Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Ok then. Let's completely ignore damage output forever and focus on other things.

Slot layout. That's a big thing that seems to put the NH at a disadvantage. Both the Claymore and Vulture have more medslots than the Nighthawk, and it only has 200 more shields than the Vulture. They've got the exact same resist profiles. So if you can put more defense modules on the Vulture than on the Nighthawk, and there aren't really any other major differences, then...?

Oh look, you have a less useful ship.

My only disappointment is that the nighthawk fells like it got the short end of the stick out of all of them, tight PG for starters and that horrendous kinetic dmg bonus(relics of the past yay ) which brings its dmg potential on the same level as the others, except those can do omni .
Furthermore this is on a ship that takes 1 year to train , i can live with the kinetic dmg on the drake but i just feel a T2 BC should not be so "restrained" when it comes to damage type.

WTB Absolution, Astarte, Vulture with selectable damage types

For as long as off grid boosting stays in the game (and I think it most definitely should stay in the game because it allows us to have more interesting fights) wing commanders will not be on grid in these big fights. Even if you get the bonuses fixed AND give the ships resist bonuses it might not be enough EHP to survive the first minutes of a 250v250 fight let alone anything bigger than that. Fleet bonuses are simply too powerful and they are concentrated on too few ships that they are the most important targets every single time. Some of the things you have recently rebalanced also work against putting boosters on grid. Like the Armageddon for example, increased neut range against on grid boosters? Have fun trying to use your new DPS bonuses when all you can do is run away and die trying.

The bottom line is that having boosters on grid will make the fights less fun. They will always be primaried first. They will always be locked down 24/7 so you can't reposition at all. They will be neuted, or they will be webbed long enough until the battle evolves to a point where you can neut them without dying. If the fleet moves (not warp, just moves around with their prop mod) the boosters will be left behind. All these things make the fights become less fun because you can sacrifice a few DPS ships to reposition, you can't sacrifice a boosting ship. So instead we will have everyone sitting still not even trying to maneuver.

So when the choice is having low-ish EHP wing commanders on grid VS having slightly less strong boosters in safes you don't even need to think about it. You can't keep 6 boosting ships locked all the time because it takes too many targets. Ask a logistics pilot to devote 6 target slots for all the boosters and only use 2 or 4 targets, depending on skills and ship, to manage reps on the rest of the 250 people. They will be forming a suicide cult within a week.

From what I understand the big point of this rebalance is that you want to put the boosters on grid and you want to make them feel useful and/or fun. To even consider putting wing commanders on grid they must have Damnation-level EHP. There simply is no other answer. They absolutely must to have that EHP and my prediction is that in the end it won't change much. Wing commanders will always be the weakest link and easy to kill so the only realistic option is to use off grid t3 boosters for serious business fleets. But if they have enough EHP then people might at least consider using them especially for smaller scale fights.

But even if you had the boosters on grid they would be anchoring on the logi anchor and be as far away from the fight as they can so how could they even provide any meaningful DPS to begin with?

There is no perfect solution because the fleet boosting system itself is horribly bad design. You can't redesign the ships to fix the problems with the boosting system itself.

So in my view there's only one thing you can do and it has already been suggested probably dozens of times in this thread. You need to split the command ships back to fleet and field command ship design. Fleet command ships are to have double tanking bonuses with miniscule or totally non-existing damage bonuses. In fact I would like them to have utility bonuses instead of any DPS. But their job is to give out their bonuses (which itself is one of the most important jobs you can have in a fleet) and survive. For this to work the wing commanders need to receive fleet commander's bonuses or you have to otherwise design around the bug to help them reach the required EHP. If you want to go totally crazy and have to have them be more useful and fun (or engaging) you could maybe introduce some module that is restricted to command ships only. The highslot target painter that was accidentally introduced to Sisi long time ago could be just the thing. Unique, "fun" as in something to do and useful. That's just a random idea and I don't personally believe it is something the ships actually need but if you have to have them have something, then make that something be something other than DPS. The options are of course quite limited since it can't be a rig, low slot or mid slot because any of those would mean sacrificing tank or another shield/armor imbalance thing introduced to the game.

And then you can have the field command ships with their DPS bonuses and no resist bonuses. These can be your plex/mission runners or tech2 BCs or whatever you want. Just don't ruin all four of them by putting active tank bonuses on every single one of them.

It's not a perfect solution and it most definitely isn't an exciting one but at least it would give the option of putting wing commanders on grid if people really want to do that. Some might even do it.

Yeah, bit it's unrealistic to expect to be able to hit *every* resistance hole perfectly, which is what an omni-damage bonus (meaning no damage bonus to a specific type) would be.

Every race has to fire a damage type, with most of them being mixed damage types as it is. Asking for all Caldari missile systems to do bonused damage to any missile would be broken. But Minmatar can! Yes and no. Their primary weapon system, projectiles, fires a mixed damage round that you can distribute to more reflect one damage type or another but its never a perfect, 100% one-damage-type. The missile turreted ships that they use typically have bonuses to omni, yes, but the damage from these ships is augmented by drones or some of the missile ships just have bonuses to explosive damage.

Firing all missiles, from long range (HML and others) or short range, high damage (HAMs and others) perfectly into a resist hole would be broken. Caldari favor kinetic damage. That's the way it is, just as much as Amarr favor EM, Gallente Thermal, and Minmatar Explosive.

I agree with the active rep bonuses not being on the command ships. Or if they are going to appear on command ships, each race needs one resist/buffer and one active rep.

For the Gal/Min I would suggest dropping the active rep bonus and giving them an HP bonus just to make them different from the Amarr/Cal. I would also drop the HP bonus on the Damnation and up the DPS to bring it inline with the other ships.

