Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hi there features and ideas!

I'm CCP's newest game designer. As some of you may know, I've been a pretty dedicated Eve player for quite awhile now, and I'm very excited to start working to improve the game as much as I can. I'll be contributing to a range of projects I'm sure, but for the immediate future my biggest focus will be balance. I bring a lot of my own history and experience into this role, but I'm also the first to acknowledge that Eve has an enormous variety of environments and situations. That means you all can always help improve my perspective on the game.

At the moment I'm spending a lot of time thinking about ATTACK Battlecruisers and Tech 1 Battleships specifically. I want to open this thread in the hopes that you guys will contribute thoughts on those topics. I would push you towards more high level/meta discussion rather than hyper specific attribute adjustment type of stuff, we just aren't to that stage yet. If I can validate my own impressions about the state of balance regarding these two classes through your contributions, I'll feel much more comfortable going forward!

Excited to be here, look forward to hearing from all of you!
CCP Rise

why can i sense an immediate dissapearance of every kitsune in the game...
On a more serious note, congratulations on the new job and hope all is well for you, i don't fly "combat battlecruisers" (wuts a tier3) as much as i used to so i'm out of the loop with that.

This was

Ooooh, I know a thing.

Every empire but the gallente has its own viable large fleet battleship. (rokh (scorpion), maelstrom (tempest) and abaddon)

Things will stay that way with the changes proposed by fozzi some time ago.

That's not cool.

Megathron?

welcome new balance overlord!

umm...

t3 bc's?

nerf bat! personally i would make the 8th high slot utility only and slightly reduce the agility of them...

as for bs's...

it seems like we need more hulls 3 is too few... bs's should be like frigs... so we need perhaps 2 more hulls...

i am thinking we need one attact bs one combat bs one logistics bs one exploration/mini profession bs(the ratting pve ship of chioce) and one e-war bs...

i would make the combat ones have current tier III ehp and the attack ones have current tier 1 ehp and the e-war/logi ones have current tier II ehp...

thats all for now...

You should make this thread sticky before it gets buried .

Congrats on the job!

Now on to ship balancing, I really like the idea of having 4 EWAR Battleships, we've already got the Scorpion, but the other 3 races are quite left out. The idea I had in mind for the Amarr is to turn the Armageddon into a larger Arbitrator, with a bonus to TD's and Drone damage/hitpoints. It could be given 2 extra mids in exchange for a loss of 1 low, and an extra 225m3 of drone bay. Something like this:

Amarr Battleship skill bonus per level: 7.5% Bonus to Tracking Disruptor Effectiveness. 10% Bonus to Drone hitpoints and damage.

The Dominix performs well as it is, but perhaps we could drop the Hybrid bonus in exchange for remote sensor dampener effectiveness.

Gallente Battleship skill bonus per level: 7.5% Bonus to Remote Sensor Dampener effectiveness per level. 10% Bonus to Drone damage and hitpoints per level.

As the Typhoon is becoming a Torpedo boat (so I have heard) it only seems appropriate to give it a Target Painter effectiveness bonus to help it apply that torp damage to small ships. It could also gain 1 midslot

Minmatar Battleship skill bonus per level: 7.5% Bonus to Target Painter effectiveness. 10% Bonus to Torpedo and Cruise Launcher rate of fire.

Just my 2 isk, and some thoughts that were on my mind.

Hey Rise! Good luck in your new post! Here are some comments:

Attack battlecruisers:

They're extremely powerful ships at the moment, I really love their dps and maneuverability. However, they've made a lot of fleet concepts obsolete, such as sniper hacs and nano bs, the microjump drive has gone some way to help differentiate bs doctrines but I still believe the tier 3s maybe a little bit overpowered in fleet situations. I think one way to counter this might be to emphasise active reps on tier 3s and make buffers less viable. Although thats just my opinion. In terms of T1 battleships. I'll make another post soon.

once again, congrats on the position mate and we eagerly look forwards to your input in the grand teiricide \o/

this is a bit of an odd situation it must be said, teir 3 battlecruisers are all told considered excellent platforms (due for nerfs if anything) and the teir 1 battleship line has arguably very little wrong with it as a whole, with all of the ships involved, while not being as popular as their teir 2/3 counterparts have solid niche support roles.

the scorpion is arguably the most "solid" of the teir 1 battleships if only because of its unique role in the line as the only Ewar battleship platform available. unlike its counterparts its competition is firmly "within" its own race against the caldari recon ships and the blackbird. balancing the scorpion against these platforms is more the challenge than balancing it against the other teir 1 BS's.

of course it should very much BE a battleship which presents the interesting challenge of matching it up against not 3 but technically 6 other ships (dominix, typhoon, geddon, blackbird, rook and falcon.) an obvious solution of course would be to present the scorpion as the "durable" ewar platform as opposed to the more powerful rook, versitile falcon and expendable blackbird. shield tanking bonuses would be the obvious thematic choice, but the conflict between shield and ECM slots may not make it feasable while alternate bonuses such as armour tanking would break the theme in favour of meta. (which if i've not made it obvious isn't a great idea)


the geddon... arguably one of the best isk to effect ships in eve. does a huge amount actually need changed here? and before people bang on the standard argument of "cap weapon bonuses r bad!" the geddon is a solid a strong battleship platform for its price. if i were to consider "bringing it up to standard" with say the abbaddon or apocalypse i would suspect that the trick will be to increase its turret count rather than actual bonus changes. the geddon representing the "endurance" based battleship in the amarrian line. the guns won't stop until the hull has been atomized \o/

the typhoon, technically speaking its a REALLY good battleship, but the training curve required to actually use one properly is phenominally difficult to achieve with not only T2 gunnery but T2 missiles and T2 drones to get the full bang for your buck. its been previously suggested that the typhoon could be altered to being a pure missile platform and that's not all that terrible an idea, a high end minmatar missile boat to follow the breacher/bellicose/cyclone line. perhaps switching the gunnery bonus in favour of target painters prioritizing the ship towards torpedoes over cruise. (perhaps encouraging the raven to represent the longer ranged or higher "raw damage" bonus battleship later on) I'd rather stay away from continuing the active tanking bonuses here though, something the maelstrom already handles superbly. the drone capability could easily be maintained as well and perhaps 7 highs with 6 launchers to permit the classic minmatar utility high?

the dominix... is a bit more difficult. arguably one of the best battleships on paper with excellent dps, tank and versitile damage output it should be fine but the current flaws in drones leave it somewhat lacking particularly when engagements scale upwards and the travel time of drones become a serious hinderance to preformance. perhaps following the example of the brutix and providing extra agility and reduced mass would help solve these problems and permit the dominix some straight line sprinting speed to catch and devour its opponents in glorious battle?

heading out for now but i'll return with some more thoughts ^^