Player Features and Ideas Discussion

...and by "fixes", what I really mean is, of course, nerfs. ...and a few buffs

In this thread I will point out specifically what makes Strategic Cruisers too strong. To begin, I must get all of you on the same page. There are two dominate opposing viewpoints out there:
1.) Strategic Cruisers are too strong because they can reach battleship damage or defense with cruiser attributes
2.) Strategic Cruisers are not too strong because they are expensive and cost skillpoints when you lose one
I must first explain a few things here:
The cost of the strategic cruisers (in materials) is fairly high, the total labor required to build one is up in the heavy assault cruiser range, or higher. But a lot of the cost associated with these is also tied to their popularity. As people wish more and more to fly strategic cruisers, the value of their components goes up and more people go to wormhole space to farm these, but you experience both a thinning of players willing to go, and a thinning of sites in which the materials are available. So really, part of the price is tied to the value already.
The skillpoint loss is also not a good gauge for how strong these should be, in this case because a really strong ship with a huge skillpoint loss penalty on loss of ship has no penalty to a pilot who does not lose the ship, and the stronger the ship is, the less likely it's going to be lost. I'm going to say skillpoint loss should probably be removed from these, but more importantly we shall disregard it in determining the cost to value ratio of these ships.
Finally, strategic cruisers have a lot of strategic potential in matching various combinations of subsystems together to get the exact ship you want for a given situation. That alone is a powerful tool in the right hands, and it should be considered one of the ship's major selling points. It is trivial to suggest the ship is too weak merely because someone who does not know how to strategize with it is unable to make it match its cost value in field effectiveness. For the above reasons, I am concluding that the Strategic Cruiser's five skill bonuses and currently existing cost in player time/energy to build are in line with a ship that has slightly above tech 1 base attributes, which will put it well above an actual tech 1 cruiser in raw effectiveness yet well below a tech 2 cruiser in raw effectiveness to a given role. The purpose of the strategic cruiser will then be to mix roles and fit for specifically what is needed in a given situation. The best strategic cruiser pilots will be those who carry extra subsystems and can swap them out quickly while docked in a nearby station or at another fitting service.

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TL;DR
Read on, the actual changes are below:



First change: remove the tech 2 resistances. Let me explain my reasoning for this:
1.) when combined with the strategic cruiser's very substantial powergrid, it becomes quite possible to give the ship a full weapon setup and still have enough powergrid left over for the top-end defensive modules. This combined with such heavy resistances allows the ship to match HIC defense or higher.
2.) it already has a lot of base hit points. If strategic cruisers all had above standard hit points and below T2 resists, it would make them have high enough EHP to last in a fight, but they would not respond as well to reps and sustained fire.
I could see fit to increase strategic cruiser hit points a bit because of their cost, perhaps up to pirate cruiser amounts. As for their ability to hit battleship EHP, well so can HICs, command ships, and even some HACS or battlecruisers. The problem is that battleship EHP is too low, so don't use that as a metric.



Second change:
Make all subsystems offer only one effective skill bonus. Those subsystems offering 2-3 bonuses with no drawbacks to balance them out are what's making strategic cruisers beat HACs at their own roles. Example: Liquid Crystal Magnifiers - Legion. This subsystem offers an oversized damage bonus plus a full capacitor reduction and optimal range bonus, making its offensive potential FAR above that of a Maller, all the way up to about as powerful as a Zealot which has four skill bonuses all dedicated to its lasers. The Legion gets slightly less DPS but significantly better laser capacitor efficiency. This is a problem because the Legion gets this power from just one subsystem and it can fit four more, making it a LOT more effective than a Zealot.

I am going to list some subsystems that are unbalanced, and tell what changes to make to them to put them in balance. I will also list some that are deceptive and explain how I see them. To save forum space I am not listing all of their attributes. You can view them here.
Disclaimer: some of these attributes may be out of date and I am not going to check them outside of EVE University's info.

I am not going to go over the nitty gritty of the specific attributes, but rather I am going to assume they are about right and save tweaking them for either a later rant or for someone else to work on.


Legion Defensive - Adaptive Augmentor: OK
This adds two effective skill bonuses but the act of using one (the remote rep bonuses) directly infringes on the bonuses you get from the offensive subsystem. The net total is still one bonus.

Legion Defensive - Augmented Plating: OK
10% bonus to armor per level is fine. The standard resist bonus gives the equivalent of 5% per level bonus to hit points as well as 5% bonus to both onboard and incoming remote repair strength, so 10% to only hit points is pretty fair. Same goes for the nanobot injector and, I might add, all ships with the 7.5% rep bonus should have it increased to 10%.

I'm not sure on what planet strategic cruisers get battleship DPS.

My battleships get between 900 and 2800 DPS. My Strategic cruisers all do about 700-800.

Sure, your on-paper DPS is a lot higher for a battleship. But when you take into account the increased application of the strategic cruiser, they are often hitting targets for a lot more damage than battleships are.

But I'm not one of the people saying they get battleship DPS, so what does that have to do with this post?




No, it's not enough. The optimal range and capacitor cost reduction bonus of the Liquid Crystal Magnifiers do not increase its on-paper DPS, but they increase its ability to get damage onto the target, and that's just one example. You have to take these factors into account as well.

I'd rather see them get the tactical treatment, and gain more smaller skill bonuses on 'sub systems' or modes. So they can actually do their versatile role.
The current problem is that they are too good at their focuses, but they don't have a second focus at the same time. That's what makes them stomp so heavily on the specialists toes.

