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[Phoebe] Stealth Bombers

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Momiji Sakora
Omni Galactic
Central Omni Galactic Group
#381 - 2014-10-16 23:03:53 UTC
Seraph IX Basarab wrote:
This is probably one of the first times in recent memory where I just could not see why a change was made to the game. I'm sitting here in complete disappointment at just how bad the majority of these ideas are. I can't say I completely blame you because covops and bombing are an extremely niche play style that many players do not participate in and less even excel at it. While the majority of ships all balance around the idea of dps, mobility and tank, cov ops factors in the mental game more so than any other ship.

There are some staggering bad misconceptions expressed within the thread which I have read through most of but I want to underline and debunk a few because I believe CCP is putting these changes in out of a misunderstanding mostly backed by said misconceptions. Bombers as they are now are perhaps one of the most balanced ships in the game. The only thing I would have done is to add a touch more fitting and mobility to the Nemesis. Bombers are devastating but their paper thin tank allows them to be easily counterable which I will detail.

Furthermore bombers are not only almost completely balanced, but also act as a balancing factor in Eve. They are one of the few ships that curb the N+1 problem. Bring 10,000 ships against me? As long as they are within the radius of the bomb blast, they all die the same. Bombers/cov ops are one of the few ways the "little guy" can stand up to the big powers.

Now some of the bad reasons FOR the changes:

ISBoxing: Although CCP won't say this directly, it seems to be an almost universal opinion here that curbing ISboxing bombers is one of the main reasons for some of these changes. As explained, even by posterchild ISboxer bomber wheniminspace, as well as others, this penalizes individual bomber pilots much more than it does ISboxers. Want to deal with ISboxer? Ban it directly.

No more Shield Battleships: This was spoken by a few people some of which should clearly know better. The main reason for armor bs doctrine dominance is due to the popularity of Archon/Armor triage carriers. NOT because of bombers. Shield BS doctrines were popular long after the cloak changes were made in 2012. Certain groups preferred armor, others shield. PL took over Delve as part of the HBC using Rail Rohks.

No counters?: A few people say there are no counters to bombing runs. Anyone remember insta lock arty canes? I know TEST was running with a good twenty or so in every major fleet. These pilots would have an overview tab that would show bombers and only bombers. The moment something appeared on their overview it was locked and popped. Bombs don't do damage if your bomber dies before it detonates. You can also use frigates such as the combat ceptors or pirate frigs to catch bombers. Not every bombing run is a success. Bubbles already are a strong counter to them as well as a defensive bubble will pull in the bombers and either put them out of place or decloak them.


Bombers are suppose to be nimble evasive frigates designed to provide a counter to the N+1 problem. Making them slower, making them uncloak one another (which was said to be a glitch) and messing with their bomb damage is completely pointless and limits player interaction. Now bombers will only be on grid for the moment it takes them to drop their bomb rather than 150+ away on grid setting up for a run. I urge CCP to reconsider these changes, even scrap the majority of it all together.

So much this ^^^
Ziraili Onzo
Yggdrasil Woodchoppers
#382 - 2014-10-16 23:04:32 UTC
CCP Fozzie wrote:
I think some people came into this thread expecting it to be something completely different, and are therefore disappointed.


I think people got upset because they have known to expect and love your threads on ship balance, based on the fact that you normally give with one hand and take away with the other.. Its balance, its the best way of doing things, i applaud you in your efforts so far. Now Stealth Bombers have a unique role on the battlefield, one that might be a bit too strong right now agreed, but still one that i would hate to see be nerfed to non-existance moving forward.

However, with this change, your showing us what your giving to all other ships to counter bombers (smartbombs, slower align for the bombers themself, longer reaction-time), you then proceed to take away a very big part of the SB's ability to be effective on field, instead of just going in blind and praying they can get the organizational part done that comes before the actual decloak and fire. Then when it comes to the "giving with the one hand"-part, your serving us what can only be classified as horse manure. Might as well "rebalance" T2 logistics ship, reduce their range by 50% and give them a tracking bonus on your whore-gun to replace it.. Thats how useful a HP bonus to a bomber is.

