Assembly Hall

Im going to draw first a parallel, so please be patient :).

A while ago i used to play a game called Carrionfields, a text based, medieval MMO, very player killer oriented. One of the classes in there was The Thief. It had the ability to hide from most characters and be in the same room with them, remain undetected. Was weak in actual direct combat, but had one exceptionally powerful but very limited ability. The ability to backstab, which gave the thief one strike with huge damage potential, about 50 times more powerful than normal attacks...which for a thief were anemic. It could only be performed if the thief or its target was not currently fighting, meaning, engaged in direct combat (behing the target of other attacks). The damage level depended greatly on the skill of the thief, the weapon used, and the status of the target (sleeping, sitting, standing). The backstab could also not be used if used if the target had been in a fight less than 2 minutes before or was below 70% health. This ability gave the thief a fighting chance at winning a fight against a superior opponent if properly prepared. On rare occasions (random), on very high level, highly skilled thieves (perfect backstab skill), the backstab was so powerful that it rendered the target immobile, making it unable to flee for 20 seconds.

An idea came to me and I was thinking maybe we could have something similar in EVE for Recons, providing for class/game balance issues of course.

Ive been playing EVE for 3 years now and what i see are the SAME abilities, being more or less swapped between different ships, with a few exceptions. Im going to focus only on recons now. IMHO I do not think that their abilities, short of being able to cloak, refect their covert/black ops role. All of them get across the board bonuses, 80% of which are valid for 15 other ships.

I think that gunships, like Rapier and Arazu need a specific ability, available to nobody else, which reflects their covert ability. ATM, recons do not really have abilities which are inherent to the stealth class and that nobody else can have, T3 included. Most current abilities are not representative of their covert, sneaky, backstabbing surprise attacking class. Even if they get the drop on someone they are extremely fragile in combat with anyone except the uber short range gallente ships, and those have drones.

So here is what im suggesting.

1. Create a skill called First Strike which would be valid for only recons and black ops. A highly skill intensive, ship class role specific, powerful yet difficult to use well, and potentially very taxing for recons.

2. Skill injection requirements would be Recons V, Surgical Strike IV, T2 Guns, Sharpshooter V, Gunnery V.

3. Skill description - The ability of a recon ship to deliver Critical Strike, a very powerful, extremely precise, first volley against its target, when it first uncloaks. This strike either hits or misses. So make sure you are at optimal with your guns. Does not apply to missiles. When perfect this skill becomes exceptionally powerful.

4.Recons would have this particular button on their HUD, when pressed it tries to perform the strike using its main gun group. Trying to shoot non grouped guns will only count the first fired weapon in the damage.

5. Skill Specifics:
• Does not work on other recons, covert ops unless their speed is below 50% of max. (I guess indicating a certain level of relaxation (RP wise) on the part of the pilot :P
• 50% Damage per skill level, for shot fired when uncloaking. Must use gun group for perfect unison and max damage. Training this to 5 would be exceedingly important for actual damage.
• Initially drains 25% of your capacitor total capacitor when it fires. Then 5% reduction in Critical Strike cap use per level.
• 20% Chance of doing 20% damage to your guns and the whole high rack. Both chances decrease 5% per level of skill.
• Random chance to cause 70% damage to a single non passive module on another of your racks. This chance decreases by 5% per skill level.
• Uses 15 Liquid Ozone consumption per attempt
• Only valid for guns, not missiles.
• Cooldown: 5 minutes
• Minimum capacitor required: 85%
• Level 5 skill can, very low random chance, result in potentially crippling damage to the enemy ship. 50% damage to all the modules of a random rack on ships of equal or smaller size. 25% chance of damage on some random number of modules of bc, bs size ships. Excluding cap ships. This means that the target will be in trouble if he needs to overheat his those modules too long.

A pilot, in order to take advantage of this ability would have to fit his ship to be able to do this most effectively. Not doing so will probably not result in much success.

Conditions of use (part of description):

1. CANNOT Target cannot be in combat and be shot at, directly or by drones. Its ok if its in combat and does NOT having anyone shooting at it. If you attempt crit strike, you will get a msg which says that a critical strike cannot be performed as the target is already in combat and wary of impeding attacks.

