Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Punisher still remains useless outside of the super niche use as a durable platform for a single scram and nothing more.

It indeed looks like a nerf.
The Vexor is a brawler boat. It has to to close on its target before releasing drones (Ogre's fly slower than the ship does). To lower its speed is just bad idea. Though with the drop in mass, I am curious what the MwD speed looks like.

First of all : you have my gratitude for keeping changes to ships that still need it.

Now some ideas you propose are cool.

But i still think either tormentor or executioner could use some other bonus than laser activation cost.

Please ? Also if you cannot give puni 3rd mid , maybe you can give it 5th low. It will still lack very important mid for web. But it will be beast if it will be able to track anything ;p

I agree yet disagree. I would agree if just getting into range allowed you to properly apply damage, but heavies have trash application on a good amount of targets. You pretty much have to run a dual web and scram fit to properly apply with the heavies, but if you do you actually get a pretty sweet gankboat what with the blasters and drones.

Though the 15% per level with mediums also sounds pretty damn fine, giving good application, good damage, and a more reliable drone system, though perhaps too strong against frigs.


From what I understand, they're mostly trying to keep MWD speeds the same, but reducing the plated speed to penalize buffer tanking and encourage Gallente style active tanking.

"Was/is" should be very much "is". I'm sure you're already aware of all of this, but a reminder:


Small projectile ships with a tracking bonus and a raw damage bonus (not RoF):Rifter, Slasher, Firetail, Dramiel, Thrasher, Wolf, Jaguar, Claw, Stiletto, Sabre.

Small projectile ships without a tracking bonus: Reaper, Cheetah, Rifter.

Small projectile ships without a raw damage bonus (not RoF):None.


The Rifter is the first serious small projectile combat ship to operate without a tracking bonus. This is a good direction to go in! Bonus homogeneity across the entire line of small projectile ships frankly makes them very boring. With hybrids/lasers, there are brawling ships, scram-kite ships, sniping ships, etc, all determined by their bonuses. With projectiles, it's "meh, whatever works", with much less well-defined roles and niches for ships. Please replace tracking bonuses for more ships, like the Firetail, and maybe even change the damage bonus to RoF if a particular ship is anemic in DPS (hint: Jaguar is).


Looks good to me. I would have increased the speed a bit further, or switched the damage bonus to RoF, but I might be biased because I believe the Rifter is entitled to being the best ship in Eve. It should be much better even with these changes, and I'll have lots of fun figuring out the new niche the Rifter fits in.

Why? The whole point of the bandwidth mechanic is to enable a lot of versatility in what you put on the field. Why would mixing drone sizes be bad, so long as you can apply damage with all of them?

I like most of these changes, especially to the Rifter. perhaps I'll be able to fly one again without my corpmates threatening to awox me.

However, the Punisher really does need more help. To be honest, all ships need a mimimum of three mid-slots.

On this note, if they did change the Vexor to a 50mbit/15% bonus, I'd be alright with it getting a 75-100m3 drone bay limiting the amount of spares/limiting the versatility of the ship by letting it carry spares or carry a flight of lights for engaging more targets.

I mean, we can't let it have 2 full flights of max damage in addition to having a flight of lights, or a flight of damage, spares, a flight of lights, and a flight of ECM. That's really pushing into Amarr drone ship territory, where the Amarrians typically have larger bays and lower damage giving more versatility compared to the Gallente "tons of damage, versatility be damned" philosophy.

No the bandwidth mechanic was introduced to limit the size of drones you could field while allowing large drone bays still. Large drone bays is what allows for versatility in the field.

I do not understand the reasoning for some of these changes, namely the Rifter and the Punisher.

The Punisher is already a great ship. It has one of the best tanks of the T1 frigates and applies decent dps as well. Its weakness has always been its speed and agility, making it easier to evade or kite. A small squad of Punishers equipped with 1 small remote armor repper each is nothing to take lightly, and often ends with any similar class squad of frigates destroyed or running.

Now you intend to remove it's weakness, speed, and buff it even more by increasing the capacitor recharge and sensor strength. So not only will jams be less often, but energy neutralizers will be less effective. On top of that, it's speed is increased so forget running away unless you're one of the quickest frigates. These changes are not needed and do not "balance" frigate warfare.

The Rifter is my favorite frigate, mainly because it's the first ship I flew in PvP and it looks awesome, so I know it quite well. It has fallen from grace as one of the best combat frigates to a mediocre one, to what will now be one of the worst with these changes. You intend to replace the tracking bonus with falloff on a frigate that already has great falloff range. You can get 13km effective range with barrage on autocannons and, with the short lock range of a frigate, artillery already reaches as far as you'll lock without significant sensor mods/rigs.

The tracking bonus is necessary. Because other Minmatar ships have a tracking bonus is no real reason to remove it, and it frankly makes no sense to. They have that bonus for good reason. The tracking bonus allows turrets to still hit their targets while kiting, and at close ranges it allows it to still hit while under tracking disruption-if piloted correctly. While a falloff bonus could theoretically increase damage output, the lowered tracking will give it zero damage output if it can't track its target. Tracking disruptors being the main ewar of the Amarr hulls mean you'll often find yourself under a situation that is going to make it difficult to track. These changes would make it nearly impossible.

Put this in perspective with the reality that Minmatar "ewar" is terrible when compared to the other 3 races, and you have a serious issue. Tracking disruptors could mitigate damage on a whole fleet, while target painters only increase the signature radius of a single target, which likely won't even increase damage in frigate warfare due to the fact that the turrets are already small enough to hit and speed and ranges often mitigate any benefits target painters make for missiles in frigate warfare. There's something you should rebalance-ewar.

You could argue that tracking links/computers are the solution, but this "solution" would not be necessary if the bonus is not removed. Further, this "solution" removes another midslot that should be used for tackling or ewar, not electronics boosting. With these changes I'd have to fit a MWD, Sensor Booster, and Tracking Computer/Link....I have no space left for tackle.

These are not the changes to make. I don't think you, CCP Fozzie, have much experience in T1 frigate warfare otherwise we wouldn't be heading down this road. Don't "fix" what's not broken.

(I'd like to end this post by mentioning how terrible your forums are. I spent 15 minutes writing a nice reply to the OP when I went to post it, and forums ate it with no draft saved or anything. I know other people who refuse to spend the same time to write the same post over and instead decide not to contribute at all. This needs to be fixed, get rid of that "draft saving" function that is the bane of eve-o forums.)