Ultimate Ship?

  I had a post the other day about the Escort Carrier I've always wished CCP would make and that got me thinking about some of the other new ships types they may be able to inject into our EvE universe.  It seems like there are hundreds of possibilities but in the theme of balancing capitals that the Escort Carrier started I will stick with the Pathfinder.
  The Pathfinder class vessel would be a smaller capital sized ship like the Escort Carrier that would have the ability to open a jump bridge between itself and a cynosural field just like a Titan.  It would have local defenses in line with a Carrier or a Dreadnought but would have basically no offense.  It would have a larger cargo bay for fuel and an extreme jump range thanks to the internal drives needed to generate a bridge.  This should increase the utility of the ship.
  But wait; isn't the entire argument that the Titan bridge is too powerful?  Well yes, it is.  However that is only true because smaller alliances simply cannot field a Titan, not to mention the multiple Titans that the big guys can fly.  That provides a huge advantage in being able to bridge cheap ships onto the field of battle.  While this may hurt the most unique advantage of Titans with their growing prevalence I don't see that as such a bad thing.

Blog Banter #22: Corp Loyalty

Welcome to the twenty-second installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week or so to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check for other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month topic is brought to us by L'Dene Bean of Nitpickin's who asks: Why, and how did you pick your corporation? Is your loyalty solid or just until a better placed organization "recruits" you. The shorter version: Who holds your Unshakable Fealty and why?

  I typically do not participate in the blog banter because I am usually too lazy but this was a really interesting question to me.
  When I first started my EvE career there were thousands of choices in corporations, and I had absolutely no clue about any of them except that I was "supposed" to join a corp as a part of the game.  It was certainly difficult to find a corp that I liked but in the end I settled on an extremely small group who had an awesome name and were very kind to the n00b that I was.  I spent a while in that corp phasing in and out of EvE until I eventually decided I liked the game enough to really commit to it.  I then found Aurelius Federation after a truly exhaustive search and made friends in Providence that I still speak with today.
  After the fall of Providence we tried to prosper elsewhere but attrition and constant alliance "stuff" eventually took it's toll and we shut our doors (for now at least).  I spent some time wondering but have since followed some corpmates to a new home which is also a friendly atmosphere for playing EvE as I see fit.
  At the moment I am on opposing sides with some old friends but that is becoming part of the fun.

Yes Please!

  So the Create A Starship contest is in the semi-finalist stage now and there are some interesting designs.  It got me thinking a little bit about some of the ships I would love to see added to EvE.  These days there are plenty of ships to fly so I don't think CCP should feel the pressure to add new ones, however if they do this is just what I would like to see.

Escort Carrier
  With the recent talk of capital ships growing too abundant this ship seems fitting.  Aside from the respectable DPS the main use for carriers/supercarriers is for their "super-logistics" powers.  The Escort Carrier would take the logistics strengths of it's big brothers but place them in a smaller package.  Of course the miniaturization of these abilities would come with some drawbacks when compared to a full size carrier.  Part of the purpose of this ship would be for CCP to increase either the production cost/difficulty or the skill requirements of the current capital ships while filling the huge gap that would create between capital and sub capital with a smaller ship.
  Because of the need to save space and reduce costs the Escort Carrier will not be able to fit capital sized modules but will have the latest technology to allow BS sized modules to work at a greatly improved efficiency.  This will push the capabilities of this ship beyond that of the BS but leave it short of the standard Carrier.
  This ship class will be able to field a full flight of up to 10 drones (skill dependent) but only have the bandwidth to control 5 fighters at maximum skills.  It also won't have the command and control systems needed to delegate it's fighters that it's bigger brothers have.  This will allow it to field a maximum flight of repair drones and have very respectable DPS but maintain the Carrier's advantage in both of these areas.

What the Escort Carrier would have
-Bonus to Large Modules to make them more effective than they would be on a BS
-Range bonus to Logistics modules closer to that of the Logistics class than the full Carrier class
-Defensive stats and bonuses somewhere between the Tech 2 BS and current Carrier of each race (this will need the most attention for balancing)
-Up to 10 drones, maybe a bonus to logistic drones range or survivability
-Up to 5 fighters
-Jump drive, here the range would be more like the Black Ops BS than the Carrier.
-The limited ability to use gates like a normal ship.  Here I picture the Escort Carrier having to supplement the gates own power for the jump, thus using the same 90% capacitor that a Jump Drive would use but saving fuel.

What the Escort Carrier would NOT have
-Capital class modules
-The ability to fly 10 fighters or the ability to delegate fighters
-The ability to fit triage modules
-Hi Sec clearance from Concord, it would still be locked out of Hi Sec by special order of Concord.



Using the current contest semi finalists try to imagine these designs scaled up for the purpose of an Escort Carrier:

Gallente
Caldari
Amarr
Minmatar

Busy Month

So, a lot has happened this month which has kept me busy. I decided to scrap my plans for a corporation because I wanted to focus a lot less on EvE right now. In that theme I have signed up with a new corporation and have ventured back out in to 0.0.
It feels good to back out there, especially now that the carrrier jumps are finished. I was able to get a little assistance from an Anshar which lightened the load considerably. This corp is a very good group that I found through a long time EvE buddy. So far it's been fun to get back to 0.0 and we shall see what adventures there are to be had.

In other news I am sad we are losing Capsuleer because it's my favorite app but I understand the reasoning. Let's just hope somebody somewhere has a change of heart.

Also, 4 hotfixes to EvE?!? What is going on?


--posted from my iPhone