Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The second Maulus bonus is lame, just drop it for a Damp optimal range one.

Are you considering making T2 EWAR worth taking while you are rebalancing disruption frigates? Right now Meta 4 is better than T2. T2 was cheaper than Meta 4 for a while, but with the whole Technetium business Meta 4 was cheaper and better. With the rebalancing of T2 armour plates, T2 EWAR is the only T2 set of mods with worse stats than their Meta 4 equivalents (I think). What is the design goal for T2 modules over Meta 4 in general? Is EWAR an intended exception?

Meta 4 ECM
Tech 2 ECM

Meta 4 Tracking Disruptor
Tech 2 TD

The activation cost and fitting requirements are both better for Meta 4. This is also true for Sensor Dampers, Target Painters, ECCM, Sensor Backup Arrays, Projected ECCM and ECM burst.

Perhaps there could be stronger bonuses on effects like target painting, but proper counters to them. For example, one can fit ECCM to boost sensors against jamming. Perhaps a low slot module like a "Metamaterial Composite Hull" would permit defense against target painting (the exact behavior of real life stealth bomber hulls to protect them against detection). The module could also reduce signature radius, making sig tanking on unexpected ships a possibility.

ECCM should probably do something more than just provide a little more protection against jams, just like the recent buffs to capacitor batteries provided some protection against neuts/vamps, to incentivize their use. Currently the modules don't get fit on many ships other than logistics because the mid slots are so valuable and an ECCM is completely useless to a pilot if he never encounters a jammer.

Jammers are excellent, but the ships they're put on are extremely fragile. This seems to limit them to skirmishes, in my experience, since larger fleets can't be jammed enough to keep these ships from being swatted. Perhaps a special type of cloak could be made for these ships which permit cloaking even when being targeted, but cannot be turned off during their cooldown and only run for one cycle. This gives the jam ship the ability to do the job they're meant to, and possibly even survive a larger engagement to justify their hull cost. Of course, the typical mechanic for decloaking a ship (closing range) would still work and it could be quickly killed. For the duration of the cooldown, all of the other modules could be disabled and warp drive put offline (forcing the ship to remain on field), but the cloak could give a speed boost to the ship while engaged like cloaks do with black ops ships. Perhaps this cloak would only be available to Force Recon ships. Tactically, the cloak gives the pilot a get-out-of-jail-free card, but also renders them temporarily helpless if they're caught, and might even be used to get into position a bit better (the speed boost while under cloak).

Sensor damps should probably be made stronger and do something which aids close-quarters fighting. Unlike jams, which are always useful, damps are too limited to one fighting style (and, face it, how often do any of us see sniper fleets?). Plus, they offer no benefit at all for Gallente blaster ships, and railguns are generally regarded as sucky. I can't think of anything to fix this, so perhaps someone more clever than I am could make suggestions for them.

I haven't used tracking disrupters, so I won't comment on their efficacy in combat.

The balance of ECM isn't really the problem, it's broadly balanced these days. The problem is that it's an utterly terrible mechanic. It's hopelessly binary, being either ineffective or rage-inducing, and lends itself to being a remote-WCS. All that can be said of it is that old-style ECM, which just used a simple comparison of sum of jam strengths against sensor strength without any % chance roll, was even worse.

So I don't believe there is anything you can do with ECM to make it a better mechanic without basically making it Not ECM. ECM is therefore Not Fixable. So get rid of ECM completely. Give Caldari Gallente's RSDs instead, with appropriate balancing of ship bonuses etc. to ensure that Caldari retains a sensible degree of ewar advantage over the other races. Arguably, RSDs are what ECM should be - capable of inflicting a permajam if the right conditions are met, with the target still able to alter those conditions himself. RSDs are still a bit binary, but it's a much better mechanic.

Gallente should get a new ewar of missile "tracking" disruptors to replace RSDs, as befits their racial enemy. Don't add the missile disruption effect to tracking disruptors, you're in danger of making them too powerful, particularly with the new 7.5% per level bonuses that you're throwing about, and the ubiquitous link T3s.

All we need then is a secondary ewar for Caldari. Something like a module that disrupts remote assistance maybe, to help replace the logistics-suppression role of old ECM. The module would reduce the range and transfer amount of shield, armour and cap transfers by some amount, subject to normal stacking penalties.

My recommendation for the Griffin. Will be much more balanced this way.

