EVE Alliance Tournament Discussion

Neither did I ever understand this re tarded rule. Ban faction and officer mods because AT is about skill not wallet thickness, but at the same time allow ships that cost tens and even hundreds of billions isk?

Bob Shaftoes you do realize that if those ships were pretty bad for tournaments, no one would ever field them, right?

Out of last 3 you pick the most favorable for your argumentation?

We both know that AT frigs are significantly better than their t1/t2 counterparts, and AT cruisers just open new possibilities which without investment of hundreds of billions isk are otherwise inaccessible. Like sleipnirs at the point cost of recons (no links and sb bonus, but long range webs), gilas with ECM bonus, sacrileges with curse's bonuses etc.

How many teams can craft a decent setup out of limited issue ships, use it decently and in which situations they are usually used - is the whole different story. But that doesn't change the huge contradiction within the AT rules conception.

Not really. This is just example of how uniques are used - it doesn't explain why they were not fielded, but it indicates that there're reasons for that.

While this is true (apart from chameleon-gila and moracha-sleipnir comparison, of course), unique use is more complex than you think. We learned it the hard way.

- First off, it's as dumb as it may sound, but it's ISK investment. It implies uniques will be used only either as swag or in extremely important matches (which happen almost always vs another team which has uniques too).
- Uniques are not gamebreaking factor on the field in 95% of cases. The only match which was literally bought by uniques is HYDRA's victory vs PL in at11 semifinals vs 9 sentry ship setup. In other cases which i can remember - outcome was not decided by unique presence at all. They either died in a fire or closest t2 replacement would still let a team fielding uniques win anyway.
- Setups with uniques have to be tested separately, which effectively reduces time you spend on brainstorming/refining regular setups, which you might be using much more often
- You commit your team's morale to a fight when you field uniques. Want it or not, but people assume that setup with uniques must win, and it must win w/o losing uniques. I still remember that feeling after fight vs PL (which i mentioned above) - you just won it, but you lost flagship, etana, cambion, and everyone feels like you just lost tourney. I am not going to say it's the same for every other team, but it's important factor you can't ignore.
- Many of uniques are just ****. I saw someone here mentioned Utu being powerful, i think he never tried to compare it to ishkur in its role (while keeping in mind all the factors i listed above). Freki was more powerful hyena (50% longer webs) for 1.5 times less points, it wasn't used effectively by anybody, and it will never be used after hyena buff. Etana in most of use-cases is not much better (or maybe even worse) than scimitar. Many uniques are drowning in power creep after multiple cycles of buffs to regular ships. Some of them are still good, and I'd say only those few have chances to be fielded. I'm not going to name them, but i'd say it's just 3-4 hulls out of 10.

tl;dr - uniques are not winning tournaments. Do not make mistake which we did during at11, when we committed too much resources on setups with uniques/flagship, while missing some gamebreaking setups composed of regular ships.

I think there's clear difference between officer modules and uniques. Uniques provide excitement factor to viewers - because they're well, unique, and clearly visible on screen. You can't see 3x4b heatsinks on that navy geddon like you can see shiny etana hull. If CCP really wanted fair conditions for everyone, they would run AT on separate server with free ships/modules and all 5 chars. I don't know what's the reasoning behind not doing this, but i'd say excitement factor for viewers is part of it - much less people will tune in to see free ships exploding.

If uniques are going to be even 1 point more expensive, i think we will see them slightly less often than during at12 - i.e. 0 times instead of 1.

I wonder would it b possible to include the nester this year but restrict it using remote armour reps

13 weeks till A.T XII kicks off can we pretty please have a ETA when the rules will be released