Ships & Modules

I think you may be misunderstanding the principle . . .

picture this:
Im running around a pole clockwise. that pole is going to be off to my right; if I want to point at the pole i just extend my arm out to the right.

now as im running, I can just keep extending my arm out to the right to keep pointing at the pole, and I never have to move my arm, provided that im in a circular orbit, i never have to move my arm and it will always be pointing at the pole; my arm doesnt have to "track" at all.

this is just like the ships should be. the same side of my thorax/hurrucane etc is facing the target, my guns have had to move 0 degrees to keep pointing at it.

Now that being said, I understand why they dont do this, the number of calculations this would add per volley would make the server cry.

Agreed.

Though i wouldn't say poorly thought out as much as narrowly scoped.

To me, the Tier 3 BC embody the perspective of the new generation of game designers (Soundwave, Ytterbium et. al.). While a confirmation is unlikely, it's somewhat evident that they were designed only with large scale PvP and the "Drake" problem in mind. They were meant to offer up a bridging alternative inbetween Drakes and Baddons or Maels. They were supposed to combat Drakes, give incentive to train toward BS and they were supposed to push up cost a little bit (slightly more minerals in the hulls and the BS weapons). That it reinvigorated the SHAC tactics was likely a nostalgic design-choice once the introduction had been decided. In that sense it just become yet another tactic to be readily prepared for the masses with easier accessability. Do you miss nano? Here, have it on much cheaper ships so everyone can do it.

Though, everyone could already do it, old roaming groups were hardly rich. It's just a question of risk-reward mindset.

When you try to appeal to that by changing it, you just feed the problem you try to deal with.

That any such mindset stomp all over most ships that were already not part of the hegemony going from cost-effect to hitpoint-buffer (BC-SC), that was the poorly thought-out part. It's like the developers belived that if a ship wasn't popular (at large scale) it didn't exist. That's another reason why i am very sceptical to the whole comprehensive ship overhaul project. It's spanning years so it will continue to rip up and ripple ship balance for a very long time, the recent track-record isn't very trustworthy (hence this thread) and it's obvious to me that they still maintain the same perspective.

How can we make Frigates more used? It's the same approach again a year later.

At the end of the day it's just a cost-effect dump, moving expensive tactical lynchpins over to inexpensive platforms - and providing powerful options to a thoughtless tactical setting. Even as it stand, many players get into alot of ships before they know how to handle them, and we're getting ever increasingly shallow in our use. The whole notion of new-player-experience, player-retention and all that is definately second in nature. Claiming that the two odd weeks you had to train to get into an Interceptor somehow made people stop playing is laughable.

Skillpoints < risk, creativity and scale.

That training time mean little in the scope of things. Moving a 30m loss over to "free" matter alot more, or makes PvP matter alot less. Recent threads like "What is the role for Interceptors now?" are quite obvious, it's just amusing to me that some people don't wake up until it slaps them in the face. The same applies to the BC. The Tier 3 BC have done much less to give incentive traveling the Drake-Mael route to lower cost-effect as it has to raise cost-effect by obscuring other more expensive and impopular concepts. The exact opposite of the intention, because you can't adress a hegemony if your perspective do not go beyond it. If EVE only had Drakes, Tier 3 BC, Tier 3 BS and Capitals (combined with "Rifters that the newbros fly and Tengus or whatever it is the elitebros fly"), then their introduction would likely have been a success. In fact, among the large-scale actors it is probably seen as a success. At the same time, it doesn't really affect them in the slightest, for what they do the old ships are still the better options. Drakes, BS and Capitals still out-scale them and take part in the cost-effect game.

At the end of the day their effect have become "less meaningful interaction" reinforcing the problem of "Drakes".

That's how it relate to the whole scaling thing. It's not like it's impossible to fight blobs, or that they have never existed in the past (as some people like to sneer and point out). The problem lie in worthwhile targets and choking the game out. Even if certain cheaper options may not be as good, once you transfer the speciality over they will get used and you feed numbers. How many groups are still out there who use Tier 3 BC in some underhanded creative way now, 8 months in?

It's interesting to see the train of thought just chugging on while more parts of the community are slowly waking up to realize that the game have issues with making the world meaningful. It's interesting to see Tech (the mineral) being described as an issue and SRP-finances gone over while ship balance head for the end-station of free ships for the passengers.



