Player Features and Ideas Discussion

the stationary marauder you guys are refering too would be better served calling it a juggernaught class.
big brutish and tanky.

the marauder needs to be fast and agile. lightly armored (within reason), heavy dps (like they are now with good application) and high mobility (mjd bonus, burner speed bonus).

more like a (and i hate to say this) tier 3 bc.

maybe not as fast though.

again, scan probe bonus, salvage bonus.
descent, balanced resists. maybe not all the way up too t2, but we would have figured out that a balanced approach allow you to fight everyone you encounter and not just racial enemies.
as the galaxy grew, they encountered more ships. a need for a more balanced role.
add up the numbers on t2 resists and then divide by 4. like you guys did with the gnosis.
we can pump it up from there.
the dcII gives a steady ammount, the bastion mode (original version) would kick that up another 30% balanced...
if you need stacking penalties to keep it down to a reasonable level, so be it.

thats probably true, but thats not what the devs will do, the art assets have already been seen by the csm so they have allready comitted to some extent.

i like the probe strength.

a lot.

I haven't been reading a ton of this and just checked in to see if there had been any devposts concerning the marauders balance, but I'd like to note that on the topic of t1 battleship hulls, I know that all of them can complete any L4 mission without warping out. Guaranteed. If you're in a battleship, you don't have an excuse for warping out of an L4 mission, sorry - most people with appropriate skills can complete most L4 missions in a T2-fit hurricane (even post-hurricane change), albeit slowly. The rest just comes down to what reasonable completion times are. In my experience a really nice relatively pimped-out marauder, faction, or pirate battleship will complete L4 missions, on average around 30%-40% faster than a t2-fit teir 3 battleship. With that in mind, I would expect, including travel time and without salvage in a t1 battleship, most missions to take around 10-20 minutes and a few of the big ones to take longer - 60 minutes or so. This is based primarilyo

The argument of whether or not the additional cost of the more advanced ship is worth the additional risk and completion time comes down to how you play your game.

Edit: I'd also like to weigh in on my opinion with marauders, although in a thread this big I doubt any dev will read it. I think the idea of making marauders more role-oriented independent of PvE vs PvP is great. I don't think the current pass of marauder rebalance ideas really gives them any role, though, it just limits their options. For one thing, I think a web bonus on all of the hulls is about as pointless as you can get. I think a local rep bonus instead, or alternatively a damage bonus, is more appropriate. Right now, and even with a 25% optimal/falloff bonus on the vargur, a 1400-arty Machariel can match or out-DPS an 800mm Vargur with significantly better range, and still drop flights of drones up to 4 sentries with room to spare for frigate-killing light drones - obviously it has better damage projection, even if the Vargur is supposed to be "specialized" in damage projection. And with the Vargur's new powergrid, it will have a 1400 platform that can reach farther, but outside of some very specific sniping setups, that kind of range is not particularly useful, and can be better fulfilled by a rail platform anyway.

In my opinion, balancing marauders with the bastion module is a cool idea, but not a good one. Changes to the hulls to rid them of their really annoying properties (low sensor strength/scan res and small drone bays/bandwidth) and giving them the MJD bonus + T2 resists is plenty. But since the bastion is probably going to be a thing, it really needs to be something that gives the ship a real role. Without the hull bonuses to repair amount, the bastion will give approximately a 45% tank bonus over what they do now (assuming a pilot with Marauders V), but at the *significant* expense of mobility. I know that I will prefer mobility over the extra tank in the vast majority of situations. I would not, however, prefer mobility if the bastion either:

A. Increased my tank much more significantly than 45% of current values.

(The idea here is that a 45% tank bonus on a marauder adds way too much tank to be useful in L4 missions, not quite enough to be useful as a self-rep in Incursions (not at the expense of not being able to warp out for a given period of time), enough to be somewhat useful but not role-defining in station games and solo PvP, and pretty much entirely useless in fleet warfare.)

B. Increased my damage projection much more significantly than 25% (so that I could project damage with short-range high-dps weapons more effectively.)

C. Increased my actual damage output to make up for the lack of projection. I like this the best because it seems like it has the largest variety of usefulness, and really encourages people to use the Bastion in a similar way to the way Dreadnoughts are used, which is quite obviously the idea behind the bastion in the first place.

It's been discussed that better tank lets you add more damage or damage projection mods, but most marauders can do fine in PvE with a 2-mod tank (resist and repair) and already pretty much fully utilize their damage capacity. Adding even more tank wouldn't do much, as I don't think many pilots would launch from station with only a repair module and not one resist, especially for the limited bonus provided by a fourth damage mod, third track

i fell like this has happend b4, lol

Well I've finally compiled all my thoughts together from this thread into a (somewhat) comprehensible format. The thread is located here. I've tried to incorporate many of the ideas I've seen posted here with an eye towards useful base hulls with bastion being a role enhancer. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it overall and where you would change or make it better.

I thought it was an interesting idea at first but with the second change its getting less so. I like the idea of a highly mobile snipe BS so I like the core idea, not so much anything else. Maybe if bastion mode ends 5-10 seconds after guns stop instead of the flat 60 second cycle. Also better agility. MJD, blast, stop firing, MJD repeat.

Still, a tornado(other ABCs are available) being 1/10 the price MWDing away while blasting is pretty much going to be a better option in most circumstances.

Yeah a T2 1bil BS should be special like Blops are. Do something crazy with it CCP.

As the marauder changes are not on Sisi but the current crop of bs are thats where you should be doing this if you havent already decided to do so. I would love to be around when you are running missions and can supply some of the missions if you are so inclined and if its allowable under the rules that you are setting forth.

I would be interested in running competing missions in my marauder as well to see differences in completion times.

For those interested, I've setup an in game chat channel "MissionChallenge". I'll get things flushed out a bit better in the next day or so, but otherwise I'll be updating the MOTD in the channel with my progress.





I was planning on doing it through Sisi because of the convenience the markets provide. If folks would rather see it done on TQ I can work on making that happen instead.

As long as you're not providing boosts there isn't an issue. You just need to be in another squad/wing/etc. so I can warp to missions or just drop fleet after initiating warp to the mission. Shoot me a message with the factions you have access to with L4 security missions and we'll go from there.

I'm planning on timing the individual missions in addition to the total time for all ten. So everyone can compare the average/individual mission time with their own if they would like to.

It lost steam hard after it became apparent that CCP was going back to the drawing board.

That's good though. This forum did it's job. We're going to see a much more thought out product in their next offering, I'm sure of it.

Is it possible for You to upload the video on YT? I want to see it, too. If you don't mind. :)

Are You doing the same mission with every hull or different missions? And which mission? Worlds collide or something else? Maybe Dread Pirate Scarlett.