Ships & Modules

meh. NVM.

No comment

If you don't understand current mechanics, please don't **** up a useful thread. Ships cannot solo-refit under current mechanics-- they require a nearby buddy ship with an SMA service active in order to refit. The problem is that in fleet scenarios a blob of supers can refit off each other, not that a solo Titan can refit off its own service at will.

My biggest concern with this list of proposed changes is this: if you're going to delve into sorting out / changing the way guns apply damage to their targets, PLEASE make sure that whatever formulaic changes you make don't detrimentally disrupt current balance between subcap classes. My main concern here is actually with frigates-- while I don't think tacklers should be as easy to blap as, say, interdictors, I would be wary of interceptors and AFs becoming seriously overpowered by these generic damage-reduction formulas. Under current mechanics, it's already quite difficult to land quality hits on these ship classes using oversized turrets. IMHO they could use a small increase in survivability, just take care not to create a total rock-paper-scissors scenario where you need a Rapier and a contingent of destroyers just to deal with a couple of interceptors. Keep in mind the cost-effectiveness of frigates, as well as the fact that AFs, faction frigates, and DPS interceptors don't have a particularly tough time killing the light drones that are presumably intended to counter them.

Regarding turret damage scaling: consider having the gun damage scaling shenannigans consider actual rather than unmodified signature radius-- modules like target painters DO have stacking penalties. There is a limit to the degree to which sigs of hostile ships can be intentionally inflated. I also don't see why people SHOULDN'T be penalized for things like signature blooms resulting from MWD use. If you know you're going to need to dodge giant bullets, fitting and tactical concerns should exist. Armor HACs are a good example of the kind of strategies people should be encouraged to develop to counter specific hostile fleet comps. If a hostile fleet relies heavily on XL gun damage, let the other side adapt their fittings to counter the hostile fleet (by using AB fits / focusing on maintaining transversal / whatever) rather than nerfing the XL guns in absolute terms (making it impossible for XL guns to do high damage to, say, battleships, REGARDLESS of how they are fit or flown).

Regarding removing in-combat refitting: I'm still generally in favor of this on principle. I think it will significantly improve the balance between supercap blobs and subcap fleets by preventing supers from continuously changing configurations based on the types of targets that present themselves at the time. On the other hand, the stuff that groups like Rooks and Kings do is pretty awesome. On the other, other hand, I'm sure that groups like R&K will devise ways to work around this problem (by using off-grid refitting carriers, etc).

Re: reverting XL turret tracking changes: If you're going to use the scaling system, I don't see why nerfing tracking would be necessary, but I guess EFT warrioring and playtesting would be in order to see how new models perform in practice.

Re: reviewing supercap ewar immunity: Interested to see what you find!




Really hoping this goes in the direction of "un-manned POS EWAR modules won't aggress ships" rather than "ships cynoing onto armed POSes will be safe from everything, including supercaps." Keep in mind that currently, the only ways to kill a capital that blind-jumps to a cyno beacon are suicide-dreads, supercaps, or a subcap fleet so large that it can spider tank the pos long enough to incap all the points.

Let weapons aggress automatically, by all means, but allowing more ships to engage caps that jump unscouted to beacons by allowing them to warp off when they're done (without having to incap 10 warp disruption batteries) sounds like a positive change to me. It rewards people for manning their space-castles and punishes oblivious, unscouted movements of caps.

I could see this being alright for super-capitals...but I'd be sad to see the in-fight refitting option taken away from triage carriers.

I have to agree with Meissa on the refitting issue, 99% of the ways small to mid sized alliances use their carriers have jack **** to do with titans but would still get hit by this nerf ostensibly only aimed at titans. Dont get me wrong I like the details but as Meissa said the refitting restictions should only apply to titans.

I'll try to make it simpler.

With missiles, we cap damages with a direct signature and velocity comparison, and that's why damages don't scale down with turret size (when turret size increase, damage to smaller target reduce a lot).
With turret, we cap damages with chances to hit and a multiplier (I forgot it last time ; I will go back to it later), and that's why damages scale down pretty well with turret size (when size of turret increase, damage to smaller target do not reduce too much).

That is because with missiles, being small is enough to reduce incoming damages, and speed reduce them further.
While with turret, your size only affect how easy you will manage to outtrack the turret, and it is actually your piloting only (by increasing your transversal velocity) which decrease the chances to hit and the damages.

Turret damage formula is made with two members : tracking member (where sig ratio is used with transversal velocity) and range member (where we check if target is in optimal range, and reduce chances to hit when it's not).

You can cap turret damage directly if you want without modifying the turret damage formula, but that would be a coarse way of doing it because it would go against the idea of the turret damage formula and it would make turret more like missiles but without the advantages of missiles.
So you have two ways of doing it : by modifying the turret damage formula, or by tweaking the damage modifier.