Now, if you want to nerf the current way of not decloaking each other because its making setting up a squad too easy, then i get your point. And i wont argue that it has to stay this way, or else bombers will surely die and all that.. But if your going to take away with one hand, then give us some way of still being able to do that actual organization of our squad/fleet members so we can get our job done. Show our own squad/fleet in space/overview even if they are cloaked or something, at least a minimum of information so that we can effect us getting randomly decloaked or not. Reverting back to the old ways is just silly unless we have some way to control the outcome of a good/bad organized squad.

That being said, just adding the changes to smartbomb-screening for bomb-runs could potentially be enough to offset what i agree to be a too easy way of making a successful bombrun. Its gonna suck enough for the bomber to pull of a good run, only to see the enemy fleet have strategic placed ships at the edges, lighting up with smartbombs and go "denied!!" Throw in all the hoops you have to pass just to not decloak your squad with just a pure luck-based warpin/alignment, reduced agility and longer reaction-time for bombs. You just found the perfect way to tell the players they should do torpedo-only based SBs and just remove bomb-launchers entirely. That unique role in combat SB once had just went from too strong to potentiallgone in 1 patch.
Lugh Crow-Slave
#383 - 2014-10-16 23:10:22 UTC
Deacon Abox wrote:
The decloaking mechanic was there before, and there was plenty of successful bombing going on.



bombs also didn't blow each other up

BLOPS Hauler
The 16.8km Bubble
scorchlikeshiswhiskey
Totally Abstract
O X I D E
#384 - 2014-10-16 23:10:55 UTC
Looks pretty good.

Can we get Ishtars fixed now?
Lugh Crow-Slave
#385 - 2014-10-16 23:15:18 UTC
Seraph IX Basarab wrote:
This is probably one of the first times in recent memory where I just could not see why a change was made to the game. I'm sitting here in complete disappointment at just how bad the majority of these ideas are. I can't say I completely blame you because covops and bombing are an extremely niche play style that many players do not participate in and less even excel at it. While the majority of ships all balance around the idea of dps, mobility and tank, cov ops factors in the mental game more so than any other ship.

There are some staggering bad misconceptions expressed within the thread which I have read through most of but I want to underline and debunk a few because I believe CCP is putting these changes in out of a misunderstanding mostly backed by said misconceptions. Bombers as they are now are perhaps one of the most balanced ships in the game. The only thing I would have done is to add a touch more fitting and mobility to the Nemesis. Bombers are devastating but their paper thin tank allows them to be easily counterable which I will detail.

Furthermore bombers are not only almost completely balanced, but also act as a balancing factor in Eve. They are one of the few ships that curb the N+1 problem. Bring 10,000 ships against me? As long as they are within the radius of the bomb blast, they all die the same. Bombers/cov ops are one of the few ways the "little guy" can stand up to the big powers.

Now some of the bad reasons FOR the changes:

ISBoxing: Although CCP won't say this directly, it seems to be an almost universal opinion here that curbing ISboxing bombers is one of the main reasons for some of these changes. As explained, even by posterchild ISboxer bomber wheniminspace, as well as others, this penalizes individual bomber pilots much more than it does ISboxers. Want to deal with ISboxer? Ban it directly.

No more Shield Battleships: This was spoken by a few people some of which should clearly know better. The main reason for armor bs doctrine dominance is due to the popularity of Archon/Armor triage carriers. NOT because of bombers. Shield BS doctrines were popular long after the cloak changes were made in 2012. Certain groups preferred armor, others shield. PL took over Delve as part of the HBC using Rail Rohks.

No counters?: A few people say there are no counters to bombing runs. Anyone remember insta lock arty canes? I know TEST was running with a good twenty or so in every major fleet. These pilots would have an overview tab that would show bombers and only bombers. The moment something appeared on their overview it was locked and popped. Bombs don't do damage if your bomber dies before it detonates. You can also use frigates such as the combat ceptors or pirate frigs to catch bombers. Not every bombing run is a success. Bubbles already are a strong counter to them as well as a defensive bubble will pull in the bombers and either put them out of place or decloak them.


Bombers are suppose to be nimble evasive frigates designed to provide a counter to the N+1 problem. Making them slower, making them uncloak one another (which was said to be a glitch) and messing with their bomb damage is completely pointless and limits player interaction. Now bombers will only be on grid for the moment it takes them to drop their bomb rather than 150+ away on grid setting up for a run. I urge CCP to reconsider these changes, even scrap the majority of it all together.


