Player Features and Ideas Discussion

"But, but, but it's not in F&I..." Yes it is.

There has been a tremendous amount of effort by CCP to begin to redesign all the ships in Eve. This in and of itself is an incredible undertaking and CCP should be commended for it. This also points to the fact that CCP itself admits that the ship designs and overall game balance isn't where it should be and everything pretty much needs to be scrapped and rebuilt from the ground up.

As usual, I don't think they're going far enough. I'll get right to the point:

Right now, racial themes for ships are muddy, diluted and overall have no real sense of focus. I agree with CCP that each race should be different, offer a clear choice as to its pros and cons and be easily understood by the player base at large what these choices are, and how they're going to work in-game. Currently that's not the case.

Quick overview-

Current Racial Styles/Focus:

(These are my opinions/perceptions, open for refinement and debate)

Caldari attributes/themes, in no particular order: shields, range, missiles, slowest, least agile

Gallente attributes/themes, in no particular order: armor repair amount, drones, blasters, close range/high damage output

Amarr attributes/themes, in no particular order: passive armor tanking (EHP), lasers, cap warfare (neutralizers/nos)

Minmatar attributes/themes, in no particular order: speed, flexibility of fitting (yes, I know it doesn't actually play out in reality), more speed, flexibility/adaptability of damage output, did I mention speed?

The primary pairings of opposite factions are Caldari vs. Gallente and Amarr vs. Minmatar. As such, you would think that each race's weapons and attributes would complement the core design/fighting style of their own ships and be the best foil to their primary opposing race. The current design is exactly opposite of this.

Which race is most susceptible to cap warfare? Amarr. Who has the best offensive anti-cap capabilities? Amarr. Who is speed focused? Minmatar. Who has the web range bonus? Minmatar. Shouldn't it be reversed?

It gets worse. Caldari is supposed to be the "range race". Damps allow ships to fight at a greater stand off range without being targeted by the enemy. Caldari ships are supposed to take advantage of their greater range capability, but they can't because A) they don't use damps, and B) they don't have any range bonuses to Warp Disruptors etc. like Gallente do. Hmm...

ECM works equally well, regardless of range. Gallente are supposed to be short range, high damage. Wouldn't it make more sense for Gallente to use ECM, and Caldari to use damps and get a range bonus to their warp disruptors? Particularly since missiles are much more suited to a damp ship like the Lachesis, which can sit at range and pound a target at 40-50km with missiles and not suffer loss of DPS due to range or tracking, which it would if using guns.

DISCLAIMER: this isn't some scheme to get ECM transferred to Gallente because I'm Gallente etc. I fly all four races equally well and have been playing this game for 8+ years. In fact, I can't stand ECM in general. I'm just trying to point out poor game design.

Yes, it has taken me half a page to simply describe the existing situation. Stay with me, I'm going somewhere with all of this.

REDESIGNING THE RACES

If CCP is going to redesign all the ships and rebalance them, why not redesign each racial focus while they're at it?

How I'd like to see it play out:

Caldari: range, shields, missiles. We should see a heavy focus on active shield tanking, missile use, heavy range bonuses for the few gunships it will have, swapping E-War so that Caldari use damps and have range bonuses to their disruptor modules. Caldari should be the range race. Fighting at range, keeping the enemy at range, reducing the enemy's lock/fighting range. Active shield tanking means big tanking bonuses, very low shield recharge rates, more shield EHP.

Gallente: short range, big damage, drones, active armor tanking. I'd like to see speed/agility second only to Minmatar, not a huge amount of static HP, but with resist bonuses (to help active armor tanking), big active tanking bonuses, and very high peak DPS output with guns via blasters to offset their lack of massive EHP and range. Gallente would use ECM for their racial E-War. Drone based ships would be 100% focused on drones. No split weapon bonuses. Big drone bays, extra drones controlled per level, big drone EHP, big drone damage bonuses. All drones, all the time. CCP doesn't push the focus of ships enough. They don't make them intense enough. What you get are ships that have equal drone space across the majority of races and the majority of ships, fairly equal drone capability etc. Boring. Make them different, and make them great.

