Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I hear manners go a long way in life, you should try it.

Interesting idea for Marauders but i feel like it is stepping on the toes of too many other ship roles... also alpha would still be their weakness.

I'm not calling this overpowered as all the specs can be tweaked for balance but my personal opinion is that this doesn't really feel like Marauder for me.

I'll just have to disagree on your whole agenda and thought process for this discussion, you call it "hilariously overpowered", I call it specialized with flexible properties but in need of iteration. Blanket statements are "hilariously" pointless and I'm waiting for you to realise this.

Even an unqualified person can at least pick up the functional mechanics from this and visualize a working concept without parading "overpowered" as a reason not to, you just complain and reiterate "overpowered" and even add further attempted personal insults in your latest posts, weak to say the least.


I made this suggestion on a concept similar to 'Bastion', I wanted it to reflect the 'Bastion' because it seemed it was what CCP was aiming for, yet I wanted to give it flavour, a "Marauder" flavour and move it from the rigid one trick pony role it was given.

I did not suggest it because I wanted it to be some boring cousin to a pirate ship, nor in the aims of what you rigidly believe it should be, but how I would like it to be and give it unique properties.

From there on to iterate it into something fully functional with the help of the player base, but I've understood now that at least you will have none of it because it is too different and nothing will ever change that, that's just how things are aren't they?


This is my personal opinon for the Marauder role, this is not a suggestion following CCP initial design intentions for the Marauder, but I guess you missed to read the first few lines in the OP apparently.

You're all about outright "overpowered" with no room to spare, I respect your opinion as much as I can , but don't expect me to understand yours in this case nor compromise my own for it; Additionally hold the attempted insults please or I'll drop the conversation with you.

I have not attacked you once, I have attacked your idea, I have pointed out flaws in it in a very direct and fairly respectful way. "This is overpowered" is a legitimate complaint for an idea if a fairly broad one. If you feel I have insulted you directly then I apologize.

I will, however, stand by the assertion that there are large sections of this idea that run directly count to existing mechanics, such as modules that affect things inside a station or boosting that only works within a set radius and only for specific ship types. Also there is no mechanic in-place for a pilot entering into another person's ship and doing so creates quite a few problems from a technical standpoint with the way session changes work in Eve to what would potentially happen if that ship is destroyed.

Second there is very little point to having one large ship boosting a lot of smaller ones, especially just Interceptors and Destroyers. For a start that runs directly into the role of the command ships. If you want a ship to boost destroyers then make a destroyer sized command ship, at least then you could bring it into Faction War sites that limit ship type. Swarms of small ships also tend to die rather easy to an equally sized force of larger ships because you have a hard time applying damage while maintaining traversal against the mass of the enemy force and your overall very thin hitpoints mean that you're going to be blasted out of space if they get even a few good hits off on you.

Plus having a large single ship "boosting" these ships means that the larger ships will simply tank the DPS of the small ones and blast the larger target off the field at which point the small ships are once again weaker and even easier to wipe off the field with webs, target painters, and simply spreading the fleet out so you can't maintain traversal against everyone at once.

As to the single ship bonuses. Too many bonuses and too many powerful bonuses. Pick a focus for the ships and bonus one or two things. Without very good reason a ship should never have more than one powerful role bonus, the tractor-beam bonus is not powerful, it's very very niche and does nothing at all for PvP. The 100% weapon damage works because of the 4 weapons and is a moderately powerful bonus. The MJD bonus is powerful but situational. Things like a flat cap use reduction though are extremely powerful by themselves as is web range.

Also a game designer should try to avoid introducing mechanics that circumvent other mechanics without a significant trade-off. Things like the ability to flat avoid gate-camps is very very powerful. Capitals Ships can do this because they also flat out can't use gates and Black-Ops Battleships pay a fair bit in other ways for the ability to bypass gates. Your idea doesn't even have a fuel cost and is entirely linked to a module. The ability to do this should be on the ship and should have inherent trade-offs like less tank or the cost of a "bonus slot" on the ship.

Also in general a ship like a T3 or your proposed Marauders should not be doing any single thing better than another ship type that is specialized into that role. This fits with the idea of meaningful trade-offs. If one ship does several things the best then that ship is by definition over-powered.

My suggestion would be to take this concept and build it back up from the ground up. If you want this to be a very generalized ship then go with the principal of T3s and have it do a lot of things well but nothing the best. If you want this to be specialized in small-ship boosting then make it a small ship and run with that.

As things stand though this has absolutely no relation to the existing Marauder class and given reactions to CCP's current proposals would not be received well by the current owners of Marauders.

You and I just have differing opinion in both how game design philosophy is to be applied at least in this case and what the Marauder role is and how it is supposed to function, that is quite natural though and keeps the discussion alive.


I will prioritize features and roles which are interesting and fun first and foremost, to then attempt to balance them without removing the initial intention; Going strictly by the numbers from the start might guarantee a more "balanced" situation quicker but you will end up with the most bland result possible and there are plenty of bland ships in EVE already.
This ship is directly meant as what I would like it to be to give it a solid role, as mentioned before I'm fully aware it isn't perfect and that it needs rehashing, but starting from scratch as you suggest when the role is perfectly defined is wasteful and unnecessary, it just needs iteration.


This Marauder is supposed to be a solid ship but offering in essence specializations which introduce both benefits and weaknesses, after discussing with you I've come to see that maybe those weaknesses need to be more clear cut than they are currently, for instance the damage penalty on Guardian doctrine could be as much as 50%, Assault doctrine could lose more locking range and projection, just to guarantee less toe stepping on pirate ships.
It then also has a side option of carrying some player interceptors and destroyers, this doesn't up its strength as a solo ship in any way, it only introduces the option to field a proper interceptor/destroyer gang to "Maraud"; All this making it highly effective in certain situations, giving it a high amount of options which I believe it should have.


All the role bonuses guarantee its strength versus unorthodox warfare and apply control to the battlefield, all of which are possible to overcome and none of them are definite in any way, they make it more slippery and allows it to function as a reliable lead raiding ship to a gang, but in only one doctrine at once, possibly the doctrine reload time could be longer as well, 30 seconds might be too short.

If you find some doctrines are too lenient with their introduced drawbacks I hope you can help me with their reiteration.

Additionally, if pirate ship toes are excessively stepped on there will be an iteration on their balancing later as well as there exists the possibility to rebalance any statistics on the Marauder to accommodate the additional utility. I'm just hesitant to reduce any bonuses of those because they directly define a role and I don't see the problem in them as a whole, these are after all highly advanced battleships with one of the biggest price tags for sub capitals, that warrants some utility in my book.

I'll actually update the doctrines right now to reflect the higher drawbacks needed.

Thank you.


EDIT: I also found that the Fortress doctrine(former bastion) doesn't fit the attack role of the Marauder, I removed it completely.