This morning CCP Fozzie released news of pending changes slated for the October release, which will change the behavior of titan-class starships. The player-led Council of Stellar Management was a primary mover in the impetus for these changes. This is likely in response to the extreme proliferation of titan use in bloc-level fights and Keepstar clearing.
The changes are two-fold: first, the removal of area of effect damage associated with the death of a titan. Second, an extension of the time required for titans to re-tether to a structure after firing their doomsday weapon.
Area of Effect Death Damage for Titans
Under the current mechanics, when a titan dies it releases an AoE damage effect; 200,000 damage in a 10 kilometer radius. CCP Fozzie cites a slight performance increase by the effect’s removal, as it creates a small amount of server load. The effect will be trimmed to decrease the impact of having large numbers of titans on field.
A request to remove the effect was actually posted to Reddit two months ago in a thread which saw 95 replies. While no CCP developer responded to the thread, Fozzie adds, “and since the death AoE feature does not serve a very important gameplay role we believe that in balance it’s a worthwhile idea to cut the feature.”
Titan Doomsday Cool-down to Affect Tethering
The other change increases the re-tether delay to five minutes for titans that have fired their doomsday weapons. This falls in line with the current mechanic preventing titans from jumping, docking or cloaking during this cool-off period. This is in response to an issue where titans were able to re-tether if their target died immediately. CCP Fozzie was careful to declare that this is not a change made to benefit server performance. This is purportedly a pure balance change.
What is unclear is whether titans will see delays introduced when using phenomena generators. This comes as an interesting omission as CCP Fozzie was the one who originally posted about their inclusion in the game back in 2016. For reference, phenomena generators are modules which – like doomsday weapons – can only be fit to a titan and require fuel to fire, potentially affect large numbers of ships and can change the shape of fleet battles.
Stay tuned to Imperium News Network for more as this story develops.