The tracking discussion is interesting but i think there's some risk that it beaches on principles. If you combine the general use of MWD with the mobility of the Tier 3 BC you can easily see that there are no massive tracking issues for a well-composed, skillpointed and experienced gang. Discussing the merits of raw dps in regard to an AB tank offtracks alot since it only assume those sig-tanks that can hit at distance.

I remember making that example in regard to the Deimos on several occassions. How they did well against the same common gangs (Tier 2 BC and BS) prior to Crucible, but how the Tier 3 BC just stretched the necessary uptime of MWD to more or less invalidate rush tactics.

That means the only way to deal with the new ships become combining sig-tank with either reach or simultanious speed (not shifting speed, as a competent BC-groups will only sort-by-distance kite that like old nano gangs).

Lin, i think you have an issue with terminology there.

Blob in EVE can be defined in many ways but they all tend to belong to two over-arcing collective terms:

1. the act of blobbing someone (essentially a shift from the genre where gank have come to mean [burst-] damage, while blob have come to mean gank [gang-kill]), or overwhelming an opponent.

2. an obscure high-number mass, where volume trumph any differentiation.

They do relate to each other in several ways, but there is also definate distinction between them.

I have a feeling Jack Miton referred to the second definition, though when he only notes down a single sentence it's hard to know for sure. I belive he tried to say that the class only present problems when grouped in large numbers. On the other hand, regarding the Tier 3 BC (as opposed Tier 2 BC), he's wrong about that - it's actually the opposite.

What Crucible did to the HAC-class is pretty much like you say though, it relegated all of the ships further to situational use. The question i raise is what you or Ybert () envision for the future? Looking at current pace, it'll be years until HAC's are adressed and how do you or them intend for the ships to be balanced? Should they be incredibly powerful to warrant the cost-difference or should they remain inefficient while the game around them continue to favour cost-effect?

My gripe with this whole carousel has continously been that the existing balance (let's define that as: prior to Crucible) was not bad from a mechanical standpoint. Battlecruisers never were too good in relation to HAC (note: i fly alot of HAC, little BC), they were too cost-effective. If they already had a good balance performance wise, why are we undertaking this massive project, and what do people envision to get out of it in the end? What mechanics do you assume to improve?

The "math" is pretty simple: if HAC cost as much as BC, they would be used more. If that mutual cost was low (make HAC cheaper), they would be used more in larger numbers and the ships with tank-projection would be used the most. If the mutual cost is higher (make BC more expensive) you balance the value of numbers and risk-reward with losses. That enables more diversity in scale and ships used.

Even if I wasn't does it really matters, does it? -any way me too I laugh about this every time I read "blob" and "gang" then "pvp".
Happy I made you laugh dude

But you know yourself that in larger fleets that means nothing cause at that range tracking is practically non-existant. Combine it with support fleets with web's and TP's and it becomes obvious that HAC's are fairly pointless in the sniper role. (Hell you can fit out an autocannon tornado which hits to the same range as medium arties but has better tracking and DPS.)

The effect of Tier 3 ships was opposite to the effect of T3 ships. Unlike T3 ships which could perform several roles and ended up being better at some roles than the ships that were designed specifically for those roles (command ships for instance), the Tear 3 Battlecruisers were designed for a specific role (sniping) and in that role made other ships which had not been designed specifically for that role obsolete in that role.

Yes, Tier 3 Battlecruisers are better sniper ships than Battleships and Heavy Assault ships setup with a sniper fit. This is because they are designed specifically for the sniper role. The trade off is that when sniper fit, these ships have almost no tank and are easily killed by any ship that gets within range of them. In my experience the counter to a Tier 3 Battlecruiser is an Interceptor with web and point.

As far as HAC’s go, I only have experience with Armour HAC’s but I do know that when combined with logi an AHAC gang can easily take on twice it’s number of most other ship types. I see a lot of AHAC gangs in Syndicate. Armour HAC’s still have a solid rule in PVP. Maybe Shield HAC’s need a buff; I don’t know them well enough to say. I don’t think that HAC’s were designed to be snipers though, so I don’t see a point in complaining about them not being as good as ships specifically designed for that role.

Posts like Renier Gaden's really boggles my mind.

How can you write three paragraphs and just sound like someone pulled "show info" on a module?

You need to look at the use of the ships a bit more man, so you don't end up sounding like a leaflet.