EVE Alliance Tournament Discussion

Are ships that have 13 charges in their ASB from before the capacity nerf was implemented allowed?

Of course they're allowed. Why shouldn't they? It's not any more unfair than allowing AT prize ships for that same point cost as normal ships, is it?

After some discussion internally we have decided to allow the legacy overloaded ASBs to be used in the tournament legally.

It's simply another method where collectibles can be used for moderate gain in a tournament environment.

This is a terrible idea fozzie

edit: To expand on the above statement in more detail, I think this is bad because it in large part limits what kind of ships will be fielded. You reduced the number of charges as a balancing decision, which means you thought that ships with 45% more ASB charges than currently were overpowered compared to their non-ASB counterparts in whatever way you decide to look at it.

Not banning these ships also means that quite a lot of the effort that you personally as well as the rest of the balancing team put in over the past year in regards to balancing ships was largely pointless with regards to changes to the tournament metagame. It's harder to justify using the freshly rebalanced ships, alternate tanking methods such as AAR, or even new ships like the navy battlecruisers when your bread and butter Sleipnirs, Vargurs, Tengus, Golems, and Scimitars all have 40k+ more EHP from their ASB charges than theyre supposed to in real PVP conditions.

Not to mention that one of the more significant rule changes this year was the banning of 5/6% and other unique implants, thus reducing the barrier of entry for the tournament for the smaller teams. What this change in particular does is give a rather large innate advantage to the teams of the fabulously wealthy tournament giants; I'm sure PL, Hydra, Darkside, etc will all scramble to pay out the nose for 13 charge sleipnirs while it just isnt a realistic option for the newer, smaller, or more casual teams.

You say that this is an opportunity for teams to show off their collectors assets. The whole appeal of collector's ships from a spectator's point of view is the always-present potential for something incredibly valuable to die with a glorious explosion. These overloaded ASB ships offer none of that, since no spectator will be tell the difference from one with extra charges to one without, except that the overloaded ones seem to tank longer. From the competitor's point of view too this kind of sucks since there is no indication that their opponents are using overloaded ASB ships. When someone drops tournament prize ships you at least generally know the capabilities of the ships you face and can play around that, rather than having to guess whether a team of 3 sleipnirs will tank 113k more damage than they should before dying. This is even ignoring the fact that it is literally impossible for teams without these ships to reliably practice against them, since they are unavailable on Duality, something which contradicts the rest of the testing methods you have set up for us.

Most of listed complaints apply to flagships too, i guess.

Some excellent points brought up in this thread that we hadn't fully considered, specifically that overloaded ASBs cannot be seen nor practiced against.

However, there are some technical barriers in the way of us enforcing a no-overfull-modules rule - the same kind of barriers that are the reason overfull modules are allowed to exist in the first place. If I manage to get through the work I need to clear off in order for us to have a tournament, I will dedicate some time to finding a way around those issues.

So, as things currently stand, they will be allowed. If I get my tournament work done ahead of schedule, that will likely change. In any case, their status will not change once the tournament has begun.

We understand that this uncertainty complicates preparation for teams who have overfull modules at their disposal. We will communicate the status of this as the situation progresses and will reach a solid conclusion as soon as we can.

Money has always won tournaments or why have I never seen a known poor alliance at the top?

Some Officer Bhaalgorns would like to have a word with you regarding small and "poor" alliances being able to afford them. But yes you can prepare for that (i.e. get ready to be stomped by officer neut/webbing bhaal). Easy fix for 13 ASB Ships:

Simply make a rule that 13 ASB Ships have to be announced just like Flagships. There you go.

AT is probably the biggest Meta event in EVE? Its all about spying on enemy tactics, setups, players and the connected weaknesses all while hiding your own tactics and setups from everyone else.

You do realize, that EVE is so fun and different from all those other MMOs because of all the Meta involved? Else it would just be another MMO.

Anyway. If those ships are not allowed please be consistent and forbid usage of any limited edition ships including AT rewards. Also ditch that flag ship rule with officer fittings.

The "can not be seen" advantage can easily be neglected by having people announce that they have 13 charge ASBs loaded at the beginning of the match. People do not get more time to recognize the flagship as well.

Well the main thing that made ASB insanely strong were those dual ASB fits with Crystals, Drugs and T3 Bonuses.

This effectively allowed solo players to circumvent the crazy 60second reload time by having
a) more boosts through crystals and drugs
b) a second ASB for those 60 seconds

basically making the ship invulnerable as long as it had cap charges.

In the AT people will not have crystals and Drugs (they will likely also not field a Command T3 but a Command Ship which gives slightly lesser boosts).

Of course this does not leave the fact untouched that the 13charge ASB stays roughly twice as good as the old ASB. Compared to Tournament Reward Ships its quite a small thing imo.