Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Sounds strangely like tech3 ships.

This idea falls under the "looks good on paper but not so well in reality" category.

There will ALWAYS be bonuses that people covet more than others. Giving any ship (that we currently have right now) the ability to change it's bonuses will simply result in people hyperspecializing (see: min/maxing) their ship in such a way that if others are not doing the same thing in the same ship, then they will never perform as well in that specialty.

Tech 3 ships are an example of this. A multitude of combinations can be made using their various subsystems... but only a few configurations are viable (because they are simply superior to any other combination through their bonuses and traits).

Granted, Tech 3 ships were terribly balanced when they were introduced... but re balancing them will be equally terrible as it will be a perpetual rat-race to keep all the sub-systems viable in the face of people searching for the optimum configuration(s) that simply outclasses all others (again, because certain traits will always be infinitely more useful than others).



Also...

- Tech 1 = "generalist" ships... good at a certain role but with good flexibility.
- Tech 2 = "specialist" ships (or supposed to be anyways)... excellent at a certain role but with limited flexibility.
- Tech 3 = not sure what they are going to do with this one... supposedly they will have access to "watered down" Tech 2 specialties but maintain Tech 1 flexibility.

The difference between this and Tech III ships is that Tech III ships can (in their original concept) effectively fill multiple ship roles. Such as Logistics, fleet boost or Covert/Recon junk. Rigs on the other hand cannot change the role of a ship.

All this change will do is make each ship a little more flexible at it's job. Currently all ships are designated armor/shield tank either by slot availability or by a bonus on that ship. This change would take away the designation of tank type by bonus by allowing each ship to fit a different bonused rig but it also wont' take away the ability of the ship to also make use of it's armor rig bonus. By the nature of this method, fitting all rigs with bonus will give you the full strength of your training to that ship type. Currently, if you don't use all bonused modules, you lose out on the effectiveness on the ship you fly. That means you wasted your time training the ship higher than 1 on that specific bonus.

With the Tiericide changes, all of the ships have pretty much been put on the same playing field as all the rest of the other ships of that class. This means if you have a ship with non-weapon bonuses it's going to be very much forced into that build or be significantly disadvantaged compared to the other ships with only weapon bonuses. Lets face it, weapon bonuses on a ship are redundant. Of course you're going to have weapons on that ship, and you're going to have as many of that weapon as there are hardpoints for them. That means the ships with only weapon bonuses are free to fit any module they want and the ships with other module bonuses are strongly encouraged to fit that other module or risk effectiveness.

As for Tech 3 ships. Why not build off of this model? Your subsystems could give you a bonus for a rig line OR a specific bonus for specific roles. ie: RR bonuses or Ganglink instead of the Rig Line bonus. Then a Tech 3 ship would be really be, fully customizable. And when you go up against one, you'll never know what they are ahead of time. Even if you recognize the visual sub-systems. Maybe that would be a great selling point for T3's to keep them desirable? ;)

No, thanks.

I like the ships with their unique look and their unique bonuses. It is what makes this game alive. If a ship's abilities cannot be estimated at least by some degree just by looking at its hull and type name, then it makes the game ridiculous to play.

No. The variety comes with the modules, and fixed bonuses to hulls only adds to it, because it does not copy it and is different.

Again, no, thanks. I am good.

+1
But there's a character minimum, so, ehm. I wrote this.

Shameless self bump, with numbers!

Lets have some examples here.

Thorax 5% bonus hybrid damage 7.5% bonus tracking. for a total of 25% damage 37.5% tracking.
Lets say we buff Hybrid rigs by 30% per level for a total of +150%.

1 Hybrid Collision accelerator + 150% = 25% or 10% for the rig and 15% for the ship bonus.
2x hybrid collison accelerator + 150% = 50% or 20% for the rigs and 30% for the ship bonus.
1 Medium Hybrid metastasis adjuster +150% = 37.5% or 15 for the rig and + 22.5 for the ship bonus.
2x Medium Hybrid metastasis adjuster + 150% = 75% or 30 for the rigs and 45 for the ship bonus.
3x Medium Hybrid metastasis adjuster +150% = 112.5% or 45 for the rig and 75% for the ship bonus.

1x collision accelerator + 2x metastasis ends up being 15% damage and 45% tracking. Very similar to the base status of the ship but also you have more options. And of course you could always choose any of the other rigs including optimal, falloff, cycle time etc. much more flavor.

How about something different. How about a Brutix. 50% damage + 37.5% armor rep.

