Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I don't have experience in incursions, but will you be able to do incursions with a fleet of pure Golem/Vargur? If you can ditch all the logistics pilots for Marauders that's a massive increase in DPS and therefore ISK/hour. Just how much damage do you have to tank in an Incursion if stuff switches to you? If you fully pimp these two ships out with Pith-A invulns and Pith-X SBAs you can get 20,000 DPS sustained/40,000 DPS burst tank on each ship while still maintaining 1200+ DPS.

The Golem can actually attain a hilarious 100,000 DPS burst tank if you overload everything with deadspace/crystals/bluepill.

How much alpha do incursions actually have? XLASBs boost instantly, and the Marauders would have between 170k-200k EHP. Unless 20k sustained tank is insufficient I just don't see how it wouldn't work.

From memory, basilisks need about 30k EHP to withstand the alpha of the mothership's bombers.

170k ehp is looking comfortable.

well the ehp on a basi/scimi is a bit different because they also sig+speed tank so its not accurate to compare to a battleship

and the other problem is sustaining it, what if you run out of booster charges? XD incursion sites, depending on which one, can last up to 20 minutes or longer depending on fleet. (with the shortest being approximately 10min)

Yes, but specialized to a use doesn't have to mean stuck running L4 missions and nothing else.

Also, and I apologize if my argument was somewhat convoluted, I was simply questioning the assertion of a literal entire fleet, as in ~200 players, full of T3s on a single side. My actual assertion is that T3s lack both the overall cost of Marauders and have a much less intensive skill train to get into them, especially when both of these things are taken relative to the effectiveness of the ships in question.

I think that T3s are used because of their relatively low cost and training time relative to their effectiveness. SP Loss just doesn't factor into alliance fleet doctrines, especially not for something as tanky as T3 Cruisers.



Damage king seems slated to go to the Pirate Battleships, giving them a damage bonus in Bastion would just lead to power-creep. Also there is no Tracking Bonus on Bastion Mode.



This is likely to come in the form of Rise's hinted at Missile Damage Application modules. Balancing by raw DPS is generally a poor idea though since that doesn't take into account damage application ability, max and min range, or any number of other factors.



T2 hulls are not supposed to be Flexible, they are supposed to be Specialized, per the original dev-blog on ship re-balancing.

Also trading range for damage on a long range weapon system is a bad idea because iit risks invaildating the shorter range system and adding a big damage bonus to a T2 Battleship class isn't likely to happen because they're already inherently tanky and Pirate Battleships are supposed to be the highest damage battleship class, again per that dev blog and comments made in the OP by Ytterbium.

Yes, support 5s take a while, that's sort of the point, to make these hulls worth the training time if you want to get into them.

Also in-case you missed it these aren't happening until the Winter patch.

even if it does work - now how often do you have to reload cap charges? And that projected dps had better be amazing cause you arent going to be moving in the site... maybe triangular mjd for positions.... and tractor beaming cans of charges..... etc etc, Tons of micromanaging just to survive, and whats the benefit? Currently it doesnt outweigh the losses. Some range.... and no more logies. We can already do that with say, tachyon spider tanked moving nightmares XD

And you say...why dont we use tachyon spider tanked moving nightmares? Same reason we wouldnt use these marauders..... too specific and time consuming to create such a fleet, expensive and risky, impossible for anything bigger than maybe a VG, and not much efficiency gained

I'm really wondering how you manage spider-tanking nightmares without micromanaging and burning a shitload of cap charges. Shield transporters have an 8400m optimal, that's like the pinnacle of micromanaging to make that work.

It increases your DPS because you can take all the people you had in logis and put them in marauders for hugely increased DPS, or just show up without any logi at all and not have to give them a cut.

Also, IMHO it will vastly decrease drama because the only way you'll lose your ship is if YOU screw up.

At least for station games there shouldn't be much effect at all, since they get a weapons timer in Bastion, meaning they not only have to survive through the Bastion cycle but for another 60 seconds after it ends.



They're not supposed to be general purpose PvP ships, they're supposed to have a few possible niche uses, likely in small gangs more than solo or large fleets.

The 90% web bonus was likely removed for exactly this reason.

Also I highly doubt that CCP is out to wreck high-sec POSes with T2 Battleships. There are already better setups that involve bringing friends.



Specifically on C, D, and E:

They are supposed to have a small and focused advantage over Pirate Battleships in tanking ability while the Pirate Battleships are likely going to be rebalanced into strong Attack Battleships.

Damage application and E-War immunity actually both give you a small bump in isk generation by allowing you to apply the damage you have more effectively at longer ranges and preventing you from being slowed down by ECM, Sensor Dampening or Tracking Disruption.

A T2 Tractor Beam actually goes to 48km with the current bonus, meaning you're a short burn and a MJD slide away from being able to tractor anything in the site. If you prefer to have everything up close there's nothing preventing you from fitting short-range guns, ignoring the MJD bonus in favor of a MWD for burning between gates, and pounding the mission into dust within tractor beam range. And of-course for missions where things spawn far-out you can still MJD into the middle of things and then jump back to the gate.

With short-range guns the range boost helps just as much as with long-range guns by allowing you to apply better damage at longer ranges.



If by balancing you mean "we now have T2 Battleship sized HACs, then yes sure. This would be *bad* and would not actually make Marauders any more attractive for PvE over Navy or Pirate battleships.



I think you have more or less hit the nail on the head for why it's being removed. It supports Dread-Blapping and is overall entirely too good in too many situations.

Please don't misunderstand me. I actually think any subcapital ship being able to tank anywhere near 10,000 dps for 20 minutes straight is an abomination. To continue with a design at such an early stage that will allow this is not sensible.

I would urge the design team to stop now and rethink the bastion module.

This was also back before a ton of changes to speed and speed stacking. These days if you try to get under the guns on a 90% web bonused ship you end up as an expanding cloud of plasma.

Also if you actually take a look at the stats on most Gallente ships they've all gotten increased speed and maneuverability to better be able to apply Blaster damage. This went along with the Hybrid Weapons changes back in ~2010 and has only been reinforced by the ship re-balancing.




Go ask all the Null Sec guys who use Pirate Battleships for PvE? Or Carriers for that matter.



Current thinking is more or less "we'll have to see". The question isn't really whether or not they'll be able to tank them in Bastion it's whether or not they'll be able to do with without relying on resupplying cap-boosters every three sites, which cuts into profit margins and eats up time. There's certainly no question that they won't be viable outside of Vanguard sites.

Overall I don't really expect them to use Bastion in Incursions, I do expect them to be used though due to the massive number of utility highs for ETs and emergency reps and the solid base resists over T1 and faction battleships.



Overall I'm not sure how concerned we need to be about massive tanks on these things. They trade off most of their EHP in favor of those massive repair rates which means even a small group will likely be able to burn through their tank between repair cycles.

As for Cyno bait you're better off buffer fit because 9 times out of 10 there's Logistics coming through the Cyno to save your butt.

If it does become an issue I'd rather just see the repair bonus on Bastion cut down in favor of damage application bonuses.