Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Agreed, no one said these hulls or subsystems were going to be cheap either, and that's something that's often overlooked in balancing discussions - the isk to performance ratio.

It's usually ignored because cost is not a balancing factor.

I can see this happening

When you were mining Veld in an Osprey 20m isk is supposed to be a huge chunk to you. Ratting in null is intended to make that in a few minutes because you have not only invested a decent amount of time in the game to get the SP to do so but you also invested expensive assets and put them at risk to do so. You don't rat in your Osprey you used to mine in do you?

Eve has it's progression just like any other game, and the open market has done a good job of balancing the cost of ships to their effectiveness at earning isk with a scant few exceptions. Why would a new set of subsystems and hulls be any different?

Isk is not constant, which is why the market experiences inflation and fluctuations in prices. Are null alliances going to find it worth their while to triple the cost of their T3 doctrines for the benefit these subsystems and hulls offer? Not very likely. Blinging out your T3 will always remain something individuals who earn a lot of isk by using that T3 in high reward situations do as a simple means of splurging.

Solo Ratting Tengu's that wander around in Wormholes come to mind as the most prominent example of this. They see an average price range of 1.2 to 1.8 bil in C3's and C4's, because they make a silly amount of isk right up until the moment the pilot stops checking D-scan.

Production? Who said anything about production? These are pirate faction, bud. How many pirate faction items get mass produced?

Look at the prices of other faction items. Market seems to be doing well with them, and there are quite a few of them that are punitively expensive and only necessary for E-peen and hilarious killmails.

True Sansha, Shadow, Domination, Dread Gurista, all of these faction items, plus deadspace items, are drop only in either anomalies or combat signatures that need to be probed down. There's no problem with making the subsystems, or the materials required to make the subsystems, drop in the same way.

Pirate ship BPC's come from two sources: The LP store and drops. Every other ship BPO or BPC can be acquired by other means. The cost in the LP store directly controls the prices of the ships though, with the exception of Mordu's legion for the present day because of various reasons.

Ever manufactured a pirate ship? It costs peanuts compared to the BPC. Literally 80-90% of the cost is the BPC, and that cost will not fluctuate by any significant degree unless something drastic happens to the value of the LP for that faction.

Should faction subsystems be implemented, I'd expect them to cost as much as a standard T3 hull at a minimum, and that cost is easily achieved by drop rates. Should pirate hulls be implemented, I full expect them to match or exceed pirate BS hulls in price. 100% achievable if prices are dictated through the LP store, but if they are drop only (which would make more sense) expect them to be ridiculously expensive collector's items.

Translation:

I am powah creep, gives mah more powah to zee most op ships in zee game, ditch zee rest.

Zee End

Actually, a buff on some area's of T3's would be a good thing.
Only certain combinations of T3's are OP (Mainly their Cov Ops/Probing config & their ubber tank/DPS config options)
A lot of the combinations are badly under powered.

But yea... before we add to T3's lets get them fixed first.

So your reasoning is that if it's Pirate based it should be drop and LP store only. My argument is that they would be both Pirate and T3 based, so they should be procured through a combination of drops and production.

And CCP does not set a value on LP, players do. There are very, very few items on the market that CCP decides the price of. The majority of those are BPO's, Skill Books and other items linked to NPC buy and sell orders.

Yes, I have built Pirate BS's, the current production cost makes up about 20% of the actual market value, but that has changed. It used to be less than 10% a year ago. The BS rebalances changed the values and the Pirate ship rebalancing changed it more.

How is the value of a T3 hull or its subsystems decided? They are totally decided by the producers as there is no LP store or drop rate for them, only their materials.

Also, you state that Pirate T3 gear should cost equal or more than regular T3 gear, but that would only really be the case if it was a significant improvement over the origionals. However, when you actually look at the bonuses that Pirate vessels have, they equate to a mixture of specialised subsystems that are available to each of the races.
Take the Vindicator, it has bonuses to Hyrbid damage and tracking, (like the Proteus offesive options,) but it also has a web effectiveness bonus, (similar to the Loki's web range bonus.)


So, looking at it, pirate T3's - by the very nature of T3 - would need to be more adaptable and powerful versions of their cruiser equivelants. That does make them over powered. Yet, if they are not more adaptable then there would be no point in them. I guess that, even though they would be very cool, they would just be too versatile and too powerful...

The only reasonable option then would be to provide a single Subsytem for each Pirate group that could be integrated into a specific hull to change the way the ship works, but not so significantly that it would be game breaking.

As examples:
A defensive Sansha sub for the Legion that gives shield tanking bonuses and mids, but also an Afterburner bonus.
An offensive Guristas sub the Tengu that opens up drone capabilities with minor missile bonuses.
An electronic Serpentis sub for the Proteus that gives a bonus to web effectiveness.

Crucially, these subs would prevent insane combinations like a proteus with a warp disruption and web bonuses, as well as bonuses to close range DPS. It would also be important to limit the use of the subs to "One pirate subsystem per T3 hull" to also prevent potential cross overs.

And it is a shame that the Mordu's ships had to be Caldari/Gallente rather than the origionally intended Caldari/Minmatar. I am hopeful there will be a new group though that focuses on that combination.