Ships & Modules

Depends what role you give tech 3 frigates I suppose.

Sub-systems for logistics frigates, sentry drone frigate, cruiser weapon sub-system,
hic bubble frigate, sub-system for allowing fast warp to get ahead of taregts but not neccesarilly high speed,
long range firing sub-system etc

I dont think there is a sufficient need for tech 3 frigates out there. the devs need to refocus on balanceing current tech 3 ships (ie nerf tengu buff everything else).

However tech 3 industrials are pure win in my opinion. more uber tanked, cloaky miners please!

/thread

As a career solo frig / AF pilot... no.

Do not want T3 frigs. The strategic cruisers are ridiculous enough.

i do believe what schalac is right and it would be nicer to see it that way, but i wish that the curents tech 3 cruisers need to be more broad and add new eliments in to the game.

I understand and support waiting until the other ships have had their balance pass. However, I think there are a handful of roles that current Frigate hulls do poorly, or at least non-optimally.

1. PVE in general. PVE is boring; zipping around a l3 mission in an AF can make it a bit more exciting, and also give frigate-specialized pilots a better way to isk with their training. T3 frigates would be perfect for targeting this niche.
2. Lowsec Exploration. Specifically, an all-in-one explorer. Currently, recons like the Pilgrim are the best at this, and that's by virtue of it being a drone boat so it can get away with filling it's slots with probe and salvage mods. None of the current probing frigates are combat-capable, and the T3 cruisers are too skill and cost intensive to invest into for the moderate rewards of low sec.

Target cost range should be about 50m isk, plus about 5m each for the subsystems. 3 subs tops. Offensive, Defensive, Engineering/Electronics. Their raw power should not exceed current AF hulls. The benefit would be the ability to customize, and to add utility such as probes, salvagers (low sp marauder?), and whatever other goodies you smart designers can come up with. There would need to be a PVP oriented penalty; increased sig radius from MWD, capacitor drains while scrammed/webbed (unstable advanced propulsion systems...), or something. There's no other way to give it the needed power without obsoleting other frigates. This ship would have a small target audience, but it would be popular as a toy, and as a stepping stone into more advanced ship types for the lower skilled (5m sp or so) characters.

You see, frigates, and T1 frigates at that, are more or less essential for the "new player experience". Many of the PVPers today which are worth a damn started flying those, and back then, since T2 frigates were not really worthwhile and you could kill approximately half of them with a Rifter, and pirate/navy faction frigates were just showoff gimmicks... T1 frigate PVP was quite enjoyable. Worthwhile, too. You could make ISK and learn the mechanics flying in Rifters.

Fast-forward to now. Pirate faction frigs are superior to anything frigsized T1, by far. T2 frigs got boosted in many respects, especially the lacking ones, but they're also more expensive then ever. For over 30mil per frigate, it is not a "new player friendly" ship. The old advice of "buy 50 Rifters (or any t1 frig), ship them over to lowsec, start pew-pewing" doesn't work anymore. This is already bad.

Now add T3 frigs; with probable prices of 100 million a pop, they're essentially bored old veteran toys. However, unlike large bored old veteran toys, they have the scan res and agility and speed to hunt and kill people which are supposed to earn their wings in T1 hulls. That is just a bad idea.

Probably? A few? Only when "properly flown"? I think those are the exact problems Cpt Branko is talking about.

This is the worst argument ever in an MMO with one of the best simulated economies in gaming space.

I see many many ways to make t3 frigates work without just trumping all others just doing it like with t3 cruisers without making them have a super tank and spank should work just fine
lets see
probing subsystem making them able to probe well and have an assault ship strength tank at the same time hear me not more tank the same
the idea for t3 should be to make one ship be able to fill two rolls, versatility, which does not not have to mean OP right away
another thing would be covops cloak (controversial I know) and the ability to be blacktops bridged and light a black ops cyno
or how about a small resistance to webing

of course they would somewhat replace their t2 counterparts but if that hasn't been the issue in the past other ways t3 cruisers should have never been made


on a side note id rather have frigate/battleship like subsystems for the existing t3s that could be mixed and matched and would change the shape and size drastically
that would allow for cool things like a cruiser sized destroyer with eight guns and a web bonus (for minmatar) stuff like that
or even a battleship with med or small guns getting big bonuses for it
I don't think frigates with battleship guns would work well tho
even though it has been done before with stealth bombers mmmh


when t3 cruiser where first announced I was also quite sad that there where actually four racial variants and not just one hull you could plug in the different races subsystems and mix them around though looking back on it now it seems better how it is now