Player Features and Ideas Discussion

As promised, I've split of my idea for new combat-exploration ships.

The old thread about the new Expedition frigate can be found here.

New Class: Explorator

Splitting things of into two separate ideas, this an iteration on the old “new Expedition-frigate”-idea: Instead of making four ships with a shitload of different things attached to them, the new Expedition-frigate will be its own thing.

Lore: Inspired by the development of the Astero, the navies of the four great empires have tried to make their own versions of a combat-capable exploration ship. This project was badly bungled, however and the planned cooperation between the four empires broke apart before the first ship could even reach the planning stage.

Because of this, every empire developed their own version of the Explorator, specialized of different aspect of what the original ship was planned to do.

The Explorators will need the new skill Explorators at level 1 (Prerequisite: Expedition-frigate skill at level 3) and the corresponding racial destroyer-skill at level 5, too. Yes you read that right, those ships aren't frigates. Originally, those ships were planned to be frigates, but it became clear during the early design process that a frigate hull could never contain everything necessary for what the ships were supposed to do.

Since the ships were originally designed to be Frigate-sized, these ships are incredibly light and nimble for a destroyer. Even though most frigates can still align faster, those ships come close behind.

Gameplay-wise, Explorators are supposed to do two things at once: Give an alternative for players who want to skill into exploration, but don't want to be exclusively drone-users (Astero, Stratios) or jump right to T3s after their Cov-ops (that kind of progression always seemed a bit uneven to me). And secondly, Explorators are finally giving another T2-option to players who like destroyers.

Let's face it, exploration-players have not that many choices in Eve: Either you take a completely different ship (Ishtar) and remake it with rigs and modules into an exploration-ship, or you can have one of those:

-Normal scan frigs for newbies
-Cov-ops with huge scan-strength bonus, but even less combat-capable then T1-scan frigs
-Expensive faction frig or expensive faction cruiser
-T3s
-Exploration BC: The Gnosis (soon to be really, really rare and expensive)

Now, since Eve Online already as a shitload of different cruiser hulls and even more frigate hulls, I wanted to do something creative here. With T2-battlecruiser and T2-destroyers still a bit underrepresented, I had two options here and certainly, the idea of adding exploration-battlecruisers as a second T2-line has its appeal for me. But that's something for later. CCP can and should certainly add a new exploration BC if the old one finally gets old enough to stop being more than a museums piece for collectors, of course.

This time however, I've set my eyes on closing the two smaller holes: Combat and exploration-capable ships, and a second line of T2-destroyers finally using the other T1-destroyer hulls. It's a travesty that there isn't a T2-Dragoon or a T2-Corax!

Now back to the mechanics:

-Every Explorator can use a cov-op cloak, but isn't nullified. Sensor strength and scan resolution are high enough to easily catch most nullified ships however, without having to gimp the fit too much with signal amplifiers and sensor boosters. With those modules Explorators will most likely insta-lock everything. (A nice alternative in a gate camp: If too many nullified ships zip around, have 1-2 Explorators waiting for them.)

The abnormal high sensor strength and scan resolution were done for the following reasons: One, to give more people then just explorers a reason to use these ships. Two, because lore-wise it was a side-effect of cramming so many scanning-related electronics into the ship-hull. Three, because this will make it easier to overcome overly zealous NPC-jamming. Fourth, it's resting on my design-foundation for all those new exploration-ships I dreamed up: Catchable if you really try (not nullified, even the destroyers are only nimble compared with other destroyers, not with most frigates) but as long as they stay away from opposition they'll be really hard to find. (High scan-strength and low signature makes them hard to scan down.)

-Explorators have the lowest signature of all destroyer-sized ships. Funnily enough, only about average for T1-frigates, actually.

-EHP-wise, the Explorators are surely sturdily built, by they're by no means pure combat machines. So don't expect them to go easily down, but don't expect them to take down HACs. Expect something in-between Interdictors and Assault frigates, just with a bit easier fitting.

-All Explorators should have a good lock-range. Together with the high scan resolution and sensor strength, this should make these high-tech ships less vulnerable to E-war.

