Player Features and Ideas Discussion

relevant: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=24582&find=unread

The outdated tiering system is partly responsible for this, restricting slots and PG/CPU for ships that would otherwise have a valid combat role. In addition, some of the ships are just stupidly designed, like the Maller having no drones. Making these ships more flyable will go a long way towards opening up lowsec and PVP in general by reducing the cost.

Thanks for your support, friends.

Having ship classes divided into tiers definitely does render many ships obsolete and those ships don't get flown very much as a result. Support cruisers and electronics cruisers don't quite have the same problem though, it seems. They aren't bad ships because another t1 ship does their job better, they're bad ships because they aren't useful at the job they're supposed to be doing.

If t2 logistics ships didn't exist people still wouldn't use t1 support cruisers in fleets. That says a lot about how non-functional they are at the logistics role.

So I'm still flying t1 cruisers. I have Minmatar Cruiser 5 now and I've still never flown anything but a blackbird in fleets. As someone with an interest in ewar/logistics, I would appreciate more options at the t1 level.

A Scimitar is easily 10-20 times more effective and survivable than a Scythe. I harp on this specific example a lot, but it's the most egregious one.

Scythe costs 3M, Scimitar 136 (today's Hek prices on eve-central).

Besides, you're missing my point. It's not about how good (or bad) T1 cruisers are. Even if you buff them, they still have to be worse than T2. Since T1-T2 price difference compared to efficiency difference is obviously not an issue to most players, they'll simply choose T2 variants again.

I'm not asking for them to be better than t2. I'm asking for the t1 ship to actually be useful and flyable in fleets. Support cruisers and many electronics cruisers currently are not.

If I could fly a t1 support cruiser that could run 3 medium reps and actually be able to take a little bit of fire and have maybe 7 max targets, that wouldn't come anywhere near the power of a real logistics ship. But it would give newbies a platform to try out logistics with, so they don't have to drop well over a million sp just to try it once.

T1 cruisers have uses in ANY fleet! Have we forgotten the Thorax rush of the alliance tournament or many years past? (for those too young to remember i suggest you youtube it) EDIT : Spork Witch beat me to it.

You just have presume you may be targeted first and destroyed get you out of the way or just for an easy kill.

Don't be afraid to die. It will hurt. But that's just your pride hurting.

When you are young you have to be prepared to die... a lot.

T1 cruiser have no place for soloing that is true. (there is always exceptions)

That's just it, though, _why_ does every ship need to be good in PvP? Where is it written? Would you take a farm tractor into a warzone? Would you take a tank to the farm? There's no reason that _everything_ needs to able to do _anything_. That's the nature of the beast: some things are better suited to different things. The exequoror is an OK support ship. It's also nice for mining, since it gets a decent cargo bonus and can fit 4 miners. It can fight as well, and have decent room for loot, but there are others that do the PvP job better. It also has those repair bonuses, around a full month or two worth of training sooner than you'd be able to fly a Guardian (noone flies oneiros in fleets, really, they're too squishy, and can't cap xfer indefinitely). I wouldn't take a thorax mining.

As to the distance, of course they're not used much out there, there are better t1 cruisers for combat, and if you're not in a hulk, you're more use hauling than mining. You have to keep in mind that you're living in nullsec, the markets there cater to whta's used there, and ships and equipment that new players can use, that isn't particularly good in the current COMBAT fleet setups in that region, just doesn't get built or moved. It's like selling umbrellas in the desert: who's going to buy it? The cost and effort doesn't warrant the potential reward.

If you buff a t1 ship in a role filled by a t2 ship, you must absolutely provide a comparable bonus to the t2 _specialist_, otherwise what's so special about the specialist? Why should I pay several hundred to a couple thousand percent more for a ship that's only marginally better? That's what officer mods are for: spending fortunes for marginal improvements to get that last edge. T2 is the first-line specialist, it's supposed to be cost effective for the performance improvement.

