Player Features and Ideas Discussion

been on test server to try out the new rebalanced battlecruisers

the rezult?

prophecy - epic,even with my low drone skills i still menage to deal 450 dps with my ****** drone skills combo with heavy assault missile rack.decent tank ,play-a-ble.
harbinger - surprized,but i think it could still use some work.
drake - trolololoolo i`m back.epic dps with hams.decent dps with heavy.could use about 3-5 more pg to make that high slot usefull for anything if full dps/tank ham fitted.or move the high slot for utility to low or medium.
ferox - yes!move the high slot for utility to low or medium,give 5%/10% level on hybrid damage.NOBODY USES LONG RANGE medium guns anymore.except maybe zealots/munnin.
cyclone - meh compared to drake dps,at least give it 7 launchers instead of 5.
hurricane - besides the fact that the pg has been nerfed already and loosing a high slot,cant say i like it.and bonuses remained the same :(.
brutix - yes!but i`m not that happy with active armour tanking rigs increasing the pg usage or armor reppers.aar sucks balls.its not even half what asb is now.
myrmidon - ???? cant say i like the negative 1 high slot.

overall its a pretty decent rebalance,except for hurricane and myrmidon.

It's a good thing you took the time to read what Roime was talking about. If you had, you would have noticed that it was specifically comparing a Shield Tank and an Active Armor Tank. If you're Active Armor Tanking, you do need to use all 6 of your low slots. Hell, an Active Armor Tank Prophecy would be better off if it used all 7 of its low slots for tank.

With that said, in both passive tanked situations, Armor Tanked and Shield Tanked, the Brutix has a wasted bonus; therefore, especially when looking at the Hurricane's track record, there's no reason why the Brutix has to have plates fitted to it over LSEs and Invuls. The bonus and slot layout makes it an Active Armor Tanked ship; not an Armor Tanked ship. The only ship that should be strictly considered such is the Prophecy; for reasons that should be quite obvious.

As for Fozzie's latest reply; I agree, its not what I would have liked to have heard. However, the question he replied too is an easy question for that stuff that they've already had plans for doing so. The fact of the matter is, someone on the balancing team must really like Gallente having 2 Active Rep BCs (such a reasoning is unimaginable to me) considering that it has been stated and hinted beforehand several times that one of the ships would be losing it. In fact, if I remember correctly, the Summer CSM Minutes show that Ytterbium was interested in removing the Rep Bonus from the Myrmidon.

The Talos helped Gallente out tremendously, but what people are looking for here is a Gallente BC that can go into a fight and Brawl, with decent DPS and good EHP. That is not the Talos. The Talos is a kiting ship, and Gallente pilots are happy to have a kitting BC, but we want a Brawling BC that isn't limited to simply fights involving 3 people or less.

So Fozzie,

No chance at making the Cyclone an armor ship instead of a shield ship?

These are pretty much my thoughts. Why in the hell did Fozzie even bother to make this thread? He clearly doesn't want to hear/doesn't care about feedback on this stuff, and it will launch as proposed from the start. If that's how he wants to do it, fine, but he should have saved everyone some trouble and just posted this as a dev blog with comments disabled. It would have the same net effect.

I'm pretty sure Fozzie has taken the feedback from this thread on, in fact I know he has because the changes he made to the original rebalance to what we have now are almost exactly what my feedback on this rebalance was. So if you don't like the way things are now it kinda seems to be my fault too

The fact that I replied quickly to the certificate question doesn't mean it's necessarily any more important than other questions, just that it is easy and quick to answer.

In regards to the armor rep bonuses on the Gallente BCs, I posted earlier in the thread that I recognize that there are strong arguments to be made on both sides and that we are weighing the options. That statement is still valid. The desire for more varied tanking methods among the Gallente Combat BCs is a perfectly reasonable one, although the Brutix and Myrm do both stand up as very fun ships with distinct flying experiences in their current forms as well. Although we are getting close to release I don't want to lock these ships in place for 1.1 until I've had another discussion with some of the other developers internally.

I want to make sure we are all on the same page with how the feedback and iteration process works. I will always take all reasonably argued feedback from these threads into consideration and will strive to use that feedback to produce a better product. I am convinced that the process we go through here leads to better design outcomes than anything we could ever do by ourselves internally and that the expertise of the community is a crucial resource that should never be ignored.
However taking feedback from the community is not the same thing as always doing exactly what every individual person wants. At the end of the day we need to make decisions based on the best interests of the game as a whole and sometimes I may disagree with some of you on some things.

It is also important to reiterate a few other things mentioned earlier.

• We do not intend all bonuses to be made equal, we balance the ships as a whole and part of that is recognizing that some bonuses are going to be more powerful individually than others and planning accordingly.
• We also have no intention to fire and forget with our ship balancing. No matter what form these ships hit TQ with in 1.1, we will be evaluating use in the 'wild' and making more decisions based on that information.

I can definitively state for the record btw that we won't be making the Cyclone an armor bonused ship for Retri 1.1. The cyclone's bonus alongside the extra speed, utility highs and more generous fittings collectively serve to create a ship that is useful in its own right, distinct from the Drake, and fits well with the overall thematic pattern of Minmatar ships.



You know I always have time for you.

Balance ships, not bonuses.

I would say the difference from the original changes are quite large and that Fozzy as always has responded to feedback well.

I have quite enjoyed the test server as I generally don't get many BC fights.

Pretty pleased with the Myrm not sure why people are not keen on it. Don't think I have lost a relatively even fight in it and that is even fighting the EHP monster HAM drake. I do think the active tank bonus is of benefit here.

Prophecy, fit in a similar manner EHP is higher with no real loss in active tank ability, balance ships not bonuses I guess, Myrm has a touch more DPS, and I do like the extra mid. Given the prophecy has a low instead of a mid and less turrets the Myrms fittings seem harsher. May swap between the two.

Brutix - beat a cane first time I took it out, got hammered by a Talos a little while latter.

Not as convinced by the rep bonus here but struggling to think what would be better.

I understand people want a gang/fleet ship but not sure what bonus would give thus the edge to make it a choice over the Talos.

Tracking is too much like the Thorax, falloff would clash with Diemos without the speed so I guess another tank bonus perhaps 10% Armour hit points per level or a 10% reduction to mass and fitting for armour plates.

I wrote all this before the last few posts but here it is.

A lot of players ask for unreasonable things, and some things are flat out silly. Just like the request someone made that the cyclone should get 7 launchers.

Good fixes, not easy fixes.

Blanket changes are almost always a bad idea - resulting in undeserved boosts to ships that don't need boosting while not fixing the ships that do need help.

Take the 2009 projectile changes, the major benefactors of which were the Sleipnir, Hurricane, Thrasher and Rifter, ships already highly competitive in their classes. Take the recent hybrid changes didn't fix medium rails while giving an undeserved boost to small blasters and small rails. Take the recent application of GMP to unguided missiles was very welcome for torps but unnecessary for rockets.

Let the AAR changes settle in, then balance active-bonused ship individually - or just alter active-tanking, of course. For example, the Sleipnir doesn't need boosting relative to its field CS counterparts, while it would be absurd to give the Claymore an increased shield boost bonus when its role dictates that it needs a HIC-style resist bonus.