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Ship balancing beyond Crucible: Low-hanging fruit and 5-minute fixes
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StukaBee
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#1 - 2011-11-29 22:38:43 UTC  |  Edited by: StukaBee
In the aftermath of the balancing work done by CCP Tallest for Crucible, I thought it may be helpful to have a thread for looking at remaining ship imbalances and pointing out the low-hanging fruit that remains. I think we all hope to see the ship balancing process continue and move on to other hulls, and that we all have examples of 'quick-fixes' that could be made to fix a currently imbalanced hull with very little effort on CCP's part. I'm hoping this thread could serve as a resource for CCP to see examples of ships which would greatly benefit from relatively little attention. I'd like to ask interested posters to give examples of what I'll term '5-minute fixes'.

What is a '5-minute fix'? For the purposes of this thread, it is a single fix to a single attribute of a ship which fixes the most significant balance issue with that hull. I'm sure many players have looked at particular ships and thought "if only it had a bonus to x instead of y" or "this would be so much better if it just had another turret hard-point" or "why isn't there another mid-slot on this thing, it needs it so badly". For a current example, in Crucible, we've seen '5-minute fixes' to the Scimitar, Guardian and Basilisk, which received warp speed increases to bring them in line with other T2 cruisers. The Onieros received this fix too, but to make it competitive the hull also needed alterations to its slot layout, power grid, sig radius, velocity, and warp speed, putting it somewhat beyond the scope of a '5-minute fix' (while the act of changing several attributes itself is not particularly time consuming, the more changes are made, the more time is needed to consider balance issues and how the various alterations will stack with each other).

I'll get the ball rolling with one of my own, then let others post any ideas they have.
StukaBee
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#2 - 2011-11-29 22:39:09 UTC
Ship: Incursus.

5-Minute Fix: +2 lowslots

Why: The Incursus is the only tier 3, turret-based frigate with only 8 module slots. The other 3 (Rifter, Merlin, Punisher) all boast 10 slots, giving them much more options as to what they can fit. Additionally, the Incursus is from the Gallente race, a race that generally favours armour tanking, and yet has more midslots than lows. A lack of lowslots also means that the incursus struggles to fit speed mods which are important for a tackling role, or fitting mods which new players (the primary users of T1 frigates) often rely on to squeeze on the modules they want.

[Some sharp-eyed readers may note that one other tier 3 frigate, the Breacher, also has only 8 fitting slots. In response, I agree: the Breacher is also an underpowered hull which would benefit from some balancing attention - when was the last time you saw one flown around by anyone other than a slightly confused week-old newbie? But the Breacher, even with an extra slot or two, would still be vastly overshadowed by the far-superior Rifter, and like the Onieros, it'll take more than a 5-minute fix to salvage it.]



So, over to you guys: post your single-attribute 5-minute fix below.
Zi'Boo
Zi'Corp
#3 - 2011-11-29 23:49:49 UTC
Your keen eyes failed to notice that only half of tier 3 frigates have 10 slots: rifter, merlin, punisher and tristan

The other half: breacher, kestrel, Inquisitor and incursus have respectively: 8, 9, 9 and 8 (plus a drone) slots.

So if anything you can champion for a tierecide (as it's been called - getting rid of stupid tier restrictions) or for an extra slot for a breacher, because you can count that drone on incursus as the missing slot.
StukaBee
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#4 - 2011-11-30 01:07:26 UTC  |  Edited by: StukaBee
Zi'Boo wrote:
Your keen eyes failed to notice that only half of tier 3 frigates have 10 slots: rifter, merlin, punisher and tristan

The other half: breacher, kestrel, Inquisitor and incursus have respectively: 8, 9, 9 and 8 (plus a drone) slots.

So if anything you can champion for a tierecide (as it's been called - getting rid of stupid tier restrictions) or for an extra slot for a breacher, because you can count that drone on incursus as the missing slot.


1 light drone doesn't nearly compensate for a missing slot, particularly since drones can be shot, smartbombed, or simply left behind when needing to warp, and they don't have a lowslot damage module to make them hit harder. If you were to suggest a bigger dronebay and more bandwidth, on the other hand, that may be a viable option, but you'd still be facing the anomaly of 2 lows and 3 mids on an armour tanking race. My aim is to suggest ways to make a ship viable with a single alteration if possible.

