Player Features and Ideas Discussion

(on behalf of CCP Tallest)

Hello EVE players. I'm CCP Tallest and I'll be doing some much needed ship balancing in the coming months. Being on Team BFF, aka "the little things" team, I wanted to start with some low-hanging fruit and work my way up to the bigger balancing issues. These changes are not set in stone and I would very much like to hear what you think of them. Without further ado, here is what I'm thinking so far:

Lostistics
The thing that really stands out is the warp speed. It's lower than all the other tech 2 cruisers and that's just not cool.

Ship Warp Speed: from 3 AU/S to 3.75 AU/s


Dramiel
It's too fast. Obvious dev is obvious. Specifically, the mass is far too low when compared to other frigates. The scan resolution is also very high for a non-interceptor and I want to lower that as well.

Mass: from 740,700 kg to 950,000 kg
Max Velocity: from 473m/s to 460m/s
Scan Resolution: from 990mm to 750mm

Non-modified MWDII speed would go from 5,058m/s to 4,292m/s
Non-modified ABII speed would go from 1,797m/s to 1,578m/s
Aligning speed will go from 3.2s to 4.1s
Dramiel will still be the fastest frigate, but will go from 1. to 2. place in align-speed (after Daredevil)

Disclaimer: I know that there are many other things that are in need of balancing. I've started with these two because I had to start somewhere and the solutions to these seemed relatively simple compared to other ships/classes. Other ships/classes will also be rebalanced in the coming months.

Disclaimer II: We do not have a release date for any ship balancing changes at this point, but it will definitely not be released in the upcoming Incarna patch.

Wen will this suposed nerf hit ?Next year?

He's fixing "the little things", SC's are a major thing.

The Logistics boost would be fantastic.

The Drake does not need to be nerfed. It has been nerfed multiple times if I believe.

Agreed, just leave it alone, drakes are the opposite of canes, drakes have tank , canes have gank...

Honestly BC's arent where balancing needs to start ...

Ship wise balancing... Supercarrers are biggest issue, followed by blackops, and finally all the Assault Frigates

Hello Spitfire, I'm Firia, and I'm something of a PVP player in highsec areas. I'd like to contribute my experience, concerns, and opinions to your thought process to achieve a more of a positive result to balance issues than is normally associated with nerfing.

I want to touch on two topics; the Logistics ships (and by extension the mechanics behind them), and the Drake-all races battle cruisers.

I've never flown a logi ship, so I cannot speak about what it's like to sit in the cockpit of one and fly an effective logi-assist for other players. As I mentioned before, I'm a high sec PVPer, so I have encountered a great many off of stations and seldom outside of the docking ring.

I'm sure you, Spitfire, is aware of how aggro mechanics work, but I'd like to get into how they work around logi ships for those reading that are not aware:

Remote repairs work like any assisting module does; it transfers all red flags to the logi pilot with a fresh 15 minute aggression timer. This means that a neutral player could assist a corporation in their war by providing remote reps. The pilot will earn all the red flags the players s/he assists has. I want to come back to that example, so keep it in mind.

In normal PVP scenarios, when one player shoots another, a hidden timer starts running down, and refreshes with every new aggressive action. This timer prevents aggressors from jumping through gates, or docking in stations. When it comes to Remote Reps, these actions are not considered aggressive and these timers do not start running, allowing the pilot to instantly jump/dock at the moment they get aggressed upon.

When a neutral logi player provides assistance to a player or corp engaged in pvp, they earn all the red flags, and the opposing force is allowed to shoot them. However they earn NONE of the aggression timers allowing them to dock/jump instantly. Thanks to the overall positive recent change in Incarna that did away with session change timers produced by swapping ships, a logi ship can provide support, get shot, dock, slip into a different pvp ship, and undock to provide fighting assistance to the turmoil all in the span of 20 seconds.

A battle can be fought and lost over this exploit. A single well tanked battleship can hold its own against a fleet of battlecruisers thanks to the assistance of a logi or two. And if those logis get attacked, they are allowed to join the battle. This leads to very stale combats. "Station games," as my corp likes to call them.

This sounds more like an exploit than balancing issues, but the logi ships are weighed on this exploit of aggro mechanics, not their numbers. If the logi ships are going to be looked at, I would suggest looking at the timers behind Assistance modules. I don't know if the answer is to attache a similar timer as those of aggressive actions, but that's what my mind gravitates towards.

Next on the list is Drakes; when you said "low hanging fruit," and balance issues, I knew someone was going to bring up nerfing the Drake. The first reply to your post was that comment. I'd like to offer an idea that is not a simple nerf.

Battlecruisers in Eve are some of the most versatile T1 ships in the game. Their versatility leads to creativity and fun from the players. They can be fitted to produce results some people would have never thought of, and still be doing it contextually right. The Drakes versatility is extraordinary, giving it options to do a number of different things given the situation. It's role in the game too is king of PVE situations, with enough versatility to allow it a foothold in the PVP world.

I would contest that the Drake doesn't need to be brought down, but that other battlecruisers need to be brought up. Each races BC seems to have a role. The Drake is a pve god thanks to its ability to tank. The Hurricane is a master of PVP, the myrmadon is the best BC drone boat for either pvp or pve applications. Amarr... well, I've never felt their Battlecruisers were their strong point. But maybe that's just it; the Drake's versatility in the pve world is matched by the Hurricanes versatility in the pvp world. The Myrm is a nice middleground, while the Amarr options all come up short. Perhaps bolstering the myrm and Harbinger a little the answer to sorting out the Drake- put them on even ground.

Thank you for reading, Spitfire. I hope this helps create ideas that balance ships and also bring fun to those that fly in, with, and against them.

+1 for an update Tallest, you started so well.

The entire caldari race has been nerfed multiple times. LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!

I was just looking at the dram nerf, and each time I look at it, it still seems like the dram is OP.

Compare it to the ceptors, its still faster, has 2 or 3 times the EHP and 2 or 3 times the DPS.

Even after the nerf, I can't really justify a ship faster than a inty having more dps and EHP than most assault frigs. It either needs to slow down to the middle ground between AFs and inties or needs a DPS and tank nerf while leaving the speed unchanged making it more an inty style craft.

As far as the drake goes, I must have missed the changes that nerfed it if they where recent, anyone care to update me?

The logi buff is minor, logis really need other changes to make paired logis less powerful, a pair of logis can currently sit there repping each other for way too much. Not sure on a solution, I did suggest making the rep optimal range much shorter and giving reps a 'falloff' like weapons so that to do max repair you had to huge the other guy, beyond optimal DPS healed was much reduced.

They really do need agression timers on RR as well, it does make station/gate games very very boring otherwise.