Read what this guy is saying

BLOPS Hauler
The 16.8km Bubble
Barrack SquirrelTap
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#386 - 2014-10-16 23:25:35 UTC

  • bombs now require an activation code before being armed, random 4 digit alphanumeric number that must be entered after launch but before detonation



Agreed...Also make defender missiles an anti bomb missile with only light defenders and like 2-3 missiles to destroy a bomb. This would make it so that if you have 3 or 4 DEDICATED ships with a full rack of launchers they could take out a single wave. Kinda like a real life Aegis air defense destroyer. On the flip side you could have every ship in fleet with a launcher slot give up one of those for bomb defense. It would then be a player choice rather than just nerfing bombers. Also a new 1k decloak range (with two cloaked ships) would be a better range for bombers. The 2.5k range makes gate camps, bridging, etc. all equally a pain.
Elyas Crux
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#387 - 2014-10-16 23:35:40 UTC  |  Edited by: Elyas Crux
Lugh Crow-Slave wrote:
Elyas Crux wrote:
Will the new anti-capital void bomb collide with other objects in space or will it just keep travelling the same direction it was fired until it detonates? I think it would be frustrating as hell to see your bomb bounce off your target and explode meters out of range. Also if collidable it would become a viable tactic for a subcapital to ram and deflect bombs off course.

The only other thing I'm left wondering is if you had a perfect aim and a marauder stuck in bastion mode, you could really ruin their day.


i doubt they will but if it would of bounced off your target then you missed anyway because if it doesn't bounce it will go through and miss


Granted if you fired from 6kms away it should go in one side and out the other and miss. But it has an AoE range of 1 meter and 30km range. If I fire at someone 29.5kms away I want to know that the last 500 meters isn't it bouncing back off them and missing.

EDIT:bad math
Kaerakh
Obscure Joke Implied
#388 - 2014-10-16 23:40:31 UTC
Seraph IX Basarab wrote:
This is probably one of the first times in recent memory where I just could not see why a change was made to the game. I'm sitting here in complete disappointment at just how bad the majority of these ideas are. I can't say I completely blame you because covops and bombing are an extremely niche play style that many players do not participate in and less even excel at it. While the majority of ships all balance around the idea of dps, mobility and tank, cov ops factors in the mental game more so than any other ship.

There are some staggering bad misconceptions expressed within the thread which I have read through most of but I want to underline and debunk a few because I believe CCP is putting these changes in out of a misunderstanding mostly backed by said misconceptions. Bombers as they are now are perhaps one of the most balanced ships in the game. The only thing I would have done is to add a touch more fitting and mobility to the Nemesis. Bombers are devastating but their paper thin tank allows them to be easily counterable which I will detail.

Furthermore bombers are not only almost completely balanced, but also act as a balancing factor in Eve. They are one of the few ships that curb the N+1 problem. Bring 10,000 ships against me? As long as they are within the radius of the bomb blast, they all die the same. Bombers/cov ops are one of the few ways the "little guy" can stand up to the big powers.

Now some of the bad reasons FOR the changes:

ISBoxing: Although CCP won't say this directly, it seems to be an almost universal opinion here that curbing ISboxing bombers is one of the main reasons for some of these changes. As explained, even by posterchild ISboxer bomber wheniminspace, as well as others, this penalizes individual bomber pilots much more than it does ISboxers. Want to deal with ISboxer? Ban it directly.

No more Shield Battleships: This was spoken by a few people some of which should clearly know better. The main reason for armor bs doctrine dominance is due to the popularity of Archon/Armor triage carriers. NOT because of bombers. Shield BS doctrines were popular long after the cloak changes were made in 2012. Certain groups preferred armor, others shield. PL took over Delve as part of the HBC using Rail Rohks.

No counters?: A few people say there are no counters to bombing runs. Anyone remember insta lock arty canes? I know TEST was running with a good twenty or so in every major fleet. These pilots would have an overview tab that would show bombers and only bombers. The moment something appeared on their overview it was locked and popped. Bombs don't do damage if your bomber dies before it detonates. You can also use frigates such as the combat ceptors or pirate frigs to catch bombers. Not every bombing run is a success. Bubbles already are a strong counter to them as well as a defensive bubble will pull in the bombers and either put them out of place or decloak them.


