Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Ship skills are the basis of everything about EVE. Right now a new player works their way (as quickly as possible) into a Battlecruiser to grind ISK in one form or another. This proposal is an option to what CCP is proposing as far as rebalancing ship skills.

Summary
Use Spaceship Command (and Advanced Spaceship Command) as the prerequisite skills for the various hull sizes in Tech 1 and Tech 2 ships. Use Capital Ships as the prerequisite for the various hull sizes in Capital class vessels. Do not require the previous smaller hull as a prerequisite for the next size up. This proposal actually allows newer players to specialize or cross-train fairly easily, and allows them to utilize more powerful ships quicker. One of the best things about this change is that it could be announced in advance (far enough in advance) so that players could train any skill adjustments to the appropriate levels long before the launch of Inferno. Capitals are treated as a separate category, having prerequisites above and beyond the sub capital skills.

Proposal

Tech 1 Ship Skills
Tech 1 ships (and Pirate/Navy ships) require the appropriate Tier 1 skill (frigate/destroyer/cruiser/battlecruiser/battleship) and a matching skill in Spaceship Command, but not the class below it. A new player in EVE always gets basic Spaceship Command and racial Frigate skills. Currently that player has to grind up through both to get to the next tier, and so forth. My suggestion is to streamline this path and allow a player to drop in at whatever size ship they want. If a player wants to leap straight into battlecruisers, why force them to train ship skills that are not relevant to the battlecruiser class at all? Spaceship Command 4 then any racial Battlecruiser is open to you to train.

To train for a frigate, you much have Spaceship Command 1
To train for a destroyer, you must have Spaceship Command 2 (not Frigate 4)
To train for a cruiser, you must have Spaceship Command 3 (not Destroyer 4 or Frigate 4)
To train for a battlecruiser, you must have Spaceship Command 4
To train for a battleship, you must have Spaceship Command 5

Tech 2 Ship Skills
For Tech 2 ships, change the skill tree to require Advanced Spaceship Command (the cost of this skill should come down to around 10 million +/-) with a corresponding change to the pre-requisite of Spaceship Command 4 (instead of 5). The Advanced Spaceship Command skill level would have to increase with the ship size, just like the Tech 1 version:

Tech 2 Frigates require Advanced Spaceship Command 1
Tech 2 Destroyers require Advanced Spaceship Command 2
Tech 2 Cruisers require Advanced Spaceship Command 3
Tech 2 Battlecruisers require Advanced Spaceship Command 4
Tech 2 Battleships require Advanced Spaceship Command 5

In addition you would only need the minimum skills to fly the Tech 1 version of the ship. Using a frigate as the example, Tech 2 Frigates require Advanced Spaceship Command 1and the racial Frigate skill to fly the Tech 1 variant of that frigate. Then for the ship bonuses, map the bonuses based on the source ship type. So (for example) the Enyo is based on the Incursus, which requires Gallente Frigate 3. So to sit in an Enyo, you would train the following skills:

Primary Skills
Advanced Spaceship Command 1
Assault Ships 1
Secondary Skills
Spaceship Command 4
Gallente Frigate 3


A skill tree that makes sense, and can be applied across the board at all levels, and makes it more interesting, since under-training (for newer players) would get them into shiny ships faster, but still leave lots of room to improve how those ships behave. In addition, the ships themselves have the bonuses built to support this model. Keeping with our example of the Enyo, the ship has the following bonuses:

Gallente Frigate Skill Bonus:
5% bonus to Small Hybrid Turret Damage per level

Assault Ships Skill Bonus:
10% bonus to Small Hybrid Turret Optimal Range per level
7.5% bonus to Small Hybrid Turret Tracking Speed per level

These bonuses would unlock improvements in the ship as the pilot continued to train the related skills, but you wouldn't need Gallente Frigate 5 to get into the Enyo.

Capital Ships
Capital ships are more than just the next class of vessel. Capital Ships are already a whole other category. The Capital Ships Skill would work in the same way as the Spaceship Command or Advanced Spaceship Command skill, with Spaceship Command IV as a prerequisite for the Capital Ships skill, and then the appropriate level of Capital Ships for the class of capital you want to fly. Alongside the Capital Ships skill all capitals would require the appropriate Racial or Specialized ship skill. This is a bit more complex than the sub capital groups.

The baseline for just the Capital Ships skill would be:
To fly a Carrier requires Capital Ships I and Racial Carrier I
To fly a Rorqual requires Capital Ships I and Industrial Capital Ships I
To fly a Dreadnaught requires Capital Ships III Racial Dreadnaught I
To fly a SuperCarrier requires Capital Ships IIVRacial Carrier III
To fly a Titan requires Capital Ships V and Racial Carrier IV and Racial Dreadnaught IV

Capital Ships (like Tech 2 sub capitals) have secondary skill requirements:

Secondary Skills
Jump Drive Operation I
Tertiary Skills
Racial Battleship IV
Spaceship Command V
Warp Drive Operation V

In addition, the individual ship classes would have other pre-requisites. For example a Dreadnaught may require Heavy Assault Ships V, a Carrier might require Logistics V, and a Rorqual might require Ore Industrial V.

