Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Solo PVP is, according to popular opinion, largely dead outside of frig warfare in FW zones.

I've thought about why that is a lot, and have come to the conclusion that frigs need to be slightly toned down.

Frigs are incredible ships.

- They can avoid many types of damage from larger ships. I think the extent to which frigs tank larger ships' guns is not nearly as well known as it should be. Anyone who questions this, go to Pyfa and fit up any long range medium weapon system*, and see how it does in situations where you'd be fighting frigs ( In "graphs" set range from 0-80, angle of 35, speed of between 2500 and 4000, sig of between 75 and 150). I think you'll be surprised at just how well frigs tank any long range medium gun type.

- Frigs are cheap as all hell.

- Frigs are, by their nature, great tacklers. Nearly any ship in the game is vulnerable, if roaming solo, to being tackled, and tackling often results in being killed

So we have incredibly cheap ships, that are often impossible to kill for larger ships, or at least take forever to kill with Warrior IIs, that cost a tiny fraction of what the cheapest ships cost in any ship class above dessies, and that are very good at tackling which also often results in a kill.

So everyone uses them.

I don't have numbers on how much ship time is spent in different ship classes, but I imagine that by far frigs rack up the most pilot hours (can anyone confirm?).

I firmly believe that frigs are the primary reason why I almost never see anyone going solo in a cruiser/battlecruiser or heaven forbid, battleship. Why undock your 100 million isk behemoth when you may be killable, and are almost certainly tackle-able, by an atron or condor? You're asking for an embarrassing loss mail.

Is it the intention that larger ships not be flown solo?

Fixing this would be difficult. You have to avoid breaking frig on frig fights, while nerfing frigs at least a little against larger ships. I propose two changes.

1. Increase the tracking speed on medium guns slightly, especially the ranged guns. Large guns might need an increase too, but I never fly them so I don't know.
2. Significantly increase the capacitor cost of warp disruption modules.

The first buff would make frigs a bit easier to deal with through conventional means. I absolutely believe that tracking has been set too low for medium weapons systems.

The second change would hopefully either lessen the amount of time a non-interceptor frig could keep a target tackled, or force frigs to use fits that are specifically for tackling.

Lastly, I'd like to say that I'd love to see more suggestions on how to fix the issue. Perhaps the two changes I'm proposing are horrible, bad changes. I'm not likely the best person to come up with fixes. I bet others could do better.

* Short range weapon systems aren't much better, as frigs with warp disruptors tackle you just as well.

You're probably right. I haven't done much with battleships, so I may have assumed that they suffer from the same problems that cruisers and battle-cruisers do.

I have flown cruisers quite a bit, and I feel like flying them solo is a fool's errand. Too many frigs, and too many of the frigs you run into can ruin your day with ease. Putting long range guns on a cruiser and undocking solo is a death sentence. Go with blasters and they can just kite you while keeping you disrupted.

I don't think they should be as effective as they are against cruisers and battle-cruisers.

I accept that as a solo player, I'm not going to have even isk efficiency. I even accept that I'm not going to win a majority of fights, but I think that if you really try it in a cruiser, you're looking at routinely getting killed by million dollar tacklers you can't fight off in a reasonable time frame.

As a fairly experienced (solo) frig pilot I can confirm it's possible to kill larger ships in a frigate. Even the ones with energy neutralizers can be killed if you have a nos and know what you're doing. Some ships like the arbitrator, vexor or the myrmidon are pretty untouchable unless the pilot is new to pvp, while some other ships like the omen or the stabber just kind of die if they get caught by a capable frig pilot.

From my own experience I'm talking mostly about brawly frigates, t1 and t2. The experience is slightly different for kity frigs.

However, If they've (larger ships) got neuts, drones or a simple anti-frigate setup (scram and webs) you're most likely done for.
Kity frigs often have trouble breaking tanks because of their relatively low dps (the condor, for example) while brawly frigs have to get inside and risk going into a death trap.

Frigates have the advantage of being fast and being able to get under guns / stay out of reach. As soon as these abilities fail, the frigate is dead. Dual webs against a brawly frigate or long range turrets / rapid light missiles against kiters and they're extremely lucky to get away alive.

My point here is that frig pilots have to take risks. As soon as their judgement fails or they just get plain unlucky with their opponents, they're dead. The financial blow depends on the ship, but so do their chances of victory. I can say it's much easier to brawl a rupture in a jaguar than it is in a rifter. A jaguar should cost you around 20-30 mil for the ship itself plus another 10-20 mil or so for the fit, depending on your preferred modules. It's not a whole lot but when you consider how easily that jaguar can die, it's a very reasonable amount of money.

TLDR: soloing big ships in a smaller ship means taking risks. Soloing small ships in bigger ships should also mean taking risks.