Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Ups, sorry, never checked the sig radius, of my bombs ... 400 °°. Never registered, since Samrtboms, environment aoe and exploding structures like in ghost sites all do the same agai9nst all and sig radius is never considered. Well, I assumed wrong, ususally use torps or rockets on my SB - Sorry ,)

I can see destroyer-sized stealth bombers easily, where as the purifier and the like are a F117 Nighthawk, a destroyer sized could be a B2 spirit (Ok physically it looks atleast battlecruiser sized but still)

Hence the like 2500 EHP destroyer hulls I proposed. Give them a penalty to agility compared to the T1 hulls (just like bombers have low agility), and the scan resolution I proposed limits them to attacking battleships and up in practical terms, generally only capitals. At 100 scan resolution, it takes around 5 seconds to lock a dread, and around 9 seconds to lock a battleships, but it's almost 15 seconds on a cruiser, and over 20 seconds on a frigate (citadel torps also do around 2% DPS against a stationary frigate). That makes them incredibly potent against capitals, because they can hit hard and can't really be hit back, but makes them incredibly vulnerable to sub-cap groups (and drones from carriers). Essentially the same advantages and disadvantages as a torp-fit bomber, except one size category up.

The point is to decloak on a capital and burst it in about 30-60 seconds, then GTFO. Against loan capitals, it'll be incredibly effective, but since it'll still take 30-60 seconds to burst one down, and even cruisers can volley these things off field, subcapital escorts are a hard counter (and therefore become a thing for capitals), and that encourages more subcapital fights with capitals on field.

I also specifically avoided any bomb-related effects for my proposed version, because bombers already do that well enough, and more powerful, larger, or more bombs per hull are just not something we need.

T2 bombs - bigger sig penalty - more raw damage -> caps get hurt / subs survive

They'll have to use the same hardpoints as current, unless they design a new model, so they'll probably just miniaturize the launcher model like they did with Torps for bombers. As far as the numbers to, 7 versus 3 is largely irrelevant, as the end goal is the DPS. 7 launchers means more ammo per refill, however, which means cargo space can actually be a limiting component. Harder to do with only 3 launchers.

I went for 4500 because that's about 1/3rd of a sieged dread. Too little raw DPS, and these risk never being used because of the flimsy tank (barely better than a T1 frigate). 4500 would allow a wing of 10 to take out a dread or carrier in 30-60 seconds (longer if they are sieged/triaged for better reps).

I actually very intentionally made their RoF high and tried to keep their volley damage. I didn't want to risk these being used as pure alpha-strike ships except in very large numbers, but wanted them to have fairly high DPS. Citadel Torps have insanely long refire rates (longer than a battleship's Cruise Launcher, almost as long as artillery). The rate of fire bonus also allows ammo type swapping with only the 25% damage bonus being lost, rather than the 75% loss on regular bombers.

I very intentionally was trying to make sure they were vulnerable to frigates. That's their counter. I didn't want them to have solid defenses against frigates because that makes them too hard to block. A wing of intercepters accompanying your capitals should be sufficient to ward these off.



Erm, I think your math is wrong, or you annotated the numbers incorrectly. In my build, All V's grants -50% refire interval, +25% damage, on 7 turrets. That's (7 * 1.25) / (1 - 0.5) = 17.5 effective turrets. Yours gives a 25% RoF penalty, and 500% increased damage, on 3 turrets. That's (7 * 6) / (1 + 0.25) = 14.4 effective turrets. Since mine is at ~4500 DPS, yours should be a ~3700, not 2500.

Also, 2500 means that it would take a wing of 10 of these around 50 seconds to burn through a non-sieged Moros with just a meta repper and a faction EANM. Against a Moros with 2 faction EANMs, a meta repper, and a DC2, it would take them about 90 seconds. That's a LOT of time to scramble reinforcements. These were intended to ensure subcapital escorts on capitals, not to give people something to scramble to. They are hit-and-fade craft, so they need to do their work quickly.



