EVE Alliance Tournament Discussion

CCP has a history of making small tweaks to the Alliance Tournament rules each year. Sometimes this has a major effect on the tournament meta; the ban of scripted damps, the Marauder bastion module, and T2 damage drones completely transformed the meta between AT12 & AT13. Other times it does not have much effect; since we saw that the compositions for AT13 & AT14 were basically the same, just scaled down to 10 pilots. I've put together a list of several key topics that I believe that CCP should consider before releasing the next set of rules.

1. Flagship Rules

A flagship Bhaalgorn is way too powerful currently. A combination of ban immunity, ridiculous scaling with officer mods, and being an armor ship contributed to this. The Bhaal also benefited from a 2 point ship-specific point cost reduction, but even bringing it back in line with the other pirate BS doesn’t really change all that much. The fact that the Rabisu now exists basically makes the Bhaal setups completely unfair.

If you read our AAR from AT14 at http://failheap-challenge.com/showthread.php?21981-The-Tuskers-AT14-Retrospective, you will see that the vast majority of our strategic thinking revolved around the flagship Bhaalgorn, and how we would deal with our opponent's while preserving our own for as long as possible. Now that everyone knows this, the meta for next year will be extremely boring unless the Bhaal is nerfed somehow.

I think potential solutions are:
* Do not allow Bhaalgorn to be a flagship
* Eliminate the ban immunity feature of the flagship
* Greatly increase point cost of the Bhaalgorn (by at least 4 points, possibly more)
* Ban the use of deadspace/officer webs, neuts, and nosferatus on the flagship (but not faction)

Other suggestions have been to make the Flagship take up the AT ship “slot” in any comp. This would eliminate the Bhaal + Rabisu combo, but I think this still leaves us with an AT14 type of situation where the Bhaal is still way too powerful even with a T1 logi. I personally think the first, where the Bhaal is no longer allowed to be a flagship, or even is completely banned from the tournament (like the Nestor) is the simplest.

2. Drones

I believe that a ban of T2 damage drones, possibly even including sentries, is no longer justified today. The major reason drones were so popular in AT11 and AT12 was a combination of:

* Dominix and Ishtar being exceptionally powerful (both ships have since been nerfed)
* Geckos and Medium Augmented Gila drones were way too powerful in AT12
* Drones had at least partial e-war immunity against damps, thanks in part due to the assist mechanic

Both the Domi and Ishtar have also been nerfed significantly since AT11. On top of that, the Gila is no longer a sentry ship, and has itself been nerfed within the past 2 years by removing a low slot. Also, a big reason for the setups to even exist in the first place was the ubiquity of scripted and bonused damps, which no longer exist at all in the tournament.

I think they should allow all T2 drones, and ban Geckos and Augmented drones except on flagships.

3. Ship Points

CCP’s rules have what I call in my internal monologue a “points gap”. Meaning that there are an abundance of ships costing equal or less than 6 points that are useful, a whole bunch of 15-19 point ships that are good, but almost no ships in between that are at all useful within most setups, at least not at the present point value. The Bhaal + BC setup is a notable exception, but the BCs are really only strong there because they are supported by the Bhaal.

Entire ship classes are routinely 100% worthless year after year because of the point value, such as T2 DPS cruisers (except for the Cerb), Pirate and Faction Cruisers (except for the Orthrus), pirate frigates, T1 destroyers, and more. The RLML Cruisers appear to be getting a rather large nerf, which will likely eliminate the need to have elevated point costs specifically to balance the RLML ships.

To clarify, I certainly think the bhaal raibasu combo might well be overpowered, but I strongly suspect CCP already knows this. My bet is they will already structure the rules around it. The issue here is not whether it is OP, but whether a blunt solution is the right one. I really don't think it is. The bhaalgorn can be made to work in a ruleset without banning it, as it has for YEARS.

wtb cheap officer mods

allow nestors because refitting is dead

risk vs reward own your choices

So, what you're saying is that you have a shiny setup that requires a complete ban towards a specific ship?

I'm REALLY curious as to what this composition is!

allow cloaking devices

As much fun as I think this would be, Don't want the matches to be TOO one sided.



This seems interesting, what about still allowing both, but fielding a flagship (or AT ship) cost extra points?

This has always been an issue and I don't know if you can even do much about it. As long as the format is a fixed number of ships for a fixed number of points you are going to run into issues with the mid-range not being worth it.

A crazy idea that might work would be to only have a limit on total points and not the number of ships, though still only two of each type. That way you could perhaps bring more of the weaker ships without being punished by awkward point layouts. This probably ends up being broken in hilarious new ways, but it would at least shake up that part of the ship range.

Raising battleship points would make them harder to field and make support wing weaker. The only solution to the point gap is probably that. With 10 people you can field 2 battleship easily with proper support wing. If you take that away and say 2-3 points rise on the battleship point you make those setups a lot harder to field. T3 dessies are beasts with battleships comps.

I would be happy if we had options at 7, 8, 14, 16, and 17 points. Any options. Any at all. Maybe reduce the cost of T3Cs and CSes?