Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The amount of bad math in this thread is doing my head in. Let's work out some practical examples here:

Firstly, let's consider just a single hull. Rokh is your typical 'overpowered' shield-based resistance-bonused hull. Let's also assume all Level V skills for simplicity. We'll also consider reps from a Logi V Basilisk (5x Large meta4 shield reps). Without modules:

Retribution:
25/40/55/62.5 Shield Resists (EM/Therm/Kin/Exp)
10625/19540/41878 Shield HP/Shield EHP/EHP
732 dps under reps.

Odyssee:
20/36/52/60 Shield Resists (EM/Therm/Kin/Exp)
10625/18319/40657 Shield HP/Shield EHP/EHP
686 dps under reps.

A ~6.25% reduction in shield EHP, ~6.28% reduction to reps. Overall EHP reduction is ~2.92%. Note how the smallest resists appear to be hit the hardest, but the reduction is actually the same by percentage.


Let's now consider fits. Let's try max resists to see how remote reps factor under ideal conditions. This turns out to be DC2, 2/2/1/1 fields and 1/0/1/1 rigs:

Retribution:
87.2/87.7/86.9/89.1 Shield Resists (EM/Therm/Kin/Exp)
10625/86518/125206 Shield HP/Shield EHP/EHP
3242 dps under reps.

Odyssee:
86.4/86.8/86/88.4 Shield Resists (EM/Therm/Kin/Exp)
10625/81111/119799 Shield HP/Shield EHP/EHP
3040 dps under reps.

The reduction in shield EHP is identical- ~6.25%, but the reduction in overall EHP is now higher because of the larger shield contribution- ~4.23%. The reduction in reps is ~6.23%. Noticing a pattern here?


How about max EHP (by both resists and other mods)? DC2, EM+Therm Field, 2 Invuls, 2 LSEs and 3x CDFE rigs:

Retribution:
81.9/85.5/79.6/83 Shield Resists (EM/Therm/Kin/Exp)
26140/149520/188218 Shield HP/Shield EHP/EHP
2396 dps under reps.

Odyssee:
80.7/84.6/78.3/81.9 Shield Resists (EM/Therm/Kin/Exp)
26140/140184/178872 Shield HP/Shield EHP/EHP
2246 dps under reps.

Wanna guess? ~6.24% reduction in shield EHP. ~6.26% reduction in reps. ~5% reduction in overall EHP. In practical terms, that is 9,350 shield EHP lost and 150 dps reps lost. In a fleet, it's like losing 1 in 16 of your Basilisks and 1 in 20 of your Rokhs (by EHP). Against a 10k alpha, you only need one less volley.


Conclusion: this change is a flat nerf by 6.25% of resist bonused repped dps, local and remote, a flat nerf of 6.25% of bonused tank EHP, dropping practically to 2.5%-5% overall EHP loss, to every ship listed. As Fozzie correctly stated, these bonuses have effectively been a 33.3% increase on base levels and are dropping to a 25% bonus (the 6.25% comes from 6.25% of 133.3% (current levels) = 8.3% of 100% (base level), 133.3% - 8.3% = 125% in base EHP, just as 100% - 6.25% = 93.75% in current max EHP.

It's really important to note this is effective a 33% bonus to BOTH reps and EHP, in essence a double bonus, but the EHP bonus can be mitigated by changes to the base HP.

The question is whether all the ships listed individually needed to be nerfed as such- you can make ships that are strong under reps (33.3% bonus) only by retaining the 5% resist bonus, but removing 1/4th of their base HP (~133% -> 100%), while remaining weaker than the local rep bonus such as Maelstroms (7.5% per level = 37.5% overall, but quickly eclipsed by multiple logi). Or you could reduce the bonuses to 3% per level and get overall 17.6% bonuses to both EHP and reps to make ships that try to do both at weaker levels.

Nope, I can't give you one that is more overpowered than the alpha one, because that's a dumb question.
What I can give you is a list of doctrines that are actually in use for everyday fleet ops, where alphadoctrines are no longer in use.
Regular battleship doctrines are:
Abaddon, Rokh, Tempest. !!EDIT!!: Of course you can also put the Maelstrom here, and make it a general list of battleship doctrines you might encounter.
Navy-issue doctrines are:
Napocs, Navygeddon, Navydomi (These can include their regular variants too).

Then you have variants of them. Rokh could be "vanilla rail", "leapfrokh" or "brokh" (blaster rokh). Abaddons are mostly of the hellcat principle, but with the tweaks to large energy turrets I am sure you can get creative with Beams too.

