Player Features and Ideas Discussion

With only 40% more EHP than a HAC but t1 resists unlike a HAC, and otherwise equal attributes, I would pick the HAC over the t3 in most situations.

The amplified effects of remote repair due to higher resists on a HAC is incredibly important in gangs and fleets. If you have 40% more EHP but only 3/4 the resists, it is far harder to keep the ship alive under remote repair.

So between a 150 mil isk Zealot and a 550 mil isk Legion, where the only significant difference is that the legion has more raw HP but lower resists, and that I lose 4 days of training time and triple or quadruple a zealot cost when the legion dies?

The Legion is the loser by far. Unless I'm operating solo with no remote repair in my fleet, I'd always choose Zealot. No contest. RIP Zealot. And only if I'm using a buffer fit while solo. If I'm using an active tank it's back to the HAC because the whole resistance factor in active tanking.

(Zealot and legion are chosen as example ships randomly. Please let's not turn this into a conversation about the hulls in question, they are just placeholders.)

PS. 1MN Svipuls are great. 10MN may have been better, but 1MN is still a damn good ship.

Wait what, so you think it should have t1 resists, cruiser levels of attack, and what positives exactly?

Has anyone actually come up with a realistic situation in which refitting subsystems is useful?

One that doesn't involve effectively impossible hypothetical situations where your gang has many t3's with logistics refits in the cargo, and an FC that decides that turning most of his damage into ****** 500 mil isk t3 versions of a 150 mil isk t2 logistics cruiser in order to engage a larger gang is a good idea?

Cause that gets trotted out each time ("versatility" Doctor Evil quotes here) gets mentioned as an asset of t3's.

To date, I have lives in high, and low, and null, and C2, C3, C4, C5, C6 WH space. I have roamed in t3's, and brawled in t3's, sniped in T3's, Used them as probers and boosters and hackers, as logi in one really specialized situation (Pre-HML nerf budget C5 RR HML Tengu's).

And not one time have I ever encountered a situation where being able to refit subsysems mid roam would have been a significant asset. Certainly not one worth giving up t2 resist and higher than t1 cruiser damage.

Cruiserish levels of attack. Upper cruiser, because it's expensive. But not like a HAC or anything. HACs are supposed to have the strongest cruiser attack, so T3 cruiser should have less than HAC. Positives would be subsystems.

PL, Goons, and NC. do it every day. You bring T3s in against the enemy and scout out what their fleets have, then you pop your fleet into station and fit what'll beat them most easily. Then you maneuver your interdiction fleet ahead of them, stop em in place, and drop your T3s on top of them.

There's lots of other uses, you just have to be creative. If you can't find a way to take advantage of the subsystems and think that its price tag means it should have more HP and damage because HP and damage is the only way you can comprehend combat capability, then you really should just be flying a Dominix or Rattlesnake.

You can mix other ships into the T3 fleet.

I couldn't do it alone.

But the Legion can fit 5 subsystems, whereas it only needs 2 to get its tank and DPS figured out. The other 3 can give it other tactical advantages.

How incredibly vague. "Figured out" "tactical advantages"

Except that you have already "figured out" that the tank should be t1 resists, and the damage should be less than a HAC.

Supposedly it can refit to give itself "tactical advantages", as long as you consider tactical refitting to be the sort done in a station.

Maybe you can fit it to be a sub par version of any t2 ship!

You could fit it to be a logi cruiser, but not as good!
You could fit it to be a HAC, but not as good!
You could fit it to be a prober, but not as good as a t2 one!
You could fit it to be an ewar ship, but not as good of one as a dedicated ewar ship!

Versatility doesn't mean anything if you have to be in a station or parked on a depot with a full refit in order to utilize it.

Why would I have a Loki that has a Scimi refit that's not as good as a Scimi, and a Webbing refit that is worse than a Hughinn, when I could literally just have both a Hughin, and a Scimi, all for less than the cost of the Loki, and without the loss of SP?

P.S: Iroquoiss Pliskin, T3 manufacturing is incredibly time and effort intensive. There is a lower bound at which point the price will not drop below, dictated by the price point where people simply stop making them due to lack of return on effort. We are already really close to it.

I never thought you were reasonable so that's one of us.

Even Harvey James who is notorious for loudly hating t3's and demanding sweeping nerfs to them at least has the decency to include in his proposals that a t3 with similar HAC levels of ability have HAC level costs.

