Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Ok, so the "other Marauders" part on the subject is to open this up as a discussion on All Marauders, but my suggestions are primarily based on my experience with the Golem, however some of my suggestions may be cross adaptable for other Marauders.

For a short period of time I was flying a Golem, but when I moved to caldari space I decided to trade it straight up for a tengu because I knew it wouldn't hold up to the ecm that is prevalent in Caldari missions. However, I do understand that Marauders are designed to be weak against ewar.
That being said, ewar, while a major problem, isn't the only Problem Marauders have.

After having spent a while flying my tengu, I decided to hop on the test server and mess around with building a fitted out Golem. I quickly found out that its lack of cap recharge rate and large sig radius on top of slow speed has caused the Golem to suffer pretty heavily in its tanking ability in moderate to heavy hitting missions. There are some missions where the dps is so heavy that golem can't even come close to tanking them, and with its limited torp range, can't kite them either.

All this being said, I have a few suggestions to better balance Marauders for what they're supposed to do well, yet suffer at.

NPC ewar immunity - While this may not be a popular suggestion, it is the only way to make them the kings of pve but without effecting their pvp capability which is designed to be weak.

Cap Recharge Rate buff - Whether you're fitting an xl booster or lg booster, with or without a cap booster, they suffer from slow cap recharge which cause a situation where even when you dont' cap out with the booster, it'll drop you below your threashold for the cap, thus causing painters and resists modules to cap you out even without the booster going. While a cap booster does address this, it's more of a bandaid solution that the players themselves has created, but at the same time it limits us on our tanking and/or effective dps capability. Not to mention it fills are cargohold with cap boosters, thus taking away the large cargohold that was originally designed to allow us to loot/salvage on the go.

Remove shield boost bonus for resistance bonuses per lvl - This is to better suit the fitting of a Marauder. It's extremely impractical and also complicated to make a cap stable Golem.. In order to do you, you not only lose a lot of dps, but you also lose your range rigs. In giving them resistance bonus per lvl instead of rep/boost per lvl, you're allowing them to better suit their buffer tank design.

Buff their tractor beam range to 150% - This means with t2 tractor beams they'll have a 60km range, which is generally within their engagement range. This makes them more effective at their tractoring.

buff their salvager cycle time - This is to make them more effective in comparison to a noctis, thus allowing pilots flying these to not need to swap ships in order to be more effective.

Buff Golem target painter buff from 7.5% to 10% - This is simply because even with 2 target painters a golem doesn't have all that effective of dps, so a slight buff could help a decent amount.

Small buff to torp range - The golem is the only ship i'm aware of that HAS to have t2 range rigs in order to be able to hit at appropriate range for orbitting ships in lvl 4 missions. Even the raven navy can fit 3 t1 range rigs and get better range than a golem with 2 t2.


Overall the things that I feel are primary are addressing npc ewar, cap recharge, and exchanging rep bonus for resistance bonus.
Everything other than that doesn't NEED to be addressed, but would better suit addressing.

Feel free to post suggested changes for all Marauder types, and if you feel a suggestion made for the golem would suit other Marauders well too, then feel free to apply it.
Certain changes are meant to suggest all marauders such as npc ewar immunity, tractor and salvager buff, and rep bonus exchanged to resist bonus.

I want Marauders to be the ultimate missioning boats that they should be. They're the only ship in Eve specifically designed as such, and in conjunction with them being t2 ships, they should easily outperform other ships because it's their role.

I know Marauders buffing has been brought up many times and in many way. However, until CCP responds and says they're working on it, what they're doing to address them, hell no to buffs, or just any kinda general response then Marauders will continue to be brought up over and over again.

Commonly proposed Ideas don't become common because CCP responds to them and addresses the issue in a timely fassion, but rather because CCP rarely responds and procrastinate worse than any business I've ever seen.

I do like the ship and mayby it needs abit of tweaking but no not like this.

You should not modify the ships to just kill npcs.

What would be nicer that they would get a buff so that people would take them into battlefields and use them in pvp more and not just as a ratting tool. Plus the golem is evil with tech 2 torpedoes if it gets close to you :P

I fly a Golem to run L4s and I've never had a single major 'wtf moment' tanking a mission.

If you understand the triggers, use your AB and range effectively it doesn't fare too badly on the tanking front. Where it does fall down, and I agree they need work, is that it's bloody slow.

The benefit for Marauders has always been their salvaging 'on the go' and the noctis has made this almost entirely redundant.
Now the only real bonus is that it uses half the ammo of the faction BS's...woop de do.

They need some love, they take a long time to train for and simply aren't worth the investment. I would enjoy improved scan res and damage such that they become quicker at clearing missions and the drone changes would make it easier to deal with the small stuffs.

you are doing it wrong... marauders are awesome tanking wise specially if you know how to use cap boosters, with a 2000m3 cargo bay a golen can carry enough boosters for absolutely any mission, the problem with marauders is not their tank or capacitor, is their DPS and high skill requirements when compared to faction battleships, or even with their T1 counterparts.

... possibly it was designed to hold both?
I run a Kronos, and carry cap boosters, usually 8-12 (+4 in the booster) leaves me plenty of room for most missions, specially now that they have been nerfing the loot drops. before i might have had to come back to grab a second can, but now that its mostly empty wrecks, i don't have any issues.

bump

Here's a decently long and well thought out post in the missions/complexes section about why the golem sucks, even/especially compared to the other marauders: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=65340&find=unread