Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Did you just say solo punisher? lol

So is tristan definitely not ever getting a useful second bonus and/or a 4th midslot or tanking bonus? Disappointed. How about some powergrid at least? It seriously has none.

I don't get why you hate split weapons so much. It's good if done right.

Typhoon. So, more effective weapons without lots of damage mods, but less able to increase damage/tracking in gank fits.

these changes sound reasonable

Take a look at all the ships you mentioned in this paragraph though. This is a perfect example of the prevalance of Caldari and Minmatar ships at the frigate level. Cormorant, ridiculous range and damage enough to blap before a brick realizes and warps out. Kestrel missile spam at long point and good enough speed to keep the target at that range. Griffin, ecm and frigate sensor strengths, enough said. Condors, Merlins, Hookbills, it's all caldari kiting atm in the frig and destroyer realm (well except for the dramiels and daredevils).

The only time a fat slow Gallente or Amarr armor tanking ship has a chance or even an advantage is if it is camping a plex warp-in beacon and thus can get scram and web on the kiter. If not camped at a choke point, often scram alone is often not enough as the kiter will have more mids and thus a web and get to kite range and proceed to kill the brick armor frig.

I looked at this OP, Fozzie, and said to myself why bother. So you gave small teeks to hull hp and speed. None of this fixes any of the imbalances that mean armor is a stupid strategy at the frigate level. Light missile and rocket range is all there is (or ridiculous 10% per level bonuses on Caldari gunships). Drones just get killed, shortrange guns on armor ships have trouble getting and staying in range to apply the dps, long range guns that are not caldari rails don't have enough range and then create fitting issues anyway.

What could you do? Create small micro jump drives? Doubt that will fix the problem. Do you anticipate providing extra mids and fittings so the ships could use something like that? Because one would still need another prop mod. This would be sort of ridicuous as any extra slots would have to go to every ship just helping the kiters even more.

Why not reduce the 10% per level range bonuses to 7.5% or 5% per level? Then those Caldari range advantaged frigates would have less margin for error. They would have to sacrifice more lows for speed instead of damage mods. How about upping the armor honeycombing skill to 7.5% per level? Or maybe, how about another round of slight range nerfing missiles and rails, when you implement the tc/te/td changes to affect missiles? Make it so that if those ships want to keep the range/kiting advantage they sacrifice damage mods or tank to do it, just as any gunship has to do.

Presently it is all Hookbills, Condors, Kestrels, and Merlins at the frig level. Minmatar has the speed but stuck with shortrange guns that are deep in falloff and less margin for error in kiting (or prohibitive fitting and badly tracking small arty not an option). Amarr is still stuck with cap issues unless it can get right on top of it's target with pulses and maybe a nos. Which isn't going to happen. Meh. Long time to wait.

Will you reimburse the SP I sunk in Citadel torps and cruise missiles?

I basically love the rebalance work, but I hate the impact on my SPs. The BC skill change will leave me with a Gallente BC 5 I have zero use for (I trained Gallente cruiser for angel ships, I have zero hybrid skills) and now the Naglfar changes will leave me with even more completely useless SP, that will still count toward my (stupidly expensive) clone cost.

No he didn't.

I agree the Minmatar are currently very lackluster in the frig department. Thrashers are still very strong options however, even in the face of the Caldari predominance. The Rifter just isn't performing anything well. The Breacher I've gone at length about. The Vigil's TP bonus is as lackluster as it has ever been.

There are a few standouts :; I've seen Slashers do some amazing things. So, Thrashers, Slashers and Bursts are where it's at for Minmatar frigate scale combat. Incursus and Maulus' are doing some good things out there. The Tristan can perform really well, but the mid/low fitting is tough on it as a "combat" ship.

The Amarr Executioner is really underestimated. They are really tough when they're flown properly with a scram+web kite setup to mitigate damage from heavier ships. In larger engagements I just don't think players have found how to make it into "the cheaper slicer" yet. Crucifiers are a god send really.

So, here's the basic pattern : The Attack Frigates that are losing lows/mids for a utility slot are suffering. Without natural speed of their other ships, and without the sufficient EWAR mids/Shield Tank slots to make them have that speed or to counter that speed advantage, they're suffering heavily.

Purely from Bonuses... dividing the DPS frigate into roles... where Combat ships get SOME kind of "Tank bonus", here's the layout.

Combat - Punisher/Merlin/Incursus/Breacher
Attack DPS/Tackle - Tormentor/Executioner - Kestrel/Condor - Tristan/Atron - Rifter/Slasher

The pattern is pretty clear that Rifter, Executioner, Tristan, as the DPS attack frigs are suffering in being able to keep up with the counterparts that can apply DPS at range. The reason is simple as dirt. They can't reach as far, they can't catch up, they can't out tank the DPS.

The Kestrel escapes the issue because it can choose to be long range, like the Condor. It also doesn't have a utility slot. So the Condor escapes the Utility slot curse by not really being a DPS Attack in the first place, and having to focus on tackling, so the tank + DPS aren't really failing for it.. The Merlin escapes because it can tank heavy and still roll fast as needed. The Incursus escapes because it can also active tank a lot of frigate DPS for long enough to get tackle or decide to leave. Note, neither of these have a Utility high slot.

The Breacher SHOULD be able to escape the curse at the moment, but the issue is with frigate ASB's being crap and normal shield boosting being too demanding for a frigate's capacitor, and conflicting with capacitor boosters in the mid-slots - which is a separate issue.

The obvious answer to me is that the Utility High Slot is being grossly overestimated in its Utility to the Rifter/Punisher/Tristan in making it survivable. This comes from a few things. #1, the number of options for Utility High Slots is pretty much non-existant. Neut/Nos or bust. Give us more Utility High Slots that can be a form of counter for Attack Setups. Otherwise, just get rid of Utility slots because clearly they're not performing well enough on their own against the frigate counter parts to mean a difference.

At the frigate scale, I haven't even thought about what a Neut can do for me since the Ancillary setups exist now - Cap independence for tanking makes them pretty insignificant in the 30-45 seconds it takes to win or lose a fight - enough for those ships to make a difference. And the ships that can use cap boosters make this even more insignificant for frigates.

Are Neuts useful? Yes, but on bigger ships. When's the last time you were neuted and capped out on a frigate in a fight, and said "Damnit!" Probably in a logistics frigate, or an Amarr frigate on an extended engagement, or while fighting a Tristan with FULL set of Neuts (happened to me recently). But, a Rifter with a Neut? Nope. A Punisher with a Neut? Nope. Cap warfare for frigates is barely existent at the moment.

So, Utility slots for frigates = not useful.

Move the 10th high slot somewhere else, or give us more utility options for high slots.

Is a Polish Pass at all like a Polish Sausage?

Well local tank when you're DPS fit isn't that big of a deal if you're in close proximity to friendly carriers. Get primaried? Switch to pure local rep tank with just enough cap stability to get you out of siege.

Kinda a crap deal that Gallente have an entire ship type (or two: carriers and supers) devoted to their second weapon type. While everyone else gets the one, and Caldari gets the weapon type that needs work.