Bombers are suppose to be nimble evasive frigates designed to provide a counter to the N+1 problem. Making them slower, making them uncloak one another (which was said to be a glitch) and messing with their bomb damage is completely pointless and limits player interaction. Now bombers will only be on grid for the moment it takes them to drop their bomb rather than 150+ away on grid setting up for a run. I urge CCP to reconsider these changes, even scrap the majority of it all together.


Agreed.
Link to original post if you wanted to find it:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=5125162#post5125162
Feel free to quote.

Schrodinger's Hot Dropper

The Fate of Forum Alts

Guaranteed Success
Trinkets friend
Sudden Buggery
Sending Thots And Players
#389 - 2014-10-16 23:49:49 UTC  |  Edited by: Trinkets friend
The nerf to cloaking is SOLELY to counter the ISBoxing bomber squads. SOLELY this. And therefore, it's not getting reversed because of whining.

The anti-capital bomb with an AOE of 1m. Dude. Fozzie. Mate. How are you supposed to hit anything with this?

lets do a thought game. I am in a Hound with a Cap Void Bomb. I am burning in from 50km away aligned toward my target, who is in triage/siege, blah blah. My bomb has a range of 30,000 +/- 1m. my ship has a speed, for argument's sakes, of 300m/s. I must therefore launch my bomb EXACTLY 30,000m away ffrom my foe!

From 30km away if you launch it 1/300th of a second late or early, you miss.

OH BUT WAT IS DIS?

The server tick is 1 second! So does it launch on the server tick, or does the server (plus/minus 8-200m/s lag for Interwebs) calculate it on the actual milllisecond you press the key?

Given the reaction time of the human being is 1/30th of a second, and you have 200ms lag, you have precisely ZERO chance of landing a bomb within <1m of anything at 30km range. Hurr durr!

OK, so given a capital is a big ship, are we now saying that the bomb lands inside the foe? Or what?

TL;DR 1,000m AEO for bombs, minimum, to make them practical.

Me using a capital void bomb.

~~ Localectomy Blog ~~
Lugh Crow-Slave
#390 - 2014-10-17 00:00:38 UTC
Trinkets friend wrote:
The nerf to cloaking is SOLELY to counter the ISBoxing bomber squads. SOLELY this. And therefore, it's not getting reversed because of whining.

The anti-capital bomb with an AOE of 1m. Dude. Fozzie. Mate. How are you supposed to hit anything with this?

lets do a thought game. I am in a Hound with a Cap Void Bomb. I am burning in from 50km away aligned toward my target, who is in triage/siege, blah blah. My bomb has a range of 30,000 +/- 1m. my ship has a speed, for argument's sakes, of 300m/s. I must therefore launch my bomb EXACTLY 30,000m away ffrom my foe!

From 30km away if you launch it 1/300th of a second late or early, you miss.

OH BUT WAT IS DIS?

The server tick is 1 second! So does it launch on the server tick, or does the server (plus/minus 8-200m/s lag for Interwebs) calculate it on the actual milllisecond you press the key?

Given the reaction time of the human being is 1/30th of a second, and you have 200ms lag, you have precisely ZERO chance of landing a bomb within <1m of anything at 30km range. Hurr durr!

OK, so given a capital is a big ship, are we now saying that the bomb lands inside the foe? Or what?

TL;DR 1,000m AEO for bombs, minimum, to make them practical.



yeah and even if you are holding still the overview and even the overlay aren't exact but i would like to see these explode on impact. delay the warhead (so you can't just do it from 2km) but make it so if it hits its target say after it's gone 25-26km then it goes off.

or to make coding easier just make it a radius of 500m-1km

i love the idea of single target bombs and want to see this test run a success so we can see more like it.

in another note do you know when we will see these on SiSi so we can find out just how hard it will be to hit something?

BLOPS Hauler
The 16.8km Bubble
FT Diomedes
The Graduates
#391 - 2014-10-17 00:05:17 UTC
Chiimera wrote:
Great work killing bombing runs completely.

Cloaked ships decloaking other cloaked ships would be fine IF fleet members could actually tell where each other are.


As I said before, this is a terrible change. Chimera has explained why. Please go back to the drawing board.

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

baltec1
Bat Country
Pandemic Horde
#392 - 2014-10-17 00:14:36 UTC
FT Diomedes wrote:
Chiimera wrote:
Great work killing bombing runs completely.

Cloaked ships decloaking other cloaked ships would be fine IF fleet members could actually tell where each other are.


As I said before, this is a terrible change. Chimera has explained why. Please go back to the drawing board.


