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[Kronos] Deep Space Transport Rebalance

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Lets GopherIT
Unusual Disturbance
#101 - 2014-05-18 02:20:11 UTC  |  Edited by: Lets GopherIT
I would suggest to go back to the roots of what a Deep Space Hauler really should be about..........

This is fundamentally a ship that can haul a lot of stuff around in dangerous places........ that's why it has some tank...........

But, you would not do this solo.......... so give it bonus's for fleet work.

Let it be able to travel thru bubbles if escorted by a ship that's bubble proof....... Let it align and warp off as if it were webbed by a fleet member if it truely is escorted......... Let the DST get thru that gate camp and let it's support team deal with the camp........

Give it a role bonus that's based on the fact that it need's to be supported........ Don't limit it's capacity FFS, we have Blockade Runners that can do that job.

My 2p
FT Diomedes
The Graduates
#102 - 2014-05-18 02:24:14 UTC
I've been trying to figure out how these are supposed to work. Let's assume a hostile is trying to run through my space. I have an informal gate camp up - a bored Interdictor pilot and a bored Interceptor pilot.

Scenario 1: An interceptor comes through and types "LOL, you noobs suck!" in local as he zips through.

Scenario 2: A T3 comes through and doesn't say anything, because he is too much of a bitter vet to notice us.

Scenario 3: A Blockade Runner comes through. I drop my bubble. He waits for a few seconds, picks his align point, hits align, MWD, cloak. The Interceptor and I burn towards him. If he has expanded cargo holds, we catch him and kill him some of the time (100% of the Blockade Runners my alts and I have killed had expanded cargo holds fitted). Otherwise, we miss, he coasts out of the bubble, and continues on with his merry way. We try to repeat the same thing on the next gate and the one after that, and the one after that, until he either goes AFK or evades us or we finally catch him.

Scenario 4: One of these new DST's comes through. It's a Bustard. It jumps in. I drop my bubble. He waits for a few seconds, picks his align point, hits align, cloak, MJD. The Interceptor and I burn towards him. We decloak him and I put my scram on him. His MJD shuts off. He doesn't have an MWD, since that would be equally useless. He turns on his afterburner, overheats ALL THE THINGS and continues on towards his align point. He burns out of my first bubble (he was right on the edge of it when this encounter started). I drop my next bubble. He continues to burn through that. If he can live long enough to get through the third bubble, or I drop one too late or too soon, he warps off, unless we have 6 points on him. Or unless we web him, in which case he dies horribly once some bored ratter warps in to add some DPS so we can break his tank.

In any case, Scenario 4 ends in fiery death for the DST often enough that I am not likely to see one fly through solo any time soon. Ergo, these ships are still mostly useless for Deep Space Transportation.

Now let's add to that the fact that the ship cannot deploy a POS… and it's totally useless outside of carrying a certain value through High Sec that is less than 1b (max value for a freighter) and more than 40m (max value for T1 hauler).

CCP should add more NPC 0.0 space to open it up and liven things up: the Stepping Stones project.

Ines Tegator
Serious Business Inc. Ltd. LLC. etc.
#103 - 2014-05-18 02:36:32 UTC  |  Edited by: Ines Tegator
Bad change is bad.

Fleet bay is interesting. Tank bonus will likely not be used (except in Q ships) due to unreliability. Dissappointed in the new bay size; this means there's still no crossover from Industrials to Freighters within the same skill tree. At least it's bigger then the t1 holds I guess.

Overall, interesting idea, but dissapointed with the direction. I don't think that this is a role that needed filled. Tanky haulers never worked before, this will be no different. Thanks for the poor-mans Orca, I guess.

I'm going to put in my standard copypasta that I've used in all the DST rebalance threads for the last year or so, for maximum embarrassment to CCP. I did add two words and an acronym to it to compensate for the new changes though.

Ines Tegator wrote:
This topic comes up about once a week. I suppose I'll paste in my standard response.

The problem with this or other ideas about making DST into dangerous-space haulers is that it's impossible.

