Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Some of you may be disappointed to hear this, but this isn't erotic fanfiction.

What this is is a discussion about the possibilities for the future Minmatar-Caldari hybrid race. As this was the intended spot for the Mordu's Legion ships before the lore pointed CCP to making them Cal-Gal, it only makes sense CCP will return to try to fill this gap.

The Caldari side of this relationship has been done well in both the Guristas and Mordu's Legion faction ships, so we'll focus on the Minmatar side as our primary influence. This will also work well with the lore bit I'll get into later.

So what are things you think of when you think Minmatar ships? You probably think of speedy ships, powerful webs, good tracking and high alpha.

Well, Angel Ships (as well as Mordu's) already have speedy ships covered and both Serpentis and Blood Raiders get web bonuses. Tracking bonuses have been done before and are easily improved further by modules, so that's really not a significant feature to build upon.

That leaves us with alpha. Alpha is possibly the biggest contribution Minmatar ships provide to the overall meta of New Eden, whether its Thrashers and Tornados ganking in highsec, Muninns decimating in medium gangs, or Alpha and Omega fleets destroying capitals every cycle.

Lucky for us, Alpha also works well with Caldari, as Cormorants, Eagles, and Rohks run pretty solid alpha as well.

Now, how do we work Alpha into the ships design? Taking advantage of the pirate hull role bonus, we increase the raw damage on the ship by a significant amount, and increase the cycle time to bring the dps back down to reasonable levels. Balanced properly the ship should have slightly lower dps than a comparable Minmatar ship, but at twice the alpha.

Now for racial bonuses. Primary Caldari bonuses are shield resistance, missile and ecm bonus. Additionally, most turret based ships have a racial optimal range bonus. To maximize the effectiveness of the alpha, this optimal bonus seems ideal, especially while Guristas already share in the Caldari resistance bonus.

The Minmatar bonus makes most sense to be a tracking bonus to maximize the effective use of the ships weapon systems (primarily artillery over autocannons)

On the Lore side of things, Thukker Tribe is the obvious choice, holding Sov in the Great Wildlands, which is currently a desolate region due to few stations and very little reason to set up shop. It's possible that making the Thukker Tribe actually have their own rats, and own ships (even combat sites and data sites) would put them on par with the 5 primary pirate factions in terms of accessible content, as well as driving player activities in the region. In the long run this could lead to a new line of deadspace mods covering gaps in deadspace coverage, to later be couple with the Intaki Syndicate faction and DED sites.

With the focus being on Minmatar in the mechanics, the fact the Thukker Tribe has little connection to the Caldari has minimal consequence, but at the current point in their history, the Thukker Tribe has a lot of ways that this could be worked into their story.

TL;DR: Thukker Tribe ships.

Role Bonus:
140% Bonus to Projectile Turret Damage
50% Penalty to Projectile Turret Rate of Fire
(Combined this makes 20% bonus to dps)

Minmatar Bonus:
10% Projectile Turret tracking bonus per level

Caldari Bonus:
10% Projectile optimal range bonus per level

On a battleship with 8 turrets, this would be slightly below a Maelstroms dps, and above a Tempests.

Obviously these would be adjusted to be balanced for the ship size, but these would be the base attributes.

When I get a chance I'll put more info together to compare this to other ships more directly as well as adapt it for others suggestions that will likely arise. Maybe even put together a mock up of ship stats.

+1 because this is something entirely different and would be fresh.

Thukker already has a t2 line of ships. There is no reason to give them any faction ships.

No.. the Minm + Cal ships should be missile boats.. What I'd like to see is the web range of the Bhaal, and a damage application bonus.. but NO Damage bonus.. Or if it does, be like a NM where is does more Damage, less launchers.

Mach is enough of an instant Apha boat, we don't need more than that. Want more Alpha, use missiles and risk firewalls.

Just retcon the T2 line of ships to be a random minmatar tribe (pull one out of the hat) and problem solved. Nobody cares about the lore of T2 ship lines anyway, methinks.

OP, I was silly to question the alpha thing considering the existence of tornadoes and maelstroms, +1 to your idea. It's unique enough and the game could use a few more projectile platforms.

I just got visions of 10-20 of the cruiser variants flying around at 100KM popping things in one volley.

As an alternative, how about focusing on the fact that both races have damage select-ability so they could get 99% reduction in reload speed, a damage bonus to all missile damage types and 100% accurate ship scanners.

This would make for the most beastly RHML and RLML ships ever.

well the ship scanner will tell you how they're fit and with a 0 second reload you can instantly switch to the best damage type to shoot them with.

Just playing off the damage selection angle.

I like where you're going with this. I support the idea of making them missile boats, for the reasons pointed out by Sniper Smith above, plus as a further (even if slight) "drawback" to them being the new meta: missile ships are not generally considered to be the best PvP hulls for reasons most folks know.

Maybe give a bonus for Caldari to flight time, and a bonus for Minmatar on TP optimal?

Role bonus would be a flat (10%?) bonus to Kinetic and Explosive missiles.

Just tossing ideas into the mix, and trying to avoid mimicking the Mordu's Legion ships.

Nah optimal bonus is better for artillery.

As far as the OP is concerned, I think the alpha bonus is too dangerous. I prefer the RLML or RHLM idea, it is unique and interesting.