Player Features and Ideas Discussion

As best I can tell, CCP's idea is that each ship "class" has a base sensor strength, and then a racial adjustment is added on top of that. This probably applies to all stats, not just sensor strength.


I suspect that these numbers will eventually be changed. They can't rebalance everything at once!


That was kind of my point, earlier. Targeting range can be useful, but mostly in sniper-fits. Sensor strength, not so much - it only matters when a player tries to ECM you.

Also, did you know that T1 ships get +10% racial armor resists? Can you guess which race is most heavily biased towards shields?

How about these frigs get a bonus to the new ewar drones? Some of them are still totally useless. What if a bonus to the ships were "ewar drones have no stacking penalty" and "20% bonus to the factor of ewar drones strength pr level".

We all know that the dronebays will just be filled up with Warrior II's, and the ewar drones will never be used. But what if the Maulus could send a flight of SD drones that had the effectiveness of half or two thirds a sensor damper. I would use them...

You mean they stack with ship modules? Yeah, but if a flight of drones could compare to a module you could possibly free up a midslot to use for something else. I dunno, just thinking about stuff that could make people use those drones....

Web strength, are you for real?

no web strenght. would be a first for minmatar.
stick with web range or make target painter worth something.

yes, it would make the hyena obsolete, but EAF's in general aren't known for their uniqueness. rather make the hyena obsolete now and get a better, more distinct hyena later, ending up with two useful ships than have 2 ships which both are percieved as not good

The optimal range bonus for TDs on the crucifier is kind of redundant, given the fact that they already have pretty huge optimals anyway.....

Griffin - I'm not liking 5 mids, but meh. It means people will fit 4 ecms and a mwd. So you still have the uber ecm boat that removes 3 or 4 enemies from a fight. But, really just make the counters to ecm more meaningful. Give us a skill for each race to increase sensor strength. The game needs some new skills anyway and this would be an indirect nerf to ecm and thus more palatable. Think about making eccm a combo of a whole number bonus to sensor stregth plus a percentage bonus as well. This might make it useful and worth fitting on a frigate or cruiser. With that the Griffin could stay as proposed and still be powerful. Indirect nerfs to ecm will be better I think than another attempt to nerf it directly (which you've failed twice already).

Cruciifer - fine. Just you'ld better make TDs affect missiles range. I really could care less about eplosion parameters but if you want to give them an effect on missiles there too ok. But having tds reduce flight time of missiles might do something about the Drake Tengu overuse problem.

Vigil - really sorta sad. Painters in general. You could maybe up that bonus to 10% strength per level. Even then it would not be equivalent to any of the other ewar but it would at least cause a recipient to say **** I'm being painted.

Maulus - Damps. Ok, how about making that strength effect 10% per level. They already are operating in falloff with no range bonus. They should at least be a serious irritant when they do hit.
As for the cap use reduction bonus in my experience oddly it is the Celestis that needs the cap reduction bonus and not the Maulus but whatever. People seem to want it on the Maulus. Damps do suck cap pretty heavily. I suppose I would rather a reduction on the cap use of the module itself directly and then a falloff bonus to the damps. I can understand how an optimal bonus might make them another ecm. Regardless, these ships will not removing 3 or 4 enemies from a fight like the griffin will.

As for the other balancing parameters I think the griffin needs a little more mass and sig. For all that ewar power it should not be granted such low mass and thus agility.

1. We have seriously considered it yes, including considering having TDs shared between Amarr and Minmatar. What we concluded was that increasing the number of situations where target painters are useful was a better long term goal.

2. The primary damage reduction method for the Vigil is speed, range and signature radius. On larger ships it will be a combination of those factors and heavier local defenses

3 and 4 are basically covered above

5. Was part of the original plan, but the problem is that frigate missiles do not receive significant benefits from TDs. The idea isn't going away though.

What about adding benefits that a TP provides? Right now it increases the size of the target. Your gang buddies can lock it faster and hit it harder. What if it could also decrease a target's shield or armour resistances?