EVE General Discussion

Now that the skills for Light Fighters and Support Fighters are out there are some training choices to be made. I looked through all the dev blogs and information I could find and found a woeful lack of information on what kind of stats the new fighters will have, as well as a lack of information on the various racial carrier strengths and weaknesses.

Can we get some preliminary information soon? It's understood that things can and will still change, but getting a general idea of how carriers will be after the patch would be very helpful for making training choices. Given the amount of time needed to train this kind of skills compared to the time before the changes, we really need some data soon.

Here's my situation and I'm sure some others can relate: I have a character dedicated to flying DPS carriers (slowcats, ratting, fooling around). This character can't do triage so FAXes aren't a concern. There's a significant lack of information on the skills, such as:
1. What will the existing Fighters skill do? Will it be a damage bonus like it is now? Will it be for a certain type of fighters like the light and support skills? Will it be required at a level above 1 for anything?
2. What will the existing Fighter Bombers skill do? Will it become the skill for Heavy Fighters? Will it be required at a level above 1 for anything? Will it still have Fighters 5 as a prerequisite?
3. What will Advanced Drone interfacing and Drone Control Units do now?
4. Will the new fighters/squadrons be affected by skills like Drone Avionics, Drone Durability, Drone Navigation, and Drone Sharpshooting?
5. Will T2 fighters (if there are any) use the racial Drone Specialization skills or something new?
6. Will Support Fighters require or get bonuses from skills for modules with similar effects? For example Electronic Warfare for ECM fighters, Target Painting for target painting fighters, Propulsion Jamming for webbing fighters, etc.
7. Will there be any more new skills to save space for in the queue, like for capital plates/shield extenders or capital ewar?

A few more personal skill concerns:
8. I currently have perfect drone skills except Fighters. What new skills would I need to get the same functionality I have now? Light Fighters 5?
9. Will the Light Drones, Medium Drones, Heavy Drones, and Sentry Drone interfacing skills have any application or will I be left with 3.3 million SP in skills suddenly useless to a dedicated carrier pilot?
10. If existing drone skills will be completely useless for carriers, will there be any option to move their SP into the Light Fighters skill since that looks like it will serve the same purpose? Same question for skills like Drone Navigation, Drone Sharpshooting, and racial Drone Specializations if they won't affect the new fighters.

And some needed information about the hardware:
11. What bonuses will each faction's hull have? Will Gallente still have a damage bonus? Will they get bonuses to that faction's fighters or favorite kind of ewar?
12. Will fighters/squadrons still get bonuses from modules? If so, normal drone modules or new capital modules? Will there be new modules to buff Support Fighters?
13. Will there be any rebalancing of the materials/production costs of carriers now that they have a different role?
14. Will there be any rebalancing of the cost of superscarriers vs carriers?

Edit:
15. Will fighters still do two types of damage with a 70%/30% split like they do now?
16. Will the Light Fighters and Support Fighters skills give significant bonuses per level or are they just to use the fighters? (apparently the skills are only for bonuses?)



I know it's relatively early in the development process to ask for all this information, but these skills take so long to train that it's important to make informed decisions months ahead of time. And I know people are getting curious after the relative silence the last couple months with such a huge change looming ever closer.

They said there's gonna be devblog later this week to adress the transition issues with carriers to FAXs. I hope it will also include Fighters.

As I already said in another post some information is desperately needed. It's 4 months or so since the announcement. These are long skills. People need to prepare to still have the same lvl of gameplay after the Capital changes are out.

How is that relevant? That's about a completely different part of the update.

Happy to help

Still waiting for that devblog....

If you had carrier SP you would know it hasn't been removed yet and won't till the Citadel expansion occurs, which is probably still 3 months away.
Though I agree with the posters who want information as these are long trains and so prior information is needed as far out as possible.

So far, basically fighters are going to mess up caps, light fighters are going to mess up subcaps, and support fighters are going to do things in a place far away from you. Fighters skill is the only skill you need to control all three types, light fighter and support fighter skills are going to make each one better. Probably tracking on lights if I had to fancy a guess.



The rest of it hasen't been revealed yet, so just wait for a devblog on carriers that will come out long before the expansion. Just make sure you don't have a triage module fitted to your carrier.

Yeah, that does seem like a much simpler route since all you have to worry about is training your skills to use T2 guns and modules while we'll be getting a whole new weapon system and complete ship overhaul.