Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Double post again, geez i sucks:))

I like alot of your ideas and it's very apparent you put alot of thought into this thread. I am quite passionate about AF myself so bear with me here.

Retribution - Small ships don't get ROF bonuses. Those are usually reserved to cruisers and up. Small ships usually get a tracking bonus where their larger cousins get the ROF bonus. I would give the Retribution a 7.5% per level tracking bonus. I also like it better as a 5-2-4 setup with four turrets. I'm sure this sends the math to hell.

Vengeance - This one always drove me crazy. Again my thoughts are against the ROF bonus. Maybe an explosion velocity bonus instead? I'm not an expert on this ship but I don't see ROF bonuses going live for the reason I stated above.

Harpy - Luv it!

Hawk - Frigate bonus: 10% bonus per level for kinetic missile damage, 5% bonus per level for EM, Thermal, Explosive missile damage. AF bonus: 10% missile flight time per level. 7.5% shield resistance per level. This is a better balance between the frigate bonuses and the cerb flavour.

Ishkur - Luv it!

Enyo - In it's current form it sucks in all ways compared to the Wolf. Here is my favorite Wolf setup:

High:
200mm II x 4
Small Nuet II
Med:
Catalyzed Coldgas Arcjet Thrusters
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler
Low:
F85 Damage Control
Gyro II
TE II
Adaptive Nano II
Rigs:
Projectile Burst
Projectile Collision

Overheated it does 294 DPS overheated with 12km of falloff. And you just added a tracking bonus to it.

When you create an Enyo with a Light Nuetron II rack, a MFS II, and the hybrid burst and collision rigs- you get 306 DPS overheated - gun to gun - with only a fraction of the range. The Enyo IMHO needs a second damage bonus. Also any frigate that needs cap AND to go into scram range should stay away from active tanking. That's a recipe for frustration.

Jaguar and Wolf:
The Jaguar is technically supposed to be an artillery boat. It's not because most like it's heavy tackling functionality. Another reason is small artillery without a tracking bonus is pointless. There's lots of thoughts floating around these two ships. One is to swap the optimal and falloff bonuses between the two. Add a tracking bonus to both. Done.

Another is to give the Jaguar a 5% velocity per level boost. Give the wolf tracking. Most Minmatar pilots are going to view a shield boost Jaguar as a nerf though. The usual fit involves 150mm II, an MSE, web, and point. Active tanking for a frigate in scram range is suicide. Many favorite PvP fits - especially among Minmatar - is to fit a nuet.

Zarnak and Alex, thank you for your recent input - it has given me much to think about as well as a bangin' headache, but I won't hold that against anyone. Trying to balance a number of different factors including what should be one-race bonii, consistency amongst lineups of Tech-2 manufacturers, preventing Minmatar from being too Winmatar, and making the changes as undisruptive as possible is... troublesome, to say the least. Fret not though, I haven't given up and I'd like to address a couple of points that have been brought up.


Small ships don't often get rate-of-fire bonii, but it does happen and I think it should happen more. It does have a greater effect over a plain damage bonus (I'm catching on, honest) but considering which ships we would apply it to, it's not displacing or threatening anyone's role. The different ship bonii in the game are a means to an end, and not having seen one be popular at a particular level isn't sufficient reason to resist/avoid using it, especially if it fixes a problem AND fits with other ships of the same origin.

The Retribution is a strange case and that's why it has a very particular fix for it. Giving it a 5-2-4 slot layout as you suggest would make it identical to the Enyo and Wolf with which it competes, and Amarr vessels always have the most amount of low-slots in any given class (plus the Vengeance is already the 4-low AF). For the purposes of fixing it, I considered the low-slots untouchable. Removing a high-slot became the only option and as I pressed further, the removal of a turret was the only way to keep the utility high. I've tried to compensate for the fact that it might upset some Retribution pilots to have 1 less gun on the visual model of the ship. The rate-of-fire bonus I've proposed not only makes up for the missing gun on paper very neatly, but it also means the ship will fire at disco-speed (read: fast!) which is hopefully an acceptable tradeoff. Combine that with the fact that a laser rate-of-fire bonus is present on a number of other Amarr laser boats and I can think of no more simple a fix.

As for a tracking bonus for the Retribution, the rate-of-fire bonus only compensates for the turret removal if the damage bonus remains. The Retribution needs the optimal bonus and ever-present laser capacitor-use reduction as well. The only Amarr ship other than the Coercer that has a tracking bonus (which is a non-point because all destroyers do) is the Crusader which makes sense given its position as the fastest Interceptor - it needs the tracking where the Retribution does not. For all those reasons and the fact that Retributions are slow ships for their class, I cannot recommend a tracking bonus for it.

Regarding the other two, even the weakest Assault Ship should be capable of dealing similar amounts of damage as the most damaging T1 frigate (the Incursus, with optimal conditions) but this is currently not the case for the Vengeance as well as the Hawk. A Vengeance barely manages 10 DPS over the Inquisitor, its closest T1 analog and then, only while using rockets. The Hawk does equal damage to a Kestrel, and only when using kinetic damage. The changes to these three as well as the Harpy are approaching final as far as my proposal is concerned. The Gallente and Minmatar still need some TLC, though.


I'm still not convinced that adding this bonus would in any way break the Jaguar's role. Cap stability while shield boosting and tackling would be impossible without use of a nosferatu, but the passive tank would still be just as viable before as after these changes went through. I was (overly) concerned at the lack of an obvious tanking frigate for both Gallente and Amarr and these bonii seemed like a very neat fix. From your reactions as well as conversations with others, I'm seeing it might not be so cut and dry.

