost a Thanatos being stupid in low-sec, and though it was just regular capital and not a supercap, that's still not an experience I'm in a big hurry to repeat.

I don't have one because I don't have that kind of money. But if I did have a supercap, the only way it would come out to play is with friends. I'm sorry to say, I would not be looking for "fair" fights with a ship that costs 20B ISK.

 

[avl90]

I think it would be good if this were different though. Or the support ships were cheap enough to lose.

 

[pward]

If they were cheap enough to lose willy nilly, nobody would have anything but those particular advanced ships.

You wouldn't want to unbalance the game (any more than it already is) by making battleships as cheap as cruisers; for instance.

 

[Dr Zaius]

I think it would be good if this were different though. Or the support ships were cheap enough to lose.

Well, that's part of what makes EVE fun. When you lose something that's really useful and really valuable, it stings. In some cases, it stings a lot. That's frustrating, but it's part of what helps give the battles meaning. You know going into it that you won't just respawn in 30 seconds with all your equipment intact.

 

[avl90]

Well, that's part of what makes EVE fun. When you lose something that's really useful and really valuable, it stings. In some cases, it stings a lot. That's frustrating, but it's part of what helps give the battles meaning. You know going into it that you won't just respawn in 30 seconds with all your equipment intact.

How much money can you make in nullsec in an evening? What about doing an L4 agent in hi-sec?

 

[Dr Zaius]

How much money can you make in nullsec in an evening? What about doing an L4 agent in hi-sec?

I used to run missions in high-sec all the time before I moved to 0.0. Now I just rat or scan out random Gurista's stuff and kill it. Sometimes I participate in our local gatecamp op, but there's no money in that.

Where I live we get triple spawns of Gurista BS that are worth 600K-1.5M each. So in a big belt where no one else is ratting, I can easily kill 20M worth in an hour. I'm usually too lazy to salvage all the loot, but if you're willing to do that you can make significantly more. The most efficient way to do it would be with a Marauder. That way you can kill everything you encounter and scoop up the loot with ease. But flying a Marauder in 0.0 is like wearing a sign that says "kill me." Still, I do it anyone once in a while and just keep an eye on local.

If I'm doing a Gurista site I'm more careful than when I'm ratting. For starters, some of those sites are tough enough that you have to pay attention. Second, you don't want to be fighting the NPCs and then have to fight intruders as well.

Some people park a carrier by a station and then assign the fighters to follow a ratting BS. With that you can vaporize even the toughest rats very quickly and the carrier can dock if there's any trouble.

The problem with running regular missions in high-sec is that it's boring. And according the latest dev blog, CCP is going to impose a tax on high-sec mission runners that choose to remain in an NPC corp. Clearly, they are trying to get everyone to join a real corp, which means there is a possibility of getting war decced and killed, even in high-sec. If one has to face those kinds of risks, you may as well just join a 0.0 corp.

 

[avl90]

Granted, there is a fun factor associated with risk.

From what you've written though, I see no reason to risk a 600m ship to go to nullsec. 20m an hour is not much really... and a station is just a bigger ship that can't run away.

I guess it all comes down to the moon mining?

 

[pward]

And according the latest dev blog, CCP is going to impose a tax on high-sec mission runners that choose to remain in an NPC corp. Clearly, they are trying to get everyone to join a real corp, which means there is a possibility of getting war decced and killed, even in high-sec. If one has to face those kinds of risks, you may as well just join a 0.0 corp.

Nice to see a tax on the NPC corps, so at least there is a cost for the safety. Hope it isn't too expensive though, say 5-15% which is probably average for player corps. I might even agree that 20% would be reasonable because of the wardec safety.

 

[Dr Zaius]

I believe the devs said it will be 11%. But I understand this only applies to bounties from NPC kills. That means this really won't be a 11% tax, but more like 3-5% of a mission runner's income.

Of those who do not want to join a corp because they fear a war dec, who is going to suddenly change course because of a 5% tax? No one. CCP nerfs stuff all the time and it has a lot bigger effect on income than this change will have.

I don't believe this change will do anything except annoy some people and/or lead to the formation of 10,000 one-man corps.

 

[avl90]

That's the same way normal corp tax works, isn't it?

 

[Dr Zaius]

That's the same way normal corp tax works, isn't it?

I think so.

 

[pward]

Yep, bounties only. Mission rewards and market sales aren't taxed by the corporation.