Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Are you mental? You could hardly come up with a bigger incentive for people to engage in dock/gate games.

If you really want to nerf docking games, remove the aggression timer for redocking. This would make these games almost entirely pointless, deterring all but the extremely stubborn or professionally stupid from getting involved.

I'm just gonna leave this here...

Totally called it!

I for one am really looking forward to trying out a few of these ships. I really want to try out both the Drone-ageddon and the Torp-phoon. That explosion velocity bonus is even better than a TP bonus!

Awesome addition to CCP team. Please make armor tankers more viable in pvp kil2 ;)

There's nothing weak about the Rokh, it's a dominant fleet BS and does not need boosting. Although it surprised me, I understand the rationale behind dropping the resist bonus though, it's very powerful on the fleet BS scale because of slot abundances and the prevalence of RR.

A plan for CS was published a few months back - linky.

So Kil2, What happened to " we are mostly happy with T1 BS, just some minor tweaks" ?

Seriously This thread and the projection of expectations for almost a year now was very much a fine tuning and tweaking, and what is announced is a major overhaul, with huge balance and game play changes, lots of radical ideas both good and bad.
All based on what , one very good post by Hakan MacTrew ?

Good to see the field commands finally getting some love.

Okay, you're being too narrow minded about the rokh's role.

Why should the only BS rail platform for caldari be relegated to large fleets only? The tiericide was supposed to bring more versatility not added limitiations.

Think about it, it has a TINY drone bay, it's super slow and has no damage bonus. What justification is there for a nerf? RR certainly doesn't count, because the rokh does not have a high slot free to contribute, so it's actually a liability to spider rr fleets, and if it's fit for it's super long range niche it will make it tough to stay with the other rr bs's. If it's fit close range it's balanced, not overpowered (it has heavy competition up close so it was never OP there).

These changes are just further cementing it to that big fleet role only. A maelstrom is already preferable over a rokh in small scale pvp, but now that gap will be widened.

I'm not saying boost the rokh to some godly level, I'm saying leave the damn thing alone as is, because it was never a problem and it bloody well didn't need to be nerfed, not even a little bit!

It's already being indirectly nerfed from TE changes and that hugely precarious 'geddon buff, there is no rokh nerfing justification!

TL:DR at end of next post apologize in advance for long post and high probability of spelling mistakes and bad expression of ideas.

Long Term View

Before taking a look at the specifics and ship lines, it is good to lay out a possible overview and end goal. This will allow a perspective to be maintained and limit the possibility of having to drastically alter the ships at a later date.

CCP has worked to remove the ship tiers in favor of ship lines. According to the balance team, each ship line will seek to highlight a specific role. The only ship lines that seem viable for the battleship class are the combat, attack, and disruption lines. A support battleship is most likely not practical due to the role already flanked on one side by cruisers and the other side by carriers.

The combat and attack lines usually have two ships in each line that highlight the main weapons of each race. The disruption line usually offers a flexible but limited weapon choice while mainly focusing each racial e-war. Below is the resulting lineup for the Tech1 battleships:

Ship Line - Weapon System
Combat - Turret
Combat - Alt (Drone or Missile)
Attack - Turret
Attack - Alt (Drone or Missile)
Disruption

A total of five battleships are likely to exist for each race. One alternative is that an attack or combat ship for each race incorporates a racial e-war in order to reduce the total to 4 battleships per race.

One of the assumptions made when reviewing the changes and design will be that “systems work at the appropriate level and not necessarily as currently implemented.” (i.e. large missiles) This is because the ships need to be balanced around balanced modules. Finally, this review will focus on design consistency and being able to look at all the ships side by side and intuitively understand why things are the way they are. Actual mechanics may make some of these ideas unachievable in reality, forcing exceptions to be made.


Disruption Line:

One of the biggest problems facing balancing the battleship class is that there are only few ships and so many holes in the ship lineup. The biggest outlier is the disruption line. Currently only one ship exist in it, the Scorpion. To complicate matters the Armageddon is also getting a minor ewar bonus. These two ships are kind of the oddballs of the battleship class as the current rebalance stands. Depending on whether or not CCP chooses to expand the disruption line into other races, these two ships could complicate things later.

If a disrupt line is introduced than the ewar bonused Armageddon might make adding an Amarr disrupt ship complicated or redundant. In this case, the Armageddon may have to be altered again later. Using the same ewar on so many ships in the battleship class may lead to one overshadowing the other. Remember there are also the Blood Raider ships to complicate this even more. Either change the bonus away from ewar, make it a disruption ship, or tread very carefully as a Amarr ewar boat now has to sit between the Armageddon and a Bhaalgorn.

If a disrupt line is not introduced, than the Scorpion feels out of place. In this case, please consider altering it to reflect the Armageddon by making it a missile ecm ship in the opposite line as the Raven or attack turret ecm boat in the opposite line as the Rokh. Or just remove the ewar bonuses from both the Scorpion and Armageddon and make them fit into a combat or attack line.

