Player Features and Ideas Discussion

defense against bombs= low sig+speed
also bombers are alergic to drones and frigates/dessys

However with individual ship balancing more or less complete the new balancing plan is far more strategic.

What I mean by this is that all the ships are fairly well balanced within their class if you ignore all other ship classes (there are one or two which aren't though).

Now the balancing is looking at the balance relationship between ship classes and seeing where things fall short.

So that means the relationship between cruisers and battlecruisers then battlecruisers and battleships.

I think we will probably see some very "strategic level" balance passes in the future

It isnt my beloved battleships but its a step in the right direction!

END TO CRUISERS ONLINE...

It was rather more the T1 cruiser buff that nailed the coffin shut. They really got far too carried away there.

They can fill an extremely narrow niche role still, but I don't have any solid ideas to help them that are not going to result in crushing cruiser nerfs or extreme power creep(*).


(*) But perhaps in a wider scale that would be marginally ok, if taken in the context of altering the battleship and dread landscape as well as dreads are looking less and less useful.





@Fozzie - is this also applying to ABCs?

Edit: Sig radius penalties which are percentage based always hurt shield more (makes sense on the resist and extender types but less so for this) - has any consideration been to using absolute values for these rigs as opposed to percentages? This would also help "larger" ships in the same size class e.g. BCs using medium rigs.

Changes per se are p. cool

However they dont do a whole lot to give BCs a niche.
In my opinion boosting base lock range would be a start here, so it'd be possible to prelock and MJD onto people without making ridiculous fitting tradeoffs

Here's a suggestion, especially in conjunction with the posted Entosis Link stats from your other thread:

Give Combat Battlecruisers a role bonus to Medium MJD activation times. Something on the lines of 50-70% or so, like Marauders. Do not include this bonus for Command Ships.

This would give the CBCs some very, very unique abilities and open up a whole lot of new gameplay options for them. While their on-grid speed would be a lot slower than existing doctrines, and their ability to avoid instalock gatecamps would similarly be poor, they'd have some AMAZING ability to reposition on grid and counter sniping / kiting doctrines. They'd retain some vulnerability to bombing runs, but would retain the ability to GTFO to another spot on grid. Combined with their large existing powergrid, they'd become ideal platforms for using the larger T2 Entosis Links with their 250km lock range, while the heavy cap use of the T2EL and the MMJD would require careful management.

Add this to the warp speed tweaks, and CBCs become rather interesting again I'd think. Someone might even let you bring your Drake.

Thoughts?

I quite like this, as long as a lock range increase was had.

Although I think I misread it as REactiviation timer and made me think of marauders. Did you mean cycle time, or cooldown reduction? The latter I like, the former would be too good.

Don't think you have flown a BC in ages. Part of the reason that roaming in frigs and cruisers is so much more preferable to BCs is the speed of getting around. While the warp speed change isn't huge, it does help close the gap and make BCs slightly more viable.

However, the penalty change from CPU to sig radius is incredibly disappointing. My ship fits with warp speed rigs (like my raptor) work fine around the cpu penalty, but are now punished worse by the sig radius change.

This helps balance out the bonuses though, since the warp-speed rigs are already far more beneficial on smaller ships than they are on larger ones.

To a point, but it's still less than even the garage door cynos. Something mostly the prevail of cap pilots only. Well them and the "HAH! SUCK IT!" mobs...

I just don't think many people care because we're all rolling about in cruisers (and caps, apparently :) )