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Dev Blog: No Brakes - Ship and module Balancing in Retribution 1.1

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Callduron
Dreddit
Test Alliance Please Ignore
#121 - 2013-02-15 05:33:02 UTC  |  Edited by: Callduron
CCP Fozzie wrote:
We want to reach a place where cheaper ships are more than just something you fly when you start the game,


This can only happen (at least with regard to nullsec) if clone costs are addressed. If someone with high skill points goes out in a Rupture rather than a Muninn they are flying a ship which is more likely to die and often when your ship dies your pod dies. It's just silly for someone to fly a 100m pod around in a 10m ship.

This issue doesn't only affect old veteran players. As the veterans don't want to be in Omens because it risks their pod more than using Zealots would they decide upon a doctrine which everyone has to follow. This makes nullsec needlessly hard to get into. Some nullsec alliance mitigate this by welcoming rifter heroes but there's a limit for many new players to how much fun you can have being the disposable tackle that generally dies 2 minutes into the fight.

My concern is that after the BC changes and if this summer buffs Battleships we won't see so many roaming cruiser gangs which most of us feel is a great enhancement to Eve.

I write http://stabbedup.blogspot.co.uk/

I post on reddit as /u/callduron.
Paul Maken
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#122 - 2013-02-15 06:28:49 UTC
Callduron wrote:
CCP Fozzie wrote:
We want to reach a place where cheaper ships are more than just something you fly when you start the game,


This can only happen (at least with regard to nullsec) if clone costs are addressed. If someone with high skill points goes out in a Rupture rather than a Muninn they are flying a ship which is more likely to die and often when your ship dies your pod dies. It's just silly for someone to fly a 100m pod around in a 10m ship.

This issue doesn't only affect old veteran players. As the veterans don't want to be in Omens because it risks their pod more than using Zealots would they decide upon a doctrine which everyone has to follow. This makes nullsec needlessly hard to get into. Some nullsec alliance mitigate this by welcoming rifter heroes but there's a limit for many new players to how much fun you can have being the disposable tackle that generally dies 2 minutes into the fight.

My concern is that after the BC changes and if this summer buffs Battleships we won't see so many roaming cruiser gangs which most of us feel is a great enhancement to Eve.


This is definitely an issue. I can jump clone into a PvP clone for a roam, but then I'm stuck there. It's not so much the fact that I'm locked into a clone that trains more slowly for 24 hours that's the problem as it is the fact that once I jump back into the training clone I'm stuck in the expensive clone for 24 hours and cannot participate in any cheap ship gangs for that period.

If I'm to be completely honest, I don't like the way in which skill implants impose a skill point tax on active PvP players. It seems wrong that since I play daily I end up with fewer SP than someone that only plays on weekends and can use jump clones to spend the week in +5s.

Brainstorming a bit, I see a couple of solutions to this. One is to reduce the jump clone duration to something like 16 hours. That way if I jump clone back to +5s at the end of a day, I'll be able to jump again into a PvP clone at the start of the following day's play time.

Another is to let players accumulate some small number of jumps so that if I hadn't jump cloned in 2 days I'd be able to jump into the +5 clone knowing that if something came up I would be able to jump back immediately.

Another would be to be able to switch clones in the same station without using the jump clone timer at all. That way I can always get in a cheap clone to go out in cruisers without introducing any additional fast travel.

What I'd like to see the most is completely to disconnect the clone you are in from the rate at which you gain skillpoints. Players already have this relationship between the cost of the ship they are flying and the cost of the clone they are willing to risk and removing the attribute implants from the equation should lead to increased usage of hardwiring which I feel make much more compelling gameplay.

This is the opposite side of the coin from the off-grid boosting. In that case, the problem is assets that are affecting the fight are not put at risk in the fight. In this case, assets are put at risk in the fight that are not affecting the fight. It would be better if the assets risked on the grid were always the same as those that affected the outcome.
Roime
Mea Culpa.
Shadow Cartel
#123 - 2013-02-15 07:03:11 UTC
Paul Maken, you do understand that what you describe as a problem is not a game design issue, it's your personal problem. Consequences from choices, OCD, etc.

+5s are not required, you want to use them but are unable to deal with the consequences.

.
Roime
Mea Culpa.
Shadow Cartel
#124 - 2013-02-15 07:05:10 UTC
Oh yeah and this "rebalance" didn't actually rebalance BCs or armor tanking, release was rushed.

