Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Fozzie,

what were your goals for this balancing pass, and do you feel like they were met?

I personally was expecting at least one fleet-compatible BC per race, and the removal or fixing of useless hull bonuses. Unfortunately this didn't happen :/

Changing Cyclone and Prophecy weapon systems was in line with "2 weapon systems per race" -trend. Amarr drone battleship and full missile Minnie bs coming soon.

Looks like Drake will still very much Drake, Gallente shield tank, Amarr stuck with "unique" fitting bonus, Cyclone fits an XLASB.

EDIT: I also still wonder about the logic behind active armor tanking BCs having the largest sigs and more hull than armor.

Not sure which post it was, but didn't Fozzie state recently that medium rails were going to be looked at again for the next release?

I've kept up with all the threads running in F&I but don't recall reading anything beyond that one quote......

Technically, Amarr already have a drone battleship in Armageddon, it just isn't bonused and the bay is a bit small. I half expect them to double the size of the bay and give it the ability to fit turrets or missile launchers. Fozzie already said they're turning Typhoon into a missile boat.



Nano Drake is getting hit pretty hard - testing it on SiSi, it really feels sluggish and "heavy". Meanwhile, Cyclone zips about just like your usual minmatar ship - I expect it to take over the nano role (though more of a mid range verrsion due to considerably shorter targetting range), while the Drakes will be delegated to the brick role. Since I always prefered the nano drake, it seems I'll be shifting over to the Cyclone after all.



This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Let's compare railguns and lasers - railguns have lower cap use, but also relatively low damage - they need the damage bonus of sorts to work decently (note: Rokh's range bonus doubles as damage bonus, since the pilot can downgrade ammo to shorter range, higher damage version). Meanwhile, lasers have high cap use, but also high damage. A cap bonus reduces their drain on the capacitor, but if you combine a laser with a damage bonus, you get a high cap use, very high damage weapon, an option other weapons systems simply don't have. Of course, it comes with a price - it's limited to EM/TH spectrum.



Frankly, they'd need to look over how TE/TCs work (optimal vs. falloff) and over the whole ewar, because let's face it, playing a roulette with ECM isn't fun either.

And by look over how they work, do you mean reduce the falloff they give to somewhere towards x1.5 for instance?

TD not affecting falloff the way TC does would make sense if the plan would be to let brawling ships at least stand a chance against kiters by going into deep falloff.
Now how much that reflects the current state of affairs, is another thing.

No didn't bring resist and shield boost bonus in it, not takan the time to calculate that, so I went with the hull HP.

as for the smart bomb, it will be hell to fit with say 6 Heavy assault launchers, tackle and shields, the Cyclone has a lot less trouble by the way because it needs only 5 launchers and has more Powergrid.

but yeah I'll see how it ends. though I'd made my drakes ready for a long time in the hanger and bought my selfs some cyclones.

Do not like, seems like a waste of engineering cycles to produce a change that is not making the players very happy.

I would say politely, back to the drawing board please.

Those who enjoys the Breacher/Talwar/Bellicose game play do not expressively enjoy gimping the cyclone...how do you come up with this data?

I will stand corrected if someone can show me a thread that says eve players WISH they could make the cyclone a missile boat...

New Eve Player response: " Please Please CCP!! Make it MORE difficult to fly minmatar ships by making us train EVERYTHING UNDER THE SUN TO 5 ! I thought I was on a roll getting my gunnery skills up but now I need to switch to missiles!! YAY!!! " (Cancel subscription).


Old Eve Players response: "dafaq?"

you know the races have always been just fine with taking each others tech

the amarr invented the jumpdrive and the gallente/caldari invented the warp drive

also the races have a pact with each other to share all tech advances

also the amarr got capsule tech from the cal who got it from the jove

also their religion and the reclaimings centre around flying about and taking other people's stuff

their first priest emperor started it

the amarr were always meant to be a drone/laser race just as the gal are hybrids/drones, cal are hybrids/missiles and min are missiles/projectiles

btw the bhaal is made by a group whose faith is illegal in the amarr empire under religious law

e: and a drone balance is deffo coming at some point soon i reckon

At frig level, active armor repping bonus was fine, since at max skills a 10%/level bonus is 12.5% better than a 5% resist or something like that.

At BC level balancing we were promised buffs to armor, and the thread is still rolling, though I'm not quite enthusiastic about trying to fix armor tanking by introducing a module with "ancilary" in it's name that still uses the same cap and has a fitting limit of 1, but there's something going on at least.

With drones, for now there's only the promise that something will happen at some point.
If the AI mess was good for anything, it was to remind folk about how drones aren't in the best shape in many ways.
Yes, with the new and buffed DDAs, on a nearby serpentis-webbed target, they are doing fine dps, that one part is in better shape than ever before.

I've heard a ton of people asking for the cyclone not to be changed to a missile boat.

I agree with them.

If I wanted a shield tanking missile race, I'd use caldari.