Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Eve has been getting a lot of fancy deployable structures lately, and I love it. In the last year's worth of expansions, we've gotten deployables that can do everything from refitting ships to shutting down cyno fields. These have all done wonderful things and enabled new forms of gameplay. Now, I present an idea to further the role of deployables: The combat engineer.

This would be a T2 frigate based on the current frigate logistic ships. It's role would be specialization in the construction AND destruction of deployable structures. It would be equipped with a very large but specialized hold that can only carry deployable structures (Yurts, MTUs, repackaged cans, etc) and would have a bonus (either fixed or per level) to deployment/on-lining speed allowing it to rapidly construct structures and carry many different options. For example, several of these in a fleet would be able to quickly construct a blockade of bubbles or micro jump units in a combat zone to assist their fleet in out-maneuvering an enemy, or assist in the speedy construction of a POS (possibly used to invade enemy territory) by deploying turrets and shield hardeners quickly.

It would be just as good at blowing up structures via a special weapon system that I will refer to as demo charges for the sake of this thread. Basically, a demo charge would be a missile with incredible amounts of damage, but a very low speed and incredibly and/or unrealistically slow explosion velocity. It would be excellent at applying massive damage to stationary targets while almost completely unable to significantly hit other ships. The low speed would also make it a short range weapon, meaning that it has to get in close to take down its target. The opposite of the above example, this could be used to break a blockade or quickly kill cyno jammers. It would also be decent at breaking down POS's and other sov structures, although its nearly non-existent damage against other pilots would make them virtually defenseless outside of a regular fleet dedicated to this purpose. Much like their T1 counterparts, these would support and enhance the role of any fleet without replacing anything already existing.

All in all, I think a ship with a role like this would fit in excellently with where the game is going. It would provide more gameplay options, serve a specific purpose, and not require substantial re-balancing to compensate for its introduction due to it's self balancing design, IE it counters itself. Being a frigate hull, they would be easily dispatched if focused, preventing them from becoming a tiny anti-structure juggernaut (unless the enemy fleet is completely incompetent, in which case they deserve what they get). Thoughts?


EDIT:
I'll add things that have been discussed here so that people don't have to read through six pages to figure it out.

1. Perhaps split combat engineers into two hulls: A small one (Frigate or destroyer) for destroying/deploying small structures and a larger one (crusier/battlecruiser) for quickly erecting large structures like POSs.

2. Make demo charge only damage structures to prevent seiged dreads from being blapped by a swarm of angry frigs.

I'll add more as I see them.

I like the idea in general.

Only one thing I can think off to be checked forbalancing - High sec POS bashing. Just not to make it too easy. But that is somehow balanced by having reduced requirements for POS setting up.

I like your line of thinking. I feel like a T3 frigate configuration should be something this specialized. One of the 5 or so configs a t3 frigate could be. Very specialized. Maybe just make the T2 logi frigs more comparable to their t2 cruiser counterparts but make the materials cheaper so it's similar to the price of an inty or AF. Nice idea! On that line of thought hopefully they can introduce t3 frigs in very specialized roles such as one you propose and make them have a lot lower building requirements so that they are not as expensive to make and buy as well since they are only frigate hulls after all.

I really like the idea! More than a special weapon system for destroying the deployables, I'd suggest something like being able to hack these deployables in order to "unanchor" them and take them... which is one of the ideas proposed for unanchoring abandoned POS at W-space.

In fact, I imagine a line of T2 ships whose role is the anchoring and unanchoring of structures: the frigate proposed by the OP would be about deployables and a larger ship with similiar bonuses would be about POS and similar sized structures.

I'm really liking this; I think it deserves a good review. +1

Perhaps a T2 industrial or cruiser focused on the anchoring, hacking, and unanchoring of POS modules. Leave the frigate for small deployables and have a large ship that can speedily anchor towers and hack large modules to take them over, as long as they're past their reinforce timers.

I think that frigates would be a great size for a combat engineer ship that has to zip around the field quickly to put modules up and take them down. Tinukeda'ya is probably right though, when it comes to POS modules at least the ship should be bigger. Perhaps the role could be split into something like Field Engineers and Heavy Engineers. The former stays on the battlefield to assist in laying and removing traps, while the latter focuses on larger scale construction.

I agree with the POS ship being either a cruiser or a hauler. A hauler would make more sense due to the large size of the structures, but a cruiser would be in line with the deployables frigate... The Field/Heavy Engineers split is interesting too and makes sense.

Think of how fast you could setup a POS!

Commenting to bump. I actually think ships based around tactical use of deployables is a really awesome idea and could add a whole new dimension to things.

I'm really loving these ideas... But they probably need more opinions being heard.

Also a very good idea. I threw in the warp strength role bonus on my suggestion because, as a (probably) industrial ship that is designed to be part of an invading force, it would need to at least be able to evade people. If it would be possible to give a bonus to the on-lining time of a module deployed by this ship, I think that would be much more useful for a ship dedicated to putting up starbases (And pocos, if it was used that way). It's been a while since I've done much with a POS, but if I remember correctly, it's the on-lining time that usually takes longer. Being able to reduce that time by a third would really be helpful if you're trying to deploy in a hurry.