Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Still feels like the Ferox needs +1 midslot and the Drake needs to lose the shield resist. Just make a clear break between the "attack" boat and "combat" boat in each race; every race needs one boat that is good at each. The tier 3s are not "attack" ships, they're dedicated snipers and gank wagons. Right now all the tier 1/2 boats are some sort of half-hearted hybrid without any clear roles between them. And the 10% kinetic bonus on the Drake is even worse of a bad thing than 5% was. Just swap it to RoF + Velocity. It is plain silly for the Drake firing heavy missiles to have the same effective range as a Caracal firing lights.

These are both the combat boats. The Attack boats are the Tier 3 BCs.

To the specific criticisms: Another mid on the ferox means losing either the utility high it just got back or another low. Neither is acceptable.

The drake's kinetic bonus helps to keep it distinct from the Cyclone.

Even if they gave out more PG and CPU to fit a warfare link there will be people using that for other modules. That high slot would still be empty and people will ask for more PG and CPU again.

I do have a concern of my own actually, regarding the drake. My understanding (or assumption, anyway) was that the -10 cpu/grid you gave it before was supposed to make certain fits just a little more difficult to fit; it did this with varying degrees of success.

You've now ripped off a launcher, but only removed 40 grid and 15 CPU (50 and 18.75 with the respective skills at 5). An HML II at max skills is 41.3 CPU and 94.5 grid, a HAML II, 37.5 and 101.7. So you've undone the previous minor fitting nerf, and actually given it a net fitting buff.

The same can be said for the Brutix, but in that case it's understandable, and fine - it gives them some room to work with for the new armor tanking tools if they so choose.

Is the fitting buff to the drake intended, or is it going to be offset by other, as of yet unanounced changes? (You don't have to answer the last, but I am curious about what appears to be an about-face here)

I am not sure I am happy with these changes. I was happy with the reduction in utility highslots across the board. I understand that these ships are designed to be t1 command link ships but more often then not these highs will be filled with neuts and more neuts is not a good thing. Honestly more command links is not a good thing either.

Oh and also fozzie we all vote no to both Gal battlecruisers with active tanking bonuses. Give us one ship that is not forced into a specific tanking type. We want to be able to have options without completely wasting a bonus.

Wiv

I'd be more in favor of the Ferox losing the new High slot and the new Turret for a 6th Mid. Remove the Ferox Resist bonus and give it a 5% Hybrid Turret Damage Bonus. Then on the Drake, let it keep its Resist bonus, and move it to a 7/5/5 layout. But, that's more than likely never going to happen.

Drone ships: 11 low+midslots
The rest: 10 low+midslots
Ferox: 9 low+midslots

Doesn't that hurt the Ferox a bit too much?

The prophecy change is kind of meaningless - it's perhaps the most powerful of the new BCs (at least in small scale combat), and losing a little hull doesn't really make much difference to its capabilities one way or another. The Brutix and Harbinger changes are both very nice, but the nerf to the cyclone is both baffling and utterly debilitating to a ship that was already very tight on fitting room - you already needed one or two fitting mods to do much of anything with the hull and it wasn't particularly strong compared to the other new BCs, so I'm not sure why it received such a harsh nerfing; the loss of PG moves it from competitive to essentially worthless.

Missile launchers are easier on grid and harder on cpu than equally sized turrets.

Because it doesn't need it in the first place. I'm looking at a variety of setups here. 2x LSE passive tank with HAMs and neuts; sure it wastes the bonus, but it's a valid use of the ship for some situations. Or replace the LSE with LASBs - that one actually has fitting issues, but they're CPU, not grid, and it works with a coproc or rig.

Two examples of what are likely to be some pretty common setups. You know what the common theme amongst all these fits is?

If you remove 125 grid from them (100 plus 25 from Engineering 5), they all still fit, with room to spare. That first setup only uses 1262, the second, 1315, out of 1500. You can swap a neut on either for a single gang link and still not have grid problems.

We can get a little more exotic, I guess. HAMs, two neuts and an XLASB fits, now we have to make some trades. As is, this fit comes up 3% short on CPU and 2% short on grid even now, so -100 grid means you run an ACR as well as the CPU rig to make it fit. Or maybe downgrade a medium neut to a small. You're getting an 850+ DPS tank, I think you can afford the sacrifice.

Maybe we want to get all fancy and have a cheap ganglink platform? HAM, 2x LSE II, invuln, 3x BCS II, DCII, 10mn MWD, plus two gang links. A coproc and command processor round out the lows and the mids, respectively, and we already need two CPU rigs as it is. But it fits now. Post-patch, you run either an ACR or an implant... or you just don't care, because who runs their bonuses on the front lines anyway?

Basically, normal combat fits fit before and after the patch without an issue, more specialized or gimmicky fits require a bit more tweaking.

What I'm saying is that the cyclone is fine and losing 100 grid isn't a big deal.