Ships & Modules

True, perhaps skill loss isnt "harsh" enough but this suggestion is mostly anti power creep. Giving assault frigates D-scan immunity... more speed... signature change and so on only increase problem that EVE and every single MMO suffers from. Power creep. We need to make ships viable by not adding more abilities. If not skill points then perhaps price. Make it cost more. Everytime we add power to ship we make other ships that specialized in that power, obsolete.

Make them frigate versions of hics?

Except they are not. Look at speed difference between hacs and their t1 parents. Then do the same with frigates.

That's really a lot of effort. To humour you, I checked Punisher vs Vengeance, compared with Omen vs Zealot.
I didn't find anything remarkable.

Well that's very interesting. Thank you for sharing your observation.

or just nurf T3D

:D

I actually took the time to look into this claim that AF use was low and found it was not true. AF were popular and in heavy use right up until a few weeks after T3D were added. In fact all frigate activity aside from the cov ops and logistics branches took a very noticeable hit in usage along with T1 destroyers. This is not just an AF problem, t3d have messed up the entire small ship balance.

AFs were one of the first ship classes to get buffed during the whole tiericide thing. They got a 4th bonus which they'd been missing since they were introduced, and they got an additional slot and a smidge of fitting. Their mwd sig bonus was a bandaid, on the test server they got an AB bonus which was generally seen as overpowered so they removed it and slapped the mwd bonus on.

Since that time every other ship class got some pretty drastic changes. Destroyers lost their rof nerf, new destroyers were introduced, most ships got more fittings, weapons have been buffed, etc etc etc

A lot of tech 1 frigates got tougher thanks to extra fittings, agility and speed buffs.....things the AFs missed out on. That's the thing AFs had going for them, the tank. Now we've got tech 1 frigates that are faster, more agile, much cheaper........

And don't get me started on how command destroyers make them even more obsolete. Command destroyers are faster, have a better tank, generally more dps, fit into the same accelerations gates........why even bother with an AF?

That's the thing everyone is getting at. They have been surpassed by other ship classes. They have no role.

At a bare minimum they need their mass reduced to sane levels. Destroyer hulls shouldn't be more agile/faster than a frigate. Hell, even if they do get fixed HACs are going to need some loving, since they're kind of in the same boat since HICs got buffed.

T1 destroyers are fairly well balanced. Flown well they can be very nice but at the same time AF were not at a huge disadvantage and could fight back if flown well. T3D just **** pillage and burn all in their path with next to no hope of anything under or in their class winning a fight.

T1 destroyers are in an even worse position than AF are as they are utterly outclasses in every area aside from the catalysts use as a suicide ganker. Its the reason why I say nerf T3Ds rather than buff AF because T3D have invalidated a whole lot more than just the 8 AF which are still good ships in a scrap.

I think there is some truth to this, and your idea of nerfing the T3D damage output is warranted (400 dps svipuls, why fly stabber?) since it competes with cruisers. You don't need 430dps out of something faster and just as tanky as a cruiser to kill frigs. Although the main culprit is the svipul. The hecates dps comes at a cost (its slow, and vulnerable to neuts). The svipul has no "weakness" per say. Just overwhelm it with dps, neuts and webs.

However, i don't think AF "need" mitigation against larger ships. I've fought against and used AF against larger ships. Large ships only have an issue when they don't fit for application.

Best example: All tank drake with only a scram. Of course you can't hit/damage an AF, you aren't fit for the job. Drop some extenders and slap on a couple webs and a missile computer and you're golden at killing any frig/T3D.

What i'm getting at is, there is no reason to nerf large ships to fix a smaller class of ship. AF's were already viable against larger ships. Yea if you fought someone who wanted to genocide frigs with a drake/typhoon, it would happen. Thats not the AF's fault, its the fact the person flying the big ship sacrificed tank, for application. In the case of a max tank drake, or any turret BS, an AF would have a field day tanking it.

I also don't believe in homogenizing AF. Harpies have range because they're Caldari, which the trend in their hybrid ships is they favor range. The harpy sacrificed a trait for double optimal bonus, that is the racial flavor. We don't need dual optimal bonused jaguars, or 100% optimal retributions. There can still be variety in each race, and still have different roles for each ship. Homogenizing 4 AF to be basically the same, but with different weapons is boring.