Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hi CCP Fozzie.

After a couple of days of thinking about the changes i've come to the conclusion that they are abit overkill, even for a bomber hater like me. My main concerns are the sig + align nerfs, and the 12 second bomb time.

12 second bombs

I realise this was implemented because you want to get some team work between bubblers, tacklers and bombers. I usually fly a bubbler and HAC/ Tech 3 fleets are a nightmare to fly against, they have good tracking and usually run with recons and kite out away from fleets. The result is that any tackler that gets within 40km of them stands out like a sore thumb and is melted. I have in the past flown bubblers with combat probes to combat these kind of fleets, however bubbles are destroyed by 1 bomb leaving HICs as the only really option to stop people warping off (outside void bombs, which only for a few seconds). And HICs, with their bubble up, are prime targets and melted in fleet fights. As a result i strongly believe that successful bomb runs on cruiser sized line ships are now almost impossible with the ample time to warp off.

Sig radius and align time.

Bombers are really hard to catch, at the moment they spend prehaps 5 seconds on field and are gone. It takes a bit of luck or a bomber FC without a bubblers tab to destroy an entire wing. Your other 'Counter' alternatives are insta-lock alpha based alternatives and fast lock inties, for which bombers fit 1 WCS. However the 1/3 nerf to sig radius and extra second align combined are pretty ridiculous, now HACs and Tech 3 cruisers will be able to lock and shoot bombers, considering that perfect warpouts are no longer existant, which is kind of really dumb, considering the move away from battleships towards these cruiser sized hulls.

That's what i think was done wrong with the proposed changes. Nerfing bombers damage application and survivability so hard is a receipe for disaster, bomber wings will be largely ineffective in large fights and if they do go in for a bomb run then they can expect to lose half their wing.

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Proposed changes to the changes

So like everyone in the world at the moment, ive got a few thoughts on how these could be improved.

1. Turn defender missiles into anti bomb missiles.

Changes the code, or just make a new 'anti bomb' missile that targets the closest bomb. To stop them hard countering bombers they should only be allowed to attempt to shoot that first closest missile. Ie. Everyone launches their anti-bomb missiles at once, they kill 1 bomb, however if launched over say 9 seconds they can get prehaps 3 bombs. I figure maybe 10k speed or so to limit the damage to bombs to at max 3 bombs destroyed per a 7 wave bomb run. This allows players to punish lazy bombers operating by bombing 1 squad at a time and incentivises people to co-ordinate bomber wings to deliver payloads at the same time to maximise damage (which also increases the chance of a bomber squad decloaking next to a sabre :p ). Also, defender missiles worth using and not wasted SP. Reddit seemed to show strong support the idea of defender missiles working against bombs.

2. Revert the bomb timers to 10 seconds.

I feel that bombers should be allowed to bomb cruiser sized targets, like HACs and Tech 3 cruisers. At present it is impossible to land a bomb run on them if they are not bubbled and don't want to get bombed. For a good example of how this interplay between HACs and bombers atm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv9ZxX42lhk (Dances with bombers video, not sure if links are allowed on this forum)

3. Change the Sig / agility changes.

Bombers don't need a 1/3rd extra sig radius and an extra second align. Cut down the sig radius nerf, it hurts, alot. Just rebalance these numbers essentially. Personally i like the idea of having to fit a sebo or sig amp on a cruiser to target stealth bombers before they warp out after a run (unless they are like doing a 180 turn) as a limit to the nerfing, effectively line ships should not be countering bombers without compromising on their fittings is the logic behind that. Balance HP increases accordingly.

4. MJD changes

A little noticed change in the current proposals is that you can sort of counter bombs with MJDs if you are fast enough. When MJDs came out alot of people were excited about this but the spool up time made it pretty much impossible. I think that this would be a positive change so support a change to the reduction of spool up times of MJDs to help Battlecruisers and Battleships, which are in a bad way in fleet fights at the moment without the speed to get out of bubbles and avoid being bombed, as well as warp changes.