Minmatar: Speed, flexibility, more speed, more flexibility. With Minmatar, you should never know for sure what you're going to be up against. Give them maximum versatility with slot layouts (4/4/4, 5/5/5, etc.), maximum weapon fitting options (four high slots? Allow 3 turret slots, 3 missile slots, and enough grid to fit either or, with no weapon damage bonus to penalize the use of each). Why no weapon damage bonus? Because per class of ship, Minmatar will have an extra slot or two to offset the lack there of and allow even greater flexibility and customization. Maybe Minmatar ships are so special they get a 4th rig slot? Similar to how Gallente get more/larger drone bays? On average, Minmatar ships should have one more slot per ship class, whether it be low, medium or high, than the other races. I'm liking the 4th rig slot and a little additional calibration to go with it.

Because Minmatar is all about speed and flexibility, their reload times for both guns and missiles should be half that of everyone else. Minmatar should be focused on speed and agility bonuses, tracking bonuses and their racial E-War should be anti-capacitor nos/neut based.

How can you be half of instant laser reload?

From your point of view, caldari are pretty much range, the counter is obviously damp so that's why another race can use it more effectively. Your idea will imbalance far more ships than they are atm.

[continuing]

Regarding Minmatar:

Minmatar is probably the most difficult race, because how do you define and build "flexibility" into a design without either A) making it useless, or B) making it horribly overpowered?

I think that Minmatar ships should never have split bonuses (like the current Typhoon), and the bonuses that they do get are weapon and/or tank neutral, so that players can choose the weapons and tank as they see fit and still get viable performance out of the ship.

Slot and weapon layouts should be equally effective regardless of shield or armor fit, turret or missile fit. Example: 6x high slots, 5x turret hardpoints, 5x missile hardpoints. Offensive bonus: 4% rate of fire increase for medium projectiles *or* heavy missile launcher/heavy assault missile launcher rate of fire. Note that the bonus is slightly less than traditional (4%), but it's usable across more weapon systems than the other races. Again, ignoring convention, doing what makes sense/is interesting.

Typical racial bonuses: projectile/missile rate of fire, damage, tracking/explosion velocity. Speed and agility bonuses instead of traditional tanking bonuses. Signature radius reduction bonuses, possibly MWD signature penalty reduction bonuses. E-War: nos/neut range/power/efficiency bonuses. Outliers: drones, traditional tanking bonuses (shield, armor).

And that leaves us with Gallente:

Short ranged, ultra high peak DPS, drones, fast in a straight line, doesn't turn very well. Typical bonuses: active armor tanking- armor rep amount and armor resist bonus. Offensive- big damage and ROF bonuses to hybrids, tracking bonuses. Drone ships would be focused 100% on drones: drone damage bonus, HP bonus, speed bonus, range bonus, drone control range bonus, drone control bandwidth bonus, drone bay size bonus, drone tracking bonus. CCP introduced drone bandwidth to decouple drone bay size from size/number of drones controlled with the promise that Gallente would get larger drone bays than the other races because Gallente was the 'drone race' and that was one of the advantages of flying Gallente. What really happened? CCP used bandwidth to nerf the hell out of Gallente drone ships and none of the existing ships got a buff. Typical CCP.

Outliers: missiles, range bonuses.

Racial E-War: ECM. I vote ECM for Gallente because it works well with short ranged combat, and I want to see ECM's range limited even further to bring it closer to the fight so that the ships are more accessible to opponents. Additionally, ECM bursts are very short ranged (and under used) and again, this works well with the close-in knife fight style of Gallente.

Now remember, everything that I've been talking about up to now is simply a high level overview. A general idea. There will always be interesting exceptions design-wise, for no other reason than it's cool: Missile Amarr ship? Yes, make a single unique one because it will be cool and unique. A Minmatar drone boat? Again, because it is cool and unique, and to break up the monotony by designing racial outliers and bringing hybrid concepts to bear.