Rank 9 seems a bit high. Covert Ops is only rank 4. Recon is 6. I'd say these should be 6-8 at the most.

Unless I'm doing something wrong, T2 siege, 3 Meta Torps, faction ammo, and 2 T2 BCSes puts a Phoenix at 9523 DPS. I *was* calculating my DPS totals for my build with meta launchers and faction ammo, btw. With T1 launchers and T1 ammo, mine only do 3700 DPS, instead of 4500.

The sensor recalibration, if that's what you mean, doesn't exist for these. These are designed to pounce, burn a capital down, and then warp off or cloak back up, just like current bombers do with battlecruisers and battleships. Sitting on field for 90+ seconds burning down a capital doesn't fit their intended role.

I actually prefer them to NOT have turrets without sacrifice. I'm fine with them having turret slots, if they want, but they need to sacrifice something for it. Current bombers can't have more than 1 turret without dropping a cloak or torp launcher, and that turret precludes the use of a bomb launcher or probe launcher. These should either have 8 slots (7 launchers, 1 cloak) or 4 slots (3 launchers, 1 cloak), with 2-3 turret hardpoints so they can be fit point-defense if you needed.

I seem to remember doing a size comparison at one point, but I may be mis-remembering. In any case, new model or not, the number of turrets is largely irrelevant to the actual balance. The important features for balance are DPS, volley damage, and total ammo capacity.

I personally preferred higher DPS and lower volley damage, with the limiting factoring being ammunition and tank. These would then be hit-and-run craft with very little staying power, both in their ability to remain on grid against counter-attack, and their ability to maintain their DPS long-term without an ammo truck. Their tactical use would be to find vulnerable capitals without substantial anti-subcap escort, pounce, burn down the target capital, and escape. Defenses would include just about anything cruiser or large, and even most frigate, as well as the normal firewalling techniques against Phoenix (note that my proposed Albatross gains no missile velocity bonus, so firewalls are very effective against kiting gangs of Albatross).

I chose the DPS I did because I wanted a gang of 10 (single squad) to be able to burn down a relatively tanky-fit capitals with self-reps in no more than about a minute (note that this is already 2-3 times as long as it takes a gang of 10 bombers to burn down a buffer-fit battleship).

The DPS provided is also at maximum skills in a ship with at least a 6-8 rank skill with meta launchers (200m each) using faction missiles (8k each). With 7 launchers, that's 1.4b just in weapons, plus 1m isk per full reload on the launchers.

Actually, that alone may make your argument of having fewer launchers reasonable. 3 launchers would make these about 600m each with metas, or 200m each with T1, plus hull cost (Dictor hulls are worth 40-50m). Could even drop it down to 2 launchers for 150-400m plus hull cost.

Now, assuming 2 T2 BCSs, a meta CTorp with faction ammo does 253 DPS and 3617 alpha before bonuses, and a T1 with T1 ammo does 207 and 3288, respectively. if we retain my refire rate (under the argument that these need to do high DPS, not high alpha, for their intended role, and high alpha has more potential to cause issues when shooting under their target class), that gives us 506 DPS or 414 DPS per launcher, before DPS bonuses, with alpha remaining the same. This also gives a refire interval of 7.14s and 7.93s, for meta and T1 launchers, respectively, at all V skills. For reference, T2 Torpedo Launchers at all V's with 3 BCSs on a Purifier are at 7.58s refire, so these would be in the same playground.

Now, 4500 DPS with the meta/faction combination would give us 3700 DPS with t1/t1. If we aim for that, we need a total of 8.9 effective launchers after the refire rate benefit (17.8 actual effective launchers, since the refire rate doubles effective launchers). That means + 197% damage at 3 launchers, or +345% damage at 2 launchers.

I rather favor simply rounding those up to 200% and 350%. That said, one point is that we rarely see more than a 50% increase in DPS potential between level 0 and level 5. Bombers are one of the few with more (at 75% total), excluding capital bonuses. I also rather like the idea of the RoF bonus being rolled in to the hull from level 0 (so innate or Destroyer skill), so ammo consumption doesn't become more punitive as players level up the skill.

