Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Currently - right now - you can get a 36km point on a Keres and overheat it to 43km. That is of course before links are added in. Surprisingly the ship doesn't get used though. So we're making the lock range the same as the Maulus - the T1 counterpart. We're making the sig radius smaller but not quite as small as the Maulus. 5m > seems to be the rule. The griffin is 42m - Kitsune is 47m. The Vigil is 34m - the Hyena is 39m. You get the idea. EHP is getting a very, very slight buff. And we're expanding the distance of it's point 6-7km.

That is a very thin line to go from 'never gets used' to 'OMGWTFBBQOP'

All of these ships hurt on tank. If you go shield you cut into their e-war. If you go armor you slow down ships that need to be fast to avoid getting hit. If you go nano you're paper thin. Those two damps will shut down exactly one target. The more badguys there are the more likely it is you're going to get blapped. 1v1 will suck. But quite frankly most people will run from these in a solo engagement and with less then 100 DPS in most cases, you'll struggle to get enemies down before backup arrives.

Interceptors warp faster, move faster on the field, have a built in damage mitigation, and cost a hell of a lot less. A rigged interceptor will warp over twice as fast as a EAS.

This !

IMO people here just hate EWAR so much they prefer these EAF to stay in their current TQ state than risking to see them flying. Listening to them, they already are OP...

I have never flown the Sentinel or Hyena. But I have flown both the Kitsune and Keres, the latter extensively. So as soon as i could, I went to SiSi to go check them out.

Keres does its job well. It is a small frigate that can damp and tackle a single target indefinitely, so long as that target cannot close range. It can also screw with reps by focusing all damps briefly to break locks on longer-ranged targets. It's size and speed make it difficult to catch and easy to escape with. A flight of small drones are not a serious concern for it. I was easily able to outrun warrior IIs and blap them with blasters.

Right now, you will need a very fast combat frigate to catch it at all, let alone kill it.

Kitsune was not as good. In order to have a reasonable chance of jamming anything bigger than a cruiser, one has to jam it full of ECM boosting distortion amps and particle rigs, eliminating the possibility of a nano-fit. This made it significantly slower, and thus unable to escape quickly or run from drones. Also, missing a jam cycle meant getting blapped, which is exactly what happened. Using racial jammers over the course of about 2 minutes, I literally permajammed a hurricane, and missed every cycle on an Abaddon.

That being said, it is a frigate, and perhaps being able to reliably jam large ships should not be within it's perview. If that is the intent, than I am willing to accept it as is.

In comparison, the Keres is imo far superior because it is more reliable, more versatile, and much easier to pilot. It does not require a bunch of extra mods or rigs to be effective, though this is more to do with damps vs ECM than the hull differences.

edit: Wait, CCP Rise, you just added more mass to these things? Seriously? Perhaps to the Keres, which was very nimble. But not the Kitsune.

These changes are really going to complicate the small frig ecosystem in lowsec. And I think that's great. I'm looking forward to the challenge.

But I'd say we'll need some new counter-moves to the inevitable gangs of EA frigs + cockbag thrashers sitting in plexes and on gates.

To reiterate and modify an idea from earlier: Can we consider giving covops frigs a heavy missile option (in addition to the current torps)? They are very fragile and expensive. So I doubt they will be overused or overpowered. But at least with heavy missiles, they will have a chance either to snipe EA frigs if the pilot (or alt) is half asleep or to at least force them off the field for a while.

I hope I'm calculating this correctly so please correct me if I'm wrong. But a Keres using its MWD should have a sig radius of 205m. Precision torps have an explosion radius of 405m. So they still won't be that useful against a Keres. On the other hand, heavy missiles, with their explosion radius of between 125 and 215m will still be effective. Even a rack of three won't be able to single-shot the EA frig. And that's perfectly fine. But they will pose a threat. At the very least the keres will be forced to redirect its ewar at the covops to cope.

Of course, combat inties can quickly catch and kill a covops frig (heavy missiles or no). So the outcome, I think, should be a paper-scisors-rock game with pilot skill and situational awareness as the determining factor. I just wonder whether heavy missiles would make the covops too great a threat to cruiser-sized ships. Dunno.

That's my suggestion for some balance anyway.

They are called rapid missile launcher caracals... or rapid missile lanucher bellicoses. They can murder those frigs, at least enoguh to kill far more than their own cost before being subjugated.

Lol subjugated.

The "+20% per level", compares it to its current (20%) state. 20+20 = 40%

With a TII non-OH web and the proposed changes :

-Level 1 : 14 km
-Level 2 : 18 km
-Level 3 : 22 km
-Level 4 : 26 km
-Level 5 : 30 km

the hyena need more web range 60% will be ok

Eve was never designed to be balanced within a single ship class. The counter to frigs are dictors and some specialized cruisers.

Also these frigates are almsot usles solo (except the sentinel). A keres would never killa punisher with active tank.. both woudl sit there forever...

I always wanted the Ewar frigs to be more like the cov ops recons. Would add more options to Black Ops gangs.