Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Background:
==========

It's been a while since the release of the Nestor. At the time there was some scepticism that this hull would see use in Eve. For the sake of transparency, I was one of those who struggled to see a niche for it's many but seemingly uncoordinated bonuses, although I do from time to time seek to find a way to justify buying one.

Time has passed and the market has had time to stabilise. Players have had time to think of roles.

The sister ships have seen enthusiastic uptake. There are on average 200 sales of an Astero per day in Jita, 100 per day for the Stratios. The Nestor by comparison sells approximately 15 hulls per day.

My 4-years experience in Eve is that of living in w-space and being a visitor in other people's nullsec and w-space systems. These environments give rise to some requirements in one's ship when operating alone or with say, one wingman:

Stealth - the ability to traverse a camp of either a wormhole or a gate

Utility - sufficient power to do something once you've got past the danger.

Fitness for Purpose:
================

Of course the Astero and Stratios have both of these. The Astero is a perfect relic-hunter and forward scout. Covert movements, scanning and archeology bonuses, a strong hull, plenty of mid and low slots and the ability to field 100dps of drone power makes it versatile - a real favourite.

The Stratios is similarly useful - hugely strong, good firepower, scanning, stealth. 5 mid-slots AND an armour tank - wow! Good for PVP and PVE.

The Nestor has so much potential. A pair of them would be great for clearing 0.0 pirate complexes, high-end sleeper relics and so on. In effect they have similar utility to a pair of remote-rep Dominix or rattlesnake, while being stronger and having some offensive capability if engaged. It even has the ability to efficiently scan down the sites in the first place.

However, what the Nestor lacks is the other half of the puzzle - the ability to actually get into the destination system. It's a battleship - slow, easy to lock, a sitting duck on gates and wormholes. It cannot move.

It seems to me that this one failing is the most decisive in causing the lack of uptake of this ship.

Understanding History:
==================

Now I do understand the dev team's position in that to give the Nestor covops ability would make it strategically very powerful. That might be true if it was able to achieve a target lock within 10 seconds of landing (5 with rigs). I agree that this could be construed as unwarranted power-creep (I actually don't subscribe to this position, but let's leave that for now).

A neat solution?:
=============

But what if the Nestor had the ability to use a covops cloak, but suffered a 60-second targeting delay upon re-appearance?

This would make it somewhat less useful as a covert fleet logistics ship, but would give it the ability to move from system to system in small numbers in order to do PVE.

With this small tweak, it becomes a compelling choice for people who like co-operative 'exploration'-style operation but who like to do more than hack cans and run away. A pair can now slip covertly from one wormhole to the next, hack cans, take on sleeper signatures, find pirate escalations and so on. The opportunity for emergent play increases without the danger of fleet-based power-creep.

I would very much like to hear a considered response to this proposal by the dev team. The Nestor is a beautiful-looking ship and completes a wonderfully conceived line of sisters ships. But the rattlesnake is out-selling it at a rate of 8:1.

"Save the Nestor!"

Many thanks for reading.

The Nestor's bonuses boil down to insane RR-capability and it's SMA coupled to a hull that fits into c1 space. Once you got two Nestors to work with, discussing a fit pinned down beyond the rig choice is not necessary.

As for bringing a solo Nestor to basically anything, it's your 3rd, 4th, 5th and sometimes 6th guardian depending on whether you run 4-2 guards or double trimarked ones. As a logistics platform, this ship is so over the top with that combination of resists, hp and abundant midslots resulting in medium tripledigit Sensor Strength it's just not funny anymore.

Currently, this ship already offers 4 strong upsides, 2 of them unique. Armorresists, Drone damage and then a SMA and remote repair bonuses that are usable (unlike T3s tbh). The other stuff is just for fun. And you can park 2 nestors in the middle of a superior sleeper cache and tank the shockwaves. The gankers usually cannot.

The Nestor is terrible on its own, but for a small group of adept pilots it can be anything from a blessing to the sickest force multiplier they can field. The issue of *needs loads of cap* can be overcome with either a Paladin feeding cap/second RR-boat for example, or a (talisman-)guardian/auguror close by.

And then it's probably not surprising that the premiere nullsec-afk-ratting ship is bought 8 times as much as a ship whose bonnuses only apply to smallgang pvp upwards. That's like being surprised more people buy ravens compared to scorpions.

The covops cloak would be absolutely over-the-top-broken-BBQwwtfuthinking. Etana atleast is a AT prize ship. Don't want it's big armortanked brother to be avaiable to all for a mere bil.

