Player Features and Ideas Discussion

In light of the changes that are coming to the Cruor and Ashimmu, a little light went off in my mind and I thought that perhaps a good way of making the blood raider boats work a little better (and potentially others) would be to add a rig to the game that increases neut range, much in the same way that there are ewar rigs to increase the range of things like damps, ecm, etc.

The trick would be balancing it so it doesn't become too terribly op for ships that don't have any neut bonuses like the arbitrator, but are commonly used with them. I'd be fine with having it be a 50% bonus, but that's pretty much an arbitrary bonus that I put on there; someone running the numbers to provide a better sense of scale in relation to web range would be nice. 150 calibration might also be a good way to go for space usage.

Thoughts? Ideas? Critiques on how this could be horribly, horribly broken and break the game in turn?

EDIT: I neglected to mention this would be an Electronic Superiority rig, not an engineering rig. I also wanted to balance this by changing drone rigs to go from CPU penalty to targeting range penalty, since it would make more sense from a combat engineering perspective to shift the CPU output from your sensors over to better drone control efficiency rather than gimping your core fitting. Electronic Superiority rigs would then suffer the CPU penalty, which is fine since most of the ships that fit them and focus on ewar tend to have a decent amount of cpu left over anyway.

I am going to settle on the t1 rig range be 15% and the t2 be 20%. This would prevent more power creep on large-sized neuts and ships like the bhaal and geddon, and ships like the geddon that get a base neut range without being too expensive. And speaking of expense, it would be more acceptable to fit the t2 rigs on small ships due to cost efficiency; I could see this being extremely useful for the Dragoon and Cruor, respectively.

Also, in regards to calibration, I think 100 for t1 as was stated and 150 for t2. That would suit t2 and faction boats nicely, wouldn't you think?



Thoughts on the rigging idea are also appreciated, as well as ideas to contribute to balance issues related to power creep.

As overpowered as it would be, that would be *awesome* and I would have to change my pants. But then, I love neuts for some reason....something to do with sucking people's capacitor dry, maybe.

Heavy neut curse can already do like 80 or 90km lol. Eats the ENTIRE ship fitting to do it, but it's rather funny.

That being said, this would be a really interesting rig, as Neuts/NOS ranges are NOT affected by any sort of links, rigs, or support modules, only modules themselves and ship bonuses. 50% is certainly WAY too high, but 10-15 for T1 and 15-20 for T2 is reasonable.


+1 from me. This rig would force a choice between triple trimark geddons with standard range or long arm geddons with weaker tank, or more cap stable geddons vs longer reaching(Geddon used as example for any neut ship).

Edit: Could also lead some of the more capable groups out there to mix it up, with brick tanks and neut specialized geddons. While this rig could also create problems for logistics trying to fight geddons, it also can add some more depth and strategy choice.

This is a great idea. 20% would be around the area I would put it at. +1

Why should it be range?
It could increase the amount by e.g. 10 % (T1) and 15 % (T2) but with stacking penalty.

Covert Ops ships can fit a single T2 rig only
in case of a range rig, it should be need a high quanty of calibration points to have a real sacrafice.
you should have to decide, if you want 30 % Armor HP (3x trimark on you Neut-Geddon) or 20 % Neutrange.

Yes please.

+1

This is a practical and good point. Neut range can horribly break a lot of ships to the point of requiring immediate rebalancing, which never ends well.

I think some alternatives could be Cycle time, cap use, grid use (poor Arbitrator...) and "maybe" something that allows them to cut through a bit of the resistance offered by cap batteries and such. That last would help pacify the nerds crying about cruiser logi being broken just a wee bit.

That would be acceptable in terms of alternate additions, but I DO think it's quite balanced due to how much is sacrificed for their fitting, especially in the medium-sized ones. This along with the proclivity of many ships that do not, in fact, use cap at all for their offense and defense (and many others with the ability to fit a nos) I don't see this really being too much of a game-breaker considering how ships balance out and counter each other.

In regards to how it would affect t2 ships like the curse or sentinel, how EXACTLY would it make them any horribly worse or broken OP than they are now? They both push out past 30km, which is more than far enough to shut off disruptors; the only advantage this would serve on them would be just a slight buff of effectiveness at the cost of tank or fitting space, would would still be slightly better for fleet, but at the cost of tank.

Ships like the geddon already have an enormous range advantage. This would be very interesting to see on a geddon with large neuts because at say, 60% range buff you'd be pulling a tad over 60km neut range. That's good enough to knock around the max range of most close-range battleship setups, and would be invaluable in larger fleets. It's not necessarily terribly overpowered because of what you sacrifice on your rigs, and the fleet effectiveness tradeoff in regards to that.

♦ The Pilgrim does not get a range bonus to its neuts. Only a neut amount.

♦ If you are using medium 12km range neuts on a arbitrator or dragoon and you wished its range to be extended to ~24 kms using 3 rigs, each rig would need to boost the range by 25%. While this might not seem like a big deal, this is a HUGE boost to the ships, and pretty difficult to balance IMO. Heavy neuts hitting 50 km's on a normal BS, with geddon neuts would hit 75 kms. To be frank, that's over the top.

♦ What type of drawbacks would be valid for this? Most "Energy Grid Rigs" don't have drawbacks (ACR's, CCCs, Egress Port Maximizers), but this rig absolutely needs drawback given its potency.

To be honest, I think a rig that increases Neut amount would be a hell of a lot easier to balance than a rig that increases neut range.



Geddon's ALREADY see heavy use in anti-capital warfare. They are ALREADY the "cheaper Bhaalgorn", which, by the way, doesn't receive a Neut range bonus.



Neuts are one of the most brutal means of disrupting a ship in a class lower to you. A Vaga with a neut often attempts to neut off a scrambling frigate. With this change, that vaga can neut out the scrambling frigate long before it gets within scram range, let alone NOS range. In general, I'm very hesitant to support this, as I cap warfare is generally an in-your-face disruption technique, and this will extend that range well beyond standard engagement ranges. Perhaps if there was an appropriate drawback on the rig, it could be balanced, but traditionally Energy Grid Rigs don't have drawbacks.