Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Nope they won't help either, since most of the time you want to be in scram range anyway.

Thing is, I still don't know what a good bonus for HACS would be but some of the afore mentioned ideas sound more promising than an ab bonus without a significant base speed buff.

nah you'll have tons of time cause some idiot tried to tackle you in a cloaky huggin instead of the rapier meaning he has a severe scan res penalty so the entire line of thought is moot.

Compared to what, in what scenario?

A quick glimpse at the released data would assume that you are looking to poke a few more ships into the 'AHAC role' to compete with the Zealot, shift another couple of ships into some sort of play-at-war brawling (Blaster Eagles, ASB Vagas etc.) for the Amamake crowd and the broad overall objective seem to be cautiously reinforcing the old 'SHAC role' with the new role-bonus (burning a bonused MWD outside of immidiate web-scram ranges).

How do you envision these expensive ships standing up defensively in the face of modern budget sniping options such as Caracals, BC3 and similar?

The range come with the upside of avoiding Loki webs (and the only ships being able to web them from an onset is yet again Recons with their more managable buffers while things like Painters will face falloff-values). Having framed the setting with that dull lead-in: How powerful would you envision these ships to be against considerably larger gangs with cheaper ships firing at them on stacked, unbonused Painters in falloff? I understand that it's a ridiculous "What if" scenario, but I have a feeling that it's going to be a common one and much of a make-or-break scenario. Would it be possible to grab a bunch of these expensive ships without imidiately entering into a trading-blows scenario with less expensive options?

You may not be able to control how we'd feel, but there's usually some sort of logic and elegiability behind how we feel.

Alot of the early calculations done within the community today is simply a "critical mass" overview to the alpha of common ships (ie., you'd need this many Talwars, Caracals or Megathrons to volley ship X on either ideal, average or common accuracies). That's obviously not the end-all measurment of a ship's performance and likely appeal but it's a good starting point and overview. In this case I think it's more prudent than usual since what will make or break the use of these ships is not wether they can kill stuff but wether the risk involved with their price-tag will warrant any use against common gangs.

You didn't have those issues revamping Frigates for example, because Tech II Frigates are still cheap enough in the general span of Tech I subcaps. In that sense, this is a new challenge for the ship-balance team.

Honestly, I haven't really chewed through the other changes that much yet, but the Vagabond change seems completely stupid to me off the bat. I've been flying the ship since pre-nanonerf, and no, this change is going to drastically change how the ship is going to be flown.

You've essentially made a ship that, at its core, was an excellent kiting ship that did very well in small/medium gang scenarios, and turned it into a flying brick waiting for anyone whose competent to shut it down. The ASB vagabond is a special snowflake setup that has far too few practical uses in ~real pvp~ outside of very controlled scenarios. The traditional vagabond has already been slightly hamstringed by the changes to TEs. You're essentially pushing any good vagabond pilot to just give up on the hull and fly a Cynabal, which just does the current vaga's job a whole lot better as a pirate hull.

You're essentially slapping a useless shield booster skill onto a hull that already suffers, like a good kiting minnie hull, from cap issues. Please, for the love of god and keeping that ship anywhere near useable, do a sensible bonus like projectile falloff or something appropriate for the hull, not some stupid bonus for the special snowflakes that will make the hull completely useless outside of some very specific scenarios.

So....

Why did you think it was a good idea to take the Vagabond, the ship that is supposed to be a high speed skirmish ship, and then give it a tanking bonus and make it about 100m/s slower under MWD?

All of these changes rock my world.

EXCEPT THE ISHTAR. I'm actually aghast with it. I'm convinced it will really suck in comparison to all the other cruisers. It's getting SLOWED DOWN? What? Why?! You're making it a kiting ship with **** agility and now worse speed? It'll be the 2nd slowest HAC. I don't understand this at all. It's slot layout means it can just about do nothing well. It's not a good sniper because sentry mechanics still suck.