I like your idea OP.

However I for myself haven't purchased one as I don't really want to fly a white bog brush around space

The Nestor is not only strong when you got a big squad with guardians. You can pretty much fit a babyarchon and a nestor and you got a logistics wing that can tank between 6k and 10k ehp a second. Add to that for example a few lokis, an eos and a bhaalgorn and you suddenly got a 8 man fleet with a few thousand dps, serious neuting, beyond 10k ehp/s repped on those lokis, and unlike guarians only the nestor part is jammable but sitting at 260SS and a 450mm scanres. This is mean enough.

I can't quite say in which exact concrete way covops cloak would push them over the top, but let's use this analogy:

If the stratios wouldn't have a covops cloak, would you ever use one? Does it offer anything beyond a Navy Vexor? No, nothing but the cloak.

Now the Nestor is already beyond any alternative's performance, and not by a small margin. Having a ship, or for scalabilities sake a number of nestors warping around warped will mean that suddenly something decloaks next to you that
- deals BS level dps (say 800dps)
- has access to BS modules like heavy neuts/large smarts
- is so tough with it's friends it laughes at the (for shooting things fairly useless) proteus
- dat RR

So it would basically be the one-and-only, fly-this-or-gtfo ship to use. Because no other hull or combination of hulls will yield anything remotely similar to a bunch of Nestor's performance. Cloaky-RR-proteus with dps? 400dps with void. Cloaky-RR-Tengu? 250-350dps depending on launchers.

Nestors? Twice the money, twice the dps, twice the tank, 3 times the RR, no SP loss and they're not even heavier mass wise.
So ofc, you can put a covops cloak on there but then don't wonder if wormholes become nestors online in notime. They are strong already, with a covops cloak they'd be out of control, reducing the meaning of ship choice or strategic diversity to a matter of *do I have the 500mil more to buy a nestor instead of a proteus*.

Mournful dear,
if not a covert ops cloak, why not an improved one with the black ops speed while cloaked bonus instead?

The Nestor may not be fast as a machariel but she is highly mobile and can make a 180° turn faster than any battleship I have ever flown.

Lloyd is right a covert ops cloak would make w-space Nestor online and that wouldn't be any fun.

Right now the Nestor has the problem of being a very expensive gang-boat and I wouldn't really mind if rogue drones would drop copies a tad more often than they drop those chips.

I really like that the other pirate faction ships got a lot more affordable than ever and they are used much more often. The same could happen for the Nestor and she will experience a nice pricetag-drop.

Thanks for the comments. I'll tackle them in turn, hopefully fairly.



Because this won't get you past a camped wormhole, and it won't get you past an interceptor on a gate.



Respectfully, this is an assertion and not a fact.



This would affect price, not utility.



I agree, I actually think that if the number of BPC-drops increased it would become the cheapest of all pirate ships, because of its limited role.



That's fair, but the core of the fleet is still immobile, and outperformed by replacing the nestor and paladin with 2 carriers or 2 guardians.

Theoretically it's powerful, but how often do we actually see it, or think "man, if only the Nestor was 500m or had a covops cloak - I'd totally take that and a paladin in place of my 2 guardians"?

Respectfully, I think never.

yes I agree, the limited covops idea is solely to overcome the gate and wormhole transition problems.

So... how about a module that opens up a parallel wormhole on the same grid as the one the nestor is near but somewhere between 50 and 100km from the exit, maximum mass of (say) 2 nestors, only sisters ships can get through it and lasts 10 seconds?

Of course the energies employed would mean that the spot where the nestors emerged would be a warp-to beacon on overview which lasts 10 minutes - so everyone gets fair warning.

then scrap the covops cloak proposal.

Thanks for contributing. You're the first person I have met who actually claims to use the Nestor. I'm genuinely interested to learn what kind of space you operate in.

Do you use them in high-sec, one w-space system, your local 0-sec or in hostile space?

This is because unlike the strat and the astero it is a fleet support ship and so is not meant to be moving around alone


the nestor is one of the strongest faction battle ships in its element and no it does not need a cloak



also what was wrong with the rest of the nestor threads already open you could have posted in to keep people from needing to repeat themselves and others

Emphasis mine. So what exactly is its element then? It's certainly not high-sec PvE, and you never see these roaming around low-sec. The lack of a Covert Ops cloak precludes seriously consideration in wormhole space, so I'm just curious where it's one of the strongest faction battleships. It's certainly the most expensive...