Lets say 80% per level hybrid rigs and 25% per level on armor rigs.
Then 1x collision accelerator + 400% = 50% or 10% for the rig and 40% for the ship bonus
2x col accel + 400% = 100% or 20% for the rig and 80% for the ship bonus
1x Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump + 125% = 33.75% or 15% for rig 18.75% for ship bonus
2x Medium etc etc = 67.5% or 30% rig 37.5% bonus
3x medium etc etc = 101.25% or 45% rig 56.25% bonus

1col accelerator + 2x nano pump = 40% medium hybrid bonus and 37.5
So maybe a bit less powerful but, because the rigs are so diverse, you can split that into many different areas. One thing to consider though would be the resist rigs. Maybe 25% per level (or 150%) is too much for an armor rig. But then again maybe it's not. You'll only be rigging one resist per rig. that'd be 75% resist per rig. If you use 3 then you lose out on other rigs and become sort of brick-like. It would be very effective for filling a resist hole, that's for sure, but no more blanket resists on top of other bonuses. You could also apply it to a Trimark too. increase your HP substantially.

There would be some need to adjust some of the rigs to put them in line with this change, especially the Tech II rigs. Maybe just adjusting their Calibration cost could work wonders. But i do believe this could be where it's at for the future of ship rebalance. Every ship would have an amazing amount of customability. You could make a high tracking small ship blapper. That might make you more susceptible to same sized/larger blap ships. Or conversely you could make an all damage or all tank or manipulated fitting ship. But no matter what you do you can make the ship that you want to use the way you want to use it. And all ships would be just as viable for Large Fleet, Small Gang and Solo flying if rigged correctly.

You're oversimplifying things. Not capitalizing on your hull bonus does not make a ship more inefficient for the task you fit it for.



First of all rep rigs don't make ships slower anymore, and Brutix is one of the fastest BCs.

Lets take the Brutix example and your concept of losing "efficiency". When you fit it with shields and max gank, what do you get? Right, the most efficient Combat BC in terms of dps. The fact that you are not using the rep bonus doesn't make it worse in the task you have in mind, quite contrary.

See how this affects your claim of versatility? There are plate/AAR Brutixes, dual rep Brutixes, full armor buffer Brutixes and shield Brutixes, and all work in their tasks.




So what about the ships without local rep bonuses? In your mind they must be also worthless for solo and small gang.

That's an interesting concept to say the least. If you think about it, a ship should be really defined by how big its hull is and, more importantly, how its divided up. How much room does it have for engines and so on? How much cargo space? How much propulsion can it fit? If its a big ship and you want it to still have some pep, its gotta have a good chunk of space devoted to thrusters, gravity controls and other tech of that kind. Not much different from seagoing vessels, honestly. If we're talking about a non-combat military ship (transport, support vessel and so on) it will need to be larger than a civilian version in order to allow for more defensive systems (armor, shield, countermeasures, etc). Rigs or something like them would be the logical way to modify the basic role of a vessel. "Calibration" really represents the concept of, "how much can I modify this hull in a certain way before I break it?" I can see what you're getting at here - way more customization without a huge extra load on the servers. I can certainly get behind that. While we're at it..maybe we should consider the whole idea of "slots" as their currently defined in EVE. I've never really understood why you have low and mid-slot items that do essentially the same job with varying degrees of effectiveness and/or marginally different focus. When I started playing I thought maybe the slot types represented how deeply integrated into the ship they were. It seemed logical since power plant stuff, cargo holds and so on were low slot - that is, pretty fundamental to a ship's performance. Sadly, I soon realized the inconsistency in that theory or any other theory I could come up with. For example, say low slots represent engineering - power, thrust, CPU and other things that are really the "heart" of a spaceship. How am I increasing turret tracking with low mods exactly..boosting power to the aiming servos? Seems like if a ship could aim turrets faster it simply would, and without needing to waste a slot. A targeting computer add-on makes more sense and it lets us pretend that the middle slots are the "command and control" range of equipment. High slots are obviously gear with external connections - weapons, remote reppers and so on. Shield reppers are mid-slot, suggesting their mostly just a series of optimized power relays, frequency modulators and that sort of technobabble. But wait - armor reppers are low slot mods! How can this be, if lows are supposedly the very guts of a ship? Shouldn't armor modules be midslotted as well?? This is when I started wondering if there was any logic behind the slot system at all. Frankly I would like to see each range of slots replaced with a number similar to calibration. You would still have high, mid and low modules but ships would have "zones" instead of slot categories. You'd be able to cram as many modules into the high, mid and low "zones" as the zone allowed for. That limit would be akin to a cargo container's size and each module would have a size as well. How a ship's hull was portioned up between zones would depend on the ship's basic role, the ship design philosophies of its manufacturer and so on. Think of MMOs where they have bags that will only hold certain types of crafting items and you have a good idea of what I'm talking about. Say I want to build the fastest transport in the galaxy. OK, you fill the low zone with power grid and propulsion modules, but now you have minimal room for cargo. So maybe you install a rig that converts part of your mid-zone to low zone, allowing you to put a cargo expander in there. Naturally, this leaves you with less room for defensive systems (which would ALL be mid zone except for defender weapons).

Its a variation on what we already have to be certain, but IMHO a more believable and interesting one.

And balance is thrown completely out of the window never to return. No, in the name of the four empires, no.