5. Reinstate a longer bomber time/ Revert the cloaking changes.

I really like the cloaking changes but as a balance suggestion introducing a sort of hard counter (defender missiles) and cloakies decloaking each other is such a heavy nerf. Bring back the old bombing ways, re-increase/ nerf the timer of bombs so it's not a 70 second a bomb 0.0 and there's abit more time between runs.

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If you're reading this post Fozzie you're probably like 'Not another of these 'know everything, balance it like this' posts. So, whatever. Maybe there is an idea or two in there you think is good and the rest are bat sh*t crazy. *shrugs*

Ps. i liked the other changes to bombers and HICs.

I am not in favorable of targetable bombs, for me that's a total counter that requires very little effort, and it's not worth bombing if your effect on the battle is zero and you don't have a chance to get on some kills, and by extension bombers would be worthless, which isn't balanced or fun.

Strongly disagree on the 12 seconds, for above stated purposes. HACs and Tech 3 cruisers are already difficult to bomb, and able to warpout for the most part unless void bombs are being used. MJDs in PvP they are the 'get out button' when your fleet is going down or needs a reposition, adding in that option to evade bombs with a disciplined fleet and quick thinking removes that get out option for Fleets for the cool down period, so it's a cool little trade with lots to go wrong if people MJD too late and catch a bomb with 500% sig radius

Ty for feedback, it's appreciated :)

AGREED ....... this is madness!

REPLY TO:

1) BOMBS SHOULD NOT BE TARGETABLE - but hey your kill boards look like you rather be flying smaller ships that attack bomber pilots. Bombers only have the element of surprise to help get kills. Now you want to shoot the only real damage they do !!

2.) In small fleet bomber roams (what i mainly do) only pilot who are half asleep get caught by bombs mostly. So why give them more time to get away?

I guess I should have been more explanatory when I made that graphic.

The bombers are already cloaked off-grid. You simply warp to default at an off grid BM, and since they are all now 5km apart, you can recloak them if needed.

Align all the bombers to the on-grid BM/spotter.

Then you warp ISBomber 1 (the one with a default warp range of 0) to the on-grid BM/spotter (who would of course have to leave or be moving away at a decent speed as soon as ISBomber1 initiates warp so as to not decloak on arrival). A second or two afterwards you send ISBomber 2 (whose default is 5km). Few seconds later, #3, wait, #4, wait, #5... until they all arrive in a nice little line, and are still cloaked since they didn't share a warp tunnel. They won't all land at once, but the lag from the first to the last bomber would only be 15seconds, or less.

Can you see now how the cloaking nerf does nothing to harm ISBoxer but it DOES harm everyone else who uses a cloaking ship?

Oh and if you think the bomb damage will be crippled because they're all "spread out" let's examine it, shall we?

If the middle bomber is exactly 30km from the center of the target blob, then the ones at the end (#1 and #7) would be ~33.541km from the center. So 3.5km short for the outlier bombers. Could someone who actually flies bombers and uses bombs on a daily basis tell me if this would cripple your run? I don't think it will.

This post brought to you by Players Against Cludgey Changes and the Pythagorean Theorem.

So what you're saying is that we just leave this all as proposed and "if" the ISBoxers adapt, which we know they will, then revisit it? Because you know that they aren't going to test it on SiSi, they'll wait for it to go live. You said yourself that it'll be a one-time effort to set up, then they'll just continue on, business as usual. Is it really worth even considering that they won't immediately make that one-time effort, then share the setup with everyone they know that also uses ISBoxer to bomb? Then we're right back where we started, except that individually controlled fleets are further behind than before.

Why not be proactive for once and head the problem off before it happens, rather than letting it happen, then thinking about fixing it. Because we all know that once it's in, it'll be a lot more difficult to convince CCP to revert it.

