Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Vaga is faster than the loki, zelot is faster than the legion, munin is a better arty platform than the loki but gets outclassed by the tornado. Sac active tanks better than the legion, though the legion's significantly larger natural buffer somewhat counteracts this.

Proteus and tengu staright up beat the demios/cerb respectively. But removing rigs sure as hell isn't the way to fix that.

If you remove them, everything else doesn't need buffing.

Astroniomix, Sigras, ab armour HACs.

They're now fuel catalyst lokis and legions. A cheap, accessible and loss-friendly fleet concept that had emphasis on good piloting and nimble fleet placement is now a demanding, constrictive and expensive fleet concept. With less agility and more follow the anchor lock and hit f1 kthxbye.

What Anhenka pointed out is the beginning.

Slots are restricted for a reason. Forcing people to choose between this and that makes inventiveness essential. 6 gun HACs with resist bonuses will be a real disappointment.

Tightening the remit of tech3 ships a little by removing their rigs is a way of allowing t2 cruisers to hold on to their niches.

If you want the effect of ccc rigs, use a cap recharge sub. If you wanted more grid, use the relevant sub. And so on. Better still, these augmentations aren't permanent and you can swap them in and out whenever.

You spoke about the web range of rapier compared to loki. Ever tried armour tanking a recon? It doesn't do well. They are barely good enough to get into an ab HAC gang, even when you start using faction resists, and that's the recons with four low slots. The gallente ones and the huginn have a huge sig that puts them at a serious disadvantage. The ewar tech3s are armour recons.

Re: Deimos / Proteus and Tengu / Cerb comparisons, they're not really fair since the Deimos and Cerb are two of the objectively-worst HACs in the game (them and the Sac, ugh) and could use significant buffs (the Cerb's DPS output in particular is just miserable, and the Deimos is a completely schizophrenic ship design that ends up with a slot layout that precludes it from doing ANYTHING well).

The Vaga / Loki comparison is a more productive one, and here the Loki trades increased tank and the possibility of fitting a bonused web or having better scan res for decreased damage output, lower top speed, and poorer agility. And 400M isk.

The Legion fittings I'm familiar with that parallel Zealot fits allow it to either:

- play the role of a massively more expensive, slightly tankier armor HAC

or

- do a shield tanked, nano-pulse setup that trades a significant amount of speed, agility, and some cap-stability for the a 50% larger buffertank.

In neither case is the T3 cruiser significantly better than its T2 counterpart. The only place I've found the Legion to be a worthwhile improvement over the Zealot (IE, when taking costs into account) is a particular Legion fit that I use for extended stays in hostile space, where the Legion is able to sacrifice some of its max dps potential in exchange for a utility high slot which allows it to do more DPS than a Zealot could while also fitting a cloak (since the Zealot has to drop a gun).

The Loki falls into a similar category-- I fly it because with the right fit and implants (Snakes are pretty much required) it is possible to eek enough speed out of a Loki that it basically becomes a slightly fatter Vagabond with a bigger tank and a web. You still lose DPS output, speed, agility, and I think even some scan res over a Vaga, but I often find that these are worth trading for a tank and web, since it allows you to engage tankier targets while still being able to kite a light tackler or two effectively if things go south.

In both cases though there's no way I'd recommend my ships to someone who didn't have a significant amount of disposable income. They're definitely not "worth it" in terms of value for money-- I mostly fly them because I've flown cheaper ships extensively and grown bored of them, because I can, and because sometimes its just more exciting to fly something expensive.

For what it's worth, I'm seriously considering swapping my T3s out for either a run of the mill pulse Oracle or a brawling Cane. I like my T3 fits (especially my Legion, which is a very weird fit that I've grown quite attached to), but multiboxing while flying a 700M isk ship that needs to fly right on the edge of tackle / heavy neut range (and isn't that agile or fast, either) gets pretty stressful after a while, and I've noticed that I actually end up leaving my T3s off the field more often than not as a result. An Oracle or Cane won't be "as good," but I think I'd certainly get a lot more actual use out of one.

v0v

Just my thoughts. I don't consider T3s overpowered in general, and especially not in HAC-like configurations (I don't have much experience with brick-tanked setups, in fairness). The Tengu is kind of questionable, but it's about to get d|ck-chopped, so there's that. Covert / nullified T3s are kind of a pain, but that has more to do with the way decloaking mechanics work (which is to say, badly) than anything else.

Regarding the Proteus, it's kind of an underpowered ship for all the useages I've investigated for it (nano-cruiser and recon-replacement). Brick tanked brawling fits might be good, but I'd speculate that that's probably all the Proteus does well, with the possible exception of solo-tanking Guristas 10/10's...