Unlike yours which demanded levels of abilities under HACs or other specialized ships, for far more expensive than HAC's, while keeping SP loss, and did not add any capability that would not be better served in every way by a t2 cruiser.

Even the Rorqual is in better shape than your proposal would make t3's.

If you never had any interest in leaving t3's as a worthwhile ship class, your leaving the discussion is a net benefit to us all.

As an example of versatility when asked, you started talking about what happens currently, which was bad enough since you didn't include any situation where the post change ship would be used, but then you started talking about refitting in stations.

Once you are refitting in stations, versatility goes out the window, because you have access to a location where you likely have many specialized ships stored. A very versatile range of specialized ships.

I don't have any use for a Loki that can be fit almost as good at logi a Scimi, or almost as good at a webbing role as a Hughin, or almost as good at DPS as a Muninn. Because I have a Scimi, and a Hughin, and a Muninn. And once I am undocked, any benefits of versatility in a t3 is gone, because I am now one cog in fleet, and it is my job to do my role to the best of my ability. As such, I will always pick the best tool for the job (The t2 that is superior in it's own role as compared to the t3).

If a DPS t3 is overall inferior to a specialized DPS t2 ship in the main DPS role, and you have access to both a DPS t3 and a DPS t2, you naturally pick the t2 instead of the slightly inferior t3. As such, fitting versatility of a single ship is relatively useless if it requires you to be docked to do so. Versatility is only a bonus if it means you are able to accomplish a wider range of goals than a t2 ship once undocked. Your proposal contains no such ability.

And your example was of nullsec groups refitting t3's in station to counter an enemy fleet.

1: t3 refitting to counter enemy ships is always in the modules. You add in or remove tackle, ewar modules, more or less tank or damage or application or drone types, but all of it is module swapping. The exact same thing you also do with all other types of ships, t1, or t2, or t3. That means that your example was to put it simply, entirely irrelevant as a plus for t3's because any ship can do it. Any change that actually requires a different subsystem is almost certainly an entirely different doctrine, for which you will have a separate fitted t3. I flew Lokis and Legion and Proteus and Tengu's with NC, Darkness, HK, and now Nulli, and I have never actually swapped out a significant sub right before a fight.

2: The example was using the current powerful t3's and the current nullsec usage of them. This is irrelevant because if t3's were nerfed to have t1 resists and less damage than a HAC as you proposed, there would not be a single alliance in the game that used them as a doctrine. The reason we use them is because they have high resists, high buffer, and decent DPS.

If they had t1 resists and t1 cruiser levels of damage, it wouldn't matter if you could press a button in station and have the ships magically acquire and fit entire new fits and rigs from nowhere, they would still not be used because you removed their redeeming features of tank and gank.

The ability to fit something flexibly in station is pointless since it means I also have access to other, better, more purpose built ships which overshadow the t3 in each role.

TLDR: You gave examples of flexibility that were not unique to t3's as something that only t3's could do, and projected current uses of t3's onto post nerf t3's that wouldn't occupy the same role, and then proposed sweeping changes that would gut every current use of t3's (with maybe the exception of boosters), without giving any role for them to fit into afterwords.

By the price it is always presumed to be build cost+profit margin, so I see no point being argued here.

WH income cut in a worst case scenario wouldn't exactly be disastrous.

Situation has developed such that it is a can of worms from any point you look, so I expect /half-measures/ to be taken in a year or so.



It's the reverse, Ishtar is too good - was a perfectly healthy HAC meta before the addition of drone upgrade modules, but the final nail was the switch from Hybrid dmg & dronebay bonuses to Sentry drone optimal range and tracking being rolled into a single bonus, with an almost-mirror copy of it for Heavy drone alongside it.

http://community.eveonline.com/news/patch-notes/patch-notes-for-odyssey-1.1

Odyssey 1.1 September, 2013 - Never Forget.



Take two bonuses that are boosting two separate Attributes, then make them into four bonuses boosting 4 Attributes.

Now find September, 2013/early 2014 on the chart - http://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility

Draw conclusions.

If you nerf the T3s half as much as you're suggesting, CCP will need to tear up almost all the C5/6 content.

And whilst yes PvE takes a back seat to PvP, reality beats both all day long. And the reality is that CCP is likely to unwilling to take on that much work in one pop.


The unfortunate situation is that any ships which can hope to survive that tier of content are going to be absolutely stupid in PvP.