Well, not impossible per-se. You could make them completely immune to capture, but that's just stupid. The problem is, there is no way to balance a gate-camp passing ship other then giving it the ability to not get caught. No amount of tank, or warp stabilization, or even bubble immunity will make running a camp viable. Tank can easily be overwhelmed by a gang, stabilization by multiple tacklers/HIC, bubble immunity or a MJD by a single interceptor. Sure, these things might get you past a lone sabre pilot or a really stupid camp, but strategies that rely on the incompetence of your opponents are never a good idea.

These ideas have all been suggested before, and some of them even tried before. None of them have worked. The rest are completely op.

The only way to make them work is give them very fast align and cloaking. We already have those in the form of blockade runners. These are so effective at their job that they have to be limited to 10k in cargo to maintain balance. I don't think this part needs to change.

The only place for DST to go is into a new role entirely, such as the mini-freighter (say, 100k cargo).

Overhaul Dscan!
Michael Harari
Genos Occidere
HYDRA RELOADED
#104 - 2014-05-18 02:48:05 UTC
FT Diomedes wrote:
I've been trying to figure out how these are supposed to work. Let's assume a hostile is trying to run through my space. I have an informal gate camp up - a bored Interdictor pilot and a bored Interceptor pilot.

Scenario 1: An interceptor comes through and types "LOL, you noobs suck!" in local as he zips through.

Scenario 2: A T3 comes through and doesn't say anything, because he is too much of a bitter vet to notice us.

Scenario 3: A Blockade Runner comes through. I drop my bubble. He waits for a few seconds, picks his align point, hits align, MWD, cloak. The Interceptor and I burn towards him. If he has expanded cargo holds, we catch him and kill him some of the time (100% of the Blockade Runners my alts and I have killed had expanded cargo holds fitted). Otherwise, we miss, he coasts out of the bubble, and continues on with his merry way. We try to repeat the same thing on the next gate and the one after that, and the one after that, until he either goes AFK or evades us or we finally catch him.

Scenario 4: One of these new DST's comes through. It's a Bustard. It jumps in. I drop my bubble. He waits for a few seconds, picks his align point, hits align, cloak, MJD. The Interceptor and I burn towards him. We decloak him and I put my scram on him. His MJD shuts off. He doesn't have an MWD, since that would be equally useless. He turns on his afterburner, overheats ALL THE THINGS and continues on towards his align point. He burns out of my first bubble (he was right on the edge of it when this encounter started). I drop my next bubble. He continues to burn through that. If he can live long enough to get through the third bubble, or I drop one too late or too soon, he warps off, unless we have 6 points on him. Or unless we web him, in which case he dies horribly once some bored ratter warps in to add some DPS so we can break his tank.

In any case, Scenario 4 ends in fiery death for the DST often enough that I am not likely to see one fly through solo any time soon. Ergo, these ships are still mostly useless for Deep Space Transportation.

Now let's add to that the fact that the ship cannot deploy a POS… and it's totally useless outside of carrying a certain value through High Sec that is less than 1b (max value for a freighter) and more than 40m (max value for T1 hauler).


You forgot scenario 5. The bustard scrams your sabre and kills you.
FT Diomedes
The Graduates
#105 - 2014-05-18 02:52:57 UTC
Michael Harari wrote:
FT Diomedes wrote:
I've been trying to figure out how these are supposed to work. Let's assume a hostile is trying to run through my space. I have an informal gate camp up - a bored Interdictor pilot and a bored Interceptor pilot.

Scenario 1: An interceptor comes through and types "LOL, you noobs suck!" in local as he zips through.

Scenario 2: A T3 comes through and doesn't say anything, because he is too much of a bitter vet to notice us.

Scenario 3: A Blockade Runner comes through. I drop my bubble. He waits for a few seconds, picks his align point, hits align, MWD, cloak. The Interceptor and I burn towards him. If he has expanded cargo holds, we catch him and kill him some of the time (100% of the Blockade Runners my alts and I have killed had expanded cargo holds fitted). Otherwise, we miss, he coasts out of the bubble, and continues on with his merry way. We try to repeat the same thing on the next gate and the one after that, and the one after that, until he either goes AFK or evades us or we finally catch him.

