Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Ok so after some discussion with the design team here and the CSM we've decided that there's room to keep improving these ships a bit without making the content trivial or stepping on the toes of other ships.

One big concern with the tiericide is making sure we don't obsolete the tech 2 ships along the way. In this case there's almost no danger of obsoleting Covops since they die rarely (so cost is not a big issue) and their cloaking gameplay is a large unique advantage. In the same way, there's almost no danger of these ships making any of the pure combat ships obsolete. You should always be able to run the combat portions of a site more easily if you bring a friend in a combat or attack frigate, but there's room to let these exploration frigates spread their wings a bit.

So we're going to upgrade their relatively inconsequential role bonus into another slot. Side effects are that we get to improve the ships overall, reduce the gap between the best performing in actual gameplay (Imicus) and the rest, give you Imicus pilots that really feel you need cloaks a chance to do so, and help ensure that the Heron has room to compete with the others in tanking.
It also means that we can make the class without duplicating any slot layouts between them, which is nice for racial differentiation.

We are also bumping the probing bonus from 5% to 7.5% per level, which should help increase their utility over a blackbird with probes without causing them to step on the toes of the 10% bonuses covops and T3s.

Along with the slot we're giving them some more fitting to make use of it, and a bit more structure HP (for all but the Heron)

OP will be updated in a second, the exact changes are:

Magnate:
5% probe bonus changed to 7.5%
Role bonus removed
+1 lowslot
+1pg, +10cpu
+30 Structure HP

Heron:
5% probe bonus changed to 7.5%
Role bonus removed
+1 midslot
+1 pg, +10cpu
-10 Structure HP

Imicus:
5% probe bonus changed to 7.5%
Role bonus removed
+1 highslot
+1 pg, +10cpu
+35 Structure HP

Probe:
5% probe bonus changed to 7.5%
Role bonus removed
+1 highslot
+1 pg, +10cpu
+25 Structure HP

Each of the races can fit two weapons plus probe launcher and salvager except for the Imicus which has a greater dependence on drones anyway. I still think if someone has chosen exploration then putting a few SP into scout drones is not wasted effort.

cov ops have covert ops cloak, that alone is enough to make them better, even if the tech1 had the same probing bonus.
that's really not an issue here.

but it's true that for some others frigates changes, i got a bit scared for tech2 advantages being greatly reduced ^^

Now that the Imicus has 3 highs, I believe it's appropriate to give it the 2/2 turret/launcher setup the others have.

-Liang

I don't believe that's a realistic concern when you're giving 2 turrets + 15m^3 + enough slots to fit dmg mods to the other frigates.

-Liang

Ed: Honestly if you've done the math on it and the potential DPS is too high, then alright I guess. But at a glance it doesn't seem like it would be. Out of curiosity, what is the target long range DPS output of these frigs?

I think putting Imicus with 20 bandwidth vs 15 for all other frigs may put this frig in dominating position, like Tengu comparing to other T3. Especially if whole concept of this new frigs designed for new people using distance tanking/drone dps techniques.

To keep things a bit balanced I'll love to see Magnate with 20 bandwidth and less drones bay capacity.

Yes, I understand it is for new people in game, who want to try different things and exploration is a sort of content to keep people in game, especially in the beginning of the game mechanics learning curve.

Therefore, if we look a bit ahead, developing exploration as mini-profession (it is not anymore, btw) can just go along the path like Imicus-Vexor-Helios-Ishtar or
Magnate-Arbitrator-Anathema-Pilgrim

Since both of them based on drones, I guess Magnate deserve 40 Band.

From my personal experience, quiet a number of people will switch to Gila at very early stage, once the get to cruiser hull, especially with some drone skills trained already, and with further development toward Tengu.

Thank you!!!

I dunno, I'd say that 2 turrets/2 launchers + 3 drones > 1 turret + 4 drones.

-Liang

I still think you should keep some designs going across different parts of the game.

If you said that there were 3 ship roles and one was attack and speed, damage and defense, and Ulitiy defense. At least that's how it sounded. And each ship would get a role bonus. So each race shares a bonus is the ship Line bonus. Mabye you should label it that. Ship lane bonus, and give that extra bonus to all ships in that ship line.

I disagree. The ships look very good in their latest reform.

CCP Fozzie's idea to drop the role bonus for +1 fitting slot was a very good solution to what everyone was complaining about. I think these frigates are now ready for testing. I would love to see them on SiSi soon(tm)

Also, I'm ASSoutofUandME'ing that the lack of high slots for probe launcher and weapons/cloak combined with the large drone bays means you want these puppies to use salvage drones. If so, any chance the salvager bonus could extend to the drones?

Pretty pwease!