Maybe I am misunderstanding you here, but the HAC is specialized for high damage output. Of course the strategic cruiser should have weaker damage output than the HAC, that doesn't even seem to be up for debate, however what is also not up for debate is that strategic cruisers generally can at the very least match HAC damage application but with consistently better overall other attributes.

Consider a comparison between the Zealot, Devoter, and Legion in which all have skills 5, no fleet bonuses, no implants, no boosters, all modules are tech 2, and the Legion has Adaptive Augmentor, Energy Parasitic Complex, Power Core Multiplier, Liquid Crystal Magnifier, and Chassis Optimization.

Right off the bat, we can see that the Legion beats the Zealot at just about everything. With pulse lasers, the Zealot has 346 DPS while the Legion has 374, and the Legion has the same range and a lower capacitor cost . The Zealot has a bit smaller sig radius but the Legion is a bit faster. The Legion has way higher hit points and the same resistances. The Legion has more CPU and a whole 400MW more powergrid, a lot more than it needs for that 6th turret. Sure, the Zealot has two more low slots, but the Legion has them as high slots and it can fit bonused neutralizers up there which it can power with all that extra capacitor it's not using, in order to obliterate the Zealot's capacitor. The Zealot does have a bit stronger capacitor but it really needs it for the weapons. Also don't forget that the Legion has higher armor resists on top of having higher armor hit points and higher powergrid for armor plates.

Now let's compare the Devoter. The Devoter with Acolyte drones has the same net DPS as the Zealot, less than the Legion however the Devoter is spending the least capacitor to run the weapons. The Devoter also has the same resists as the Legion, but only slightly more hit points than the Zealot and still much less than the Legion. The Devoter has the larger sig radius of the Legion yet is barely faster than the Zealot and still significantly slower than the Legion. Now the Devoter also has the extra two low slots that the Zealot has, but its powergrid and CPU aren't that much higher than the Zealot.

All in all, this Legion would roflstomp either the Zealot or the Devoter in a 1v1 match, and can easily perform the Zealot's own role better than a Zealot can, plus all the extra bonuses the Legion gets on top of all that. Also HICs are OP but apparently that's because nobody will fly them otherwise.





That is an excellent point.

I always felt their EWAR bonuses should be on the disruptive side, as that would make an excellent combo with their offensive potential. But the engineering, navigation, and electronic subsystems don't feel all that strategic.

I was thinking there could also be some strategy in choosing different levels of attributes, for instance some subsystems could give you more hit points at the cost of signature radius, more powergrid at the cost of mass, or more targeting range at the cost of scan resolution. Other subsystems could push attributes in other directions. In the end, you could build a strategic cruiser that's bigger and more sluggish than a battlecruiser, one that's sleek and smaller/faster than a Stabber, or anywhere in between with a lot of potential to mix and match, to choose your poison.

It would be nice, though, if more of the electronics subsystems could put the skill bonus into the mid slots, to take the pressure off of the high slots.

Exaggeration, but yes.


That is patently false.

edit: after visiting EFT, all I have to say is this.....wat

Yeah I just checked on EFT. The Phoenix beats the Raven on DPS against a frigate every time. I am blown away. And people whine that it can't hit supercaps or something like that.

I'm going to go against the grain here and say they don't need any nerfs at all.

Some greater versatility perhaps, as some additional reasons to use some sub systems, but not nerfs.

If every ship in the game is perfectly balanced, then the challenge in the game would be reduced to just knowing what the established strategies are for each ship.

Imbalance creates challenges that make the game more interesting in my view.

By having some ships that are really strong (above what you'd expect), facing them becomes more engaging in terms of ttying to counter them and different tactics need to be developed to face those ships. Once those tactics are developed, then that makes particular doctrines strong, which leads to more theory crafting to counter that.

For me, T3 Cruisers (and to a degree Destroyers) should be where the imbalance is. T1 is the base in a class, T2 is improved and almost good enough to match T1 in the class above and T3 is on a higher plane again.

T3 Cruisers should be strong against anything smaller and should be at least as strong as any T1 BC, with an OK chance against BS. They are T3 after all.

Why would anyone engineer something that is supposed to be improved and only make it as good as everything else in class?

So for me, the balance comes exactly for the reason that in gaining the benefit, you are risking skillpoints.

Maybe once skill packets come into the game, that risk will be eliminated since skillpoints won't be worth much. But currently, risking SP is a nice balancing mechanism.

Just my 0.02c.

Many brilliant minds would agree with you here but I have to wholeheartedly disagree. There is some fun in finding the loopholes and exploiting them, but it is always polarizing. Everyone figures out what is best and gravitates toward it, and some things get left behind and unused. But in a truly balanced system, the ships are not by any means even, they simply are balanced to have effective counters while also being an effective counter to something else. It makes it so everything is good when applied properly, and the skill is in figuring out what you're likely to go up against.

In a balanced system, people will always believe they are finding loopholes. People will always believe certain ships are underpowered, because in their experience it has been an underperformer. People will always believe certain ships are overpowered, because in their experience those ships have performed well. You can see this in EVE Online quite a bit, even though it is somewhat rare in other games, because EVE is one of the few games out there that's actually really well balanced. For example: I feel like the Tristan is overpowered, but I don't see anybody dominating with Tristans. Other people think the Arbitrator is underpowered, but I know from experience it is quite effective in many circumstances.

Those disadvantages can be factored into what is an effective counter, such as price. Any expensive ship can be countered with a bunch of cheap ships, and the cheap ships will win in ISK efficiency. But as I explained near the top of the OP, skillpoint loss on death of ship is not a good system to use as a disadvantage, because how much of a disadvantage it is to you varies directly by how good you are at keeping your ship intact and for some people it is not a disadvantage.