And what do you mean they can't be a POS-repper? I'm staring at a 500% bonus to range on the Exequoror, and I know for a fact you can fit a large RR on it with Engineering 4 or 5, and even easier if you use fitting modules. A t1 medium repper will reach 25km on that ship, also, which is sufficient to hit a POS. As I already said, the very ship you're complaining about the most can do quite a few things, it's just not what you _want_ it to do. The reason you're told to climb into a different ship is because you can be _more_ use in that, while the people using the dedicated ships handle that. They don't _need_ you doing repping, they need you providing damage to the blob.

As to my dislike of goons, they're largely a bunch of noobs with no real connection or relation other than being a giant blob, and they're not even remotely fun to play with. I've fought engagements against both BoB and the Goons, and I'd happily fight BoB any day: they actually were good pilots and good people, and they were FUN to fight. The Goons would be more at home on X-Box Live than EVE.

The scimitar also doesn't see much use, because the basi gets the cap xfer bonuses, same reason you see Guardians, not Oneiros. And you're right, the difference between the t1 and t2 is not marginal right now, which is intended. Nor is the t1 useless, however, but no one is going to take a less useful tool, when a more useful one is available. You, being unable to fly the ship _built for that role_, are more useful as additional damage. Want to learn how to fly logistics? ASK. CTA's are rarely 23/7 affairs, ask your goonmates to go into a belt and teach you about properly repping (honestly, it's not exactly rocket science: watch broadcast, right click person asking for reps, target, click module on, complain to CCP that logi's get screwed on killmails unless we split our attention and targets with sentries to get a cheese shot in for the KM).

That support cruiser _is_ a farm tractor. Sure, it can pull the busted tank off the battlefield, but the one designed for the job is going to do it a hell of a lot better. Likewise, that tractor can do the farming work a lot better than the tank that can't do it at all.

And no, t1 ships are _not_ there just to teach you how to play different roles. Quite the contrary, they're there to give you something that you can use, period. Some are better suited to particular jobs than others, but just because they have lowers skill requirements does _not_ mean they're supposed to just sit there and teach you how to do the job of the specialized t2 ship that does a particular role. Hell, take interdictors or HICs for example. What exactly is suppose to teach you how to properly utilize one of them? There's not a single t1 ship even remotely relatable to them. Sure, there might be a ship or two with a range bonus to scrams, but that's about it, it doesn't teach you anything about how or when to use a bubble.

Your mistake is in thinking that it's like a level-based progression system. It's not. T1 ships are good overall, great at nothing. T2 ships are highly specialized to excel at a particular role, to the exclusion of all or nearly all others. T3's we'll have to wait and see what they do with the next ones, but the ones we have no versatile adepts. Unlike the t1's that can do whatever, whenever, you need to dock up and refit them for their purpose with the correct subsystems (and it completely changes their characteristics, not just appearance; even slot layout), and they're much more effective at that job than a T1 ship would be, but they're generally not going to excel at it to the same extent that a T2 does.

The Tech Level system is a measure of how "advanced" it is, it's not a simple linear progression. It's not a level system. This is not WoW. They are their own things, they're just more advanced and require higher skills. The fact that they use the same hull can basically be ignored, unless you're the one building them (building t2 ships requires the t1 hull as a construction component).

EDIT:
Sorry, I missed the part where you said you didn't agree that T2 ships are more specialized than T1. That's _exactly_ what they are. T1's are generalists (though not so much the battleships or battlecruisers; but then, the name alone tells you what they're built in mind of), t2's fit a specific role, and do so extremely well. Sometimes those t2 ships do a particular thing that others flat-out can't, such as stealth bombers and their bombs, covops and warping cloaked, blackops and their jump engines and portal. That is what t2 is. This is not an opinion thing. There's nothing for you to agree or disagree on. It's quite simple and straight forward: you either acknowledge the fact that t2 ships are specialists in particular roles, while t1's are generalists that happen to do certain things better than others, or you sit there willfully ignorant, and wrong.