Player Features and Ideas Discussion

One thing that could be done to fix the issue with HAC balance is to rearrange some of the slot layouts on specifically the Ishtar, Vagabond, and Muninn.

The Ishtar having a 4/5/5 slot layout means that it can easily shield tank and apply more of the low slots to damage modules. Moving one mid to the low for a 4/4/6 will make it so that if you are going to shield tank it you have to sacrifice having Drone Tracking Units.

The problem with both the Muninn and Vagabond is that they have a 6th high that is nearly useless because they don't have the hard points to mount any bonused turrets and are forced to leave it empty to save resources or put useless or highly situational items in the slot like a non-bonused turret, smart bomb, or cloak. The Muninn should have enough mid slots to be able to shield tank and not be forced to armor tank, and the Vagabond should be a 5/5/5 because then you can at least get a reasonable shield tank on it while fitting a MWD and Web/Scram/Point.

There is a reason that of all the HACs in game the ones you see the least are the Minmatar ones.

well the point of a HAC as defined by Rise .. is as a resilient cruiser .. yet its quicker than a stabber the fastest attack cruiser .. attack being about speed and all .. and just look at the other HAC's too see how slow they are compared too there attack cruiser T1 variants they are based on...

The vaga should trade some 20m/s -30 m/s for more shield HP

Well the old Vaga was also much faster than its current form. The big part of my issue with the Muninn though is that CCP is supposedly making Minmatar more shield focused, especially considering that their logi is all shield focused, but then they have ships like the Muninn and the Wolf that have to be armor tanked, because they lose mid slots in favor of a utility/missile high.

The problem with the Vaga is that ACs suck. The hull and bonuses itself are fine. Name one ship that primarily fits ACs that isn't terrible. That pretty much leaves you with just the Sabre.

Blasters with Null, let alone lasers with Scorch, project damage and track better than ACs. At the range where blaster DPS goes under AC DPS, the DPS of ACs is so low it doesn't matter anymore. It's the same problem lasers and ACs have before you get T2 ammo, blasters outdamage them until the DPS is so low it's irrelevant. It's the main reason Gallente is more popular than Amarr and Minmatar combined, their weapon systems (hybrids and drones) are actually functional at T1, so newer players have to pick them if they actually want to kill anything.

Except at 20km, a vaga cannot break the deimos' tank with `300dps (with 2 TE/2 Gyro) unless its buffer or single MAAR fit. This also doesn't include rail deimos' that are getting more and more common, which would generally shoot into the vaga's kinetic hole, and easily force it off or kill it.



Hmm.. so the t2 version of the t1 is faster, you don't say? And what role do all those t1 ships of other races have? The stabber is the fast one, the caracal is tanky anti-support, the vexor/thorax is brawler, and omen/maller is a split, super tank and anti-support. If you look at their counterparts, the vagabond is fast, cerb is tanky and excel as nuking frigs, the deimos brawls **** down, the ishtar.. well you know, the sac has an amazing resist profile with potential for good tank. If anything, the moa/eagle should be reconsidered, as the moa is a brawler, and eagle is a long range sniper.

The point of a HAC is to be more than just a "resilient cruiser", otherwise we'd have cookie cutter sac's for every race. They're to fill a specific role, the vaga's is being one of the fastest HAC's and fighting in fall-off.

Yea, and the other HAC's are performing their specified roles, where speed isn't necessarily part of that role. They outperform the vagabond in those roles. As an example, the deimos and lesser extent sac, are some of the best brawlers, and vagabond couldn't brawl to save its life, unless you sink 400-500m in fits and implants, and even then, its subpar. Mainly because you're trying to do something with the ship that isn't intended for its role.

And as of right now, the "fastest" part is questionable, scyfi, nomen, Nosprey, cynabal, orthus are all knocking on the vaga's door or blowing right past it. For a T2 that specializes in being fast, it doesn't seem to be that unique or special when other ships can do it just as well.

Don't even know what to say to your last sentence there.. make the fast hac slower, but give it more EHP.. that goes against everything for its intended role. If the vaga gets any slower, many other ships in the game will overtake it easily, and that extra shield HP isn't going to save you. The tank of the vaga is mainly its speed, you neuter that, and you might as well redo the entire ship. As it would need more mids to brawl effectively. At which point, they should just make the muninn a minmatar brawler, since no one uses it for its intended role anyway.

Why do you want to make all the naturally fast minmatar ships armor tankers? If anything it should lose a low and gain a mid.

the HAC tweaks are fine.

seriously though, if you're going to slow the tempest down speed the maelstrom the **** up.

CCP why don't you spend more time to create balance by releasing new ships more than nerfing existing one?

The constant tweaking of ships etc to make them all pretty much equal should be carried to its logical conclusion by CCP.

One ship type of each class, no ship allowed to have even a slight inbuilt advantage over another, just different skins so folk can feel that their ship is 'different' to the others.

Further to this, each ship class should only be allowed to fight ships of the same class in equal number fights.

Finally, Eve Online should be renamed as - Vanilla Online.

Seriously. This seems to be where things are headed. It's sad.