Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Fixed! No thanks necessary.

I would say trade the repair amount for repair range.

I'm really not sure what to think about this ship.

On the one hand, as a logi pilot and sometimes EFT warrior, I am really excited by the prospect of a logi ship that can keep up with MJD battleships without having to be *really* careful about positioning.
On the other hand, I have no idea how to balance that, or even if a reasonable balance can be achieved. It looks broken (in a hard-to-use sort of way) as currently implemented and the role bonuses are really all over the place.
On the gripping hand, Sound doesn't fly ships like this (both too big and too expensive), so I probably won't run into situations where it would be used very often.

I feel like the probe and virus bonuses are fine. They're flavorful, and they won't matter very often, so they can be, IMO, easily ignored.

The Nestor really needs another low slot, IMO. It has an armor resist bonus, but it has fewer low slots than a Prophecy. Heck, even the Dominix Navy Issue, to which I suspect this is going to get compared a lot, has a 6/6/7 slot layout. (The regular domi is 6/5/7.) I'd be okay with either 7/5/7 or 6/6/7. Typhoons do fine for mid slots with a 7/5/7, from what I've seen, but the demand for omni tracking links would increase the value of mid slots on this ship.

Then, there's the remote rep bonus. People more experienced with it than I am have stated that it's easy to get out of range of unbonused remote reps, and I believe them. Personally, I think it'd be interesting to go whole hog on the remote reps, with a small range bonus (to get them up to 16-25km range) and a rep amount bonus. That would require them to still pretty much fly with the battleships, but it would give some squish room for varied navigation skills or bumping or imperfect pilots. Aligned formations tend to spread out over time as a result of these things. In any event, you need to figure out if it's providing a bonus to remote armor reps only, or some larger set out of remote armor, shield and energy. (It's worth noting that, if they get a ~30km shield rep range, I'm sure they *will* be used to rep POSes.)

Another option for the rep thing is to expedite logi ship balancing and rebalance the remote rep mods while you're at it. Currently, there's an interesting trade-off on T1 logi between smalls (which cycle faster and use less cap) and mediums (which cycle slower and rep a lot more). There isn't nearly as much of a trade-off between mediums and larges on T2 logi: mediums have less range and rep less but are easier to fit and that's it. If we did a logi rebalance sooner rather than later, we could reduce (some) the ridiculous range bonuses on logi ships, rebalance T2 logi to use small and medium reps better than T1 logi, and then be free to rebalance the large remote reps around this ship instead of around whatever the hell they were balanced around originally. I like this idea, but it's a lot more work.

It's hard to come up with suggestions that AREN'T an improvement on the original...

I think I'm mostly re-iterating what other people have already said, but I'll take a shot at it and if nothing else, reinforce the opinions.

This ship seems to want to do two things, and it ends up doing both poorly.
1) It wants to be a medic-line ship. Having the DPS and Tank to fight, with emphasis on giving aid.
2) It wants to be an exploration ship built to do combat sites, but lacks the cloak and the self repping.

The problem with #1 is that you're missing out on the range, as other people have pointed out. 8.4k is really close for even just a few ships. If you get several of these trying to do some kind of subcap slowcat fleet it's going to be really hard to keep them from being bumped apart. Moving negates a lot of damage, and even orbiting in a ball it will be easy for ships on opposite sides to get out of range. If you are aligning anywhere you run into even more trouble as different skills and different fits start to affect range. Anyway, my point is that 8.4k is short, and others seem to agree. Plus, if you're going for combat-medic ship, why have the probe bonus and virus strength bonus that suggest solo exporation work?

The problem with #2 is that an exploration ship has to be self supporting. I don't know of any explorers that run around with a fleet. Two people maybe (and then you might use RR), but as others have pointed out, if you're doing that there are probably better fleet combinations to be found. You're giving it a bonus to probing, but without a cloaking device this is pretty much meaningless. I'm not leaving my home system(s) without a cloak to go on explorations and if I'm right next to my POS/Station I'll use a cloaky prober to find sites and then a much cheaper battleship/T3/faction/whatever to run them. Basically, I'm not running around doing PvE in red systems without a cloak. That's a quick way to lose a billion+ isk faction battleship.

