Warfare & Tactics

If you've lost hundreds of Interceptors and lose them to things with battleship size guns at relatively close ranges, I think the real issue is pilot error.

Something is horribly wrong if you lose a ceptor to an Oracle at 40km while doing 5km/s, which I would say is the pilot.

What if arty nados are hitting your 5KM ares at 60-70km ?

Then you either have really bad skills, you're painted/webbed, or you just hit approach like an idiot.

Obviously there are fringe cases where there's too many people to get transversal on the entire gang and just becuase the formula is chance based, i've seen impossible shots take out loki boosted interceptors with max skills and transversal maybe twice...but the point remains that they're not as woefully bad as this is making them out to me. Judging by the fact that he claims to have lost hundreds of ceptors...I mean really, hundreds?

Every ship has a counter, and to me it really just seems like this guy wants them to be this invincible tackle ship that he can just fly around pointing all the things without consequence.

Combat interceptors were put into the dumpster way before t1 frigate buff. Why fly a t2 hull when faction frigs are so much better?
Tackling interceptors are still the best at what they're supposed to do - scouting for roaming gangs with the option to point stuff when its safe.
My Ares goes 5.2km/s (6.4k with snakes), pretty much instawarps due to <2s align time, points out to 36k, and can still take 2 medium autocannon volleys before having to GTFO. No complaints here at all.
Just dont do silly stuff like trying to use ceptors as primary tackle in medscale engagements vs. proper gangs.

I love the s h I t outta my atron & can't wait till I've skilled up to a 'ranis.. Banging out core skills like mad caps now, remap in a couple months for ships when I'll have the exp & isk to make t2 worth the risk

Now try the same for any of the other races and you will notice:
- Amarr: Crusader is completly crap if compared to Navy Slicer.
- Caldari: Crow is laughable if compared to the Hookbill
- Minmatar: Claw... what the **** is that? No Tank but has to go close (scram) range and less DPS than a Firetail?

You missed the word "pretty".

I solo pvp in some of my ceptors. While they are not good solo boats they do have a suprise factor. Also my malidication eats slicers for lunch.

A bit more survivability would be nice though, especially against snipers. Personally I think the game would be more balanced if Tr3 and Battleships have to rely on Destroyers and AF to get rid of Inties.

Tech II overall is the big loser of the "Tiercide" and redesign.

They will be revisited at a later time, and that later time may be years down the path.

Also, going by the comments that have popped up so far from the redesign team they seem interested in marginalizing the advantages of Tech II over Tech I (Fozzie was on a podcast just ventilating some of the brainstorming going on and threw out the figure 30% for good measure). We're at a time now when it's difficult to warrant the use of Tech II outside of ships with entirely unique roles (EW, Bombers, Bubbles etc.).

In the same interview they discussed the preservation of unique qualities of certain classes and how they didn't want to give the EAF the tackle-component of the Recon bonuses (webs, points) citing the obscurity of the role and class. It's just perplexing how they at the same time view the balance between specialist Tech II and baseline Tech I differently, or the balance between other Tech II classes such as HAC differently. Appearantly it's okay to shaft certain classes over years and then look upon them from a 30% (for a 1000% cost-increase) perspective while other classes are to have entirely unique qualities preserved.

They motivated that they belive a 30% performance abundence compared to equivalent Tech I class would be enough to warrant their use. However even now (with HAC being well above 30% of the Cruisers) it's difficult to motivate their use for the vast majority of players and you have trends of traditional Tech-justifying groups running various BC comps despite ISK being at an all time high "inflation" (i'm putting the citation marks there to note that i refer more to the general conception of how easy ISK is to come by in the community, rather than actual economic inflation which i don't follow).

It's just an odd standpoint that i think it's a shame that they are not being pressured more about.

So many people applaud this redesign from a standpoint of certain ships or classes being dusted off and given purpose again, yet they don't look at the end result: if there are other (and even more...) classes losing ground and what impacts further encouragement of "cheap Tech I explosions" will have on the community. Most of these things are generally regarded as "bad" (not enough sinks to the faucet) yet when it's done to game design we applaud somaticly.


The recurring yawp:

It's also an odd perspective, because on one end of the scale we have large groups running "faction battleship" comps discussed as an example of faucetting (Seleene on the recent DoW#35; yet they are quite exclusively used in situations of calculated numerical safety) while on the other end you have almost everyone from solo pilots to small-gang traditional roaming groups to medium sized siblings (and i mean that trends among almost everyone within those cliques) running stale BC concepts with very little variation (and mainly run them for "goodfights" among themselves or as throw-away ganks). It's gone from bridging scale with higher risk, higher profile, comps in ingenuitive concepts to simply giving up by the looks of it.

I'm riling now, but at one time CCP were accused of not playing the game, then they've been accused of only playing big-numbers content and now we're assured that there's people trying to start a "bring solo back" movement within the company. I wonder when they are going to start taking responsibility for the whole spectrum and make the game connect again. Some might see Fozzie's comment about creating a "solo movement" within the company as positive, but i see it as extremely negative because it's still trying to feed a "positive" from the existing disconnect. The exception that cement the rule. That's why we keep seeing irresponsible ship changes as well.

Changes that later will bring up more questions like the one raised here in this thread.

More ships will follow the Interceptors, Faction frigs and Dodo bird - we'll get more "free explosions" and ISK piling up, while scales keep separating and it's increasingly pointless fighting outside the clique of your peers. Those trends are already in motion and Retribution will not make them disipate, quite the contrary.

They tried to fix the BC by introducing new BC (Tier 3 BC), and now they try to fix BC again by introducing more BC (bringing other Tech I ships more in line with the cost-effect of BC).

They all have one thing in common: cost over effect, free ships, which make the number of them a more dominant factor.

Stop applauding when being pandered to.