Player Features and Ideas Discussion

So, this is back to circular arguments which have been beaten to death. So let us simplify down to major points the arguments here, and elsewhere.

On one side we have:
Follow the graphic, so that specialized t3s aren't as good as t2 ships in overlapping specialties.
T1-ish resists and DPS
Market will adjust regardless of effort required to whatever the demand is, with a fairly constant supply regardless. i.e. no floor price below which they simply do not get built.
The versatility of being able to refit subsystems makes up for sub t2 capabilities, and so they will remain viable.
WH income does not need to be significantly considered, and a major stealth nerf might be good.

On the other side we see:
Keep resists and other damage mitigation high, to allow them to be survivable in c5/c6 content
Market has a floor price, below which they might as well be a mere novelty, as people almost entirely abandon their construction.
Willing to compromise more on DPS and application but need to be in the same league as HACs when fit comparably.
Refitting subsystems is a draw which might justify the added price and hassle of building t3 with comparable performance to t2 ships.
WH income does need to be significantly considered, as the unique content and culture of WHs is a positive addition to EVE.

Does everyone agree that this is about where the two sides stand, and that I have stated the two sides within a reasonable margin?

Cause if I have, I may also have a reasonable concept to balance the two arguments.

Give t3s the marauder/black ops resist profiles as their base resists which leads to

1. a much wider gap in how the resist and buffer sub end up with the same EHP
2. a general tank nerf that is survivable and still leaves them capable of c5/c6 content when properly fitted
3. more incentivized to fit resist modules over loading down on huge amounts of buffer, because it isn't so deeply affected by the distance and stacking formulas used to calculate final resists.
4. Solves the issue of t3s being better than HACs out of the box, but retains the ability to get epic performance with shiny mods, and hopefully keeps t3s doctrine viable for richer alliances.

You make very good points. The problem is that you're arguing against working as intended, in the same manner as people who start threads complaining about jump fatigue.

I don't have quotes and timelines in front of me, so I have to go off of my memory of conversations and threads past. If I am mistaken, I apologize in advance.

But T3's are supposed to be swiss army knives for a reason. What you pointed out above, however opposed you are to it, is precisely how T3's were intended to work (but never balanced correctly in the first place). Supposedly T3's were a gift to wormholers of EVE...so they didn't have to bring in entire armadas of ships to fill roles, they received a ship that could be configured to do many roles just not as well as a dedicated ship.

That T3's overstepped those roles and outperformed dedicated ships is a problem that needs to be eliminated, not a feature that needs to be preserved. That's not what they're there for.

There's an oft-passed around image here on the forums, saw it for the upteenth time just yesterday, that shows progression from tech 1 to tech 3 and faction, with how things are supposed to be either good in general purpose or specialized. Tech 3 on that chart is in the generalization category, and is supposed to be outperformed in those roles by specialized ships.

But it's not as black-and-white as that. Someone in the combat recon rebalance thread pointed out that some T3's would still outperform recons because while recons had stronger EWAR stats, T3's brought the EWAR with more EHP to survive on the field. I happen to like that. Meaningful choices...stronger ewar, or stronger tank? Sounds like a good choice to have in-game.

And while you cannot imagine a scenario where versatility of fittings and subsystems is an advantage, I already know of one. I have trained into dozens of different racial ships for different roles in small fleet warfare. From light tackle, to scout, to DPS, to EWAR, to logi, etc etc. Whenever I need to move to a new area, there's dozens of ships I have to move either manually by flight, strip rigs and pack them into a hauler, or contract them to a bowhead pilot.

People who fly T3's get all that versatility in three or fewer trips. Pack the extra subs, modules, and ammo in your cargo, and you can be set up in your new destination in a quarter of the time it takes a regular pilot to do so. Combat refitting is a niche scenario and not fit for everyone, but a T3 has that option a lot more than a regular cruiser pilot who can only switch out mods, and not completely reconfigure his ship role. Whether or not you choose to do so is irrelevant, that opportunity is still there for you to use and is not present for standard ships.

You made that above quote in a derisive connotation. "Can fit like a tech II _____, but not as well!" Yes, precisely, that is the point, that is what makes for good game balance, and that's what we should be looking to achieve.

You want something as good as a Tech II DPS, logi, EWAR, etc? Then get into that appropriate ship. You want versatility that isn't as good (swiss army knife), get a T3. Want on-battlefield versatility as you seemed to indicate in other posts? Get a D3.

