Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Remember that some people - and I'm talking about Reaver here - spend more time thinking and posting about Eve, than they do playing it. You have to provide them with the real server experience to balance out their ideas. He doesn't understand that many wormhole fights take place on the wormholes and therefore are brawls right from the beginning.

The real "problem" why T3C are so powerful is because of many things.
To name a few:
-Abundance of ISK in player wallets, combined with huge supply of T3C materials.
-High-End-Cruiser DPS combined with battletship EHP and Cruiser Signature and strong resistance profiles
-Battlecruiser Application
-Versatility

However, the most notable thing is probably:
LOW SKILL REQUIREMENTS
as in: If you max out a Thorax to get the absolute maximum performance possible out of it you're about 3 Weeks away from doing the same things in a Proteus. All you need is 3 Weeks and about 300m ISK.
But you don't just get a better Thorax with that, no. You get a scram range bonus. You get covert ops cloaks. You get bonus to probe strength. You get local tank bonuses like the Deimos has it.
You get ALMOST all the good stuff that is also available to T2 Ships - but you don't have to spend 40 days to get that HAC V so you deal max dps. You don't have to spend 40 days to get that CovOps V so you can probe all the things. You don't have to spend 40 days to get that Command Ship to V for the best gang links.

All you do is skilling 5 subsystems that are Rank 1 and you just upgraded from Racial Cruiser V and good overall support skills (Read: Being a good T1 Cruiser Pilot) to a maxed out subcapital warfare gang / fleet / solo pilot.

I think T3 need some work. The problem they bring to the field is their small sig radius and large tank. I would be OK with one or the other. Both together and it gets messy.

The vigilant can hit crazy dps numbers, but it has T1 resists, cruiser HP and a cruiser sig radius.
The proteus can hit crazy dps numbers, and it has T2 reisists, BC HP and a cruiser sig radius.

One of these ships is balanced. One isn't.

Throw a couple of T2 logi in with a T3 fleet and you have just sucked the fun out of any engagement that fleet enters. Low sig with high risists and enough buffer to hold tank until reps land makes these ships unfun and unbalanced. (unfun IS unbalance - I'm assuming we can agree this is a game and should be fun).

Overall I really like the versatility of T3 cruisers. It's a great concept. My general opinion is that if you configure your subs to effectively have a BS tank, then you should also effectively have a BS sig radius.

My opinion of how to balance these things out:

1. Give the RR changes a few months to settle out - this had an impact on the T3 / logi gang meta - get a good understanding of what it did.
2. Complete any secondary tweeks to logi balance based on their performance across all the ships in eve. Don't balance logistics based on T3 performance alone.
3. Adjust T3 cruiser tanks. Scale their sig radius appropriately with their EHP. Subsystems improving risists or HP should also raise sig radius. Also take a look at raising sig radius for subsystems that add low slots (armor based ships) and mid slots (shield based ships) as these also play into the ships overall tanking ability (good luck w/ the loki).

I think some of the OP's proposals would benefit large blobs a little too much and would lend to a new rash of null T3 doctrines. On the one hand - I build T3 stuff so weeeeee, but I'd rather have a fun game over vast space riches. (if only a few other space numpties would choose fun over riches.... sigh).

Rapiers? :P

Pulsar is boosting their ehp, obviously i agree that they perform better in a Pulsar, however in no effect and outside of WR, Rapiers even if deadspace fit struggle with dual and triple escalations, Rapiers have better armortank than Huginns, the issue here is alpha.

Quick question: What happens when more people cotton onto the fact that command ship fleets can put T3s to shame and start wielding them in serious force?

I agree, but I think my point still stands. Use the ships and the tactics dictated by the environment. For us - pulsar and huggins and we tripple spawn, knock them down and then bring in the 4th spawn when the time is right. I've seen guys in the RR bonus wh drop 5 or more carriers on the site and bring the dreads in at 200km and back out just for spawning the waves. I don't think the tank on a T3 cruiser (loki in this case??) should be based on it being able to survive the alpha of multiple escallation spawns - that would be crazy.

As a side note for you - have you played arround w/ how you run the sites - the sleeper AI is just that - an AI. It doesn't make a lot of on the fly decisions. Try messing around w/ how they react to different things. An example would be bring in an abaddon (assuming you're fitting armor) with as good a tank as you can fit - Put an ECM in the mids and start jamming one of the frigates (the trigger maybe) and see how the guardians respond to that. If aggro is a problem - bring and aggro sponge to sop it all up. Spending a few hours messing around w/ a few out of the box ideas may grant you some beneficial results. Dorp a faction BS into the site - thngs happen. Put skins on some dreads and not others - things happen. It's a game - play aournd a little.

This is what is going to be said if there is any change to T3 cruisers.
Fact is there is room for expansion from WH industry still.

T3 Cruisers need to be balanced as cruisers, nothing more, nothing less.

Since your corp flag implies some degree of math savvy - I'll answer as follows:


WH escallations + guarantee safety = X/zero


And again - I don't think it's reasonable to 'balance' the loki around the ability to web sleepers while surviving the wrath of multiple escallation waves all at the same time. If you want an armor loki to do all that - move into an armor wh. If any of you wiki folks can do the quick look (I'm at work) - please post the incoming DPS and the missile alpha of a triple escallation (6-6-8). It's not what a cruiser should be designed to do.

And it won't end all wh life as we know it. That's over dramatic even for a gal such as myself

in average dual escalation ~ 10k dps, triple ~ 15k dps, quad ~ 21k dps (rounded numbers)
to surrive a dualescalation in raw hp you need ~ 16k armor hp with minimum of 80% resists, obviously transversal and sig help there, however yes a Rapier does surrive a dualescalation if they aint hitting synced, however if they hit synced, anything with less than 68k ehp will instapop
Issue here is we do not know how escalations be like postcapitalrebalance, however i think that every webbingship should tank at least dual escalations at the moment. Why? Because 1 Triage CArrier + 1 Siege dread + X supportships (rapier, huginn,...) is minimum to run those sites if you are not hero dreading or farming with bombers.
Now keeping this in mind we are not having any other solution than
a) pick an enviroment which adds tank
b) pick a tankier ship for that job (hint: it's the loki, Vindicator and Bhaalgorn)

Now lets check the pvp aspect:
sadly (and yes until it's fixxed i'll mention it as viable battlestrategie which is sadly very common), HACs are not having enough buffer to surrive Blapdreads, T3cs with their average ~ 145k ehp on armor at least can kept alive with triage.
So again if you change T3cs, you instantly change wspace meta, if you change Blapdreads, you isntantly change wspace meta in higher classes (mostly) exclusively
Now in lower classes, things and doctrins are different, it would go even further and call it an entirely different gameplay.
T3c-brawls there usually are like "nobody is killing anybody until logis are taken care of", in short, until lucky ecm or lots of neuting isk illing hostile logis, after that it's an ehp vs dps race.

I'm totally fine with T3cs and their tank, i'd rather see a decent counter for them outside of wspace, as they (let's be honest) are our mainhorse and replacement of BS in wspace, mass limits us there.