2. CANNOT be performed if target is at lower than 50% of its total HP. Trying to hit it while its hurt, you get: Critical Strike cannot be performed as the target has recently been in combat and is wary...

3. CANNOT be done if the target locks and attacks you first. This would have to be a valid attack, not a frigate shooting its blasters at you when you are 30k away....and getting the missing msg.

Basically this cannot be used as an alpha strike for fleet battles, more of a surgical procedure. A ship that can do this well needs to be fitted for this purpose, needs to lock very very fast and pick the right moment. Frigates, your most favored and vulnerable targets can lock and attack you first 90% of the time unless they are distracted. Anyway...

Thoughts?

Yeah, sorry, had to make a detailed description.

A significant detriment to the attack is the targeting. As he will most likely need to use a passive targeting module to prevent auto-targeting from ruining his surprise. This may compromise his ability engage in lasting combat. A rapier, with max skills and rigs can lock a target in something like 7 seconds from uncloaking. Thats plenty of time for a cruiser, hack or frig to lock it first and shoot, if its paying attention. If not, well, he should die

As the target, the first thing would be to watch the range and try to either:

1. Get enough transversal so they cant track you, if it uncloaks at long range. Long range uncloak means artillery strike or rails.
2. Most of the time you should be able to lock it before it locks you due to decloak delay + locking time. A close range decloak would most likely mean autocannons or blasters. At this range most frigates can lock and shoot, before the recon can. Unless a passive targeting system is used. So have to watch for that.
3. If you are a recon, cov ops, black ops, keep your speed up if you think you may get hit.
4. Pay attention to overview!
5. There should be no skill or ability which will save/protect you by default. It should require some action on your part such as adjusting speed, direction, paying attention, not relying on auto-targeting, etc. You, actually doing something.
6. Keep moving, dont camp if there is a rapier or arazu around.

This is what I can think off the top of my head. It would not be hard to protect against it just have to pay attention.

Sort of like uber neut dominix. Nothing you can do except keep away from it.

Two things. First, this is Eve, not D&D, I don't think that we really need the theif's backstab in Eve, I don't think it'll really add anything worthwhile to do this.

Second, if you're looking for a "line up for the perfect shot, uncloak and fire, run away screaming before you get killed", you're thinking of Stealth Bombers, which already do that quite nicely.

We also need some more healing spells. Guardians should be able to cast Divine Intervention and heal the entire fleet.

Flavour is off, name is definitely off. Concept needs work, but isn't entirely bad... I could see a high-slot module that uses an 'Ambush Tactics' skill or some such to add a short damage-related buff immediately after decloaking. For balance reasons, it shouldn't be the kind of massive alpha gank you seem to be advocating, but it could work. Idea not supported in it's current form, but it's not intrinsically horrible.

Im not looking for a perfect shot before anyone can hurt me. Plenty would get plenty of time to kill the recon, just HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION!

I would like this more a ship property than a module, inherent to a certain ship class or ship. I have not run the numbers much, the 50% is just there to be there. THe bonus would have to be significant enough to warrant all the possible damage and risk to the shooter.

Against it being a 'ship property', since nothing in Eve works that way. Covert Ops ships can't become invisible on their own, they fit a Cloaking Device. Dreadnoughts don't have some kind of a siege ability, they fit a Siege Module. The Rorqual, despite being designed especially for the unique action of ore compression, does not have that as a special ability, it fits an Industrial Core.

Particularly since Recon Ships already exist, it'd be bad to simply add a 'ship property' that just happens; you'd want an Ambush Targeting System or some such; which would be an actual module you plug into a ship, and which, when active, cycles only after decloaking to give a buff to turret damage. That way, you might fit it to any Covert-type ship... or, indeed, any ship capable of fitting a cloaking device, as tastes differ... but specific ships would have a specific bonus to using that specific module, and that's fine, that's how the game works.

Isn't this just s stealth bomber?

No, its not.