It is silly and game-breaking to even ask for a ship that can outperform four dedicated platforms within its own class. Let's just bring it down to where it was originally supposed to be. A T3 should perform around 70-80% as well as a dedicated ship. That way specialized ships aren't obsoleted, T3's are still immensely useful and versatile, and everyone can be happy. Even then there will be roles that only T3's can perform (cloaky and interdiction-immune subs, anyone?).

If you want to discuss how to adjust the cost of the ship post-nerf, or if the SP penalty should still be in place, I think everyone's all-ears on that. Let's rebalance these ships appropriately.

That's what I noticed as well. How much more fixing do t3 even need? It feels like they're getting phased out probably to be replaced outright in the future.

and this is balancing? using other hull because current is nerfed? Meaningful choice?

Yet SNI increased its value, must be really good hull...acording to "all good hulls are expensive".

It's good in theory, but swiss army knife arguement is crap. T3 don't perform all roles at once. You can't build awesome ecm-tanky- dps-speed tengu. keyword: versatile - only docked or with depot. Will they be still usefull after nerf? Who cares, I'll still be flying them because of nullfier and cloaky prober subsystems.

Word, brotha. \m/ Hedion University.

I think the only thing keeping CCP from enacting the vision they themselves defined is the scope of the vested interests all around: from the users, to the farmers and producers.

Shaky-shaky, coupled with the capital ship situation - wrong move and one could lose substantial PCU count over a short span.

Then again, keep things broken and things will certainly never change nor heal.

They can, last I checked.

A bunch of crap can suddenly go offline (if you pull the subsystem giving CPU for example), but I've done it in T3s with mobile depots.

Find me a HAC you can keep up in a C6 please

I repeat, just about anything subcapital which can survive in that environment is de-facto going to murder everything else because of the nature of a) the level of DPS incoming and b) the size of hulls it is coming in from.

T3's are a symptom of the requirements for high end PvE in holes.

This is why I don't believe it is possible to put them between T1 and T2, not without extensive revising of other content. If you nerf T3 and buff something_else™ to handle holes, then that something_else™ becomes tomorrows T3.

Based on most posts from that person, I'd guess the latter.

Good idea, I've always wondered why they had both rigs and subsystems.

I guess it really all just comes down to this doesn't it.

As long as you really believe that people will accept sub t2 performance at a higher price than t2 in order to not have as many ships in station, I can't convince you otherwise. Me asking for any reason why people would do so certainly has not gotten a realistic reply so far.

*shrug*

Go on believing I guess.




It's really the other side of the same question.

And the answer is specialization.

Each of the Recons have far more powerful Ewar than a t3 fitted to perform that role.
Each of the logistics rep more, further, faster than a logistics fit t3 cruiser.

Many of the HAC's have application bonuses well up and above the t3. All of them have the 50% sig bloom reduction on MWD's. Most of them have higher scan resolution, lock range, and sensor strength than the t3's unless the t3 has the specific sensor subsystem on.

Cerb is better at applying more damage at further ranges than a similarly fit Tengu.
Ishtar is better using drones than a drone fit Proteus in every way.
Vagabond is faster and has a stronger burst tank than the Loki.
Zealot is ideal for a mid range faster skirmisher role if super brick tank is not critical.

Unsurprisingly, all of these get a considerable amount of use.

Diemos, Muninn, Sacrilege, and Eagle are in a bad spot compared to their t3, but they have serious issues of their own. Gutting t3's wouldn't magically make them great again, it would just point out that there are still better options to them.

Slow moving short range armor tank missile spewer without application bonuses that gets kited by everything. Really Sacrilege?


I'm not totally opposed to proposals that scale back t3's. I was glad to see the recent defensive subsystem nerf. But there's a huge difference between scaling back the crazy EHP on some of them and gutting them so badly I would never have a situation where I wanted to fly them again.

So, lets focus in on the 2 that I really want to know what happens with.

Lets take the rigs off, remove the t2 base resists. Tengu with hybrids and the resist subsystem now a moa as far as tank, and does damage comparably. to a moa. except that the moa can use rigs now, letting it tailor the performance to a niche more effectively than the t3 most comparable. Is this your intended state?

How does CCP reduce sub prices? Increase supply of the bottlenecks, and thus flood the market? Make them not worth using? You have to remember that EVE is a game with very very few finished products coming directly from NPCs, and that t3s have a multitude of steps in their creation.

Rat and plex to get the sleeper salvage and fragments.
Do reverse engineering to make fragments into BPCs
Build components needed for the BPCs
Build t3 hulls and subs.

If at any step, the people doing it fail to make enough isk to justify the effort, then suddenly t3s stop being produced until that equilibrium is reached again.