-EDIT-
Oh, and even if the decloak change were to discourage ISBoxer bombing, even in the slightest, (which it won't) you're still forgetting about the fact that you're not just affecting SBs with the change. You're screwing with EVERY cloaky ship in the game, from scouts, to T3s, Recons, Black Ops, the works! All in the name of a "fix" that won't actually fix the problem in the first place.

No, I think we should be holding a logical and open discussion and I have asked for input, summarized said input, presented it here and then taken it to CCP, THAT is what I do.

Nut this change discussion is about stealth bombing and (a point a lot of you are ignoring) stealth in general. Not ISBoxer.

Discuss the issues on the table and try to avoid designing the way a multiboxer will work his way around it.

m

Unless, of course, you include almost any combat fleet that flies in a wormhole. EVER. But then, wormholes aren't null sec, so they don't matter.

The point that I, and many others, are trying to make, that seems to be missed, is that the cloaking change affects a great deal more ships than just bombers. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it affects all those others ships in a more meaningful way, since they contribute highly to a way of life in wormholes. You can't simply have cloaked ships decloak each other without giving them a way to avoid it.

If I'm cloaked, watching a wormhole with my fleetmates, waiting for a target, or stalking a target in a site, how am I supposed to avoid accidentally decloaking them, or them decloaking me, if I haven't the foggiest idea where they are?! I can avoid being decloaked by an uncloaked ship in an enemy fleet, because I can see where it is. I can avoid being decloaked by structures, asteroids and other random space junk just floating around, because I can see those things, both visually, and on my overview if I set it that way. Make no mistake, approaching a target in a site without decloaking can be very challenging and can require a lot of manual piloting of your ship. Nobody that hunts in wormholes complains about that, it's why we hunt the way we do. It doesn't seem logical then, that I could take all that time and effort, only to miss the kill because I was decloaked by one of my fleetmates, simply by dumb luck because I couldn't see him. Or to have the target tipped off because two fleetmates decloaked each other in warp.

If CCP insists on going ahead with this ludicrous change, I believe they MUST give pilots a way to know where their fleetmates are, at the very least. Obviously, I think the better course of action is to scrap the idea of reintroducing what was originally considered a bug as a feature.

I've seen many good suggestions in this thread and on reddit as alternatives to completely nutting fleets in several other areas of the game because of one niche fleet type in null sec by implementing this proposed cloaking change. The top two, in my opinion, are:

1. A rework of defender missiles to target bombs. To me this is the best option because it not only gives fleets a new defense mechanism, but it also makes an obsolete and irrelevant weapon system viable again. I've also seen suggestions, further to the defender missile rework, of adding a new hull, could be either destroyer or cruiser class, T1 or T2, which specializes in the use of defender missiles, creating new options for fleet doctrines, with added roles.
2. Adding an arming code mechanic to bombs. This solution is targeted more to discouraging ISBoxer, admittedly, but I still think it's a great suggestion, that would add a new dynamic to bombing. A code would flash on the screen after the bomb was launched and would have to be entered correctly before the flight time elapsed in order to arm the bomb and have it detonate. My suggestion is that the bomber would have to be on grid and decloak to enter the code, which would give fleets a little more opportunity to eliminate some of the bombers to prevent further runs.

Is that what you're looking for, Mike? ISBoxer or not, personally I don't really care. Admittedly, I'm not a fan of it, but I see it's advantages and don't blame people for using it. And as long as it isn't against the EULA, people should be free to use it, so realistically, this whole thing isn't about ISBoxer to me, it's about stealth. The bottom line is that if the problem is with bombers, the solution should affect bombers, not every ship that cloaks.

Not happy about the changes i can live with all of them but one the decoaking of cloaks.

Atleast give fleets the ability to see eachother even when cloaked so we have a visual of our bombers or limit it atleast to squad level.
Either showing the cloak visual on all ships or some kind of IFF transponder signal so we see ranges and blibs on the field.
so far in the future there should be technology for that.

This way you can pretty much implement your ''HULK SMASH NERF" and atleast move up the quality of life to navigate better with bombers