Player Features and Ideas Discussion

CCP,
there are a lot of good suggestions posted thus far.

one of the good ones is to break up hacs into kiters and brawlers.
use the zealot and the vaggy as the basis for kiters. speed and range would be their best atributes.
give all hacs +5% to disruptor/scram range like the inties.
give all hacs +1 slot. if not, check the changes below.

kiters-zealot, vaggy, ishtar, eagle.
give these a great base speed. give them a big bonus to burners. give them range projection on guns and missile range.
drop the resist down a tad in favor of speed and sig tanking. a burner zealot is tough to hit, as should the burner vaggy be.

brawlers-sac, muninn, cerb, diemost
give these better resists, better tank, close range damage projection (tracking, fall off, ham bonus)
also, give these a bonus to mwd sig. atleast 75% as a role bonus. a ham cerb/sac should gain missile bonuses to allow them to hit frigs effectively. then switch to rage and bust up on bc and bs. also, these ships should receive a reduction in cap penalty for fitting an mwd. not a reduction in cap consumption, just a reduction in cap to fit it. this would allow more cap on the field. the brawlers need to get in and scram. pin everything down and survive.

sac- -1 hi, +1 low. roll the cap bonus into the hull. its a great bonus, but as with the vaggy, it belongs in the hull. give it multiple missile bonuses. possible speed bonus to hams. more armor to help with brawling.
zealot-faster. -1 low, +1 mid. its a good ship, i wouldnt change much else.

diemost-needs alot of armor. need help. lots of posts on helping this poor thing.
ishtar- needs cpu big time and grid. needs speed with ogre's and rails, it would make a helluva kiter. drop drones and orbit, or go to 75km and drop sentries. needs to fit drone mods or a full rack of rails. dual roles, long range sniper or mid range tackle/kiter.

muninn- needs to change to a close range brawler. it needs 1 more mid atleast. it needs all the close range bonuses for auto's.
i can imagine a mini vargur here.
vaggy-needs another mid. needs crap loads of grid and cpu. needs sniping role bonuses for kiting. needs to be ablt to fit big arties. speed and range would be best for it. small sig, burner bonus. turning 1500m/s+ with a tiny sig radius would be hard to do anything too.

eagle needs to drop the sniper role and go brawler. it should be loaded with blasters and be all up in your face. give it bonuses to reflect this role, tank and damage.
the cerb should fit the kiter role. speed bonuses to missiles so it can catch fast targets and reach in with hams or heavies. sig radius bonuses.

these are just ideas, but the seperation of the 2 styles of play would be awesome.
i am a brawler. i love my gutless sac. its active tanked with a scram/web and 52k EHP. i run a burner most of the time. if i catch u, its a tough lil thing. i will hold u until reinforcements arrive.
problem is, it shouldnt need reinforcements.

Thanks for listening! I guess now we'll see how closely you're listening... :P

I definitely want to see a HAC lineup that is valid for solo/small gang play style. The downside to that is the probability that anything good enough to solo in will be great to large scale sov-blob in. Too much of that already.

Btw, I don't mean that you should make small changes. As I previously posted (buried many pages back somewhere), the other balancing passes made thus far have been drastic and revolutionary. They have literally changed the entire face of PVP. Don't be timid in defining a role or ideal for the HACs to dominate at. The meta will evolve to take the new landscape into account.

As for what I would like to see; I'm of the opinion that the lineup should be split into "Assault" and "Strike" classifications, similar in 'purpose' but different in execution. Like the combat/force Recon series. "Assault" could be designed for high tank brawling (whether active or passive tank... I don't like having only one viable way to tank a particular hull. IMO, all hulls should be able to fit either active or passive equally well). "Strike" could be designed for superior damage projection and mobility.

As for Role bonuses, here are some suggestions:
Can fit Micro Jump Drive
Can fit Target Spectrum Breaker
-50% to enemy Webbifier effectiveness
+20% to Armor/Shield hit points
+150% increase in Afterburner speed bonus
-80% to MWD signature bloom
+10% to all inherent resistances
Can fit 2 Ancillary Armor Repair modules
-25% to Armor Plate Mass penalty and fitting requirements
-25% to Shield Extender Signature radius penalty and fitting requirements
Immunity to non-targeted interdiction
-50% to enemy Energy Neutralizer effectiveness
-25% to reload cycle time for Ancillary modules

How about it guys? If I missed any bonuses that you think would be awesome, just quote the list and append to it!

Who cares if you can use HACs in Fleets?

Exactly my point earlier.

Other than active tanking bonuses, trying to shoehorn a ship into small gang roles just makes it a **** ship, and these things need to have some performance to compete with the T1 cruiers, T3 cruiers, AND all of the battlecruiers.

All but one of which they cost significantly more than.

Could have fooled me. When I lived in low I saw fleets of them from time to time, not to mention there was an unending barrage of them running plexes and such depending on how deep you went....I own 5 T3 hulls for three races(not boosters), and I'm not an annomoly. I'd hardly call T3s uncommon at all, we fly full fleets of them. Almost all major blocks can/do field T3 fleets.


But like I said, HAC is the only T2 cruiser line that doesn't preform its role better than T3s.

They don't really compete with battlecruisers for that matter. They can work, but cost to performance is terrible.

Correct, almost all null pilots also do small roams.

We aren't doing them in HACs usually because getting 150 ships cyno'd in on your head isn't a great idea in a thin tanked ship with weak projection, or a tanky slow ship with weak projection.

You only use them when you know what the target is and the HAC is the counter. Which is admittedly rare.


To that end I fly my SFI more than my Vaga's anymore. They are only a third of the costs and doing fall apart the moment I get pointed.

That's funny I see at least one Loki fleet ping a day. Not to mention that we use recon Proteus and Lokis in our main doctrines....all of them. Just like everyone else. Do we use HACs? No, not enough tank or projection, you can do the same thing with an instacane/instastabber for half of the price or less.

I've also see, Legion fleets, Proteus fleets, various tengu flavors and whatever else.

....and no where did I mention PvE, I really don't care about mission and ratting, there are plenty of perfectly capable ships for both.

I've been out here for a while

I've fought PL in a legion fleet FCs by Elise Randolf
I've seen Null flying a full fleet of Proteus, one of PGLs experiments
I've flown both loki and tengus and -A- and -FA-
I've seen the FW guys flying legion fleets in low sec (and blops dropping them for that matter)
I've seen Liqud running tengu gangs in Molden Heath


No Tengus in null sec? That is the laugh of the week. EVERYONE isn't using them as a primary doctrine, but they are still all over out here.

Don't tell me what I have and haven't seen. if you missed it or just new, that really isn't my issue.

I agree but people are screaming up and down for T3 nerfs because they are rolling all over the HACs roll whatever that is. My entire point was that HACs need to be buffed to the point that they offer SOME advantage in the roll over the T2s.

Because right now HACs are the only ones that don't.

Sure it does, these things don't grow on trees SRP aside line members usually have to buy the hull.

So you choice becomes insurable BC or uninsurable T2 that is going to get targeted first. I have apretty much every HAC except the Eagle and SAC, I usually fly something ~anything~ else over them.