So much wall of text for nothing .. sorry.

You basically leaving you the traits of destroyers completely, it is a weapon platform, you completely ignore the only 8-3-3 (average) slot layout (T1 & T2) which does not really make it useful as an exploration combat ship.

Destroyer suggestions have come and gone and no role has been found.

What you are trying is to stuff so much lore into it (appreciate the effort) to fill a fat goose, but its still just a finch - no matter the stuffing.

Not to mention, that the implementation of a destroyer as an exploration ship is completely unnecessary. There are T1, T2 and faction ships already, frigate and cruiser size adequate for the job. Just because YOU can't fit guns on it, doesn't mean we cant ...

Still - 1

PS: And you are doing exactly what most ship-suggesters are doing, you perceive a gap where there is none, because you want there to be one for a ship you want to have. And your whole argumentation and evidence is nothing more then confirmation bias, assuming the result and making the evidence fit ... or up in your case.

I have removed a rule breaking post and those quoting it.

The Rules:
4. Personal attacks are prohibited.

Commonly known as flaming, personal attacks are posts that are designed to personally berate or insult another forum user. Posts of this nature are not beneficial to the community spirit that CCP promote and as such they will not be tolerated.

This by design. Want all in one, its going to cost you. Isk and stats wise.


There is another option not covered which is scan partner who finds and hacks and such and the combat ship pilot puts out the pain. CCP kind of intended this to be a 2 man job at base value I think. Yes you and the partner will have to split the payout. Assuming not an alt setup....which was how it was done for years and still is sometimes.


But look on the bright side...the co partner is a really good scout. Barring instalock, low sec camps should be little problem for them. MWD and cloak has cleared many a co in 0.0. Obviously if the CO is having fun...the combat ship needs to think hard about following them.

Kind of why for your latter options they are expensive. Want to to lone wolf it...cough up the isk to do so. Withe the plethora of DS gear dropping now its kind of clear....ccp would prefer you'd spend some isk before farming b and c type gear all night long trying for the a types.

Since I adressed the nice feedback I got last time, I think I should try to drum up some more responses.

Please read the OP and add your own thoughts on this idea.

A SoE-destroyer would be running into the trouble of there not even being any faction-destroyers.

This of course means CCP could actually go two ways here: Add a line of combat-faction destroyers (and make one of them exploration-based), or make a new line of T2-combat destroyers and make one of them the exploration one.

But thinking this over a bit more, four new exploration ships would be a bit much, maybe. If I have time, I think I rewrite the OP a bit to reflect this new iteration.

I'm just kind of torn between a new line of T2 destroyers and a new line of faction destroyers. The T2-way has the problem of forcing players into a single race choice if only one of the four destroyers gets exploration bonuses. Faction destroyers maybe better in the way it allows for only one more exploration ship without limiting people too much: Crosstraining into a faction ship goes a lot faster then specializing into T2.

Good point, but I should also point out myself that a exploration-bs is basically the most stupid thing ever conceived, since no one will ever use that overpriced piece of **** to do actual exploration with it. A battleship is simply too slow and too large for a typical exploration roam.

The Gnosis works better, but is simultaneously hampered by two things: Fist, by being a gift with a limited lifespan: As soon as the last BPCs are used up, the price will skyrocket and less and less of the remaining ships will be available. Also your skills won't apply to the Gnosis, which is kind of bad because this also includes your Navigation-skills. Which makes the Gnosis even slower and more ungainly then normal battlecruisers.

Exploration is better done with lighter ships, cruiser or maybe battlecruiser at the maximum. And here we have a huge imbalance, with 4 scan frigs bad at fighting and 4 T2-scan frigs without any combat capability whatsoever. So we really have only the T3s and a faction frig and a faction cruiser for combat exploration.

And the faction ships are mainly drone-ships, which is nice since you don't need ammunition, but also locks out everyone who doesn't want to play Drones Online. Everyone else can get a T3 or **** off, which isn't really balanced in my opinion.

So, I think this should be that for this particular point.