Scenario 4: One of these new DST's comes through. It's a Bustard. It jumps in. I drop my bubble. He waits for a few seconds, picks his align point, hits align, cloak, MJD. The Interceptor and I burn towards him. We decloak him and I put my scram on him. His MJD shuts off. He doesn't have an MWD, since that would be equally useless. He turns on his afterburner, overheats ALL THE THINGS and continues on towards his align point. He burns out of my first bubble (he was right on the edge of it when this encounter started). I drop my next bubble. He continues to burn through that. If he can live long enough to get through the third bubble, or I drop one too late or too soon, he warps off, unless we have 6 points on him. Or unless we web him, in which case he dies horribly once some bored ratter warps in to add some DPS so we can break his tank.

In any case, Scenario 4 ends in fiery death for the DST often enough that I am not likely to see one fly through solo any time soon. Ergo, these ships are still mostly useless for Deep Space Transportation.

Now let's add to that the fact that the ship cannot deploy a POS… and it's totally useless outside of carrying a certain value through High Sec that is less than 1b (max value for a freighter) and more than 40m (max value for T1 hauler).


You forgot scenario 5. The bustard scrams your sabre and kills you.


That would make my day, but it will never happen. Even if he scrams me, good luck killing the Sabre before backup arrives to make him explode.

CCP should add more NPC 0.0 space to open it up and liven things up: the Stepping Stones project.

Ines Tegator
Serious Business Inc. Ltd. LLC. etc.
#106 - 2014-05-18 02:55:48 UTC
Michael Harari wrote:


You forgot scenario 5. The bustard scrams your sabre and kills you.


There will certainly be a lot of lolkills in lowsec, at least for a couple of weeks.


FT Diomedes wrote:
That would make my day, but it will never happen. Even if he scrams me, good luck killing the Sabre before backup arrives to make him explode.


This is the bottom line. The burst/tank mobility idea would be great on a BC or pirate cruiser. On a hauler with a billion isk of cargo, it's not going to be used.

Not for hauling, at any rate.

Overhaul Dscan!
Reaver Glitterstim
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#107 - 2014-05-18 02:58:22 UTC
Dave Stark wrote:
however have you considered the fact that since these have a FLEET hangar, and can fit tractor beams, there's now even less reason to bring an orca and/or a rorqual on grid? if you want those two ships on grid, these changes are like a nail in the coffin to achieving that end. especially in the more dangerous areas of space.

Fleet hangar isn't the purpose of those ships. It's just a cool ability they have.

They way to bring them on-grid is to disallow off-grid boosts. 95% of what rorquals are used for and 70% of what orcas are used for is boosting. After this change, orcas will go up to 90% boosting, as the DSTs will be replacing them as a hauler for the most part.

FT Diomedes: "Reaver, sometimes I wonder what you are thinking when you sit down to post."

Frostys Virpio: "We have to give it to him that he does put more effort than the vast majority in his idea but damn does it sometime come out of nowhere."
Michael Harari
Genos Occidere
HYDRA RELOADED
#108 - 2014-05-18 03:06:23 UTC
FT Diomedes wrote:


That would make my day, but it will never happen. Even if he scrams me, good luck killing the Sabre before backup arrives to make him explode.


He tanks like 2k dps for quite a while
Rowells
Blackwater USA Inc.
Pandemic Horde
#109 - 2014-05-18 03:16:47 UTC
FT Diomedes wrote:
I've been trying to figure out how these are supposed to work. Let's assume a hostile is trying to run through my space. I have an informal gate camp up - a bored Interdictor pilot and a bored Interceptor pilot.

Scenario 1: An interceptor comes through and types "LOL, you noobs suck!" in local as he zips through.

Scenario 2: A T3 comes through and doesn't say anything, because he is too much of a bitter vet to notice us.

