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Assault frigates changes
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James Zimmer
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#21 - 2016-12-20 00:53:10 UTC
I think a general overheat bonus on a ship with meh baseline stats would be awesome and interesting. It would be unique and strong, but not witthout weaknesses, because you'll weaken in anything but the shortest fights. I would add automatic heat damage repair for modules that are off and cool so it's not a pain to get ready for another fight.
Deckel
Island Paradise
#22 - 2016-12-20 01:07:47 UTC
James Zimmer wrote:
I think a general overheat bonus on a ship with meh baseline stats would be awesome and interesting. It would be unique and strong, but not witthout weaknesses, because you'll weaken in anything but the shortest fights. I would add automatic heat damage repair for modules that are off and cool so it's not a pain to get ready for another fight.


I don't think you could get away with automatic heat damage repair, since consumables like Nanite paste are desired things to drive the economy, but faster heat repair could be tacked on.
James Zimmer
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#23 - 2016-12-20 01:52:26 UTC
Deckel wrote:
James Zimmer wrote:
I think a general overheat bonus on a ship with meh baseline stats would be awesome and interesting. It would be unique and strong, but not witthout weaknesses, because you'll weaken in anything but the shortest fights. I would add automatic heat damage repair for modules that are off and cool so it's not a pain to get ready for another fight.


I don't think you could get away with automatic heat damage repair, since consumables like Nanite paste are desired things to drive the economy, but faster heat repair could be tacked on.


Fair enough. A little bit of efficiency in heat rep speed and amount used would probably be fine.
PopeUrban
El Expedicion
Flames of Exile
#24 - 2016-12-20 02:26:13 UTC  |  Edited by: PopeUrban
So basically a "hulk out" ship.

I rather like that, and it feels... "assaulty"

You've got AFs. They're just combat frigs with a designed weakness in either their dps or tank. However you give them massive overheat bonuses so that overheating these ships is an extremely high impact decision that demands a response.

Overheat mechanics being what they are this also gives them essentially three "hulk periods" to manage in a given engagement and the entire design of the ship is "do what you gotta do before you light the whole thing on fire and die." because its super scary when its overheating stuff but countered if you can blueball that overheat by kiting, ancillary reps, etc. Fighting an AF properly would be an excercise in "rope a dope" where the goal isn't to defeat the overheating ship, but to survive its overheat until it gets "tired" and you can kill it.

This makes the AF a sort of "shock and awe" role that has to be considered by the pilot and his fleet, and the enemy fleet as an existential threat. Having them on grid means there's a threat they could hulk out and go after something at any point, but simply devoting assets to directly targeting them could easily be wasted since they may not blow their wad in response to a bad field position.

You'd definately have to INCREASE rather than decrease heat damage alongside a SIGNIFICANT increase on overheat bonuses to make this idea work, but you could give them a special ability that basically sieges them in place to rep the modules by consuming paste at a discounted rate (say eating paste this way reps all the modules in a rack in stead of just one) so that AF pilots aren't stuck paying more in paste than other ships due to their unique mechanics. Thus they'd be free to play out their hulk bonus specialization and rep up those much faster damaged modules by warping to a safe and taking a time out.

So a new breed of AFs that live life a quarter mile at a time, where the primary skillset is knowing when to hit the nitrous to win a dps, cap, or tank race. It could be cool.
elitatwo
Zansha Expansion
#25 - 2016-12-20 05:16:01 UTC
About the logi thing, my corpmate was calling us to a new found c3 pulsar and we rushed over there to help him out. He died but we still had a Stratios pinned down and I was flying a Kirin for the first time.

What an awesome boat the Kirin is, I can tell you. So my alliance buddy was flying a Hawk and engaged that Stratios with me in tow repping him and a Stileletto as much as I could.

The Stiletto died but my fellow Hawk pilot kept going with me repping him and the Stratios died.

Awesome Hawk, awesome Kirin.

Without the reps they would have killed all of us. Oh and no, I am not on the mail but my fellow corp and alliance mates appreciate me regardless.

Right tool for the job. Long life assault ships.

Eve Minions is recruiting.

This is the law of ship progression!

Aura sound-clips: Aura forever
Cade Windstalker
#26 - 2016-12-20 15:53:22 UTC
PopeUrban wrote:
I don't hate the idea of just throwing some EHP on them and calling it a day, but would that really make them a good option when compared to the reason they've fallen out of favor, the T3D?

T3Ds store the AF's thunder as the sort of on-field nano-DPS ship.

My concern here is that giving the AF thicker tank might help, but at the end of the day the balance of kite, tank, and DPS you can field out of the T3D is what started knocking them off field right?

A nice buffer is nice, but a nice buffer with lackluster application for its DPS still seems to me to be a ship that's going to be left behind when decisions are made.

My fear here is not so much the lack of staying power for the AF as it is a lack of a clear role in a world where t3ds can move, tank, and kite to effectively supplant its role in combat.