The Tristan is just as underpowered as the Incursus, if not more so, since its slow, requires newbie-unfriendly crosstraining, and has a double hybrid bonus with only two turret hardpoints. The Breacher could do with an extra slot or two, sure, but like I already said that wouldn't fix the ship since it would still be woefully outclassed by the Rifter. A quick-fix which still doesn't make the ship worth bothering with is no fix at all, whether it takes 5 minutes or 5 months.

Since you bring it up, scrapping or revising the tier system might be worth doing, but that goes way beyond a 5-minute fix since tiering affects numerous attributes, and wouldn't affect any of the ships mentioned above since they're all tier 3s anyway.
Zi'Boo
Zi'Corp
#5 - 2011-11-30 07:47:24 UTC
Quote:
particularly since drones can be shot, smartbombed, or simply left behind when needing to warp, and they don't have a lowslot damage module to make them hit harder.


But drones also don't use cap or ammo, can't be jammed, tracking disrupted or sensor dampened (well if you really want to you can waste your ewar on a drone).
A single small drone can provide up to 20 dps, which for a frigate is quite a lot (about half a turret worth of dps).

As for the 2 low slots - which slot would you like to give up to get an extra low?

I'm not saying that incursus (and other T1 frigates) shouldn't be looked at, but in no way adding 2 low slots is such obvious answer and 5 minute job.
Ninevite
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#6 - 2011-11-30 08:11:26 UTC
Gallente still sucks, Winmatar might as well be renamed Space Jews because they seem to be the chosen people of CCP
StukaBee
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#7 - 2011-11-30 09:38:27 UTC
Ninevite wrote:
Gallente still sucks, Winmatar might as well be renamed Space Jews because they seem to be the chosen people of CCP


'Fix every Gallente ship' isn't a 5-minute fix, thanks for not reading the OP and just blindly mashing the post button.
StukaBee
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#8 - 2011-11-30 10:13:23 UTC
Zi'Boo wrote:
Quote:
particularly since drones can be shot, smartbombed, or simply left behind when needing to warp, and they don't have a lowslot damage module to make them hit harder.


But drones also don't use cap or ammo, can't be jammed, tracking disrupted or sensor dampened (well if you really want to you can waste your ewar on a drone).
A single small drone can provide up to 20 dps, which for a frigate is quite a lot (about half a turret worth of dps).


Missiles and projectiles don't use cap either, and ammo is mostly irrelevant since T1 frigates tend to run out of hitpoints long before they run out of ammo. You said it yourself - 'waste your e-war' - even you acknowledge that the drone isn't important enough to be worth considering in a fight. At absolute best a light drone is worth half a turret, but that still leaves the hull lagging behind the rest.

Quote:
As for the 2 low slots - which slot would you like to give up to get an extra low?

This isn't a zero-sum game here - the Incursus needs to be better. At most I'd say -1 midslot for +2 lowslots, and even then it would still be lacking (and too similar a layout to the punisher for my liking). I'd want another improvement, like maybe some more dronebay and bandwidth, to bring it up to something approaching parity, and at that point we're heading out of 5-minute fix territory.

Quote:
I'm not saying that incursus (and other T1 frigates) shouldn't be looked at, but in no way adding 2 low slots is such obvious answer and 5 minute job.

If the Incursus had 4 lows tomorrow, would you consider using it if you needed a T1 frigate? How would it compare with the Rifter (the gold standard for T1 frigates)? Would it be worth telling Gallente newbies that they had a decent frigate of their own and they didn't need to crosstrain to Minmatar like they do now?
StukaBee
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#9 - 2011-11-30 10:22:22 UTC
Shall I try a more obvious one?

Ship: Retribution.

5-minute fix: move one highslot to a midslot

Why: Its a frigate with one midslot. I'll say it again: a frigate with 1 midslot.

Its worth pointing out that assault frigates in general need more fixing (a 4th bonus, and more importantly an actual battlefield role which isn't already covered by interceptors and faction frigs), but that as it stands the Retribution is in a special category of awfulness all by itself due to the fact it can't tackle. This would at least bring the Retribution up to the level of the other assault ships ready for a proper, more detailed fix of the whole category.