Those are just the battleship doctrines, of course. Then you have the AHACs, (Rebalanced) cruiser-doctrines, BC doctrines (Naga, Tornado, Talos especially) .......

Such as what you're doing right now?
Show me a null-sec power apart from SOLAR that uses alpha maelstroms as their primary battleship doctrine.
SOLAR FLEET uses them, and I'm daring the guess that there are more than just diplomatic and organisatorial reasons why they're losing huge areas in the east right now (Hint: Military reasons).

Apart from SOLAR, who are using alphamaels? Please, do share!

I'll be here, waiting for you to find evidence.

The problem with alpha-fleets will alway be this: each ship has a natural limit to its EHP (huge amounts of isk only provide diminishing increases). However, there is no restriction to the number of players on the field, nor the amount of damage (properly coordinated) in a volley. Theoretically, all ships can and will be alpha'd, given sufficient numbers. There's only really two counters to this:

- Damage reduction/mitigation. High speed, low sig, manoeuvre under their guns/out of range, or just bigger buffer.
- Kill them faster than they kill you (especially good against glass cannons, e.g. tornados).
- Run away. Not a counter, but often an option.

If alpha-type ships need balancing, there needs to be the right gaps in either EHP, mobility and/or tracking. Once you're in a dps fight, things change radically, because logi are relevant. Additional counters include-

- EWAR/Cap warfare/bombing/anti-support. Jam/neut/make life difficult for logi.
- Manoeuvring to keep logi safe or threaten hostile logi, optimise dps output vs. dps recieved.
- Rotating out primary targets to minimise losses.
- Switching primary targets to defeat reps.

The reason people are frustrated by/feel alpha fleets are overpowered is they are attrition based- even a losing alpha fleet should take out some ships on their way down. In a dps fight, a good fleet is going to suffer a lot less losses (occasionally there will be flawless victories).

Incorrect.

As you might gather from looking at my alliance tag to the left, I am not able to give you direct quotes or whatever.
What I can give you is that the wars that CFC (Or CFC members) has been in for a long time was not fought with alphamaelstroms as a dominant doctrine since their wars in Branch and Tenal (Where they used Drakes too, and which was before TiDi - that is, back when alpha doctrine clearly was efficient).
Their war in Delve, their war in Tribute, their deployments since then, the FA/RZR deployment to Great Wildlands, the invasion of Cobalt Edge ... Because the circumstances that brought alphamaelstroms to power no longer apply, doctrines that can better take into account the general circumstances will be favoured.
I still have an alpha maelstrom, for example. It's somewhere in Immensea, where I got it brought down after we secured the space, but the last time I used alpha maelstroms were in Delve last summer.

I'm checking in late on this thread, but I wanted to get my opinion stated, for the record.

A broad-brush 1% reduction in resistance bonuses for ALL ships is just plain lazy. This is going to hurt HICs and exhumers, especially. I can understand the rationale for a bonus reduction for large, uber-tanky ships like capitals or even battleships, but for ships that go pop all too easily, it's a severe and excessive change.

Be more selective and apply the bonus reduction on specific ships, where it makes sense.

I don't think applying this to frigs or cruisers, hics or specialised ships is a good idea. Either way, still waiting for the active tanking boost...

If you want to just nerf reps in general (active, passive, remote) on all these hulls, do the resistance nerf, but compensate the HP.

If you specifically want to nerf remote reps, this is not the way to do it. If you specifically want to nerf individual hulls, this is not the way to do it. Pattern Clarc is right, this is a lazy and dangerous wide-sweeping change. Each ship needs to be considered individually for such a change, rather than applying it as a blanket to try and fix the perceived issue with remote reps and hitting a bunch of other stuff at once.

The CSM is meant to promote preference, not intelligence. Intuition that something is imbalanced isn't necessarily correct- although it may hint at mitigating factors that weren't originally accounted for, balancing shouldn't be directly swayed by public opinion, but rather directed to investigate deeper when there is public outcry.

I approve of this change, even after the nerf a flat 20% resist bonus at level 5 is still very powerful.

Allthough I am slightly worried about the effects on Heavy Interdictory, you might want to leave the bonus on these hulls at 5% per level. Or drop the unavailability of RR on them while bubbling / focusing, and instead lower the incoming reps by 95% or something like that. Still repable, but a huuuuge waste of capacitor.