Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Half read the thread.... but as others have said, T3s need some fine tuning but not an overall nerf. HACs need a huge boost.

T3's were supposed to be the jack of all trades, but instead they've been made the master of all trades.

1. They boost better than Command ships;
2. They probe as well as Covert Ops;
3. In one configuration, they can have the tank of a battleship, the damage of a battlecruiser with the signature radius and speed of a cruiser, alongside a watered down (but still mostly useful) racial EWar bonus;
4. They are also the only ship to be virtually immune to bubbles and camps through a mixture of the interdiction nullifier and the covert subsystem, providing a nearly riskfree alternative to freely moving around 0.0;
5. They are the only ship class that can combine covert cloaks, strong probing, more than adequate racial EWar and a battleship-sized tank alongside decent damage output to prove itself a strong opponent while basically imitating three or four ship classes simultaneously.

It doesn't make a lot of sense.

Honestly a lot of the T3 imbalance comes from some OP subsystems and combinations of subsystems that give crazy bonuses, and subsequently become the "standard" fit for certain roles. This goes against the idea that strat cruisers are supposed to be these general purpose, versatile ships that are not terribly specialized towards any given role.


Tengu for example has that quintessential Acceleration Ejection Bay offensive sub. At 10% velocity, 5% kin damage AND 7.5% ROF per level a single subsystem gives the Tengu a better set of missile bonuses than pretty much every other ship in the game, even those supposedly specialized entirely towards missile combat (see Cerb/Nighthawk/etc). There is simply no other offensive subsystem that remotely makes sense on a Tengu, except the occasional armor ECM tengus that you see in WH space.

Tank levels (specifically resists, but also raw HP as well) are another problem. Most simply have obscene amounts of tank because of the way 10% HP bonuses on top of T2 resists, OGB, Trimarks (+LG slaves)/CDFE, and LSE/1600mm plates stack with each other. Simply put, I dont think any T3 cruiser should be able to outtank even their respective resist bonused battleships easily while maintaining their massive mobility/signature advantage and all the other utility that comes with the smaller ship.

Basically my problem is with specific subsystems being either over or underpowerd, which I think should be fixed. Much like tiercide in other areas of the game, the concept should be applied here as well. Make it viable to fit all the other weird subsystems that already exist in the game (rail tengu and missile loki pls) by a combination of applying relatively moderate nerfs to the overpowered subs while giving bigger buffs to the forgotten ones.

Loki is in my opinion the closest to what the T3 cruiser should ideally be. It is really the only one that is able to have both viable shield and armor fits, filling every role from the cloaky hunter to the shield tanked sniper to the AHAC style webbing ship to the fast shield boosting brawler. Tank is not massively strong like the other cruisers (due to it only having 5% bonuses as opposed to 10% like the rest); its web capability is not as good as the Recons but still serves as a more durable platform for bonused webs. Not without problems but it is the best example of the original promise of T3 being implemented at the moment.

Let' see...how many cruiser hulls cost minimum 300 M, more likely 400M.
How many have a SP loss associated with them?

T3's need a BUFF, if anything.

Only people clamoring for a nerf are pilots who only have a hive mentality and fly no-brain blob tactics...who could exemplify those traits the most?

Main CCP mistake with t3 cruisers that they are so easy and quick to train, meantime according to their effectiveness they must have training time comparisonable with comand ships.
CCP will have a hard choise - how exactly put ships on their places.
Imo they have two possible ways
1. Remain t3 characteristics the same, making it's harder to train and much more expensive
2. To rework their stats with reworking of t2 cruisers and battlecruisers. Someone call it nerf of t3, meantime it is correcting of mistakes. Even after this "nerf" T3 will be very usefull, but not overpowered, thanks to their flexibility.
I prefer second position. Gladly CCP allready exposed their plans according comands and comand subs of t3. I like it. If they will continue with such philosophy, game will survive. Allmost all my friends abandoned EVE, and one of the reasons was t3 ships. So acessable, meantime very powerfull and flexible. If you have it, in some cases you lose your game fun and interest. "Look, i kill a Maller with my Legion today!! I am a true PvP player!!!!11oneone"
Those who against "nerf" of t3 must observe their killboards. In case there are only t3 victims, without weaker t1and t2 ships, then yeah, you have a moral right to demand to stop "nerf" of t3
In two aspects t3 needs a buff. If they will be in correct place then:
1. No more skill loss in case of defeat
2. New t3 rigs, for t3 ships only, you can remove it from your ship without loss in case of subsystem changing.
I hope that respective t3 owners will not start mindless whine

On the other hand entire t2 generation needs a buff, not only cruiser sized vessels. I'd like to see 3 rig slots ( limitation with two slots is senceless), stronger t2 bonuses (in two times for example), introduction or improving existing role bonuses (for example marauders allready have 100% damage role bonus, for what reason they have 5% damage bonus per skill level? Probably it would be much better to give 125-150% role bonus, bringing new skill bonus?)

Cost is not a balancing factor, as you said. Just because you pre-empted the response, does not mean it isn't true.

This noob did his homework

Adding T3 rigs would only massively increase the cost of them when they will have to reduce their cost a lot if they want people to fly them after their nerf. removing rigs from T3's is the simple and cheap answer whilst promoting the switching of subs more often.
T2's are meant to be more specialist which also includes less rigs the only annoyance with that is T2 rigs are so expensive to buy otherwise they would fit them to T2 ships more often and you wouldn't have the calibration for 3 rigs anyway.
If they limited T2 rigs to T2 ships they could reduce their cost a lot.

I also hope T2 prices will drop with the odyssey expansion all the moon rebalancing adding more T2 components etc.

well it shouldn't be ....but realistically it is

Yes, decision removable t1 and t2 rigs from t3 hulls is a solution too.

I know and this is does not work anymore