There is (currently) only one Tech 2 Capital Ship Class (the jump freighter). As with Tech 2 sub capitals, this ship adds the prerequisite of Advanced Spaceship Command V.

Well it looks like I don't need to make a blog post because I was thinking about nearly the same thing.

Now it also needs to be added to the Guns, Missiles, Drones and all other systems.

I disagree. The breaking point is the cost. A T2 frig hull is less than a Battlecruiser and more than a Cruiser. There are some decent fits for them that are Meta 3/4 instead of T2, and frankly it makes for a more interesting game for the player when you can do unexpected (to the new player) damage for such a small ship. It also allows experienced players to train a really focused alt quicker, which can be good or bad. You can (I'm afraid to admit) run L3 missions in a T2 frigate as well.

First reaction was a simple no. I'm going to guess what you are suggesting though is to use Gunnery (or Missile Launcher Operation) as the baseline like Spaceship Command for ships. I'm not sure. I have to think on it...

T2 and T1 are different in the scope of what you're doing with them. We can't use T2 costs or anything as a comparison for why a specific T1 class should (or shouldn't) do something... Hell, to even think about getting into a T2 ship you're pretty specialised in the T1 counterpart to begin with...

In general, the skill system forces you to SLOWLY progress in ship sizes... yeah, it's probably not the most elegant solution, but your solution effectively allows people to skip over classes and get right into a battleship (and seriously, there's already enough "i just got this ship, and someone killed me" QQ on the forums).

Flying a T1 BS with Meta guns DOES NOT mean they have **** skills.
Flying a T1 BS with the wrong sized guns (because of lack of PG or CPU or cap) and all kinds of fitting mods is "flying a BS with **** skills".

And heres the thing, THEY DO.

why do you think in the navy a brand new officer gets shoved in a patrol craft or other small vessel? he doesnt have the EXPERIENCE to pilot or cammand a vessel of more strategic value and ability. The small, cheap ships are there so new players can LEARN to fly before egtting into larger, ahrder to fly ships.
If you giev them the option to skip over these ships (because what newb wouldnt go "hurr durr i dont have to fly frigates, i can go straight for the battleshipz") and then they WILL DIAF REPEATEDLY, and quit the game because its "too hard" because they NEVER LEARNED HOW. fact is, the skill tree right now IS setup for playability, to allow a new player to gradually progress into ever-tougher to fly ships.

and if i missed anythingt in my arguement im sure someone will eb along shortly to continue the opposition here shortly.

and as to your arguement about BC gank alts, those are ALTS, thsoe players can AFORD to skip classes because they already know how to fly, so they dotn bother focusing on the lower-ships. and by your own arguement they can train up those alts in days, so WHY SHOULD WE MAKE IT QUICKER?

I hate real life comparisons. But here's the thing. In the real world, it takes tens of millions of dollars and real people to man ships, and the larger the ship, the more real people and dollars you are putting on the line. But EVE isn't the real world. EVE is a game about flying around in a far corner of the universe as an immortal spaceship captain who plugs into their ship. And in the real world, private (read not owned by a national government) ships, a captain gets a license for a specific gross tonnage. There's no rule that you have to get the license for a small ship before a large one. In fact, captains of the huge cargo freighters probably can't sail a J-24 at all.

EVE is a game, and in the game EVE, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to choose. Did you know you can fly a battlecruiser in gated Level 1 missions? I heard that this week (I have to test it, but ~effort~). So why not be able to skip straight to training one?

So a parking alt, that can't use guns, can't DD, can't bridge or jump more than 3 systems (yes, three jumps woohoo). Other than a quick way to get actual skilled characters out of Titans, what's wrong with this? FWIW, from ZERO a new alt can sit in a Titan in about 220 days (right now). So this change reduces that to about 95 days, assuming you have the tens of billions ISK to buy the skillbooks and Titan.


As a goon you of all people should realize that sitting in a ship isn't the ability to use it. And besides, with the current Capswam drive, why wouldn't you want a host of Titan Parking Alts available?


EDIT - Missed Mining Vessels (see the second post)

Yawn, CCP Ytterbium has already said that they'll probably increase the training time for one of the other skills needed, resulting in an identical training time (unless the noob fancies a carrier they can't move or something similarly LOL).

And wouldn't a bunch of noobs in fail carriers be a better source of non consenual PvP?

Also @OP, maybe add the scaling spaceship command thing on top of the proposed required skills, but not instead of. Else you break the whole progression thing that is actually pretty damm important.

Wait wait wait. You think it should take longer to fly a JF than any other ship?

Why, exactly, should it take longer to train for a cargo hauler than for a titan?