Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Scorch disagrees, (as do javelins and general missile range boni).

Rise, I'm gathering that you're trying to take the Cruiser/HAC relationship in the same direction as the Frigate/AF balance with the role bonus and the "super cruisers for gank/tank/resilience" line.

The 50% sig bloom reduction doesn't fit that for HACs and porting it from AFs is lazy thinking. AFs love that 50% sig reduction because they are ships that spend most of their time hoping to up-engage against cruisers, BCs, and BS. The same thing they loved to do before their buff from heavy tackle to relevence, but now they do it better while also being respectable fighting ships in their own right (how many AFs did we see in AT X and XI?) in a small-gang environment. You bring AFs on a roam when mobility and up-engagement are important. The AF role bonus helps them do this by cutting down the likelihood of them dying on their approach to their larger targets.

Still with me? Good.

Here's where that role bonus falls apart ported to a larger class. AFs engaging BCs and up (the common targets at the time before the cruiser rebalance) were relying on not getting hit as their primary tank. Frigates of all shapes lean on high speed and small sigs to avoid being wiped out by large targets. They use their (buffed) MWD to close range and then by and large go propless once in weapons range. They lean just as heavily on their MWD to get them from target to target because their weapons ranges are generally very short. Their bonus helps them stay alive to deal their damage by mitigating incoming fire while they move from target to target.

HACs are rarely used on TQ in anything but blobs of Zealots (with the occasional BL Munnin or Agony Deimos fleets) that don't need MWD to close range because they have lasers with scorch. TWEED Deimos dual-prop but once in range fight much like a Zealot gang but with blasters. They don't need help surviving the approach, they need help surviving the brawl where scrams negate the MWD role bonus. HACs have falen by the wayside in the kiting and sniping roles due to the better power and projection of ABCs. A kiting-oriented MWD bonus on ships that are at home in the furball is counter-intuitive in a way not seen on frigates - HACs aren't forced to rely on sig-tanking for dear life, it's just a nice bonus to being small in a BS-gun world.

But this isn't a BS-gun world. Small-gangs overwhelmingly prefer more mobile cruisers and BCs which track a HAC just fine. Out in the fleet-driven world of sovwar fleets, large, long-range guns are only common in large numbers, large enough to have enough people who can track small hings in tight orbits just fine to kill them. More common in the last wars were fleets of massed caracals - which have no problem hiting a HAC of any sort, though an AB HAC will have some mitigation.

Finally, AFs are worth the price differential over their T1 cousins. a T2-fitted T1 frigate will run about 10M isk. A T2-fitted AF will run 30-40M isk, or 3-4x the price of T1. Faction frigates are popular but are outperformed slightly by AFs in combat and have a corresponding price tag of around 20-30M isk. Pirate Frigates are either ignored by players or are named beginning with D and run about double an AF but with the versatility to make the price worth it.

A T2-fitted T1 cruiser runs in the same ballpark as an AF (30-35M). We would expect, then, for the price ramp of 3-4x to hold true for HAC prices, but a reasonable fit for the common HACs will clock in around 160-200M isk with a premium for the less common ones owing to fewer builders. This is a price bump of 5-7x the T1 price. If they constituted a similar power bump over the Frigate-AF transition this might be reasonable, but they don't. Many of the HACs are overshadowed entirely by their own T1 versions. The new versions in this thread bring the power comparison into line, but don't address the fact that unlike AFs, HACs fill no niche on their own at their price point. AFs are THE choice for mobile, survivable damage. Destroyers out-damage them but can't tank nearly as well and Frigates and interceptors are more mobile but don't tank or dish out enough damage to compete. HACs are not specialized ewar platforms and can either brawl or kite - but there are better options at a lower price point for both roles. ABCs have the corner on the kiting/sniping market at half the price of a HAC. Combat BCs out-brawl HACs. HACs only have an advantage over these classes when brawling with BS, and BS are usually only found in large enough numbers to make brawling with them a question of logistics, not the core classes you've brought.

The niche and power doesn't justify the price. Bring a fitted HAC down to the 90-120M price range so they can compete with the fair BCs and broken ABCs on a level playing field and make a legitimate choice hapen. Just a simple reduction in the T2 materials involved in new builds would do it.

Confirming that quoting giant walls of text with a single line in the reply adds a lot to the discussion.

Confirming that quoting giant walls of text with a single line in the reply adds a lot to the discussion.