Eh sniper hacs maybe. But they're obsolete with tier3 bcs around. And if you're talking about Zealot mode abhacs, using mids for TCs is a losing game against legions with at least one more mid and a resist bonus or an extra gun. And more base fitting. And a fuel cat sub.

megablobs rely on uniformity, tough to enforce when the temptation is to skim the reimburse system. FCs may well feel more comfortable asking for control of a drake fleet rather than tengus. PL FCs, otoh, have had plenty of practice and are trusted by their subordinates.

abHAC are generally a far less viable choice than they once were. It's all too easy to rustle up a great counter at short notice.

I'm not even particularly nostalgic for them, I think they're just one case where the strategic cruiser has taken over the nest like a bloated cuckoo.

And I'm worried CCP's response will be to bloat the AHACs in response as they can't see that they are still very adept at other things.

This thread is about asking CCP to stop buffing things, and to be very cautious about any changes to t2 cruisers. I want CCP to know they could simply scale back the ridiculous numbers tech3s are capable of quite elegantly, bringing them neatly into line with tech2 ships, but leaving them with versatility and liability that excuses their extra cost and risk.

Try removing trimarks from your favourite armour gang tech3s. The numbers start to match up with t2 cruisers, but there's probably more isk in the lows inching the strat ahead in resists. As for shield or ships in other roles, compensating for the lack of rigs elsewhere in the fit can still produce a workable ship. Not as obscenely great, but workable.

If there's one thing CCP needs to do it's to stop attempting to balance ships around fleet fights. There are way too many variables involved in determining the winner of a fleet fight to make ship balancing decisions around the results except in the most egregious of cases; surely your complaint that 700M isk Legions are marginally better for AHAC comps than 200M isk HACs doesn't qualify as one of them.

I tend to agree with you on this point. However I do agree with CCP's belief that "drakes should not be a viable fleet doctrine".

And while we are at it, since tier 3 BCs beat the sniper hacs in terms of actual sniping ability and speed. Should we remove rigs from them?

No because they are not tech 3 ships, and if you aren't putting 8 large guns on them you are being silly. HTH.

Never did. But damn, do they do an excellent job of replicating what rigs are mostly used to do. Like increase buffers, resists, or cap recharge.

These rare HACs have niche uses. The niches are under pressure or just simply not fun things to do most of the time. Doesn't mean they need to die.

I dunno, the prote does not have pg and sig problems anything like the gall hacs on tq, the loki has a monster tank, the legion can move at serious speeds if it so chooses, and the tengu can actually brawl or be used as a fleet concept. Oh and they're all versatile if you change a few subs.

Sorry, I cant hear you over the sound of Vince Draken and Elo furiously masturbating to the proposed changes to beam laser and artillery grid use.
If your serious about the dualprop thing.. godwhy? They already work against just about anything, especially when paired with some munnins to insta whole bomber wings.



Anyway, you think that since a few builds with t3's are better than you believe they should be then the best solution is to shut them down harder than a stripper at a nun convention by removing the rigs that make them viable at all is a good idea?

Legion no rigs, far far worse than zealot with rigs. For ANY use.

Loki and Proteus, are just flat up useless without rigs, no comparison needed, much worse at any role they could possibly do than any ship or that role. Oh look at me, I have no buffer and no cloak, no mobility, I'm like a Lachesis, but worse tackle range, same ehp, and triple the cost, yeah!

And our new friend the nerfed, rigless tengu. Have a moment of silence for him, as we watch this video montage of a caracal outperforming him in 90% of situations



Removing one rig might bring the Armor fleet loki, Heavy Tackle Proteus, and Coward Tengus back to just barely being better than a t2 HAC, but all 3? Instead of say tweaking the subs a bit to reign them back?

killboard stats... really? i am a mining alt...

anyways...

just because the changes aren't on SISI yet doesnt mean that they will undo EVERYTHING THE DEVS DID FOR MONTHS to change four ships in a way that won't really do much balancing

and you have yet to state why this is actually a good idea. T3s are not perfect, but they aren't so crazy awesome that nothing can compete with them ever.

how will removing rigs from any ship fix anything? i can understand altering rigging configurations or calibration points, like they have with faction and t2 ships, but removing them altogether just won't happen. rigs arent even that advantageous, you are basically saying the three scoop ice cream cone can't have sprinkles nuts or syrup at all because its three scoops of icecream and thats not fair.

i thought about continuing the icecream analogy... but it may be a little to unserious for your very serious self.

so if you want the simplest version of my counterargument its this, rigs don't need to be removed from T3 ships, but calibration stats might want to be considered.

even then if you are complaining about trimark legions that won't really help because of the rig stats. your idea fails to take into consideration most of the rest of the eve. its overfocused, and your inability to see entertain an alteration or modification will result in this thread being a bunch of flaming and lols and icecream analogies

wana talk about T3 balance, fine. wanna talk about how the only way to fix eve is by removing rigs from T3s and if you don't all the other ships will get bloated and horrible, then i say ice cream

cheers