Frankly, I am no longer happy with the proposed armor repair bonus for the Enyo and I'm not going to force an active tank on just one of the races. As much as I've been trying to limit the amount of changes per hull (save the Retribution, obviously), I think it might be necessary to swap the falloff and optimal bonus between the Wolf and Jaguar respectively, and apply tracking to both - the jury's still out though. Expect to see a version 2 of the Enyo and Wolf as well as a version 3 of the Jaguar within the next day or so. I am adamant that the Hawk be stripped of its shield repair amount bonus and be made to feel more like a smaller Cerberus, so all active tank bonuses will be disappearing from the proposals shortly.

Assault ships just need one simple additional bonus to make them unique and fun: 15% webbing imunity per skill level.

Keeping it simple on Minmatar is probably the way to go. Turning the Wolf into an arty boat would limit it's DPS to around 210 and give the Enyo more room for it's niche. It would still get a 1250ish alpha though. The wolf needs more CPU to really make it work though - 15 more CPU base would do it.

Just curious, how is the Vengence the Amarr utility AF, when the Ret is the one with the spare high?
Only reason it (Veng) has mids is for webs to apply max missile damage.

Also, ROF bonus on the Ret is worse than 4 guns, because it means our ammo dies faster (faction and T2).

Hey, I'm liking many of the proposed changes, most especially the Hawk.

This ship currently will hit 63.3km with standard's and top skills, the same range as a Crow.
Additionally the Hawk is currently not doing any more damage per launcher than the Crow or the Kestrel.
While this ship would be loosing a tanking bonus, it gains a proper range, and the additional damage that it's missing over the Caldari T1 frigates, (as currently it only has a range advantage).
I think the 5% resistance bonus being applied to the harpy further makes up for loosing the shield boost bonus.

I also like the bonii of the Ishkur and Enyo, as well as the additional light drone for the Enyo.

The changes proposed here are very well thought out. Keep up the good work.

The vast majority of current Jaguar fits are cap stable unless they involve an energy neutralizer. Yet even with my proposed boost, an afterburning, web/scramming and neuting Jaguar would continue to be unstable, just by a somewhat softer deficit. It is absolutely ludicrous that the Jaguar, which is built with fancy Electrolytic Capacitors (the capacitor component necessary for Minmatar T2) ends up with identical capacity and recharge as the T1 ship it is based on.

Moving the Jaguar from 8th place to 7th with respect to capacitor stats will not overpower it so long as the changes to the other ships are accepted as well - you have my word.

I do like all the changes very much especially the make wolf and arty boat one =)
but the enyo needs some more love imo (same as the deimos)
and that being one more mid for a web or a cap booster and that totaly out of place optimal bonus changed best for a ROF bonus or second damage one
that way it would get fearsome again and dishing out a lot of dps in blaster range
and would be able to to hold its targets or keep its active tank running
might have to kill its utility high to not make it too powerful tho

Hi Crazy, thanks for the feedback! I'd like to address what you brought up about the Enyo - fixes for the Deimos are beyond the scope of this proposal.

I don't think it would be acceptable to remove the optimal bonus from the Enyo; currently, all the gunboat-AFs (Harpy, Retribution, Enyo and proposed Wolf) have an optimal bonus, though the Harpy has two but gets no tracking bonus like the others. It seems out of place in the description of a Gallente ship but I think they would be terribly frustrating to fly without it. I also don't think it will be possible to fit a 3rd mid-slot to the Enyo - the Ishkur already has that for Gallente.

I do agree that the Enyo's damage could probably stand to be boosted a little further as a Taranis is only 20 DPS short with one less gun however, I don't think we'll ever see a 50% bonus to damage like it has. Switching the damage bonus to a rate-of-fire bonus would bring up gun DPS by 8% but rate-of-fire bonii are never found on Gallente ships. Increasing the damage bonus to 7.5% per level would give a 12.5% increase in DPS over the current Enyo. I'm going to run the math on it and see if it breaks anything - if not, I'll edit the proposal.


In a word: No. I wouldn't propose changes that would make one or two ships categorically better than the others. Circumstance is a huge factor in combat that can never really be fully accounted for with ship bonii. If you manage to catch a powerful ship outside its effective range and you can keep it there and pepper it for long enough, you should win. Resistances also play a big role and that comes down to how well tanked your target is and what ammo the Minmatar pilot chose to put in - damage from the other races can be more easily predicted. Really it'll be up to whom one chooses to engage, with Minmatar maintaining their current ability to run most times. Running is not winning.

Keep in mind that hybrids can now quickly switch between ammo types and with that in mind, I'd be careful about rolling up on a hybrid AF if I was in a Minmatar AF. At an 8km orbit distance, the proposed Enyo using Null will actually exceed the damage a Jaguar does with EMP/Phased Plasma/Fusion and we haven't accounted for the drone(s) yet. The Jaguar can overheat the point and extend the orbit however, the damage dealt will be minimal until switched to Barrage, which takes time, all the while still running from drones and the overheated tackle will eventually fry. I think the Jaguar will be able to decide if it wants to die or leave but this isn't any different from how it is now. An Enyo would be forced to fight if the Jaguar picks it but it's not helpless.

There are many other scenarios we could consider and I could spout problems and solutions for each all day. The simple fact is that for most of the AF's, combat leading to a ship death is going to be taking place at or under 10km and if you don't have superior damage, it's going to take a fair amount of piloting skill and/or superior tank to prevail. Our goal should not be to engineer outcomes but to make surprises possible.