So, you know, it seems to me that giving the AFs a clear role that differentiates itself from the core job that another combat frig or a t3d does may be a better move, hence the kinda screwy oversized guns idea. Once class of ships that has always had a clear place is stealth bombers simply due to their ability to fill a role that no other ship can. As t2 hulls, it seems to me that specialization, not generalization, should be the name of the game here and as is I have a hard time determining what exactly the AF specializes in that other similarly sized ships can't already do pretty well in addition to their "specialist" tricks.

Going fast to get that long tackle? Interceptors do that. That's their specialization.

Sucking up damage? Take your pick of faction ships, or better yet use a cruiser.

DPS? Again, take your pick of other ships.

Currently the "role" of AFs is "here's a combat frig that tanks slightly better" or "here's a combat frig that does slightly more DPS" and that's where I see the issue really. You want more DPS out of small guns, you can run a destroyer. You want more tank out of a frig platform you have lots and lots of faction options.

They're simply "frigates with slightly different numbers" and lack a clear role. As of tiericide the point of t2 ships is that they HAVE a well defined role, as the "generalist" ships with flexible fits for their ship classes are supposed to be t1s and/or faction ship upgrades to the t1s.

If you're going to have a tanking AF, that ship needs to be the absolute last word in frig tanking. If you're going to have a damage AF, that frig needs to be the absolute last word in frig class damage. Doing either of those things would, I fear, basically kill a lot of other frigs.

In a world without faction ships or sensibly balanced and viable t1s thoe tank or dps assault frig designed would make sense. As it is though, they kinda get lost in the shuffle among a large pool of ships where their only specialization is "do frig stuff in slightly different flavors"


This is pretty much why I hedged things a bit there and said 'if that's what they need'.

The issue with AFs, and HACs to a greater or lesser extent, is that they're carrying eight or ten year old baggage from when they really were just "T1 but better" and the design of the game has moved on. CCP flat out called this out when they rebalanced both classes, they wanted to give them something to make them play differently from just "T1 but better" but didn't want to move them excessively from where they'd always been as straight up combat ships. Their solution at the time was the MWD sig radius bonus, which did them well enough for a while, but now T3Ds have kind of run into the same problem as T3 Cruisers, where utility trumps absolute specialization in some cases.

This may be mitigated somewhat now, with the T3Ds having to pick and choose a bit more with their mode swapping, but I don't think that's all AFs need at this point.

There are a lot of potential things to make AFs more viable, but the problem with many of them is that they would just end up displacing T3Ds rather than creating an interesting meta that's always been part of what makes small ship combat so attractive to people.

That kind of creates a range of values the ships more or less have to stay within. They can't end up faster than Interceptors or they supplant those, they can't end up so tanky that most small ships can't kill them, and they can't end up with a mix of stats that's too powerful or they end up as the new T3D-esque OP little monsters.

It feels like the thing AFs need most right now to be competitive is speed, but like I said that's a pretty fine line they have to walk. It's possible it could be skirted with some kind of overheat related bonus (on its own or in combination with a base speed bump) so the ships can't maintain a very high speed indefinitely, but intangibles like that are hard to balance.

At the end of the day I think if this was an easy thing to fix CCP would have fixed it by now. That doesn't mean these discussions aren't interesting or valuable though.
kardjaval
Curtana Joyeuse and Durendal Security
#27 - 2016-12-24 19:05:03 UTC
PopeUrban wrote:
A more interesting direction could be to keep the MWD bonus as is, but in stead bonus them for oversized guns. This is similar to the bomber design, a frig sized sig tanking platform with guns designed for battleships and a speciality function (bombs) to compensate for tight fitting resources and bad tank.

Now take an AF, with bonuses specifically designed for sig tanking WITH resources to mount a decent "real" tank like other frigs... and give it bonuses to fitting and use of cruiser sized close range weapons. You could even go so far as to give it a massive damage bonus along with a massive cycle time penalty to encourage its use as a "bombing run" style of alpha striking hit-and-run craft for these engagements to encourage active player rather than sig tank orbiting at gun range, making AF piloting have a unique and somewhat interesting flavor that functions as a mix of kite and brawl.

Alternately, you could scrap the MWD bonus and give it (gasp) immunity to webs, making the interceptor its natural hard counter as an extremely small and mobile ship that it can't hit well with med guns, and that it can't outrun with web immunity, which would nicely create more combat roles for intys.

This gives it a pretty unique role in combat as a frig that is primarily countered by other frigs, but primarily designed to "fight up" to larger ships as a combat vessel rather than a tackle in a way that no current sig tanking ships do, and that is highly disruptive to subcap escort fleet patterns.

Its very existance in this role could make interceptors of various types desirable for fleet combat roles as such a ship would be fairly well equipped to engage a and possibly win dps-vs-tank race against destroyers that usually keep frigs off the field, a viable DPS option against cruisers, and a superior nano-dps option when fighting battleship and larger vessels.

Its an idea anyway. I'm sure it has problems.


hmm i was thinking what would happen if assault frigates were given access to the cruiser size, short range weaponry of their race.

for for example, caldari frig would receive a cpu and pg negative requirment and be able to fit medium size blasters(and specificly blasters, not general hybrid, or rail guns), or HAMS, just 2 or 3 mind you, with a assault frigate bonus of increase tracking for turret users and increase explosion speed for misisle users.
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