Player Features and Ideas Discussion

tl;dr: Buff the damage and capacitor use of lasers on Sansha ships to levels acceptable out of pirate faction ships and so they are worth flying at all.

Inspired by this thread. Edit: This was supposed to be a link to the other thread. CCP, please fix your forum to allow at links to different topics in the [url] tags at least. Geez. Edit again: Apparently plain URLs work, so have one: http://goo.gl/3mKew

The Sansha ships (Succubus, Phantasm, and Nightmare) have been the runt of the litter in pirate faction ships. Each pirate ship lineup has a special quirk that makes it worth flying over T2 ships of its caliber:

1. Angel - insanely fast and agile (the Machariel aligns 0.3 seconds faster than a Punisher with a 400mm plate!), good tracking and flexible falloff
2. Serpentis - very fast, very agile, do all of the damage ever, plus 90% slowdown webs
3. Blood Raider - decently tanky, 90% slowdown webs (except Bhaal, which has web range bonus), and great capacitor draining
4. Guristas - insanely tanky (Drake taken to the max), and all of the drones ever granting wonderful versatility
5. Sansha - better tracking and damage than equivalent laserboats, plus better speed/agility because of the shield tank.

However, while the tracking of the lasers is beautiful, it is still a bit slower tracking than autocannons of the same size. That in and of itself is not the problem, because lasers have awesome range, but these lasers really don't do enough damage compared to T2 or empire faction ships of their own size (e.g. Phantasm = 534 DPS, Harbinger = 620 DPS, Zealot = 509 DPS, Omen Navy Issue = 512 DPS). Their tank is mediocre (Phantasm is outdone by ONI), and their speed/agility are not sufficient for kiting (Succubus and Phantasm). They also all have capacitor issues.

They are sort of... poor excuses for pirate faction damage boats. As such, I am proposing a series of damage buffs. By ship, they are:

Succubus

Right now, the Succubus functions as a sub-par AF. It has comparable damage to AFs, but way less tank. Since it can't rely on special shiny bonuses abilities to support it like the other pirate faction frigates do, it will badly need a buff once the AF changes hit TQ.

• +1 turret hardpoint. Number of high slots remains the same.
• Remove 5% damage bonus per level of Caldari Frigate
• Add bonus: "Caldari Frigate: 20% bonus to Small Energy Turret capacitor usage per level" Edit: upped from 15%

This creates a net 20% buff in damage at max skills (229 dps to 251 dps with two MPLs and two Heat Sinks).

The cap bonus functions as a "special ability" of sorts, making Sansha ships "laser ships using little cap", a sweet spot they were already aiming for by having fewer turrets with a blanket damage bonus. This same bonus is present in the buffs of the Phantasm and Nightmare as well.


Phantasm

The Phantasm (as stated previously) functions as a poorly built short range HAC. Its tank is "ok" and its speed/agility is decent, and its damage is decent... but not excellent. Plus, I hear frequent complaints about its cap. That should be a non-issue for a ship with only 3 lasers! It has mediocre tank (outdone by ONI), decent speed/agility (but high sig radius), and mediocre damage. The latter should not be the case for a ship meant to be a laser damageboat.

• +1 turret hardpoint. Number of high slots remains the same.
• Remove 5% damage bonus per level of Caldari Cruiser
• Add bonus: "Caldari Cruiser: 20% bonus to Medium Energy Turret capacitor usage per level" Edit: upped from 15%
• Change special ability to: "Special Ability: 150% bonus to Medium Energy Turret damage"

This creates a net 33% increase in damage. This would take the Phantasm from a crappy 534 DPS damage (with drones) to a commendable and worth-flying 696 DPS (793 overheated!). Now that's a ship I'd pay 120 mil to fly instead of a Harbinger or an ONI.

Nightmare

As is right now, the Nightmare is utterly unacceptable. It does damage similar to an Abaddon, and tanks way less. While the tank is excusable because the Abaddon is an uber-brick, the damage is simply not acceptable, and does not make the Nightmare worth flying at all.

