Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Wtf is up with this forum, just wrote out a nice response to Gypsio and it was promptly eaten. That's REALLY annoying. And it also just ate yours, but I'm learning to cut/paste to wordpad so bad forum software can jump in the lake.

Gallente recons are used, sure, but are they actually used as EW ships? Ever? For that matter, how often do you see RSD used period? I don't have a problem with non bonused ships not using them - that was the problem in the first place - but when they don't work that well on ships that are designed to use them, then there's an issue IMO. I've always loved options. Generally now, you have 1 - you fit shield tank and points. The option of trying to fit EW, point and armor tank (mostly tanking using EW) doesn't work under common situations as it's not effective enough. I hate FOTM and cookie cutter, knowing what's coming at me before it's even on the field. I'm not looking for rooks and falcons in gallente skins - I'm looking for effectiveness on the order of what you can get currently out of a pilgrim or curse, which despite the fact that people don't use TD on them much, are quite effective when they have them (as one ashimmu who tried to jump me once promptly found out as a orbited him at 500m and he couldn't hit me - ever). The general point is that each race, IMO, should have effective EW options. This ofc includes painters for minmatar, but that's a whole another can of worms.

As for the "hack" thing you've mentioned I agree with you, because even if it was a good idea (which I'm not sure of atm) I don't think CCP would ever go for it. However, the mobility issue is, to my point of view, even MORE important than the damage based issue, because if you can't catch it you can't kill it, with any kind of blaster, crappy or wonderful. I'll fully admit I'm unsure what exactly to do about this. Overloading a MWD would seem to be the mechanic but when the opponent can overload his at the same time and escape by copying your actions this isn't a viable mechanic. Plus of course you have the hull size issue where as hull size increases, mobility drops, to where when you reach BS size you're really looking at being forced to get a close warp in to make effective attacks. When an entire weapon system designed for a race decreases in effectiveness each time the hull size goes up, that's a sign something is wrong. If anyone has good ideas on this I'm more than willing to hear what they are.

Rails, also unsure what to do with them but obviously they need something, a X factor that defines them as a weapon system. This IMO is the whole issue, there's nothing that says when you see it "that feels like a railgun" like you would for lasers (no ammo, crystal switching) or artillery (slow ROF, high alfa). If a viable X factor could be come up with I think that this issue would be solvable.

I'm not sure what you mean by your active tanking comment, as my idea was to give all ships with a rep bonus the same bonus, to reduction in capuse of those reppers, so they could use them easier. Could you explain more what you're trying to cover here, I don't think I'm following. As for oversized mods, 1600mm plates are common fits these days on cruisers, as well as LSE's. You could hold a view that this is bad (I don't, really) but it just shows yet another passive option that is much easier, and more viable, is that the fitting of oversized mods is far easier - and effective because of no cap use - when compared against active tanks.

(next)

1. Since this would make afterburners equally effective on all types of ships, how does this address the ability - or lack of ability - for gallente blaster ships to catch, fire, and kill hostile targets? I'm not seeing it.
2. Also, low sig, high speed doesn't to me "feel" gallente. It feels minmatar to me, and I think CCP agrees considering that there's a loki subsystem that boosts AB speed (though IMO it's underpowered). I think that each race should have some kind of defining characteristics that say what they're about, and to me, this doesn't seem to fit.

a big thing blasters need is a tracking boost was just doing a bunch of level 4s and i cant even hit tyhem when im ramming them in the butt with atimatter lots of misses and i have to be in that range to hit so tracking is a big problem


thought a cool idea would be for the speed isue is give gallente a jump to targeted enemy ability would be neat have it on a 5 minute cooldown

your ship would turn a color shimmer a bit and sink into darkness and appear almost right on top of your enemey

@Kai Lae
Like I said, I don't think you need to boost RSD's to fix gallente. Our EWAR is arugably as weak as the other races and any argument to boost them starts with Caldari as the base line. You even concede that tracking disruptor aren't used much on curses or pilgrims, nor are target painters on minmatar recons but the ships still enjoy regular use. This is where gallente recons are right now. ECM arguably should be brought to that level.


