Ships & Modules

Merlin brawler

The function of tiercide is getting rid of the tiers, instead restructuring the ships in a more role-oriented way. Not taking frigates that are fine (check RvB popularity, quite a few were flying 125mm) and turn them on their heads (even giving the Rifter a further boost).

With that in mind and viewing the current changes I think CCP Ytterbium is making mistakes:

1. Committing Tiercide by changing popular ships that already have a very well-defined role is completely backwards. The Merlin was unique in its role as sniper frigate, but now it's just another generic tank&spank brawler. Moving multiple ships into the same role causes the same problems as tiers: the best min-maxed ship for a role obsoletes the rest, especially with easily cross-trained frigates, unless they are exactly the same. The only way to counter this is by giving ships with similar roles drastic different styles. Making the Merlin a 'shield-Punisher' isn't going to work.


2. If people comment how the Merlin isn't very useful als a sniper, don't change the Merlin and instead, scrutinize CCP's design philosophy for frigate snipers. As a general rule, fragile snipers should do a lot of damage, with range keeping them safe. But in EVE long range makes the damage output pathetic and it disables a frigate's speedtank. And as with most sniper-able ships in EVE, this isn't compensated by enough tank, more slots or a much smaller signature.

The underlying problem is the turret's tracking-formula barely protecting ships with small signature radius against larger guns (unlike the missile formula). But this is CCP Greyscale's 'ball of mud', now busy mucking up the XL-turrets. So for the time being, compensate with a role-crucial damage-bonus and increasing speed and tank.


3. When completely rebalancing, you don't start with changing ships that already are popular! The powercreep argument isn't valid here, because the Tr3 frigates were improved. The problem now is that this is messing with the baseline by which the results could be measured. CCP should have started with the unpopular frigates first and try to fit them into (new) dedicated roles, mixed with a racial-flavored style. And then keep pestering CCP Diagoras for popularity metrics.


4. Any attempt of committing Tiercide to the ships, will be handicapped by the fact that weapon modules are tiered themselves, which makes CPU and grid balancing very hard. Instead of 'biggest gun is the best', damage, range and tracking stats should be adjusted so they too become role-oriented (as in 'which shipsize would you like to be able to kill?'). Tr3 Battlecruisers make a mess of this ofcourse but fitting Neutrons or 1400mm should barely be possible (and drop the damage bonus).


5. Any boost low tier ships like the Tormentor should ALSO come with a boost to it's building cost. I'm not saying it's should cost as much as a Punisher (there will at least remain some remnants of tiers, no matter what), but now it costs only 50k ISK!


6. The 'bombardment' role as described in earlier blogs show that there is a misconception at CCP between 'roles' and 'styles', while also fading the lines from the start by giving 'combat ships' too much damage-potential, hurting the role of 'attack ships'. Also are the number of roles too limited and it shouldn't be necessary for all races to represent in every role. Here's an examply of my vision:

-tackle capability is determined by number of med slots and tackle bonus
-versatility is determined by total number of slots, mod-specific bonus and number of possible weapons

brawler: close or medium range, decent (unbonused) dps, good tank, average speed, ok tackle, decent versatility
Punisher (tank), Kestrel (light missiles), Incursus (dps+drone), Rifter (speed)

blitzer: close range, very high dps/disabling (role-bonus), low tank, high speed, little tackle, little versatility
Tormentor (neuting), Atron (mwd), Burst (dps)

sniper: long range (role-bonus), high dps, low tank, average speed little tackle, some versatility
Merlin (tank), Breacher (missiles)

ewar: any range, medium dps with ewar bonus, average tank, average speed, very versatile
Crucifier (tank), Griffin (sniper), Maulus (drones)

support: any range, low dps, good tank, decent speed, reasonably versatile
Bantam (shield-logi), Navitas (logi-drones)

tank: medium range, low dps, extremely good tank, low speed, good tackle, decent versatility
Inquisitor (missile), Tristan (versatility)

exploration: (pretty much working as intended, but perhaps some more tank&dps, so cov-ops aren't always better
Magnate, Heron, Imicus, Probe

tackler: medium range, low dps, average tank, very high speed, very good tackle, basically a cheap fragile inty
Executioner (speed), Condor (cap scramblers), Slasher (web)

They are awesome, but that isn't the point. Most of those 'new' frigs already were popular. This wasn't Tiercide, just a load of powercreep on the already popular Tr3 frigates.

