Player Features and Ideas Discussion

No so much when you're jumping into Worlds Collide or the last pocket of an Extravaganza.





Okay, responding to both of these together since it comes down to the same problem.

This is a handy cheat sheet for pirate damage types, and this is a more thorough listing for all the various NPCs including faction navies. (please note, I do not advocate for the former since it says Blood Raiders use ECM but says nothing about Guristas)

A quick glance over either or both of these shows that every single NPC group in the game does anywhere between a little and a ton of thermal and/or kinetic damage. Many in-fact only deal thermal and kinetic damage or deal so much of either or both that resistances to anything else are a foot-note.

This means that any ships innately bonused to resist Thermal and Kinetic damage are at an advantage for mission running since the majority of factions deal thermal and/or kinetic damage, with only the Angels, Sansha (mission rats only), Blood Raiders, and high level Rogue Drones dealing significant amounts of other damage types. However it's worth noting that two out of the four of these, Sansha and Blood Raiders, deal almost half their damage as Thermal and the remaining two deal about 20% of theirs as Kinetic meaning that a bonus to either resist is helpful.

The Gallente and Caldari T2 hulls both get bonuses to Kinetic and Thermal with the Caldari getting more of a Thermal buff and the Gallente favoring Kinetic due to Caldari missiles but still gaining some thermal due to Railgun damage from some Caldari ships.

For contrast the Minmattar gain primarily EM with a small thermal buff and the Amarr gain Explosive and a little Kinetic damage.

Now lets look at the "damage to deal" column of these mission rats for why Amarr and Minmattar have a bit of a problem and then get back to the resists issue in a minute.

Assuming you're declining Empire Faction-kill missions we'll just be looking at pirate damage since factions pretty much mirror the associated pirate faction group.

Amarr lasers deal EM and Thermal and the best damage to deal against Blood Raiders and Sansha is EM and Thermal, so to maximize the effects of the Paladin's damage you're best off fighting in Amarr space. Unfortunately your resist bonus does absolutely nothing for you in this regard since these rats do no Explosive or Kinetic damage. You're doing great against Rogue Drones but these missions are randomly scattered to all empire agents, can't be blitzed effectively in most cases, and don't provide loot and only provide mediocre salvage (the two main reasons to use a Marauder).

For Minmattar you get a bonus to EM damage and a small bonus to Thermal. Unfortunately your racial rats, the Angels, deal primarily Explosive with a little Kinetic and that EM bonus is only going to help you on one particular mission with Battleship that slings EM torpedoes. (I'm fairly certain this guy is responsible for all 5% of the Angel's EM profile). The secondary rats for the Minmattar are Serpentis but you're still only getting a small bonus to Thermal resists and half their damage is Kinetic anyway. If you want to move and mission against someone else you can at least make better use of the Thermal bonus and select damage type to some extent, but you're still coming up short compared to fighting someone you inherently do well against for damage and your T2 ammo is forced Explosive/Kinetic.

The Gallente and Caldari on the other hand can make use of at least half their resist bonus anywhere and all of it against Guristas, Serpentis, EoM, and perhaps most importantly Mercenaries.

Overall this just leaves the Kronos and Golem in a vastly better position than the Vargur and Paladin for mission tanking. They can fit less tank and have to make zero trade-offs to do so in who they fight when looking at effective tanking vs effective damage dealing. More importantly it least them in a worse position than they are in on TQ currently for these situations.

Golem FIX

250% torp max velocity, -250% flight time.
100% cruise max velocity, -100% flight time.

Suddenly this ship got fixed and is now useful for incursions and a bit more in pvp.

golem does not need any explo rad/vel buff, it is good as is...

anyway my point is that range gets to be same as now.

I've sort of been lurking in the thread, and there seems to be a definite shape forming around the space people are expecting the Marauder to fill.

The predominant use cases revolve as I see it around the following:

A) Mobility: Not in the can turn on a dime sense, but more in the realm of "can find a way to get just about anywhere when flown right". You pop up, you do your thing, and you've got the tools to make yourself scarce once you've scored hot, sweet spoils.

B)Staying power: This is a ship that asks for no quarter, and expects none to be given. It wasn't built with the mindset that "I'm going to have support!" It was built with "I'm alone, in unfriendly territory, and I'm going to eke every last second I possibly can out of it."

C)Entrenchability: This is a ship that is expected to have the odds heavily weighed against it (i.e. bastion module), and as a result has been designed with the goal in mind of being able to fight in the worst of circumstances (immobile, jammed, scrammed) and deal as much damage as possible until either honorabru death or victorious tactical retreat is possible.

With those in mind, the only thing that's really sticking out as non sequitur to me is the web bonuses. While I understand the PvP applications of them, I see it as just taking away from the package in a degree. I could sort of see it as a web range bonus, but the problem is more that the hull's bonuses are making a very great number of decisions for you. In a way. It says

"Hey! Put tractor beams on me!
...and a Bastion Module!
Target painter too! (in the Golem's case)
And a Webber!"

But what this kinda makes me thinks of is the Marauder should be slotted to fill a Tech 3 slot? I know that for the Winter expansion, that may be asking for a bit much. But the sheer amount that's trying to be baked into a Tech 2 hull just SCREAMS for tech 3 customization.

So for the interim, I say consider dropping the webber bonus on the hulls that it doesn't really fit on (Golem for instance) and tailor the bonuses along the three lines above.

And consider at some point, moving the Marauder from a Tech 2 specialization to full on Tech 3 battleship deliciousness.

Doesn't matter, you can't warp or move while you're in Bastion anyway so a scripted HIC isn't doing anything to you that you aren't already doing to yourself.



Yes, but you're tanking with a MJD more than you are with the repair module. Part of my point about having a large tanking bonus should be the option to actually use it to tank as opposed to being forced to jump off at range where the bonus is only needed a very tiny fraction of the time and generally because you screwed up somewhere.

With the proposed stats it would be just about the best value you could get for your bil.

Yes because a ship with 3-400k ehp, t2 res, 3xMJD and four utility highs clearly won't be used by anyone..............

For PvP sure, the problem is that these are primarily PvE ships at the moment...



and making them less viable for PvE than Navy or Pirate battleships would shoot their primary competency in the foot.

I certainly agree with Ytterbium that designing for a specific niche is not good way to design for an emergent game like Eve. However, it's also important not to invalidate months of training time when there are available solutions that meet the stated design goals without doing so.

I am not arguing against T2 resists on the ships, though I am a little worried about the potential EHP values such resists could provide, I am saying that T2 resists do not replace the local repair bonus if your intent with the ships is any sort of Mission or Scan-Site based PvE activity.

Yes, Bastion provides an excellent local repair bonus, but I would prefer not to see the hulls inextricably tied to the module the same way Dreadnaughts are tied to their Siege Module. I'd rather be given a choice other than "Fit Bastion for Missions" or "Train a pirate battleship"

Because raw DPS isn't everything. How effectively you can apply that DPS often matters more than the total DPS number. For reference see trying to swat an ABing cruiser in a Battleship

I sort of assumed you were talking about PvE. Most people don't even take Navy Battleships into PvP