.
Andski
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#125 - 2013-02-15 08:41:05 UTC
Is a Brutix Navy Issue too much to ask for?

Twitter: @EVEAndski

"It's easy to speak for the silent majority. They rarely object to what you put into their mouths."    - Abrazzar
TrouserDeagle
Beyond Divinity Inc
Shadow Cartel
#126 - 2013-02-15 09:43:55 UTC
I find this BC rebalance disappointing in general.
It was supposed to be a general nerf to drakes and canes, as well as tiericide, but all you've done is cut off utility highs, stop drakes from using non-kinetic ammo so well and reduce base capacitor. It's not going to change anything.
Some sort of general slot reduction on tier 2s was supposed to happen, but any actual slot reduction has been completely countered by giving them out of whack bonuses.
Also seriously, heavy drones on a BC? They're bad enough on battleships.
CCP Ytterbium
C C P
C C P Alliance
#127 - 2013-02-15 09:54:00 UTC
Liang Nuren wrote:
Dev Blog wrote:

I want to make it clear that one of our goals in this rebalancing pass is to somewhat narrow the gap between higher cost and lower cost ships compared to the canyon that existed in the past. We are not planning on buffing the high cost ships to the same degree that we did with the T1 Frigates and Cruisers, as this would simply create direct power creep and leave us right back where we started. We want to reach a place where cheaper ships are more than just something you fly when you start the game, but instead present a viable and interesting option to be chosen by people of many levels of experience. Our vision for cost-balancing is that cost should play a limited part in balancing ships and that obtaining a roughly linear increase in effectiveness should require an exponential increase in cost.


I kinda draw exception to the idea you won't be improving T2 as much as T1. Many of the T1 ships are now just outright superior to their T2 and faction counterparts.

-Liang


Tech2 will be looked at, however, in the new scheme, Tech2 ships shouldn't be plain better than Tech1 in all aspects. They should just be more specialized. So for example, Interceptors should be faster, more agile and far better at tackling that regular Tech1 Frigates, but not necessarily having more EHP or even firepower than regular Tech1 Frigates. Assault Frigates should have more firepower and EHP than Tech1 Frigates, but not necessarily as mobile.

It's about specializing hulls and tradeoffs.
Swidgen
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#128 - 2013-02-15 09:57:26 UTC  |  Edited by: Swidgen
Chainsaw Plankton wrote:
I <3 fozzie! He is the answer to all that complaining I did about ccp never talking about balance and whatnot on the forums!
I've gotta go with this sentiment. CCP Fozzie is a shining light in the world of "things that neded to be fixed for years" Smile Always the pessimist, however, my biggest fear is that in a year or two he will be doing so good that he'll get promoted within CCP and we'll be back to where we started with respect to things getting ignored for years.
ITTigerClawIK
Galactic Rangers
#129 - 2013-02-15 10:02:41 UTC
in regards to future battleship balancing, could we possibly get some more missile ships other than the typhoon and raven, atm its more like there is like 1 hull that BS class missile weapons are used one (2 if you inlude the golem) , still thinking the amarr should get a solid torpedo boat ( yes im still shamelessly pushing for my khanid battleship by any means nessesary) :-P
TrouserDeagle
Beyond Divinity Inc
Shadow Cartel
#130 - 2013-02-15 10:09:48 UTC
When are you going to go back and fix the stuff you've already done, like rifter, tristan, etc.? I seem to recall something about 'the days of balance and forget' being over.
CCP Fozzie
C C P
C C P Alliance
#131 - 2013-02-15 10:52:06 UTC
TrouserDeagle wrote:
When are you going to go back and fix the stuff you've already done, like rifter, tristan, etc.? I seem to recall something about 'the days of balance and forget' being over.


It takes time for new changes to settle in a sandbox game like EVE.
Due to the realities of development schedules if we wanted to do another pass on the Tristan for 1.1, we would have needed to be designing the changes less than a month after they were changed in Retribution.

Game Designer | Team Five-0

Twitter: @CCP_Fozzie
Twitch chat: ccp_fozzie
ITTigerClawIK
Galactic Rangers
#132 - 2013-02-15 11:22:34 UTC
TrouserDeagle wrote:
When are you going to go back and fix the stuff you've already done, like rifter, tristan, etc.? I seem to recall something about 'the days of balance and forget' being over.


erm, whats wrong with the rifter if youd ont mind me asking?
TrouserDeagle
Beyond Divinity Inc
Shadow Cartel
#133 - 2013-02-15 11:27:16 UTC
CCP Fozzie wrote:
if we wanted to


I'm taking that to mean that you don't want to.