A whole host of ships are now viable again.
Sjaandi HyShan
Overheated Industries
#393 - 2014-10-17 00:19:42 UTC
If the steal bomber is mainly being converted to a destroyer, why not actually make it one? The skill train is the same, you are slowing the warp and align time and increasing the HP (which is basically a destroyer in all but name). The destroyer line is lonely with only Interdictors as the T2 variants, with the Frigate line being overrepresented in T2. And now with the smaller bubble, the ships seem to be made to pit against each other.
Driler Nolm
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#394 - 2014-10-17 00:20:07 UTC
hey Fozzie. instead of slowly making bombers more useless. Why not spare us bomber pilots that pain and just throw all the stealth bombers in the trashcan. Thanks for NOTHING. Decloaking?? stupid. 12 second flight time? really? And by the way, a bomb is a dumb weapon and once deployed, it should STILL blow up even if the ship is dead.Evil You must not have EVER flown a stealth bomber in a small fleet, it is already very difficult to organize.
Catherine Laartii
Doomheim
#395 - 2014-10-17 00:24:29 UTC
Please change the Purifier into a Khanid ship. It uses missiles as a primary weapon and that's all the justification we need. Thank you.
FT Diomedes
The Graduates
#396 - 2014-10-17 00:30:46 UTC
Kalissis wrote:
CCP Fozzie wrote:
These changes are intended to make it easier for fleets to counter bombers (whether the bombers are isboxed or not) and to make organization of characters valuable again for bombing. Organization of pilots is made easier in a lot of ways with isboxer, but that has always been true and isn't some new phenomenon coming from these changes.

We'll be watching these changes very carefully on SISI, and if this hits bombers too hard we can easily make adjustments. We do not want to "headshot" bombers, and we don't currently believe that these changes make them unviable.

I think some people came into this thread expecting it to be something completely different, and are therefore disappointed.

If you want to discuss our policies surrounding isboxer that is fine, but there are other threads for that.


Bombing runs should be nerfed, that is understandable. But please rethink the sig radius change, it makes them useless in all the other applications that bombers are used for. You can't compete against cruisers and below anyway anymore with bombers why make this even worse? Nerf bombing it's fine, but please give them some more fighting abilities.


Seriously. Have you ever used a bomber to try to solo a ratter? You already have to deal with the hostile DPS and the rats will aggro you almost immediately because you have electronic warfare.

On the other hand, my interdictor pilot will love killing all those slow to align bombers.

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

FT Diomedes
The Graduates
#397 - 2014-10-17 00:33:38 UTC
Herrin Asura wrote:
progodlegend wrote:

Or actually welcome to how every bombing run worked before the cloak changes.


And EVERYONE was HAPPY that these times changed.

Why? Because Bombers sucked back then.


This.

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

baltec1
Bat Country
Pandemic Horde
#398 - 2014-10-17 00:36:53 UTC
FT Diomedes wrote:
Herrin Asura wrote:
progodlegend wrote:

Or actually welcome to how every bombing run worked before the cloak changes.


And EVERYONE was HAPPY that these times changed.

Why? Because Bombers sucked back then.


This.


Wrong. You want useless bombers? Lets go back to when they spat out cruise missiles and bombs did less damage than a wet fart.
Monkeynipple Salad
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#399 - 2014-10-17 00:40:41 UTC
All these people saying the new cap void bomb is impossible to hit because it's 1m range.
Has it not occured to you that capital ships (especially ****) are rather large, and that bombs don't have collision? As long as the bomb goes off INSIDE the gigantic hitbox of the ship that is several km long (or within 1m) it works.

While it will certainly be harder then hitting with a normal bomb, it far away from being impossible, especially on **** that isn't moving.
Ronin Silfar
Our Big Spaceship Gang
#400 - 2014-10-17 00:54:02 UTC
Monkeynipple Salad wrote:
All these people saying the new cap void bomb is impossible to hit because it's 1m range.
Has it not occured to you that capital ships (especially ****) are rather large, and that bombs don't have collision? As long as the bomb goes off INSIDE the gigantic hitbox of the ship that is several km long (or within 1m) it works.

While it will certainly be harder then hitting with a normal bomb, it far away from being impossible, especially on **** that isn't moving.


I was thinking the same thing, but figured I was just missing some crucial element since no one had pointed it out yet.