Player Features and Ideas Discussion

First off: looks good in general. Very good indeed. I know many ppl cry about the ridicilious ewar ranges, but learn to live with them. The shipclass is useless atm in big picture. Only few niche pilots using em as solo or what ever.

Then few complaints. Mainly about the hyena.

- The hyena gets lesser web bonus than huginn / rapier, where the Keres gets the same bonus than lach / arazu. Why this?
- The hyenas sig radius bonus is quite irrelevant. Either make it lilbit bigger, or then the MWD sig radius bonus.

Secondly the Kitsune.

- I strongly disagree on doubling the kitsunes jamming range. It already is ridiciliously high. Unmodified all lvl 5 char is 70+48. Already now, as it is, you can get it to 116km + 48km. By doubling that, you are dangerousely close to gamebreaking ranges.. Welcome back the 200km falcons. Even to a niche use of dualboxing a such ship with an alt to rescue your beloved tackled ship, you should easily be able to make it possible to jam from 200ish km. not good. Especially, as ECM is as broken as it is as a gamemechanic.

While i like the changes to the Sentinel, Keres and Hyena, i don´t think that the Kitsune is on par with the current ECM flaws.

Since the Rebalance of the Ships, most if not all ships have gotten there sensor strength increased. In most cases this was a sensible idea. However as a Jammeing pilot you now have a Rediculously outdated ECM mechanic, in wich a T2 jamming ship doesn´t even have the guarantee anymore to jam a T1 Frigate.

With the addition of Sensor compensation skills, a mere 10 base strength is enough to not be able to permajammed anymore. Add this to the Lock range and esnsor strength Link, The effectiveness of ECM ships falls to an abismal succes rate

With the only guarantee that you can permajam noobships, the Kitsune, while improved is still laughable. In comparison:

This is idealized for small gang warefare:

Sentinels ewar capability while limited to guns only allow it to operate them at 80 km with good effectiveness, with its neuts and flight of drones it can take out any non drone / missile frigate / destroyer stupid enough of going after it

Keres Ewar capabilities, allows you to point to 48 km, without overheating, faction points or links. Combine this with Remote sensor dampeners, you have an effective tackle, that can stay safely at 40 km, and have all but reconships dropped its locking range below its point range

Hyena's Ewar capabilites allow you to slow down and increase the size of a ship so dramaticly that any ship approaching your fleet within 35 km (almost double with faction webs / links) knows its doomed. With an effective paint up to 80 ish km you can increase the kiting gangs damage application by nearly double that of normal.

And then we have the Kitsune. While in theory you bring this ship to lock out half of the ships you want to face, in practice you'll be Lucky if you jam a ship half of the time. In frigates, With the current cycle time of jammers, that means death.
With an average Jam strength of about 13, combined with a cycle time of 20 seconds With the current ECM mechanics this ship will still not work as intended.

So a possilbe solution.

While i hope a remake of the ECM mechanics is on its way, it doesn't solve the current situation. To offset this i propose the following changes:

KITSUNE

Caldari Frigate Bonuses:
20% bonus to ECM target jammer strength per level
20% reduction in ECM target jammers' capacitor need per level (Instead of: 10% reduction in ECM target jammers' capacitor need per level)

Electronic Attack Ships Bonuses:
25% bonus to ECM target jammer optimal range per level (+12.5% per level)
10% reduction in ECM target jammers cycle time (Instead of: 5% bonus to capacitor capacity per level)

(maybe even incorporate its capacitor bonus into the hull?)


With this you reduce the cycle time of its jammers, allowing a better allocation in fast frigate combats, increase the survivability of the kitsune without makeing it much stronger, and keep a tactical niche to it no other jamming ship has.

Alright, these are awesome. So awesome in fact, that I worry what you can do to the current recons. These look a bit too powerful.

If these things go live as is, the only viable ship to solo around in will be a RLML Cerberus.
Seriously. Increasing their range was the wrong idea.

I... Can't seriously believe fozzie that you think giving a linked, fed webbed hyena 87K web range is some how a good idea. Nano PvP will be completely eclipsed with this ******* monster unleashed. Its going to be fast as all hell, have amazing sig tank, and disgusting web range- all for a cheap, easily trainable hull.

In fact all of the EAF's have gotten ridiculous. EWAR is so punishing to a small gang / solo pilot. This kind of unprecedented boost really places that community in a very, very difficult spot. Were these ships just made for some AT shenanigans?

Please explain to me how you see a gang dealing with that hyena? Just bring enough maulus of their own to damp everything down?

This is so far over the top. I can understand the huginn / rapier having some nice bonues. They are expensive, difficult to train, and can at least be shot at / killed. EvE has no place for these EAF monsters. EWAR is just to brutal on these frig hulls.

Play better then. Pretty much. I too hate the ECM mechanics, but still I think it has a place in gamemechanics. If you are so worried bout stuff like ability to kite away, just warp on and off, until you split them enough. And after all, the hyena is and will be oneshottable. Keres then again is not to a solo pilot, as it will damp you to 0km

Overall these changes looks good, but these frigates are still underpowered and useless imo. Some more than others of course.

Take the griffin for instance : It will win some range but it's still as squishy and as expensive as before. So basically, due to his poor speed (even LOWER than the regular griffin o_O) every T1 frigate will be able to catch it and kill it. For larger vessels, let's hope he's not in the optimal range of their long range turrets ! Or at drone range, because otherwise that could very likely be a oneshot.

I am aware that giving these frigate more resilience would represent a MAJOR change in terms of game design, but in my case they still cost as mush, and they are still as weak as before. So except if you're a large alliance with a reimbursment program that allow you to throw them in a suicide fight, you will just loose money using this ship.

I would love to see the stats on how often rapiers and huggins use painter over web - or mix them. They typically dont in my experience. Their slot layout screams shieldtank, the speed meta screams shieldtank, and the slot they use for ewar ... The Web is a lot better at the job, and provides offence and defence. The painter provides offence only - no defence whatsoever.

Hyena - slows it down, makes it big - paper thin, can be oneshotted.
Sentinel - eats cap, disrupts guns, missiles only defence issue.
Kitsune - jams it - game over.
Keres - points it, damps it - more akin to Kitsune. My favourite.

In a gang, and I only think 'in gang' - they will all do well, but I guarantee a crapton more Hyenas will die .. and then stop getting used. Just like now.

Indeed my hopes of e-war /recons getting there e-war ranges nerfed is fading fast with making EAS so potent for a fraction of the cost/training time of a recon the buff to T1 e-war ships was bad enough but tackling ranges are getting excessive with the potential of 100km webs and points despite the recent link nerf it seems everything is getting changed toward long range blob warfare. just when skirmish ships like cruisers and HAC's get a buff you do counter productive things like this...

I do not plan to fly this ships anytime soon, but this new stats, mixed with my beautiful sec status and the current gate gun mechanics in low sec concerns me a bit. Will be possible for me to go in my hunting roams after this?