Also, I don't really need the virus bonus without a cloak. Again, am I going to go exploring in hostile null and wormholes, solo, without a cloak? If I'm not solo, I can bring any number of other ships that have a bonus to that and have them do the hacking, or an alt if I'm dual boxing.

IMO this ship doesn't seem like it's going to be worth the ISK at the end of the day. It doesn't do any one thing well enough to be worth taking along for that reason. I believe cloaking is broken in this game (not so much the device itself, but the lack of a counter), but that's another discussion. In any case, I'm hesitant to introduce even more cloaky ships, but I feel like if you're going to focus these SOE ships on exploration, this needs to have it, it's worthless as an exploration ship without it. If it's solo/cloaking/sites you want this for give it a cloak and remove the rep bonus, maybe more of a damage bonus per level or an extra high if the cloak will take one up? Or a self rep bonus instead of remote? If you're going this route, a full on blops battleship that can fit blops portals?

On the other hand, if this is meant to be an aid ship in a group setting, then remove the virus and probing bonus and give it rep range (at least double) and... idk, another low or something. Maybe that'll make it OP, but I have the feeling that's going to be required for justifying the price tag. Give it something else, but don't bother trying to make it an exploration ship.

Personally I like the idea of a faction cov-ops/black ops battleship. It seems like it would be fun. Expensive as hell sure, but worth taking solo into other wormholes and nullsec where it can tank higher end sites, or faction/deadspace fitting and really having fun on black ops roams (and risking it too).

At the very least, go back to the drawing board and ask yourselves what ONE thing do we want this battleship to do, and make sure the price tag justifies doing that thing VERY well. Because this just feels like you wanted it to do 2+ things, and to avoid making it OMG OP it only does each of those semi-meh. I get the feeling this is more or less what other players think, and my balance ideas may be WAY off but my general complaint is valid.

I'm sorry that would break the game.
Make it be a faction blackops like the sin, 500% bonus to speed while cloaked, and with the RR bonus. (just range).
Give it the ability to jump and create/use bridges.
Tweek the slot layout so its 5 mids and 7 lows.
Remove the Virus bonus thats kinda dumb. (which you've already done)
and maybe like a small ship maintenance bay since it seems they want it to be a pocket carrier. they also mentioned a medical bay in the first picture but haven't mentioned it here.

So terrible in so many ways...

Probing and hacking bonuses on a ship that cant cloak? Basically useless if you cant travel safely.

RR bonus on a ship with terrible scanres and will get dropped by dreads as soon as anyone gets wind of more than 1 in a system.

Nothing original...while I agree a covops cloaking BS would likely being very OP...at least it would be unique in some way and not overshadowed by cheaper more effective alternatives.

i feel it seems to be low on the slots and given it has RR bonus it needs range too.
as for its pewpew lazors needs a bit of damage cause if its useing mids for prop and exploration itll be armor tank so it NEEDS the more slots and damage to lazors and/or maybe cap use.
but i honestly would have preferred cov ops insted of RR. or give it a special bonus so its RR becomes 5 to 10km aoe repair so it can use sentrys :P

but in all with RAT ai being lite version of sleeper AI drones will just get popped and lost too easly so FIX DRONES! and then it may be a good ship.

Food for thought CCP Rise:

Remember all the whiners in the Stratios thread? The EFT warriors with impossible fits?

Where are those uber ganking monsters that everyone was afraid of? That's right, nowhere to be seen.

The Strat got nerf'd over nothing. I guess un-nerfing is out of the question, but please don;t listen to the whiners this time.

I think that is pretty much the point. Its odd to say that a tanked dominix with a covops cloak is balanced, but the value of the ship has to warrant the risk of using it in combat.

..... I can see the issue...it is a weird one. Do you give a battleship the ability to covert ops cloak....

That is a big feature.... Maybe giving it just the black ops movement bonus under cloak would be enough.

But a cloaking warpable battleship would basically obsolete every other battleship if it got combat bonuses. I can see the downside to it.

But it might be worth it.