Hardpoints:

The next area of importance is the hardpoint and utility high distribution. If possible, having all the ships in the same ship line and similar weapons focus have same number of main weapon hardpoints and utility slots would be ideal. Having all the combat turret ships (Abaddon/Rokh/Hyperion/Maelstrom) have 8 turret slots and 0 utility slots or all the attack alt (missile) ships (Raven/Typhoon) with 6 launchers and 1 utility slot makes the ship lines easily recognizable and consistent. Why should a Minmatar combat turret ship have to fit more weapons than the Gallente combat turret ship? Why should the Amarr attack turret ship have no utility slots while the Minmatar attack turret ship has two? However, if they are going to be different, make sure that they all have differences to avoid having one special snowflake in a set of ships. Uniqueness between racial ships within a line is better provided through mid/low slot layout and ship stats. One example of where this can’t be done is energy warfare ships as those modules use high slots.

Another point to be addressed is allowing all to have ships alternate hardpoints. These alternate hardpoints can initially seem worthless and rarely use. However, they avoid absolutely pigeonholing ships and provide that little extra room for creativity and surprise without overshadowing the ship’s “intended role.”

Existing Example: Rokh and Tempest with 4 missile hardpoints, and the recent change of adding some turret hardpoints back to the Typhoon.

It is confusing as to why some ships in a ship line are given extra options and others are not.

Existing Example: Rokh vs Maelstrom/Abaddon or Tempest vs, Apocalypse/Raven

Would like to see all Gallente ships have a missile hardpoint or two for defenders as the race is not known for its use of missiles. Caldari, Minmatar, and Amarr all use missiles and guns. Would like to see their ships have at least 4 alternate hardpoints.

Point1: 1-2 missile points for defenders to Gallente ships along with a minimum 100 drone bandwidth
Point2: At least 4 alternative hardpoints to Amarr, Caldari, Minmatar ships

Hey Kil2, why is the myrm essentially being ignored in these changes?

Hello there CCP Rise!
let me tell you two things:

first: welcome to CCP!

second: i'm not happy at all with how this rebalancing is going!
allow me to explain: you want to ballance 2 hulls(rokh and abbadon) and by doing that you nerf about 40 ships. i'm sorry to say but even someone less bright like me see that we have a problem in the way you think about rebalancing
Also if those proposed changes pass the way they are right now, we will be left with basically one type of bs fleets in 0.0: alpha fleets;
the other bs rolles will be replaced with eighter:
-attack bcs(better dps/better mobility/lower scan res/lower price),
- navy bcs(around same ehp/better mobility/lower sig radius/a bit lower dps/around same price)

I really think you should take a step back and read all the player input, and then rethink those things a bit

My suggestion.
To be honest, I have been thinking of this for a while and it would add a lot of flavor to EvE, I've seen others talk of it so I decided to give my own idea.
Some radical concepts for weapons overall.

How about we make all weapon systems have delayed damage application although different for all??

What flavor would this add? Well each form of damage application could work differently.
Like below.

Lasers move at the speed of light so they would be instant damage application BUT at the end of the turret cycles.
The delayed damage actually literally makes for a "track" and then "Fire" turret cycle.
Firing cycles would probably be helped by making them a bit longer if needed for visual reasons and for the sake of delaying damage application.
How cool would it be if pulse lasers were actually pulses, or beam lasers actually beams.
A rapid pulse of zapps or the slow bzzzt and schorchy sound of beam lasers like more aggressive mining lasers with a distinguishable scorch sound at the end of its cycle.
Damage could also simply be calculated as it currently is, but be dealt over time with the corresponding animation.
In any case the goal is to actually diminish Alpha damage potential the higher the range gets, through the fact that long range weapons have slower weapon cycles and fire at or near the end of them.
And at the same time create more comparative alpha for close ranged weapons because their weapon cycles are shorter.

Every gun type could work differently.
For example; projectiles having the most bullet travel time of the guns could fire earlier in a cycle to compensate.
All at the digression of CCP.
Me personally I would love to see artillery fire as an actual barrage of thunderous fire BOOM BOOM BOOM, or for something coming close for auto-cannons and the sound of machinery adding a new clip with each volley and of casings being disposed mechanically during firing.
This might create for some odd sight if bullet velocity is low but the concept is not for any gunnery system to be that slow with application and can be fixed with a flak like effect on very big misses. (note that visually speaking a miss looks the same as a hit as is).

Hybrid weapons would come second after lasers in trajectory speed, behaving similarly to lasers except firing earlier due to also having bullet flight time albeit less then projectile weapons.
So there you have the sequence of "track" "fire" and a projectile flight time of perhaps a second or less, with or without the possible "Flak" explosion for realism.

In any case this is what would change for as far as can be overseen.

Alpha damage.
Alpha damage is reduced and as it is Alpha only detracts from the game, I tend to agree with one of my EvE friends that alpha should not be the hallmark of long ranged weapons in any case.
For lasers damage could be dealt incrementally starting with low damage and the final pulse doing the most damage.
However all weapon systems now share a trait of increased risk of overkill and a higher requirement for fleet coordination which should add to gameplay.
Close ranged weapons will have higher alpha through firing earlier in turret cycles and could use slower firing rates imho (more alpha).

Fleet battles.
Fleet battles will have increased reaction built in although damage taken should stay the same, coordination will become more necessary and rewarding.
Missile ships will no longer be the odd one out by massive margins.
Retaining instant volley damage while applying damage slower and making it super obvious what you'll be shooting.

Small gangs and solo pvp/PvE.
Shouldn't change much.