Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Tried the game out again and I'm quite impressed with the improvements CCP has made to EvE. Its almost worthwhile to pay for a sub or 10 again however the enjoy-ability of the game has been reduced by the astronomical increase in small ship.

Why are small ships bad for the game?

They're not. Support ships are great. Small ships are great. But so are medium sized ships, as are large ships and huge ships. Small ships become a problem when using small ships becomes a requirement for fighting small ships and when using medium, large or huge ships means PvP in small ships becomes consensual.


Whats wrong with small ship only gameplay?
EvE is a game of ship combat. That ship combat should include balanced fleets and tactical choice. Balanced fleets are fleets made of multiple types and classes of ships. Tactical choice is where you choose from a number of different fleet compositions and tactics (close range, brawling, tanking, kiting, long range etc). Yet at the moment we clearly are seeing fleets of only *) Interceptors *) Tactical destroyers *) Cruisers (not often) *) T1 frigates (griffs) etc.


What was / is the role of the small ship?
The role of small ships is supposed to be one of support - tackle, ecm, repping, scouting. Yet we're seeing these ships being the end all and be all of the fleet. Recently an outnumbered group of tactical destroyers defeated a numerically superior force of faction battleships. Why would anyone field a fleet of battleships, those ships designed apparently with the main role of directly fighting an opposing fleet, when a smaller fleet of small support ships can overwhelmingly defeat that superior and vastly more expensive force? Its entirely imbalanced to the point of ludicrousness.


Why are people choosing small ships?
People are naturally risk averse. EvE's small ships despite being designed for supporting fleets and thus being relatively cheap perform often better than the medium, large and huge ships they're supposed to support. When a cheap small ship can go faster, put out often more dps than a medium ship, and almost equal dps to a large ship, makes engaging consensual, causes losses to be minimal and can avoid almost all damage from medium, large and huge ships why would anyone choose to use larger ships.?


How would you fix the current imbalance?
That's the question and one that would need a significant amount of time and effort to get right. The one question that can be answered if you've read the above points is that something should be done to encourage the use of other classes of ships in null other than frig, interceptor or destroyer.

Nerf people?

Less about the game, and more about human psyche.

No technical fix will make getting decimated for no gain.... fun.

--Gadget

Because everything has to be about personal gains / losses and nobody can discuss aspects of the game without having an ulterior motive based on a loss somewhere.

The game is a bit boring when its non-stop fleets of inexpensive ships. Taking the time out to deship a person in a frig is pointless since the effort too deship them is more than the effort for them to reship. Its a consequence free loss and so its boring imo

Playing EvE frigs is somewhat like playing a first person shooter. Dying is not significant and EvE is supposed to be a game where loss or win is significant imo, that's what gives me the hand shakes. Deship someone where the loss hurts them and to potentially lose something worth losing and that i"ll have to recover from if I fail.

It's not risk-aversion.

You're imagining that people are flying cheap frigates with cheap fittings, when in fact they're flying either T1 ships (because they offer good performance now) with T2 or officer modules, or straight out T2 / T3 or pirate ships. The cost of an Astero, to just give an example, isn't "cheap".

Battleships aren't flown because they're too slow, and because cruiser-level ships can do the job equally well, while being faster on grid and in warp. The situation with frigates vs. cruisers isn't as glaring as with battleships, but, basically, T2 and pirate frigates can put out serious DPS and thus are used more often than the bigger ships.

People now have the skillpoints to fly the exotic / higher tech levels, and T2 and T3 are all about dishing out the same DPS at smaller sizes.

CCP needs to buff battleships to have higher DPS and more fancy abilities, and we'll fly them again. But then they'll need to buff capitals, to distance them from battleships, which would be ok.

Typical battleships easily do two to four times as much dps as the most extreme small ships. This is on top of higher survivability, projection and utility. Depending on the ships and fits used BSes can be very good against small targets as well, even without designated support.

Blaster hecate 700 ~ heat 800 dps (class has a heat bonus)? I mean that pretty is extreme (and neat) to me, I heard that a typical battleship (read shiny pimp vindi with drone dmg mods and implants) can "easily" output 2K only for 40 times the price of a hecate? But the web bonus seals the deal. Still 800 * 4 = 3 200, show me where, please I need that.
Projection amounts for chance to hit, which is miserabe, close to zero.
Is "well" meant to be "fair" ? That 1 v 1 with a ship 3 classes below you and quarter the price might end well?
Grappler does level the playfield for non-serpenentis ships at low ranges like these. However, can your large gun track it even at 10% speed, because it also might not.
RHML was a nice idea, but is not all that amazing even with the phoon bonus, but bring a support that can survive the onslaught of BS level dps approaching at destroyer speed with superior manueverability and you can pop a few before you die.

It's not just the problem of destroyers though, if you fly a "usual" T1 fit cruiser you will die to a RLM caracal unless you can tank the clip and kill it before the reload. Meta is just so strong it forces out alternatives.

While I agree with the problem I don't think a flat damage reduction is a good fit, for that more slots and better resistance profile available to larger size should work alone.
I am a strong advocate for 200 rifters taking down a titan being possibe. From my point of view we miss a strong T2 resist profile battleship, but that's tough to balance.

The idea behind the damage reduction is to somewhat replicate the effective damage reduction small ships have against larger ships. The problem is that currently the meta works one way only, small ships can damage big ships really well, but big ships can't hurt small ships. Unless you are dealing in huge fleets large enough at least some people get good tracking, this puts the meta squarely on the side of the small ships. And that is why we have ended up with our current cruisers online.

*gasp* you for the dream-ship!!!

Nightmare (True Sansha = master race)