Player Features and Ideas Discussion

so I'm the only one who thinks curse and lach should have like 50% more lowslots than they have?

This has probably been said already but - would it be too much to ask to give the Rook a rapid light bonus as well?

Frankly given your determination for heavies and to a lesser extent HAMS to be completely and laughably ****, I see no reason to fly even the updated Rook over a Falcon.

I take this back should you notice that heavies were over-nerfed into utter uselessness.

Curse and Pilgrim I absolutely love though, and will be flying a lot. Curse was one of my favorite solo ships and this is the icing on the cake there.

no no no no and no...

The Pilgrim is FINE... its got a thing called a Cloak to get in close so it DOES NOT need a range bonus... an MWD fit is perfectly viable with cap and fitting buff that you are giving it (hell it worked fine before now it just fits easier)... with the speed buff you are giving them as well it can move around better already...

What 'flexibility' are we gaining exactly? The ability to neut something 37km away is nice... sure... but if I wanted that I would use a Curse (which is also faster... neuts harder... immune to DScan... and if armor fit can fit up to 4 TDs after a prop mod and cap booster)...

What advantage does the Pilgrim have over the Curse? it can Cloak... and... eh... that is it? At least with the neut bonus before it could take out a target's cap quickly while brawling with nice tank. Now its just a brick with three utility neuts. Since the Curse already has a perma cloak installed essentially I am going to use the Curse every single time now compared to the Pilgrim. Thanks for killing the Pilgrim more for small gang.

I don't get why this is needed nor how the dscan immunity is going to achieve that.
Even more so, the d-scan ability actually makes them more similar to force recons, and will likely cause them to encroach on those instead, like e.g. Rooks warping in from an offgrid bookmark to gates being better at jamming quickly than decloaking Falcons. I can't imagine that's the intent of this change. I also can't see the Pilgrim being useful as long as the Curse has the dscan immunity, as the curse will neut a ton more, and the difference in their abilities to stealth around isn't all that big. Arguably, the Curse even has the better form of cloak.

As Suitonia has put nicely, this seems a lot like a feature that is either op in the much mentioned cases of fw plexes, wormholes in general and setting up traps, while being useless in virtually any other situation. A decent scout will see it on grid anyways and relay the information, be it through intel channels or to a roaming gang. Note how the aforementioned cases are all situations where the Force Recons are supposed to excel at.

I would much rather see the Combat Recons being good at actual combat instead of this gimmicky dscan immunity. They should get the HIC treatment in that they should get somewhat decent, although not HAC-level DPS and damage projection, which would also set them apart nicely from Force Recons. Their ewar bonuses are already unique enough.
If there absolutely has to be a special role bonus to set Combat Recons apart, I think it should be something like a CPU reduction and maybe even probe strength for combat probes, to give them the ability to do mid-combat and on-grid scanning decently.

I am also concerned about full T2 resists on all recons. First, I think Force Recons should remain slightly weaker in tank compared to their Combat Recon counterparts, to stress the fact that Combat Recons are supposed to be good at, you know, combat. Second, I think full T2 resists is going too far, making them too hard to kill through remote reps, which are already incredibly powerful anyways.

Combat recon doesn't show up on D-scan, this is a great idea! I don't know what some of my WH brothers are whining about, while it will be a pain to counter, that means its just as much of a pain for them. I'm so going to bring in a bunch of these ships.

[quote=Ripard Teg

Given a few more minutes to think about invisible-to-dscan, I dislike it even more. It just doesn't seem to add any interesting game-play outside of w-space. And in w-space, as I mentioned, I think it's OP.

Entertaining alternative: combat recon pilots don't appear in Local for 10-12 seconds. As it is, most ratters (and all bots) just watch Local: "14 blues... and oh look, a neut just showed up. Time to dock up!" Therefore, d-scan immunity isn't gonna do a thing for combat recons... whereas giving them 10-12 seconds of Local immunity will add some interesting game-play options without being OP. Ratters that watch d-scan will still be OK, while those that rely on Local...

This would give you guys the opportunity to dip a toe into the delayed Local debate and try it out without committing yourselves.[/quote]


Summary: Make changes that don't affect W space.


Fixed quoting. ISD Ezwal.

I like this much better, It benefits the hunter not the hunted.

I'm afraid I cannot in good faith agree with the idea of Combat Recons being immune to D-scan. This makes one of the only previously reliable active intel tools unreliable while still not really adding enough appeal to the Combat Recon class to justify choosing one over a Force Recon. The Force Recon's ability to fit a cloaking device still makes it functionally superior in almost all respects and provides the same functionality of keeping it off of D-scan while also allowing it to dodge gatecamps, avoid probing, appear on the battlefield unexpectedly, reposition discreetly and use covert jump portals, all of which the Combat Recon will still not be able to do.

Giving Combat Recons D-scan immunity is just a nerf to D-scan, not a buff to Combat Recons.

So - no warping into a medium/large FW plex in case of sebo-ed curse at zero. At least the cloaky version gets a decloak targetting delay.

Generally the balance concept for making combat recons invisible to dscan is going to be completely invaluable, especially for lowsec in fw complexes. I can see the curse ruining some peoples' day quite handily with that. That being said, here are my thoughts on the balance pass, as well as my concerns for the ones that STILL do need fixing:

-The Pilgrim and Curse changes look great; they both benefit immensely from the cap buff due to their focus on neuts, and the dscan invisibility is going to be invaluable in FW for the curse. Neut range bonus on the pilgrim is going to be absurdly fun; kiting pilgrim will now be a thing, so hunting with one solo is going to be even more of an option.

-The Falcon and Rook are great for jamming, but they generally suck for combat. The falcon is superb in its ability to ambush with ecm, but it has little in the way of offensive capability. Something that would help it out quite a bit I think would be giving it a full drone bay like the rook has, and swapping that 5% damage per level bonus into a RoF bonus.
The rook in particular needs a serious buff to its powergrid; This is such a serious issue that I would be alright with passing over the falcon changes as long as the rook got at least 750 PG or more.

-While the Arazu didn't get changed since the patch due to it being an alright place where it is, I would like to see either its hybrid bonus get switched to RoF like the falcon, or consider switching it over to a drone boat like the pilgrim. It would better, I think to see the gallente get a dedicated drone cloaky to offset the powerhouse that is the pilgrim. I will also reiterate concerns being voiced over the Lachesis' slot layout. it should get at least one slot from its mids moved down to a low slot, as it should have at least some viability with armor.

-The changes to the Rapier and Huginn are exactly where they were needed; the rapier as a missile boat makes sense, and actually gives it decent attack power and revises its role to one as a potential solo/small gang ship since can actually threaten with its missiles now. The Huginn's dropping of the split slot layout is nice, but it doesn't go far enough. Go the whole 9 yards and give it a 5th turret slot; you did it on the lach you can do it on the Huginn.


Overall, I think these changes are a step in the right direction. The extra capacitor was an excellent idea to port over from the HAC and electronic frigate rebalance, and in my mind complements their t2 roles quite nicely. It will remain to be seen whether the dscan invisibility will be useful and balanced, or OP as hell and abused to absurd levels (I know I wlll be using the pilgrim and curse a lot after the patch myself).

CCP Rise, PLEASE consider the changes to the caldari and gallente recons. They need some serious help in the combat and fitting department, and with how stronk the other recons are getting the falcon could definitely get by with a small dps buff without breaking the game.