Player Features and Ideas Discussion

http://evenews24.com/2014/11/24/pandemic-legion-conquers-f4r2-q/

And the related battle report: http://evf-eve.com/services/brcat/?s=1171&b=6256665&e=1470&t=rub

tl;dr: Waffles bombed the crap out of hundreds of HERO frigates, many of them Harpy Assault Frigates, a target that is not something one would normally bomb. Some of those frigates were afterburner fit Crucifiers that died to as few as 4 bombs.

Yes, those ships were were horrendously vulnerable to EM damage, and using bombers in this manner was a master-stroke. Well done, Pandemic Legion. I think this pretty much proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that bombs are in dire need of a proper fix.

This is not a nerf Stealth Bombers thread. Any changes to bombers will also effect other bombless uses, such as torpedo dps Seige Fleets or blops. Those are not the problem. I have never heard anyone complain that torpedo dps bombers are op. Bombs are the problem. So lets fix bombs.

Bombs are stifling nulsec subcapital combat to the point where the only viable option in nulsec anymore is T3s because of their massive EHP buffer, relatively small sigRad, and interdiction invulnerability. T3s are also in dire need of a total rebalance. But I'm talking about bombs today.

Quick recap for the unaware: applied damage from bombs is based purely on raw damage * signature radius / explosion radius (400). Raw damage from bombs is base 6400 and is increase by 5% per level of Covert Ops if you are using the same racial type of bomb as your bomber. So the smaller the sigRad the less damage the ship takes. By examining these stats, one can ascertain that the intended purpose of bombs is to deal AoE damage that scales up linearly to larger targets.

Members of Pandemic Legion with this one fight have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that bombs are too effective vs small targets, and most especially shield-tanked ships.

My proposal is 3-pronged. First, an adjustment to the way bombs apply damage is required. In order to restore the balance of bombs applying more damage to larger ships than smaller ones, move bombs to a fully missile-based damage formula. Add explosion velocity stats to bombs and figure target velocity in the damage calculations. This will allow frigates to largely ignore bombs so long as they are moving quickly.

The next part deals with the disparity between shield tanks and armor tanks. Not long ago a skill was introduced to reduce the velocity penalty for armor plates. But nothing for the penalties on shield extenders. Why the favoritism?

Second, give us a skill to reduce sigRad penalties from extenders. This skill should completely eliminate the penalty at level 5. So -20% of the base penalty per level.

Shield rigs have a substantial +10% sigRad penalty associated with them. Fortunately, the Shield Rigging skill reduces the penalty, but only to a minimum of +5% (-10% base per level) sigRad. This is not enough. I want Shield Rigging 5 to completely eliminate the penalty. So I propose the skill Shield Rigging be changed to a 20% reduction in the base penalty amount per level.

The above changes would bring shield tanks into closer parity with armor tanks. However, most shield tanked ships have a higher base sigRad anyway. This is why I am asking for a complete and total elimination of the penalties at level 5, whereas Armor Layering only reduces mass penalties by 5% per level, for a total 25% reduction at level 5.

This also doesn't help lower SP pilots without those skills maxed out. So for my third proposal I want Defender Missiles, which are arguable the single most useless weapon system in the game, to be repurposed to shoot bombs. This will allow for viable counterplay in the form of either a useful spllt-weapon utility high slot, or picket ships, which themselves have viable counterplay in that they can be destroyed.

This would give any launcher-capable ship the ability to reduce incoming bomb damage. I have no idea what kind of technical challenges such a repurposing would present. It could be entirely impossible with current code, or it could be as easy as changing the value of a groupType variable. It may even require scrapping all the old code and making new code. I honestly don't care which at this point. I think its worth it.

Another option that can be considered would be to give bombs an optimal and falloff such that pilots would be rewarded for landing bombs directly on their target, and penalized for poor runs. This would also directly nerf the effectiveness of landing multiple waves on a single group of targets.

Current tactics involve launching bombs from different angles at somewhat greater than 30km so that their AoE does not include the space occupied by other bomb waves, but does include the intended targets. This allows multiple bomb waves to strike the same targets without destroying each other. Doing this with bombs that have a falloff would result in reduced damage applied to the intended targets, while preserving the effectiveness of single bomber squads vs poorly tanked targets.

It is not my intent or desire to completely remove the viability of bombs or bombers. I like that we as pilots have the ability to apply an AoE weapon that emphasizes player/FC skill and rewards good planning and battlefield preparation. But bombs are smothering combat to the point where the only option has become tech 3 strat cruisers.

The previously proposed change of having cloaked ships decloak each other again would not have accomplished the stated goal of making bombing harder. It would have only pushed bombing further into an unhealthy paradigm of ISBoxing bombers. It would have also changed the usage of every other cloaking ship in the game. It was a poorly aimed shotgun approach to a problem that requires a well-aimed attack.

