Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I think there's a place for homogenisation, and a place for differentiation.

For example, every race needs an exploration frig, an fast tackle frig, a basic combat frig. Each race needs a decent PvE frig and cruiser. These are mandatory so new players don't get locked out by their racial choice.

Beyond that, I think differentiation is good - different races ships should fly quite differently. It's good for intermediate stuff like dessies, E-War ships, etc to be quite different. I think it's good that they have different strengths and require different tactics to do well. I don't want to see all four dessies being catalyst or thrasher but with a different (but identically functioning) weapon type.

Once we are at intermediate level, it's not that big an ask to re-train into another race's ships and guns. The core skills transfer, and the time to reach semi-decent isn't that long.

CCP Ytterbium,

I like the direction you are going here, but I would like to point out something you may have missed.

In the frigate rebalance and tiercide, many -- particularly lower tier ships -- were boosted to come in line with the working useful tier 3 ships. The lower tier vessels had limited slot layouts that made them difficult to fit with enough utility to be worth flying.

Destroyers are essentially tier 1 ships that never had improved higher tier vessels introduced. Perhaps the Destroyer buff a way back could arguably put them on tier 2 status.

Anyway, I think you may want to consider across the board buffs, add 1 mid or low, because these guys are right when they complain about losing a mid on the Cormorant or a low on the Coercer. It is a very tight fit making these Destroyers worth flying, in the same way tier 1 frigates were in some cases. Add the slot, no need to move it. I think I would go with one more low for both the Catalyst and the Thrasher. (Makes the Thrasher flexible for armor or shield like many of the other Minnie ships.) Other possibility for the Cat might be to skip the slot and up the drones capacity and bandwidth to be able to fly a full wing of light scouts.

And as useful as the utility high is, not sure why the Cormorant can't have 8 turret hardpoints as well, particularly if you are introducing a missile destroyer in the same time frame.

While looking at new destroyers it may also be a good time to reconsider that Aegis proposal that I am sure you are familiar with. Ships with defensive capabilities for intercepting or otherwise mitigating incoming attacks.

This is spot-on. The mids and lows are so gimped on the current hulls that their only combat use is really 'suicide gank' at this point. Drop the highs down to six slots if you like, but these hulls really could use 1 or 2 extra mid/low slots. The closest example is the tier 3 BC's - they've got a similar (though larger) role, 8 high slots and 8 slots divided amongst the lows and mids, yet they're hardly considered overpowered on defence.

Destroyers only have 5 slots in low/mid at the moment (FRIGATES GET MORE), consider bumping that up instead of just re-arranging them again.

Up to here almost nobody is happy with these changes.
The answer why is simple. It is really hard work to get the other destroyers on par with the Thrasher. Minmatars have the best weapons, speed and so on.
Especially in fw Minmatar weapons are awesome. Example? Ever tried to kill minnies plexers with amarrian ships? They are perfectly tanked versus em and heat, that means vs lasers. So it is not that easy to shoot such a fast and perfectly tanked ship versus your laser weapons.
But when a minnie wants to shoot an amarr plexer it is much easier: The amarr plexer will be armored versus rats what means against kinetic and explosive, the minnie knows it and chooses heat ammo. Simple.
Another example? Arty Thrasher is awesome. Fast lock, really good damage and almost no cap usage. Coercer can do the same but maximum 2 minutes. LOL. With these changes Coercer can do the same for two minutes.
Seriously: To get the other three destroyers on par with Thrasher there are probably only two options: Give them one slot more than Thrasher or nerf artillery. I see no other option. The Thrasher is such an overpowered killing machine in comparison to the others that it can do really everything. I know people who have flown Coercer for months and swore never to fly a minnie ship.
Until yet these people spit and laugh about Coercer and fly the Thrasher.
This Minmatar dessie is simply toooooo overpowered in comparison to the others.

I repeat that there are probably only two options to get the other destroyers on par with Thrasher:
a) nerf artillery
or
b) give cormorant and catalyst an additional low or mid slot and give the coercer REALLY more cap or also another low slot.
The cap option would be the better one because even with an additional slot Coercer will faster run out of cap as you can imagine and is useless in larger fleet fights.

Edit: I forgot to mention one inportant issue. The Coercer is BY FAR the most expensive ship of all four dessies because it has always to take minimum 5mil isk in ammo to get all guns firing.

Then you might explain me when Thrasher isn´t that much overpowered why I see Thrasher fleets consisting of six up to twelve and more Thrashers every day and never ever saw a catalyst, cormorant or coercer fleet?

Well if this gets really into sisi and then in the game I should really better train minmatar ships. And yes most of Minmatar ships ARE winmatar. Before inferno best T1 frigate, best destroyer (by far), best T1 cruiser (rupture) and best bc (Hurricane). And no let us not talk about the drake. Everybody cries nerf the drake but hurricane is many times better and I wonder why everybody only cries because of the drake.
I will stay at it: Buff the others more or nerf Thrasher for example by nerfing artillery.

A general frig has 10 slots all around

Dessies have around 13..

I guess I would say that Coercer is already an awesome destroyer that simply doesn't have a point. With a point, it will be easily on par or better than the Thrasher over a wide range of situations.

The Cormorant will be the superior sniper ship, but nothing else. It used to be a great sniper and a good close range ship but removing the midslot hurt its abilty to control range.

The Catalyst will be the superior high sec ganker, but nothing else.

So, the wide range of destroyer roles will be filled mostly by Coercer/Thrasher, with two niches being filled by the Cormorant and the Catalyst.

I would like to know what you're basing this assertion on. I've been following http://eve-kill.net/?a=top20 in the last six months and not much has actually changed in that timeframe.

Hybrids are slightly better represented while lasers are slightly worse represented. HMLs are still on top and projectile weapons make up the bulk as always.

Very few armor tankers as usual also.

I run cormorant fleets regularly because they **** all over thrashers in plexes.