Scenario 3: A Blockade Runner comes through. I drop my bubble. He waits for a few seconds, picks his align point, hits align, MWD, cloak. The Interceptor and I burn towards him. If he has expanded cargo holds, we catch him and kill him some of the time (100% of the Blockade Runners my alts and I have killed had expanded cargo holds fitted). Otherwise, we miss, he coasts out of the bubble, and continues on with his merry way. We try to repeat the same thing on the next gate and the one after that, and the one after that, until he either goes AFK or evades us or we finally catch him.

Scenario 4: One of these new DST's comes through. It's a Bustard. It jumps in. I drop my bubble. He waits for a few seconds, picks his align point, hits align, cloak, MJD. The Interceptor and I burn towards him. We decloak him and I put my scram on him. His MJD shuts off. He doesn't have an MWD, since that would be equally useless. He turns on his afterburner, overheats ALL THE THINGS and continues on towards his align point. He burns out of my first bubble (he was right on the edge of it when this encounter started). I drop my next bubble. He continues to burn through that. If he can live long enough to get through the third bubble, or I drop one too late or too soon, he warps off, unless we have 6 points on him. Or unless we web him, in which case he dies horribly once some bored ratter warps in to add some DPS so we can break his tank.

In any case, Scenario 4 ends in fiery death for the DST often enough that I am not likely to see one fly through solo any time soon. Ergo, these ships are still mostly useless for Deep Space Transportation.

Now let's add to that the fact that the ship cannot deploy a POS… and it's totally useless outside of carrying a certain value through High Sec that is less than 1b (max value for a freighter) and more than 40m (max value for T1 hauler).
Scenarios 6: overheats MWD, cloaks, burns toward gate. If he gets decloaked, hes already close to gate so just burns rest of distance while you try to kill him, and then jumps through gate while your gang waits out aggro timers and then GTFOs in whatever manner he sees fit.

Or scenario 7 (most unlikely but possible): he warp core stabs everything (or doesn't, it's up to him) overheats MWD and burns the quickest way out of the bubble. Fast tackle scrams him as he is escaping sphere of doom. Warps off with his +2 warp strength or +x amount of stabs.

Scenario 8 and my favorite: jumps into gate, decloaks and burns toward exit gate. Gets tackled by frigate and sabre. Scrams and webs sabre, buddies jump in and collect on kill. Moves on to next bait system.

While I am a little confused about how the fleet hangar is fgoing to work, the overheat bonuses and new MMJD module really give it some serious options to play with.
Catherine Laartii
Doomheim
#110 - 2014-05-18 03:20:19 UTC
I can see these being used as supply ships in medium to large fleets. The strong passive and local tanks along with the 50k m3 fleet hanger means they can be used for an extremely wide variety of interesting role.

That being said, I was really looking forward to seeing them rebalanced as assault transports, mixing good offense and great defense with a fairly decent cargo hold. I am completely ok with this, though.
Ines Tegator
Serious Business Inc. Ltd. LLC. etc.
#111 - 2014-05-18 03:22:47 UTC
Rowells wrote:
Scenarios 6: overheats MWD, cloaks, burns toward gate. If he gets decloaked, hes already close to gate so just burns rest of distance while you try to kill him, and then jumps through gate while your gang waits out aggro timers and then GTFOs in whatever manner he sees fit.


A gang that has all of their tacklers aggress before the kill is certain is a stupid gang and deserves to lose their kill.

Quote:

Scenario 8 and my favorite: jumps into gate, decloaks and burns toward exit gate. Gets tackled by frigate and sabre. Scrams and webs sabre, buddies jump in and collect on kill. Moves on to next bait system.


After reading the thread, I'm 100% certain that this is EVERYONE's favorite scenario. Much like a procurer in lowsec, or a drake slowboating to a gate from 15km, or a Prophecy killing rats on a gate. In other words, it's obviously the best use of the ship and nobody (who knows what they are doing) is going to fall for it.

Bottom line, these changes don't help the ship class actually HAUL things.

