These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Player Features and Ideas Discussion

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

Marauder Sensor Strength
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
James Zimmer
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#1 - 2016-06-26 03:47:27 UTC
Marauders had their sensor strength pre-nerfed way back in the day to prevent them from becoming oppressive remote rep ships. Today, because of the pervasive use of bombers and excellent T2 logi, RR fleets are rare. There are excellent options for RR fleets in a number of drone boat hulls, but this style of gameplay is not being abused. I think it's unlikely that RR Marauders would be abused, and the glaring weakness feels out of place for a T2 combat ship. Maybe it's time to give Marauders normal sensor strength while out of bastion.
elitatwo
Zansha Expansion
#2 - 2016-06-26 06:37:42 UTC
Yeah, it is much better when they have no weaknesses at all.

Eve Minions is recruiting.

This is the law of ship progression!

Aura sound-clips: Aura forever
Cade Windstalker
#3 - 2016-06-26 06:49:06 UTC
They already had their sensor strength buffed with the Marauder rebalance. It used to be in the low teens.
James Zimmer
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#4 - 2016-06-26 13:15:01 UTC  |  Edited by: James Zimmer
elitatwo, no glaring weaknesses would be very consistent with other T2/3 combat hulls. Where are the class-wide glaring weaknesses of T3Cs, T3Ds, HACs or Command Ships? They're just not there. Assualt frigates have a similar weakness because they're so slow, but they're not exactly a cancer meta right now. The biggest weakness of Marauders is, and will still be the fact that they're rarely the best option for anything. Dreads and carriers are much better for the cost when you account for insurance payouts, T3Cs are more mass-efficient for wormholes, and, with all the special bonusus they get, pirate faction battleships are comparably powerful or even slightly better than Marauders for a third of the price.

Cade, only 2 of the 4 Marauders even get to the low teens. Here are their current base sensor strengths:

Vargur: 11
Paladin: 12
Kronos: 13
Golem: 14
elitatwo
Zansha Expansion
#5 - 2016-06-26 13:36:38 UTC
James, easy.

The t3 cruiser madness didn't get a full rebalance path yet, HAC's are easy to kill and hardly a threat in most cases and there is only one destroyer in dire need of the nerf-bat.

As for pricetags, just give your gratitude to the war on goons which used to own more tech-moons. The base price to moon-poo was "a tad" lower than those imaginary prices some bots came up with.

When HAC's came into the game, the pricetag was estimated at ~40-45m each, not 13x of a regular one.

Again, tell your friendly neighborhood market trading bots and ferengi miners the gratitude you feel for them.

Eve Minions is recruiting.

This is the law of ship progression!

Aura sound-clips: Aura forever
Cade Windstalker
#6 - 2016-06-26 14:28:35 UTC
James Zimmer wrote:
elitatwo, no glaring weaknesses would be very consistent with other T2/3 combat hulls. Where are the class-wide glaring weaknesses of T3Cs, T3Ds, HACs or Command Ships? They're just not there. Assualt frigates have a similar weakness because they're so slow, but they're not exactly a cancer meta right now. The biggest weakness of Marauders is, and will still be the fact that they're rarely the best option for anything. Dreads and carriers are much better for the cost when you account for insurance payouts, T3Cs are more mass-efficient for wormholes, and, with all the special bonusus they get, pirate faction battleships are comparably powerful or even slightly better than Marauders for a third of the price.

Cade, only 2 of the 4 Marauders even get to the low teens. Here are their current base sensor strengths:

Vargur: 11
Paladin: 12
Kronos: 13
Golem: 14


Oh, my bad, you are correct. I was recalling an old version of the changes to those hulls and mistakenly thought that made it into the final version. That said, with Bastion they don't really need a boost, now that it blocks ECM again. Yes that limits other uses for the ships but not really for missioning.

As for your examples, you're calling out four hull types, two of which are T3s (one of which hasn't been tiericided and the other of which probably needs another balance pass), one of which is the hull closest in competition with T3Cs (HACs), and the last of which is Command Ships which have serious fitting trade-offs to make between links, tank, and gank.

The real main thing here though is that you seem to be confusing being a generally gank-focused combat ship with not having any real weaknesses (ignoring the T3s here, because T3s are not equivalent to T2s). The weakness here is that you don't have Curse Neuts, Rapier Webs and TPs, Blackbird ECM, Logistics Reps, HAC points, Command Destroyer Jump Drive, and the list goes on.

You're basically taking a blunt instrument of a ship, that is good for basically running around and punching people in the face, over one that has more specialized advantages that might make it situationally much more powerful.

Lastly the Marauders are kind of meant to be specialist focused Mission ships, with at best niche PvP use. I believe that's why the penalty to sensor strength was left intact, because small Marauder BS gangs still have significant potential to dominante small gang warfare.

Lastly, cost is not a balance parameter.
James Zimmer
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#7 - 2016-06-26 15:36:03 UTC
HACs may be a bit squishy, but they aren't squishier than T1 cruisers. Command ships may not have perfect fitting, but they have both fewer guns and better CPU/PG than T1 BCs. T3Ds may not be perfect, but they don't have any glaring weaknesses next to their T1 counterparts. Marauders have roughly half the sensor strength of their T1 counterparts, which means they have to trade a mid or go into bastion just to catch up with a T1 battleship. This, by design, limits their usefulness in anything but small gang warfare, where they can local tank with bastion. I'm arguing that this limit is not needed to prevent them from becoming OP, and it needless limits their usefulness.

I have no problem comparing T3s with T2s, and here's why: There is effectively no difference in cost between T2 and T3 destroyers and the SP requirements are lower for T3Ds. When it comes to T3Cs, they initially appear to be more expensive than their T2 counterparts, but when you look at their fittings and stats, in many ways they are more comparable to battlecruisers than cruisers. At all level 5, a Legion with a powergrid subsystem has exactly the same PG as an Absolution. After subsystems, T3Cs tend to be slightly more expensive than command ships, but still close enough for comparisons.

Cost, and SP commitment are both balance parameters. If they weren't, T1 and most navy faction ships simply wouldn't be used at all.
Lugh Crow-Slave
#8 - 2016-07-08 12:18:08 UTC
.... if only they had some high slot that fixed this. Maybe it could give them extra resists too

BLOPS Hauler
The 16.8km Bubble
Serendipity Lost
Repo Industries
#9 - 2016-07-08 15:13:55 UTC
Get jammed - hit bastion mode and kill the jammer.

Get jammed by those pesky ECM drones - activate that smart bomb sitting in one of your utility high slots.


I'm not sure why marauders have any ECM resistance - they're pretty much designed to take out ECM. We've actually had a guy or 2 reship to a marauder when we saw that a gang w/ ECM was headed our way.

Seriously - if you're afraid to push the bastion button in a pvp situation - why are you flying one?
Lan Wang
African Atomic.
Dreadnought Diplomacy.
#10 - 2016-07-08 15:28:17 UTC
bastion module is the international symbol for "business time" Cool

Domination Nephilim - Angel Cartel

Calm down miner. As you pointed out, people think they can get away with stuff they would not in rl... Like for example illegal mining... - Ima Wreckyou*
Nevyn Auscent
Broke Sauce
#11 - 2016-07-08 22:55:15 UTC
Serendipity Lost wrote:

Seriously - if you're afraid to push the bastion button in a pvp situation - why are you flying one?

Bastion should be an optional module on Marauders, not a requirement the second someone pops ECM drones.
And Bastion is suicide in anything larger than a small gang situation.

So, short version, Bastion is irrelevant for talking about Marauder sensor strength.