I already explained how to tweak the turret formula to affect hit chances, which will affect the raw dps of turrets : if you want signature to directly affect hit chances, you need to add a member next to the tracking and range members (X = A + B + C with A the tracking member, B the range member and C the new sig member) ; this will make hit chances, and hence dps, to be directly affected by signature regardless of any other factor.

Then follow an explanation of the damage modifier of turret, because I didn't realized that you can directly modify the damage output of turret the way you like with no difference.


I didn't realized there was the other way until tonight. Damages on turret are affected by the quality of hit.
I will not consider wrecking hit to make it simpler. Infact, when you shoot with your turret, a random number between 0 and 1 is drawn, we call it X. The formula determine the higher value X can take to hit the target. Look at the evelopedia for more explanations. In brief, turret damage number is multiplied by X+0.5. So if your turret can hit the target, it will do at least 50% of its damage and at most 150% (provided it's not a wrecking hit).
So a quick and dirty fix to cap XL turret damages could be made here. Multiply this ratio with the damage modifier by the sig ratio and you're done.
Damage modifier look something like F = D * (X+0.5) (F = final damage number, D = damage of turret (after all its bonuses), X = the random number drawn to determine the hit).
Make it like
F' = D * (X+0.5) * (target sig radius / turret sig resolution)
Which can also be F' = F * (target sig radius / turret sig resolution)
and you have something missile like. But then, you will see a lot more Leviathan... maybe...


So you can actually modify damage of turrets directly with sig, but that would make them a lot more similar to missiles without their advantages (though 20m/s explosion velocity is still a very limiting factor for capital missiles and balance that a bit; but that's not true for lower classes of missiles).

is the bridge bug also on your list?

...

I feel the general drive here is wrong, in that it makes Eve into a lower skill game. Right now the tracking formula is rather esoteric but it works.

A move toward "turret damage based on raw unmodified sig radius" reduces operational versatility on the field and encourages simply X countered by Y countered by Z. If you're in one-sized ship and you get jumped by different sig ships, you should be able to use your assets, armed with painters and webs, to kill those who have ambushed you. And, in turn, if jumping you with larger ships, they should have the same options to employ those to hit you.

Whilst I'm sure that would still be possible after the proposed changes, "turret damage based on raw unmodified sig radius" is a step against it,. Unmodified is a bad word in an open-world sandbox game. There should always be opportunity to modify variables to respond to a situation.

Otherwise, we increasingly move to a rock, paper, scissors game with no fleet wanting to jump in first, lest the next fleet bring the perfect sig counter.

A game like Eve does not stand still. As the game grows, so does the collective knowledge of the people who play it. In 2007, people would jump into camps they would never dream about now - it was a lot easier to find a fight. This is not because people lack courage now. It's simply because people have come to learn what it means when they see falcons at range, or a given number of logistics or the speed of a 100mn AB Tengu, or the firepower of a super-capital or whatever else. People have learnt what counters what.

As a result, the mystery of a game, and the heart of the game, now lies in how people can adapt to given situations. The esoteric turret formula is a major part of that. If you see a bunch of battleships hitting a tower, you should never know - unless you ship scan them - whether they'll be able to hit your frigates or not.

While on the subject, let me also say I'm concerned that the tracking formula is not seen within CCP as a monument of Eve and a pillar of their mechanics.

I remember talking to Agent Xer0 and Lord Zap many times late at night after fleet, and listening to stories of m0o in the dawn of Eve back when I was still wasting my time on de_dust2. The introduction of tracking and sig had a monumental impact on the initial Wild West that they describe. You might even say that 'modern' Eve was born at that point.

And whereas much mystery has been dispelled in the collective growth of Eve knowledge, tracking and sig have remained esoteric to many people. Note, for example, the continual 're-discovery' of these mechanics. Every so often (e.g. AHACS, Afs, rifters, etc. ) a lower sig class of ship becomes vogue, catches on and is finally countered en masse by painters and webs. Gradually those counters themselves fall out of vogue and history repeats itself.

People should never have an answer to the question 'will they hit me?' before they take the fight. These last frontiers need to be enshrined and protected within the Eve code. The tracking formula and its relation to both speed and sig is one of Eve's finest technical accomplishments.

Ultimately, I don't feel the statement “scale turret damage based on raw unmodified sig radius” is congruent with the finest aspects of Eve's game design or a full analysis of its history.

this is now the third different changes since you announced the first one. and we havent even seen a change yet.

I rly think you need to gather a team sit back and do this right instead of this flipping back and forth every second week. atm it looks like no one have any idea of where they wanna go whit Titans in the long run.

- no refit while locked

while this helps with titans refitting from dmg/tracking to full tank when **** gets real, all carrier/supercarrier relay on this ability
for carriers it was never a problem that they refit in fight as they wish. not sure if it isa good idea to change this.

-dmg scaling for turrets

that sounds like a very smart solution, but you should be carefull with this. because if you even out everything the game will be boring. if turrets work the same way as missiles do, when drone regions drop the same bounty as other regions and so on.