To those that think CCP would have to completely scrap everything to accomplish this: they're already doing that. Scrapping everything. An Incursus with a rep bonus?! Seriously?! Who ever heard of such a thing, ever considered it a possibility, until CCP made it so? Not me. Before CCP did it, it was absurd. Now, everyone has accepted it, because CCP did it. Everything I've proposed is only strange because it's not coming from CCP.

Some "weird' and slightly "radical" ideas: 4th rig slot for Minmatar ships, more total module slots for Minmatar ships for increased fitting flexibility (at the expense of an entire bonus for example), Dedicated E-War BS for races other than Caldari. Ships that get a bonus to fitting support modules- sensor boosters, or tracking enhancers. Like I said, weird stuff.

Anyway, if you've read all my ramblings and like what you see, please vote with a "like", just so I can keep tabs on how successful my ideas are. And please, I'd like to hear your ideas and input on the concepts put forth, and any of your own that you feel would contribute to a better and more interesting ship design.

I feel horrible that i stole your reserved spot :P. Your avatar conveys your feeling perfectly, its amazing.

You should aim instead for as detailed as possible an overview, so that you know exactly what patterns you'd be disrupting/emphasizing.

For instance, Amarr drone boats are ships that don't really fit weapons and that have larger bays but less bandwidth than corresponding Gallente boats (which definitely do fit weapons). Except perhaps for the new Tormentor and the upcoming Crucifier. For instance, sensor strength from highest to lowest: Caldari, Gallente, Amarr, Minmatar. Or capacitor from largest to smallest: Amarr, Gallente, ?, ?. Or that as a general philosophy Caldari and Amarr favor tank over gank, with Minmatar/Gallente the opposite. Or that Amarr have more utility highs than Gallente, or that Minmatar have a lot of split weapon system ships, some of them with de facto utility highs. Or that Caldari have the most mids, allowing for shield tank+EWAR, while Amarr have the fewest mids, allowing for barely any EWAR.

It's not true that Amarr favor passive armor tanking: the few ships that do, with HP bonunes, are ships that are also nearly worthless. Amarr favor high resists, which lends itself to local and remote tanking as well as to buffer tanks and to agile resist tanks (this last might just be me being bad.)

I'm pretty sure CCP doesn't need my opinion to implement or patch bad stuff heh?

Like I just said at the begiing of my post more or less, perception of what some race should or should not it's often a matter of personnal opinion.

However the story about the shortest range weapons on some of the slowest hulls having also scan res quite bad, well, it's not really rocket science

This.

He wasn't referring to RoF because Arties already do more damage than all other weapons

Please dont Shoehorn my Caldari Hybrid Ships into Long Range for No reason.
"Caldari is Snipe Because of Caldari" Is bad.
Give me one good reason that Caldari should be the range race.
Sorry, but statements like that Irritate me. Whats worse is that you give no valid reason to do this.
Caldari is the ONLY race that lacks brawling-oriented ships (Excluding the Recently Changed Merlin, and possibly the Drake, that wont be too brawling oriented for long)
Other Races can brawl or Snipe effectively with various ships. If Caldari is shoehorned into Sniping, then Minmatar, Amarr, and Gallente should be, too.

Regarding your EWAR suggestion, its so bad its not even funny.
First off, you ignore the fact that Amarr ships are more likely to fit Cap boosters than other ships, and that Minmatar ships often get Active shield tanking bonuses in your Neut argument.
You ignore that Caldari (Untill recently, and lets hope this trend continues) fought at Range, and Gallente damps PREVENTED FIGHTING AT RANGE. Shocking, huh?

Regarding your 'minmatar should have extra slots' argument, give me a good reason. Beacuse of Winmatar? Try harder.
If anythign, it should be LESS slots to make up for the speed. Sort of like how gallente have less slots to make up for the drone bay.

You state you are trying to point out poor game design, yet your suggestion is even poorer game design.

Your ideas are laughably imbalanced and serve literally no purpose