The Rails mentioned in the OP have more damage, the best damage at long range, and the best tracking at short range (with t2 ammo). With hulls that have received power grid increases as well as speed improvements, that should defiantly nudge them on par with the other races in terms of usefulness.

Active tanking in many respects isn't broken for what it does (if it is, it's down to the neuts), it's just that the arena in which it is useful is vanishingly small. We need to increase the usefulness of active tanking in other situations and not buff it in situations where it works as required (although active tanking bonuses should at least be a bit more powerful than resistance bonuses at active tanking). In addition, cap reduction bonuses in addition to the current amount bonus wouldn't be a bad idea I guess, although it would be more efficient to just increase the boost amount bonus (both reduces cap/s per hp repaired, one potentially reduces the number of tanking mods you need to fit).

I agree with you on drones, it's an issue, but like I said, it doesn't need to be fixed for more people to fly Gallente and for the sake of scope, and brevity I don't think it should be included right now.





A lot of people seem to be asking for the same thing, essentially a special speed boost that Gallente would have but non of the other races would have....



Not sure it would be possible for this release but it's definitely worth thinking about. The more I think about it, the less realistic it becomes to expect a total fix to all the issues in this expansion and as a result, my exceptions are already starting to be lowered.

Fixed.

I understand that EHP wise, not much is changing, I'm talking more about damage projection; with a damage boost at longer ranges, is there a role for say a rail-based ship in wh pve?

We can only wait and see, I'm not especially hopeful of al the changes we need/want being implemented, but I guess the time to rally can only start when the dev's release the hybrid fix dev blog.



Well rails will certainly be better for PvE in WH's (10% more damage) and if you use t2 ammo, you'll have the options of much higher damage at range (less tracking mods for examples) or more tracking at short change.

Outside of wormholes, if you hunt serpentis or guristas, the collection of 80/20 ammo will probably mean you do more damage than you did previously t1 ammo.

But to be honest, the main problem with Gallente PvE in w-space is sleepers vs drones. We do a disproportionately high amount of dps through drones even on blasterboats, whilst our drone carriers are generally the least useful ships in those instances.



Yep an attribute no one uses that requires engineering V which takes months to train and isn't normally trained by almost every player in the game in the first month.

Like I've said not only am I open to suggestions, most of this is the result of feedback (mostly eve-o FHC and corp). So if you've got anything constructive to say I'm willing to listen, otherwise thanks for the bump.

@ Pattern Clarc

I actually had time to read the thread (which is generally something you should do before posting in it, but meh). This may be digging up some items that have already been gone over, but I'd like to make some points on these topics anyway.

A. Droneships. My suggestion for drone ships is pretty simple. Figure out how many of the largest type of drones they should use - that's the bandwith. Then x3 that for your drone bay size. The myrmidon for example, when it was new on the test server had a 100m3 bandwith. This to me is just right, and the drone bay should be 300m3. You are perfectly right in stating that it needs to have PG nerfs to prevent overpoweredness -what you're looking for here really is a BC sized domi. I'd make the Eos the same way. However, I'd do more than that. 1st I'd bring back the old slot layout, which was 5 mids/5 lows. I'd then ditch the rep amount bonus and add a bonus to drones - either drone speed and tracking, or something similar. I would not make it into a field command ship, more on that in a bit.

B. Cap batteries - to me, the issue isn't that they can be neuted out, the issue is that the fitting requirements are nuts compared to the advantage they give. 75 CPU for a medium cap battery? Are CCP insane? A cap booster - a mod that actually is good and works - has 25 CPU. While it does take double the PG, this is nothing compared to the utility of the module. If the CPU was changed to be the same as an injector, it might not be horrible anymore, and could be of some use.