I really hate the stupid bonus to drone control range, i mean it now has 2 bonuses to drone sniping... which is the most ******* worthless thing I've ever heard.

I'm actually seriously disgusted with the design for the ishtar. It will do nothing well. If you want a sniper hac you are better off with an eagle or zealot or muninn by FAR which all have better resist profiles, are faster, and CAN MOVE during engagements. It's going to SUCK for being dual prop or close range brawler because it's DPS is getting **** on. I really REALLY hate this. So ******* dumb.

Its also amongst the heaviest HACs!? What the ****. I'm pissed. This is ********.

Couple of things here. First, deimos. What are you thinking in reducing it's armor, hull, and boosting it's shields? This has got to be one of the weirdest things I've seen since the last time you tried to turn it into a bigger turkey than it is now. Unless you're running a 1600mm buffer setup (which suck, because they take away too much agility and speed) your overall tank, right now, is about 30k EHP. This is obviously so powerful that you felt the need to reduce it? I would love to hear the explanation of why you think this is necessary. Second you've left the MWD bonus. This is just a bad bonus - which your own staff at CCP has already admitted to (though I won't be surprised if you don't remember this as it was probably before any of you were hired). The last deimos "rebalance" which turned the ship into a active tanked armor rep ship removed the MWD bonus and simply increased the base cap to compensate was the only positive idea to come out of the last attempt. How about this proposal, instead of changing the shield/armor/hull amounts just leave them alone, remove the MWD bonus, increase total cap, and add tracking. This will allow use of void in more situations due to the tracking hit being not as severe, while assisting against attacking ships using single unbonused TD's as a defense. You should also consider asking why a close range, in your face HAC has the highest signature radius of any HAC, because this does not make sense either - and greatly limits it's use or utility in an AHAC fleet.

Ishtar: CPU on this ship is critically low and always has been. When it had 15 slots you could claim it was to balance out the fact that it had 15 instead of 14. But this is no longer the case, and in addition, the amount of CPU that drone modules use is extremely high, making it very difficult to use these in any kind of practical setup. Also the previous comment in the thread that having drone space added as a bonus on a ship that now only can use drones is much like having a zealot that adds a gun slot for every HAC level is quite astute. It makes no sense and makes me concerned exactly what your plan is with regards to the Eos, in that you may be planning on retaining it for this ship as well. In addition the bonuses added are quite useful for sentries, but are much less useful for non sentry setups. I strongly advise you to consider adding the drone space into the hull as a default amount, then changing the bonus to drone MWD speed to make non sentry drones more viable for kiting setups, or any setup that plans on relying on heavy drones to kill targets.

Long ranged HAC's overall: Consider increasing the lock range of these ships.

Last, another important point which has already been brought up, HAC cost. In no way, shape or form will HAC's that cost 150-180m ever be commonly used when you have T1 cruisers which can nearly do the job as well, but for a small fraction of the cost. You could buy 10 of them for 1 HAC. The situation is easy to see in today's meta where once you saw vagas, now you see SFI's - as vagas cost 160m and SFI's only 60. It used to be that HAC's cost 70-100m, which was reasonable given their performance. I believe that this as an overall price point for these ships is a good idea and that you should consider reducing the build requirements of these ships to achieve this overall cost, as without it they will unlikely ever be competitive in the overall meta against T1 cruisers/navy cruisers/T1 BC hulls.

Well, gratz to HAC Tiericide.
I will stay out of this one mostly, but I find most of the stuff way too shiny.

So ummm... let me just throw this out there... Why the hell would anyone waste A LOT of time training for HACs at all when navy cruisers are better?

What is so HEAVY about these heavy assault ships you speak of?

Except the cerb.... so OP. LOVE IIIIT!!!

AB Bonuses are BAD.
I thought we went through this the last time with the Assault Frigates

And just to sum up the thread;
Leave the ******* Deimos as it is right now. If you need to make a change to it, give it more agility and stop ******* with it .