CCP, please fix bombs. Please fix tank-type disparities. And maybe make defenders useful, too.

4 Bombs to kill a frigate is not a small amount... is it? Each bomb is about destroyer level alpha. Based on that equation.

The recent banning of ISBoxer may help curb bombers a bit.

Bombs are fine you want a sports car to take a pound of c4 to the face and keep rolling but a semi truck should be toast.
Play smart, dont keep the fleet balled up and spread out
Tl;dr learn to fly and dont sit in explosions expecting to just be scratched

m8, comparing rl cars/trucks to combat ships in space is... laughable. But since you brought it up, it doesn't take any more c4 to disable a semi than a sports car if you know how to apply it properly, which is part of what I'm getting at. Bombs already do exactly what you just said they shouldn't. That is by CCP's design, not mine.

I'm trying to fix bombs so that they work as intended, rather than simply erasing every non-T3 fleet upon jump in to system or landing on grid after warp, which is what happens because of warp mechanics dropping the entire fleet at the same physical location on grid.

Now, if CCP were to change direction and decide bombs will do flat damage to everything, or even scaled damage based only on velocity, that might be interesting.



Did you seriously just say we need bombs to do more damage?

The ratios could be altered without adding explosion velocity or changing explosion radius, by altering the damage reduction factor. I have a forum post buried somewhere that explains this.

I think it makes sense to give bombs a much larger explosion radius, hey howabout 10km? It'll match their actual damage radius. That'll also make them good for bombing capital ships. Then an estimate for reasonable damage per ship size per bomb should be drafted up, and a damage reduction factor selected that will give values similar to the draft. Then instead of listing its total damage only on the info page, it could have an estimate for various ship sizes also listed so players can make better estimates. That would also help stop confusion arising from a 6 digit damage listing.

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In better response to the topic: I do support reducing the bombs deal to frigates.

So, remind me of a bombs radius.
And remind me how long till they land.
Then remind me how fast a frigate goes even with just an afterburner.
And also remind me how long a frigate takes to get into warp.

I believe you will find that to bomb a frigate requires them being already bubbled, and burning into the bomb area rather than scattering. You might still get 1 or 2 frigates if they were right in the middle of the target zone depending on the exact fit speeds, but frigates already have several ways to get away from bombs.
This does not mean bombs are broken, this means Waffles outplayed their targets. WAI.

I think their damage against frigates should be reduced a bit, while their damage on battlecruisers and battleships should be increased a bit.

The Damage Reduction Factor (DRF) as it is used today only applies when there is a damage reduction due to velocity, and even then it only serves to modify the intensity of the reduction.

current bomb formula: applied damage = raw damage * sigRad/expRad(400).
proposed formula (identical to current missile mechanics): applied damage = raw damage * MIN(1,sigRad/expRad,(sigRad/ExpRad*expVel/Vel)^(Log(DRF)/Log(5.5)))

@Komi Toran, no stealth about it. Because of bomb mechanics, shield tanks suffer in nulsec. Armor has been buffed, buffed, and buffed again, while shields are still under whelming. The changes I propose will bring some balance back to the force tanks.




Bomb AoE 15km, explosion radius 400m. 12 second flight time. The event I linked was a fleet getting bombed after jumping into system. If the gate is bubbled, they're screwed because the bombs won't be thrown right on top of the gate, but at a slight distance, roughly 40km. Can't turn on an MWD because its guaranteed death. Can't warp. Won't get back to gate in time under just an AB. Not much you can do in that kind of a situation except die.

When I was taking agony pvp courses, they always sent us into the roam during the second day of the training. I don't know if fc played a part in that or not, but there were always bombing runs against our 40-80 man fleet depending on roam type. We were bombed by 3 bombs once, all you could hear is 5 to 10 people telling "I lost my ship" out of whole fleet which is perfectly reasonable.

The reason of our survival was because of the fc. Each time a bomber decloaks we heard "spread out NOW". Time was generally enough for running. The next thing we hear is big boom, then ceptors saying "I got a tackle on hound/manticore/purifier/...!".

It was always like this and I can't remember any moment that whole fleet got damaged. Those people were mostly newby pvpers as I was the same...

I can say for your fleet is either;
1-) Has overconfidence of fighting everyday in deep null OR
2-) Has never imitate a bomber run on yourselves to practice against it.

TL;DR; Practice makes it perfect, initiate fake bomb runs on yourselves ^_^

Your fleet was feeling like they were on a pleasure cruise, weren't they? I'm tellin this, because that fight you posted took place in NULL, where you can see the local. Did actually nobody pay attention to newcomers to the system?