ITTigerClawIK wrote:
erm, whats wrong with the rifter if youd ont mind me asking?


It just can't stand up to merlin or incursus. I don't see a reason to ever fly it over anything else. I forgot to mention punisher though, that's worse than everything.
Kip Troger
Exiled Kings
Pain And Compliance
#134 - 2013-02-15 11:28:26 UTC
What is the rationale behind the support cruisers bonuses compared to the Recons?

blackbird (ECM) -> Falcon/Rook (ECM)
bellicose(TP) -> Rapier/Huginn(Web + TP)
Celestis(SD) -> Arazu/Lachesis (SD + Tackle bonus)
Arbitrator (TD) -> Curse/Pilgrim (TD+Nuet)

I didn't add in the DPS bonuses, as they all seem to have a small buff.

So all t1 cruisers get one special bonus, and the recon variants all get 2 except caldari? Is this because the caldari one is more often used?



ITTigerClawIK
Galactic Rangers
#135 - 2013-02-15 11:29:51 UTC
i have honestly not had problems with either hull yet lol.
Mund Richard
#136 - 2013-02-15 11:48:15 UTC
Kip Troger wrote:
blackbird (ECM) -> Falcon/Rook (ECM)
bellicose(TP) -> Rapier/Huginn(Web + TP)
Celestis(SD) -> Arazu/Lachesis (SD + Tackle bonus)
Arbitrator (TD) -> Curse/Pilgrim (TD+Nuet)

So all t1 cruisers get one special bonus, and the recon variants all get 2 except caldari? Is this because the caldari one is more often used?

Ok, so my OCD forced me to look at it.
Curse is a good package, EWAR in the mids, EWAR in the highs, and bonused weaponry in the bay, no conflict.
Huginn/Lach have two EWARs competing for 6-7 midslots, and split weapon system bonuses/hardpoints.
Caldari apply two bonuses to ECM, and Rook get double-bonused weapons with a full rack.

How much bonus a -50% cap consumption is, amarr pilots love to debate a lot as well, and weapons on a Recon...
If anything, I find the loss of the falloff upgrading from the Blackbird interesting.

"We want PvE activities to require active participation and mirror PvP more closely." Stacking penalty for NPC EWAR then? Lock range under 9km from over 100 in a BS is not fun. Nor is two NPC web drones making me crawl 10m/s. PvP SW-900 x5: 75m/s.
Witchking Angmar
Perkele.
#137 - 2013-02-15 11:52:39 UTC
Both the Myrm and the Brutix are full on armor boats now? You should have taken the Brutix a bit more in the direction of shield Talos and Hyperion IMO. The Myrm is already and excellent active armor tanker, and the Brutix will just be the same but worse.
Mund Richard
#138 - 2013-02-15 12:08:37 UTC
Shield Hyper... a really fast and powerful T1 blaster BS.

The irony.

"We want PvE activities to require active participation and mirror PvP more closely." Stacking penalty for NPC EWAR then? Lock range under 9km from over 100 in a BS is not fun. Nor is two NPC web drones making me crawl 10m/s. PvP SW-900 x5: 75m/s.
Claire Raynor
NovaGear
#139 - 2013-02-15 13:29:59 UTC
I think these are great changes! Simply reducing the PG requirements for the Reppers and then changing the Aux nano pumps and accelerators - fantastic. Don't know if I'd go for the new Aux Repper thingies yet - but does 2.25 times T1 repper rates not seem a lot - but I suppose factoring in a minute's wait. . . but combined with two Aux nano pumps and an accelerator - and a light weight 800 - and an EANM - a DC - 3 Slot armour Tank - could be really interesting?

Also. . . and I gotta pinch myself. . . I make nanite repair paste!!! Thanksyou so mucho :) I win. Hard.

And. . When Balancing - being as you are doing everything I want Twisted at the moment - can I have slots on my Freighter??

Plleeeaasseeeeee?

Thanks!
Grideris
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#140 - 2013-02-15 14:53:59 UTC
Question (and forgive me if this has already been asked): Does the Repair Systems skill reduce the cycle time of the AAR like it does for normal armour repair modules?

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