Isn't the idea to have all frigates be on roughly equal footing in the future? If so, who's to say that they won't revamp some of the other t1 frigates into sniper frigates in the next iteration? I somewhat doubt that they will make all 6 frigates for each race into short range brawlers.

OP: +1: You are right on target. Your concept and description is what Eve once was, each race with a drastically different playing style, not simply same stats with different graphics. If eve players wanted that we could all go back to Warcraft the original RTS.

CCP, please review, revist, and understand upgrading the already popular ships is not helping balance the game at all.

After Incarna I was very disappointed with CCP, then they corrected for it, and now it seems vanilla is the new FOTM.

Tweak the Tier 1 and 2 frigates that no one flies. (too late now with the patch around the corner, so please remember when you get to cruisers)

-DT

Hint for the clueless: each race does have a drastically different playing style, at least in theory*.

Also, you're looking at frigate balance, where there is the least room for different roles. For example, the role of larger Caldari gunboats simply doesn't work at the (T1) frigate level because frigate railguns don't have enough range. That means the choice is either swap range for damage, or have a "unique" ship that is only good for ship spinning.

*It's not the ship designer's fault that the players have chosen "bring more ships than the other side" as the universal strategy.



Well, it's a good thing the first step in tiericide was to fix ships that sucked, isn't it?

There's a very good reason why frigates were divided into two categories: Rifters, and ships you reprocess for minerals to build Rifters. At least now there's a reason to fly something other than a Rifter, beyond "I'm a newbie who hasn't trained Minmatar Frigate IV yet".

And what do you sacrifice? The tank bonus that was one of the most appealing things about the Merlin? Or do you just give a "free" double range bonus in addition to tank? If you do, do you also boost the Harpy's dual range bonuses to 20% each?

And even then you're still stuck with a ship with a role that barely exists. There just isn't any need for a frigate "sniper" with 20km range, pathetic damage and minimal tank. The Harpy only works because it has an extra gun slot and damage bonus, T2 resists, and the tank bonus on top of that. And even then, despite all those advantages, the sniper Harpy is still not all that popular. Trying to copy the Harpy design concept with the Merlin just creates another "reprocess to build Rifters" waste of database space.

Ytterbium, I just wanted to comment on this possibility of guns for different roles; you'd also have to be careful not to interfere with, or eliminate the roles of ships that are already specialised for hitting small targets, namely Destroyers. I know not many people have any real love for dessies (outside of suicide ganking reasons), but I would hate to see them effectively outclassed by Cruisers fitting medium dual-X type guns.

I realise at some point down the line that you'll have all new pilots have to fly their racial Destroyer, but who will stick with Destroyers when a Cruiser's smallest guns will fit the same role, tracking and eliminating frigates from the field?

Hey, look - Merin is calling other people clueless in this thread.

That's hilarious.

Rails have insane PG requirements atm please reduce it some.

It'd need to be a fairly substantial difference to be worthwhile since one can mitigate tracking deficiencies with range or intelligent piloting, but onceyou're in space you can't raise your DPS higher than it's theoretical max any way except overheating. And it wouldn't be worth it on ships/fits with the ability to fit double webs.

You could bias "higher" tiers towards alpha and range while giving "lower" tiers RoF and tracking and somewhat equalizing their stats. That'd be pretty cool and shakeup a few setups that have been stale since Dominion.