Overhaul Dscan!
Catherine Laartii
Doomheim
#112 - 2014-05-18 03:23:00 UTC
Also, in regards to the Crane and Bustard: Are the models getting fixed for them? Crane should be the Badger instead of the Tayra, and the Bustard should be the Tayra instead of being one of the weirdest ships in the game insofar as having a ship model that doesn't actually exist.

That being said, I would not be against having a third hauler added to the Caldari lineup.
Abrazzar
Vardaugas Family
#113 - 2014-05-18 03:35:09 UTC
This may actually become EVE's most loved hot drop boat. I mean 1km³ for cyno fuel, you could basically run down a pipe and hot drop every jump without restocking. And enough Fleet Hangar to refuel all the caps. Perfect, no?

Sovereignty and Population

New Mining Mechanics
FT Diomedes
The Graduates
#114 - 2014-05-18 03:53:53 UTC
Abrazzar wrote:
This may actually become EVE's most loved hot drop boat. I mean 1km³ for cyno fuel, you could basically run down a pipe and hot drop every jump without restocking. And enough Fleet Hangar to refuel all the caps. Perfect, no?


This is pretty much the best use for these ships, because it has no use as an actual hauler.

CCP should add more NPC 0.0 space to open it up and liven things up: the Stepping Stones project.

Derath Ellecon
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#115 - 2014-05-18 03:57:20 UTC
FT Diomedes wrote:
Abrazzar wrote:
This may actually become EVE's most loved hot drop boat. I mean 1km³ for cyno fuel, you could basically run down a pipe and hot drop every jump without restocking. And enough Fleet Hangar to refuel all the caps. Perfect, no?


This is pretty much the best use for these ships, because it has no use as an actual hauler.


I'm actually quite excited by the change. These are going to be far more useful to us now.
Sturmwolke
#116 - 2014-05-18 04:15:22 UTC
All in all, it's a very nice buff. This fills the mini-Orca role nicely for a variety of scenarios.
I can finally dust off my Occator.
Sizeof Void
Ninja Suicide Squadron
#117 - 2014-05-18 04:58:32 UTC
Hmm... as I recall, the main reason we don't use DSTs often (except as bait) is because they are very slow and very easy to catch. Sure, it takes time to take one down, but its fate is still pretty much sealed.

I don't see much change here, with regards to the DST's primary disadvantages.

We don't want to turn these things into blockade runners, though, so how about looking at other methods to improve their ability to get away, once tackled?

Some suggestions:

1) Add EW bonuses
2) Add nos/neut bonuses
3) Add Target Spectrum Breaker bonuses
4) Allow MJD to operate when scrammed
5) Built-in ECM
TrouserDeagle
Beyond Divinity Inc
Shadow Cartel
#118 - 2014-05-18 05:08:05 UTC
slower than a jump freighter
more risky than a jump freighter
less cargo than a jump freighter
Caleb Seremshur
Commando Guri
Guristas Pirates
#119 - 2014-05-18 05:15:56 UTC
Retar Aveymone wrote:
well that's sure a thing, i have absolutely no idea what role that thing will play

will be interesting to see how it shakes out


I just can't see them having much use outside packing a couple of frigatea inside.
Innominate
KarmaFleet
Goonswarm Federation
#120 - 2014-05-18 05:23:42 UTC
Derath Ellecon wrote:
Was the DST really used that much to online/offline POS's?


Currently the DSTs see next to no use. They don't hold more than their T1 counterparts, often holding much less. The only thing they have going for them is a bit more tank and +2 WCS but most people are rightfully cautious about not moving T1 industrials or DSTs in dangerous areas. When you need to move stuff through hostile space, you use a blockade runner. When you need to move high volume cargo you use a T1 industrial which max out at 35-40k m3 and use caution.

POS work is one of the few areas where an updated DST would be of use for any reason other than simply having more capacity than their t1 counterparts.

TrouserDeagle wrote:
slower than a jump freighter
more risky than a jump freighter
less cargo than a jump freighter


1/50th the cost of a jump freighter. Has warp core stabilizers, tank, etc.