Balance: Unkillable Battleships

[titanbot]

Battleships with large cargo and a jumpdrive mk3 have 0 counterplay.
The basic principle is to get in a fight, wreck things and when close to dying jump to a safe location and come back into the same fight in around 10 minutes. Rinse and repeat, it's a win win situation. Something has to be done and here are a few ideas:
1. Increase the mk3 charge time by 2 or 3 times. This will give us a bigger window in which they can be taken out.
2. Make the mk3 easily destructible by a few novas, something like thrusters. Bombers with novas and capships with missiles would be proper counterplay to this.
3. Increase the cargo it requires or hfuel needed to jump. That way they won't have a cap 8 aswell, but something like a cap 4.
P.S. I don't consider 10 cloaking battleships ambushing the BS with mk3 and killing him in less than 30 seconds "counterplay".

Discuss.

Jumpdrives are a cool feature. Before 4.86 I never dreamed something like that could be implemented, same with PoBs.

You could say that jumping out of battle is a tactic, fine. But rejoining the fight with a fully restocked ship, jumping out again near death and repeating the process again and again just gets annoying for the other side and it doesn't make any sense. If there are multiple jump ships, it really becomes frustrating.
The only way to kill a jumping BS is by heavy ganking, there is no other way to do it in 30 seconds.

Jumpdrives are also usable only on some battleships, those with largest cargo space. Battleships with smallest cargo space can't even use the jumpdrive without sacrificing armor, few turrets and even downgrading the shield or you must have someone to carry the fuel for you... while those with largest cargo space, such as Rheinland BS and few Carriers can combine it even with a CAU5-CAU6 and still jump without anyone's help.
Jumpdrives really need some tweaking, as now, on some caps they're OP and on most others they're useless.

It is the only way to escape destruction. Cruise is no longer an option, it is usually lack of talent that's preventing some fleet to actually kill the jumper.

Here's a few things I have to say, for you to consider.
1. In Liberty, a random jumper can be nullified by 2 (two) Liberty Dreadnoughts sporting cloaks in more than sufficient time. It will be exploding way before the JD runs it's course. I've done it, taped it. If you want, I'll render it for you and place that on YouTube.

2. The jumper is out for usually 10 minutes or more. Considering, as you put it, it's the biggest threat you are facing, then you should be literally stomping them in that time. So the jumper will come back to see half of their standing forces nullified.

3. A jumper is expensive. It costs you several (about 5, usually) millions per jump. Fuel, repairs, nanobots and batteries. Not to mention coordinates scanning. It's an effective money drain, if the someone jumps like crazy then you should consider the amount of cash flying away from that person's pocket.

4. Unlike cloaks, you see it coming. You can fend it off when you see it coming. If those jumpers are so unbalanced, how come that almost nobody uses them?

If you ask me, the JD's are very much alright. No need to "fix" something that is already working.

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[Sciamach]

Honestly anymore, I dont really care if JDs get a nerf or whatever. I've seen jumping turtles get wrecked sufficiently by the Liberty fleets enough to know it can be done.

But coming back to a fight after having jumped away...

No, that is what needs to be fixed. A ship that jumps away, needs to be PVP dead. No way is it possible to repair a ship to full capacity, replace the lost crew, re-mount damaged equipment, re-wire half the ship, and grow back entire sections of the super structure, in the 5 minutes it takes for these ships to come back after jumping.

It isnt possible. Even with the best estimates of Sirian technology one can come up with, something like that would take at least several HOURS.

Y'know what else takes a few hours?

The PVP death clock.

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[ sci·am·ach ]
/sīˈamək/

A simple, angry man casually working his way through life on a personal quest to acquire copious amounts of street cred.

[Knjaz]

Honestly anymore, I dont really care if JDs get a nerf or whatever. I've seen jumping turtles get wrecked sufficiently by the Liberty fleets enough to know it can be done.

But coming back to a fight after having jumped away...

No, that is what needs to be fixed. A ship that jumps away, needs to be PVP dead. No way is it possible to repair a ship to full capacity, replace the lost crew, re-mount damaged equipment, re-wire half the ship, and grow back entire sections of the super structure, in the 5 minutes it takes for these ships to come back after jumping.

It isnt possible. Even with the best estimates of Sirian technology one can come up with, something like that would take at least several HOURS.

Y'know what else takes a few hours?

The PVP death clock.

That's genius. With a small drawback that it takes out any meaning and usefulness out of that device whatsoever.
Seriously, who's gonna jump out of the undecided fight just not to give a blue message? Hardcore RP'ers, which doesn't happen in Fleet Combat.
As someone with FC experience, I'd rather had a player that keeps dealing damage until the very end, than the one that makes himself PvP dead before his hull points end - that is, when the combat is still undecided and you need every ship you can get.

Moreso, the amount of fuel battleships carry makes it, in most cases, impossible to cancel a charging up JD and keep the JD capability for the future.
So when you see, for example, a JDer charging at you while having a white aura around him - ignore and keep on dealing damage to other targets. The short charge time will mean he'll either have to jump away with full health or lose jumping ability in order to stay in combat.

Seriously, these things are so basic I'm not even sure why I'm writing it here.
I guess the part where solo JDs are not useful (edit2: Should read "cost-efficient", instead) for anything (EDIT: Combat related, that is) but escaping out of the fight, except for 2 factions in Sirius, is self-explanatory. There're also other ways of reducing enemy JD efficiency in a group combat.

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As for "RP" part. Would you also make, say, Liberty ships going through TX/NY JG during the brawl at JG from the TX side PvP dead? Because, you know, you can restock at Norfolk where enemy ships cannot reach due to ID limitations and get back into battle.

That would also logically lead to the return of "10k rule".

[Sciamach]

As for "RP" part. Would you also make, say, Liberty ships going through TX/NY JG during the brawl at JG from the TX side PvP dead? Because, you know, you can restock at Norfolk where enemy ships cannot reach due to ID limitations and get back into battle.

Notice how that dosent happen. When you're in a fight, you stay until the fight is decided, or you're killed. If you want to leave for RP reasons, dont fly caps.

And you'd be surprised how many people do all of this, just to jump away and deny people blues.

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[ sci·am·ach ]
/sīˈamək/

A simple, angry man casually working his way through life on a personal quest to acquire copious amounts of street cred.