There's a difference between saying we shouldn't have a kinetic damage bonus and saying we should be able to hit every resistance hole perfectly.

For starters missiles do only one type of damage (unless your crazy and have different launchers with different missiles, but whatever)

Second, being able to choose your damage type is not the same as being able to hit every resistance hole perfectly.

Third, if ships like the raven can do omni dps are not considered OP by any means, then why would having a nighthawk with the same bonuses be OP?



Again your word choice is doing you no favors here. We are not asking for all Caldari missile system to do bonused damage to any missle (what you are effectively saying here is that we want the nighthawk to be able to fire Lights, heavies, heavy assaults, cruise, and torpedoes all bonused) What we are asking is that Caldari ships get similar bonuses on ships like the raven.

The point of this discussion was never about arties, etc of the winmater, it was about them having better missile bonuses than even caldari get in the same class of ships. Why does it make sense for them to have the better missile bonuses over the people that invented the system in the first place?

As to drone damage, drones are never up 100% and are unreliable for dps calculations because of that. Not only that but they are easily destroyed and countered. In any case winmater do more damage with caldari systems then even the caldari do themselves WHILE getting more drone bay... tell me that makes sense...



The raven is not broken. Missiles are already used less in PVP do to a number of other drawbacks, making them favor kinetic not only takes away one of the primary points to using the platform, it also means they get used even less in combat.

Just to suport the HP bonus crowed, the Eos, Vulture, and Claymore need HP bonuses added to their ships. need one tanky mid range command ship (damnation like) and one in your face command ship (Slepnir like)

Heck give all the in your face ones a active tank bonus just to get your active tank jollys off.

I would just like to point out that:

A) It is completely inappropriate for a dev to publicly identify a player's character as being an alt or a main. It smacks of intimidation and petty condescension based on nothing more than the dev's position of authority and access to information.

B) Dvla made many extremely salient points, and it shouldn't matter what character or player posts them. It is sad to think that you wouldn't be able to recognize good ideas unless they are posted by a familiar name.

C) The new commands ships are worse than the old ones, except for the Eos and Claymore. Nobody wants to fly command ships with the same number of turrets as a cruiser, even if they do have stronger bonuses.

D) The Fozzie knows that the command ship changes are a big nerf to the class as a whole and don't even address the most glaring issues with the ships. He has no valid arguments to support these changes, so he has resorted to personal attacks on people for posting with alts while ignoring their valid points.

EDIT: Forget the quote block. Forums mangled that too. Edge case refers to large cap fights allowing in space refits for damage resist swapping.

That's a hell of an edge case mate. Especially since in that case, any sub-cap can too.

Furthermore, if its the case that there's no ADVANTAGE to selectable damage type (due to the prevalence of "Omni-tanking"), then clearly there's no harm in leaving the option open with a selectable damage friendly bonus, right?

This is a sandbox. Its a game about choices. Just because the choice "Do I change ammo types for better damage in the long run?" always comes out one way right now for some people, doesn't mean that its fine to take away or unduly penalize making that decision in the affirmative any more in one case, than another. THAT's contrary to the very essence of the sandbox.

Furthermore:

If there is no advantage to the player having a general missile damage buff for all missiles, then would it not be the case that there would be no compelling reason for unduly limiting the ammo choice of a missile boat into a single damage type vs. letting them use any?

Or if there is an advantage, and this advantage is reserved for every missile hull EXCEPT the hulls that have the greatest claim to it; then it seems there is some sort of schizophrenic design principal application going on here?

There has been a shift at lower tiers of at least loosening the restriction on selectable [damage] on the more expensive ship hulls; i'm looking at you Hookbill, and you Navy Osprey. I'm looking at the Caracal as well.

The Cerberus at least had a shade of a justification for (not that I think its terribly valid) of being too fast. I'm pretty sure the Nighthawk isn't going to zipping around the battlefield like a ninny. Which is apparently problematic with missile ships. Seems like a poorly thought out Band-Aid fix; but I'm not there to take into account all of the factors that go into the implementation decision, so I'll let that one slip by.

But this one seems Ridiculous(TM). Its a brick. The Amarr have a brick, and its fully Unpenalized Selectable OmniDamage(USOD) compatible. The Minmatar have an explosion in a girder factory, which is, alas, also USOD compatible! What's is so threatening in a line of ships with signature radii that are approaching that of a relative small moon that deserves to be consistently denied this privelege, whilst others have, to my recollection, never been restricted into a damage type in their missile use by hull bonuses? Gentlemen? Anything? Why is there not an equivalence of applied principles across the board?

I'm not trying to make personal attacks, I'm trying to get my mind around the fact the inconsistency exists. There are two contradictory lines of thought going on here, and they only seem to be getting stumbled across at certain historical times.

For Amarr/Minnie Missile boats:
Selectable damage is a splendid thing! This hull needs to be USOD friendly!

For Caldari:
Selectable damage is bad! Your enemy knowing what you will use Compelling Gameplay(TM).

I'm not so annoyed that its happening to just the Caldari either. Its the fact that two contradictory principles are being applied in two instances of the same general implementation decision, which in the end leads to making a decision FOR THE PLAYER, right in the hull.

The continued prevalence of Phoenix Syndrome is just.... irritating. Please, really THINK about this. Its a bur in the side of ALOT of quite a few people, even just going from those that actually post on the forums. Having choices is good. Having choices essentially made for you by game mechanics where precedent exists elsewhere for the type of restriction not to apply, is not so good. And I think trying to lend credence to it to the degree you are with the HAC and Command Ship rebalances while maintaining the inconsistency of application across the board does not bode well.

And +1 to where's my Eagle tracking bonus? WTB ability to hit things that are moving thank you.

Edit: Hate it when the forums eat a post.