C. Command ships. Obvious issues with these. First question I have - why are there different types of command mods at all? Why don't we have a generic command mod, and you can then set the effect simply by loading in a script? Having seperate command mods is damn annoying if if your character sheet looks like this. I'd personally prefer greatly to just have scripts and then be able to switch back and forth at will, depending on the tactical situation. I don't agree that the effects themselves need a massive overhaul. 3 out of 4 races have nice, effective, useful command modules - and gallente does not. It's not so much that the bonuses are not useful, but they apply to only a tiny fraction of the ships in gang, so to the point that it generally would be better to have brought a different command ship and used it instead. In addition, the ECCM command mod was given bonuses before the last ECCM boost, so that it doesn't even give the effect of a backup mod, much less an actual ECCM. What I think is needed is not replacement, but augmentation and rebalance. The ECCM effect should be boosted. The information warfare aspect of it should return - most probably forget that at one time, one of the information modules boosted lock time. I'd like to see this come back, in that additional modules/scripts would be added that would boost lock time, long range, number of locked targets (this is pretty handy for logi wings), and possibly things like tracking and weapon resolution. The assault bonuses you suggest might be a good idea as well. When you look at it, there's really 0 reason you can only have 3 types of boosts for each race. I would also not at all be opposed to adding additional ones for the other races, but haven't really thought much about it.

Personally, I'd also love a "FC screen" that only commands could access that would give you a commander's view of the whole battle that could be used to control fights with more ease, but that would take a lot of thought to implement and it's doubtful that it could be done quickly.

D. Tier 1 BC. Have no real problems with adjusting slots, but IMO the issues with these have a lot less to do with slots, and a lot more to do with the ships. There really isn't anything wrong with the brutix in reality - other than the blasters or railguns it must use, or the fact that it's too slow to be used as a blaster ship. We've already covered this issue before though, however it should be mentioned that this issue extends to the astarte and eos, which are bad (eos less so because it uses more drones) for the same reasons. The other ships? Ferox, railboat, and rails are just bad. I however find it acceptable in gun BC fleets because you can tank it rather well, and it has good range. If the weapon was fixed the ship might be not that bad, actually. Cyclone, if you gave the ship 7 turrets IMO it'd become good instantly. You'd have a BC sized maelstrom. Plus, since the sleipnir has 7 turrets already it doesn't even require a model change. Prophecy - or the funky chicken as I call it - the issue with this for me is the same that occurs with the punisher, and maller - it's a great ship to fit autocannons to as there's no reason to use lasers on it. To make this ship not bad, all you'd need to do is change it's bonuses to the battleship sized version of these ships, the abaddon. Ofc you might need to adjust PG/CPU after these changes, but that's a given.

E. Roden - I sure wish I could dig up the alteration document that I wrote on scrapheap about this (and that Haffrage contributed to heavily) but it's gone. Full disclosure makes me admit I'm one of the unlucky few that holds an Eris BPO, who would love for it to not suck, so that people would actually want to buy them (they don't now). This is a topic I think that requires a simple question to be asked about destroyers. Why, do all destroyers, require 8 high slots? When you look at it, it doesn't make a huge amount of sense to me. You mount tons of guns on them but then turn around and nerf their ROF as a class, because they would do too much damage otherwise?

(next, and wtf is a forum for if when you post you have to make multiple posts to get one point across because of word limits)

Winter is certainly fast approaching; an update from CCP on the direction they might take would sure be appreciated. (Hint Hint)

Regarding the warfare link changes, I certainly have no problem with the proposal but at the bare minimum if the assault warfare links are a no go then at least doubling the effect of the ECCM command mod and having the Electronic Superiority mod affect the positive boosting modules such as Tracking Comps/Links, ECCM and sensor boosters may mitigate this to an extent.

Regarding the third link.

Crazy ideas with the theme of information warfare may be as follows : -

• Increase D-Scan range
• Increase Probe strength
• Reduce the range a ship can be warped to on grid

But if you are going this far then perhaps the Assault Warfare proposal would be better.

I like those effects. Should be what tech 3 commandships do.