Finaly some meat!

Although I am committed to getting deeper into wormhole space, that does not mean I don't follow the developments with regards to sovereignty that are upcoming in the November expansion. This week saw the quick fire of two separate blogs. The first one was pretty much a detailed mission statement from CCP laying out where they see the problems are and the large lines of what they want to do to fix the situation.

As can be expected there were immediately 3 voices in the comment thread that followed. Please note that it is worth going into that thread for the dev answers to questions. The first is the applause. Anyone who doesn't like the current sovereignty system is looking forward to the changes, no matter how radical and would be cheering from the sidelines even if it was abolished entirely.

Then there are those who are worried that their ship specializations will be affected (dread pilots worry that they won't have anything to shoot at). Or those crazed individuals that actually like the current system.

The most vocal however are those that go "ok yep, speaking to the converted. Where's the meat???". These people want details and they want them yesterday (probably so they can try to manipulate the market but hey - that's EVE). It's like watching someone throw chum into the shark tank.

However this was quickly followed by the first piece of "meat". Upcoming capital and supercapital changes. The immediately following blog went into gooey details about the upcoming changes.

Titans are getting directed single shot weapons. Apparently they will be "serious damage" weapons and "instant obliteration" for sub-cap ships. Major HP increase as well. The other change is mother ships. They are getting a much more defined role. They are also getting a new drone type to play with: Fighter Bombers. These are like anti-capital versions of fighters that are only useable by supercarriers. Interestingly it was confirmed later in the thread that they won't be assignable. This means supercarriers will need to be "on grid" in order to use them. They are also loosing their clone vat bays, triage mode and gang link bonuses.

Carriers will see the introduction of fighter and fighter bomber bays. This will control the massive drone proliferation in typical carrier deployment (take a look at the number of normal drones on a typical carrier loss mail). Dreadnoughts will see very little change (mainly the Moros with the loss of it's drone bonus outside of siege mode and possibly a re-balancing of it's main weaponry as a consequence).

I think I see the intent here. Carriers are meant to be major roaming fleet support (changes in triage cycle times and costs support this). Dreadnoughts are meant to be anti-intallation/anti-capital primary units. Titans and Supercarriers are meant to be capital fleet busters (with their higher than normal anti-capital firepower).

It's interesting that supercapitals will now need to be on-grid in order to use their firepower (much like dreadnoughts) leaving the lowly carrier as the only ship in eve able to project it's power beyond the current grid (by assigning fighters).

I suspect these changes will be hotly debated on the forums and tested on Sisi when they hit that server. For those of us not directly affected, the verbal fireworks should prove entertaining.