GRIFFIN:

Frigate skill bonuses (unchanged):
-99% Bonus to ECM Jammer strength per level
+100% Bonus to ECM Jammer cap use per level
Slot layout: 2 H (-1), 5 M (+1), 2 L (+1), 2 launchers
Fittings: 24 PWG (-1), 240 CPU (+15)
Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 400(+9) / 250 / 250
Capacitor (amount / recharge rate / cap per second): 245 (-5)/ 135s (-52.5s)/ 1.815 (+0.482)
Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass): 325 (+38) / 3.5(+0.14) / 1056000
Drones (bandwidth / bay): 0 / 0
Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 65km (+5) / 500 (+100) / 6 (+1)
Sensor strength: 17 Gravimetric
Signature radius: 42 (-8)
Cargo capacity: 260 (+100)

I think this fixes the ECM problem nicely.

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MAULUS:

Frigate skill bonuses:
12.5% Bonus to Sensor Damp effectiveness per level
10% Bonus to Sensor Damp Optimal Range per level
50% Bonus to Sensor Dampeners Rage Factor per level
Slot layout: 2 H (-1), 4 M (+1), 3 L (+1), 2 turrets
Fittings: 26 PWG (+1), 230 CPU (+10)
Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 300(-13) / 350(-1) / 400(+71)
Capacitor (amount / recharge rate / cap per second): 275 (+25)/ 150s (-37.5s)/ 1.8333333 (+0.5)
Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass): 375 (+69) / 3.25(-0.626) / 1063000
Drones (bandwidth / bay): 20(+10) / 30(+20)
Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 64.5km (+14.5) / 520 (+100) / 6
Sensor strength: 16 Magnetometric
Signature radius: 40 (-8)
Cargo capacity: 275 (+100)

I know the 3rd bonus may be more technically difficult to implement, but I know CCP has a lot of experience with how to make players Rage, so I'm sure you can work it out.

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VIGIL:

Frigate skill bonuses:
7.5% Bonus to Target Painter effectiveness per level
10% Bonus to Target Painter optimal range per level

Role Bonus : Can Fit Titan Doomsday Weapons, -100% PG/CPU for Modules requiring Doomsday Operation

Slot layout: 2 H (-1), 5 M (+2), 2 L (-1), 2 launchers
Fittings: 25 PWG , 225 CPU (+15)
Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 350(+76) / 300(+26) / 300(+42)
Capacitor (amount / recharge rate / cap per second): 235 (-15)/ 130s (-57.5s)/ 1.8077 (+0.57)
Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass): 400 (+47) / 3.22 / 1080000
Drones (bandwidth / bay): 0 / 0
Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 63.5km (+18.5) / 560 (+105) / 6
Sensor strength: 12 Ladar
Signature radius: 36 (-8)
Cargo capacity: 250 (+100)[/quote]

I think this will bring it much more in line with the other EWAR platforms in terms of usefulnses.

Balancing target painters will be hard, they are suboptimal choice in most situation making it a waist of a slot that is better used for some other module. But when used to support blaping titans, dreadnoughts, carriers and suppercarriers they could easily become horribly overpowered.

Because of capital ships stacking penalty for target painters should not be removed. But I think they should by default have bigger range. Also giving fixed increase to signature radius of say +40 m instead of relative bonus of + 25 %, and keeping normal stacking penalty, could make target painter more usefully for killing smaller ships but actually reduce their utility for targeting big ships that are topically priority targets for blaping capitals.

Also here is my old proposal for rebalancing ECM

Good arguments and suggestions in this post.

It could also be done the other way around: giving gallente the anti-logi ewar, and caldari sensor damps + anti-missile ewar. That's probably a good idea because gallente recons are less biased for a specific tank (shield vs armor) than caldari ones.

How about giving vigil bonus to minmatars real e-war, webs? Not the useless target painters.

Anything about making EWAR other than target-painting functional in PvE? It's a really confusing dual-standard for new pilots who want to train EWAR.

Looks like the math is correct (not too certain, but wth) but I don't feel the half-built in speed is sufficient.

I don't know if it is the right moment to nerd rage, but I'm cleary not happy about those changes. If I could, I'd do a "Arab-Spring" moment just now - even if it is just about a T1 frig.

For the love of gods, please give the Vigil the full bonus we'd normally have. Heck, I'd even trade in both painting bonuses for that velocity bonus ;P. Taking away my favorite attribute.


Or, for the lulz, give us some bizarre structure resistance bonus to beef up our stacking Damage Control II resistances so we can survive against just a bit longer before blowing up.


This is just me, but I'd say have the Vigil have the painting range and give the effectivity to the Bellicose; provided it is suppose to remain a painting cruiser.