If we roll in the RoF bonus baseline (10% per destroyer level), and also limit the Heavy Bomber skill to no more than 15% per level (75% overall, like the normal bombers), the optimal pattern is a 100% damage increase at 3 launchers or 200% damage increase with 2 launchers, plus 10% per Heavy Bomber level. The equivalent with 15% per HB level is +71.4% and 157.1% innate, which doesn't round nicely.

We could then go with:



That gives a total DPS of 4554 with meta launchers, kinetic faction torps, and all V skills. With only IV in HB and Citadel Torp skills, 4080.

It wouldn't be allowed through hi-sec either. Where as with a bomber you can just say no bombs but you still use the hull and other systems.

Maybe my experiences are colored by wormhole, but our dreads do somewhere around twice the damage you're implying for a dread. Our escalation Moros drop 14k pretty easily (hence why I went with 4500, just under 1/3rd of a Moros).

Perhaps I've been overestimating. It's been a long time since I was in null, and even when I was there, I never played with the capital warfare aspects (that was back when Goonswarm's alpha fleet was still a thing).



Precisely why I favored a RoF bonus over a damage bonus. My suggested version only has a volley damage, at all V's with meta launchers and faction ammo, of 32k. Where yours might require 45, mine would require 70. At around half a bill each (including the cost of the launchers), that's not an insignificant investment, particularly when that half a bill only has the EHP of a lightly tanked frigate.



Your standard T2-fit bomber costs around 40m and does 5250-5550 volley (3 BCS Purifier/Hound using Rage at all V's is 5547. Manticore/Nemesis with 2 BCS is 5248). To volley a 150k EHP buffer battleship, assuming equal resists, you'd need just under 30 bombers, for a total cost point of 1.2b, roughly 6 times the value of a T1 BS. Losing ~5-6 bombers would make your loses equal to or greater than the battleship being volleyed.

Comparable, with the heavy bombers proposed, you have two models: T1 and meta launchers. With the T1 version, volley damage is about 29k, ship cost would be ~200m for a 2-launcher version or ~275m for a 3-launcher version. Meta version volleys for 32k for a ship cost of ~465m for 2 launcher and 670m for 3 launcher.

To volley a 2m EHP dread, you'd need 70 T1s or 63 T2s. That's a cost investment of 14 or 19b for T1s (for 2 and 3 launcher version respectively), and 29b or 42b for meta (respectively). Assuming our Moros to be around 3.5b in total cost (couple faction EANMs and meta guns and repper), that puts a minimum investment of 4 times the value of the target hull, and also requires twice the people as the bomber wing. A 3-launcher T1 version is 5.5 times the value of the target hull, and a meta-fit version is 8.3 times and 12 times, for 2 and 3 launcher version respectively.

That makes these substantially more personnel and value intensive than a standard bomber fleet. Their MO will most likely be DPS burns, not alpha fleets, purely due to the logistics of moving around that many people and value. Whelping a fleet like this will be a rather painful event, akin to whelping a half-dozen to dozen dreads.

I mean, if a hostile alliance brings in a fleet of 15 of these instead of 5 dreads, drop a dictor on them and laugh as your interceptor fleet whelps 3-10b worth of ships (depending on meta fittings and number of launchers). Declines the necessity of a capital escalation, and instead see more subcapital combat. These would also be extraordinarily vulnerable to bombs.

Give it a rapid launcher with a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooog reload time (several minutes.) This will encourage use for hit and run actions and not for grinding.

And a small cargo/ammo bay.

This is a good point. This option, probably the best option, is to have an entirely new module for this class. Have it hold 4 torps? And give it a reload time in the 2-minute range. With this, the need be concerned about raw DPS is gone. It makes sense anyway, that a capital-mod just isn't going to be fitted to a frigate that's probably the same size as the launcher itself.

This launcher could look awesome too: Have it hold 4 big torps outside the ship on pylons!