• +1 turret hardpoint. Number of high slots remains the same.
• Remove 5% damage bonus per level of Caldari Battleship
• Add bonus: "Caldari Battleship: 20% bonus to Large Energy Turret capacitor usage per level" Edit: upped from 15%
• Change special ability to: "Special Ability: 250% bonus to Large Energy Turret damage"

This creates a 75% increase in laser damage output. It means bringing a Nightmare that does 1126 DPS (with drones) to 1581 DPS.

This may seem like a lot, but consider its damage output is the only thing the Nightmare has going for it. The Bhaalgorn caps out carriers and webs everything down, the Machariel is a giant Vagabond, the Vindicator does even more damage than this while webbing everything down, and the Rattlesnake is the king of PvE and has obnoxious tank even in PvP. The Nightmare needs a "niche" and being the king of lasers is quite a nice niche.

Plus... you know... it costs upwards of a billion ISK. You get what you pay for.

Thoughts? I will edit OP as needed based on discussion.

I like your ideas.

Faction ships are damn expenisve, so they deserve a bit of oompf!

Another approach would be to try to tweak their price a bit, but this would be much more complicated.

Plus, my general policy is to promote buffs of what is underpowered rather than nerfs to what is overpowered. Avoids a lot of whining.

However, here is another path to think about:

How about giving Sansha ships jumpdrive equivalent artificial wormhole generators ? This would match the Incursion storyline and give them something really unique.

This could either be a mere visual difference with jumpdrives, or even function without cyno field to lock on to. They could lock on stars and/or planets.

So? Why the hell should a few forum whiners determine game balance?

I, too, think that limited edition faction ships should just all be awful. Every single one.

Cooler suggestion: Spikey ships should cause damage upon bumping. Add additional spikes and perhaps a per-battleship-level spike damage bonus to the nightmare.

Problem solved.

The tip of the thorax is more rounded, can't imagine that actually causing pain.

Maybe bumping something with a thorax at >1000 m/s causes them to lose all target locks due to a lapse in concentration from intense pleasure?

You know what would make the Sansha ships awesome at WH usage? Capless lasers. No, seriously, hear me out:
- Sansha ships already have utility highs for core probe launcher + cloak/neut
- WH rats neut like crazy. This is very bad for the cap guzzling sansha ships... not even being able to fire your guns because you're neuted out is just not ok.
- WH space is actually pretty passable for the small gang combat where active tanks are best. Unfortunately, Sansha ships don't have the capacitor to power them..... because of the guns.

Capless guns would go a long ways towards making Sansha ships actually pretty decent for WH space. +1 turret (choose between neut/cloak/probe launcher) and capless lasers would just make them awesome.

-Liang

It does sound nice, but it just feels wrong for lasers to not have at least a token amount of cap usage.

See, this is where my lack of WH experience fades in. But this seems reasonable. Machariels get insane agility and speed on top of their 80km-ish falloff on ACs. To me this doesn't sound more or less crazy than cap-free lasers.
I am in favor of this.

The Phantasm already goes over 1500 m/s with a MWD, and it is shield tanked so won't lose that speed. It's speedier than both the Caldari and the Amarr cruisers it's based on, so I'm fine with it. Yes, it is slower than the Gila, Vigilant, and most importantly, the Cynabal, but they don't have quite as excellent damage projection as the Phantasm does (or that it would given the changes outlined here). The issue with Phantasm appearing "slow" is the class most likely to challenge it -- battlecruisers -- having a few absurdly fast entries, such as nano-cane, nano-drake, shield Brutix, etc. Those ships are far heavier but can reach higher speeds somehow, causing an imbalance that renders cruisers overall a bit outgunned. The solution to that would be to nerf nano battlecruisers, not to buff cruiser speeds.

Nobody has had any egregious complaints about making the guns capless at max skills, and there has been plenty of positive feedback on that so I will change the OP to reflect that.