Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Interceptors
Interceptors are in a good place now. Smartbombs on gates are a form of counter-play. Although it is possible to make a travel interceptor have a lock time <2s and 10k or so eHP, not everyone is so well informed or paranoid; it is very EvE-like to have trade-offs and pitfalls built in. It would be extremely useful for the nullification to be toggle-able, similar to modes in T3Ds, for when you want to get caught in bubbles, but I think in general this part of interceptors does not need to be changed - it is class defining.

Blockade Runners
Absolutely do not need nullification. Clever use of perches or tacticals, or the built-in 90% fatigue reduction makes these ships already exceptionally good at their role. Interdictors, Heavy interdictors, etc, should mean something. Currently there are decisions in fitting and in piloting that can hand the day to either the BR or a camping Interdictor - nullification would take many of these away.

Luxury Yachts
Lower skill travel interceptor. Keep it.

T3Cs
Eh, this one is complicated. So a lot of people prefer the Tengu as a blops hunter. Personally I think it's terrible at hunting, but one of the things it offers over other choices is nullification - as does the rest of the T3C line. So long as there are gigantic static bubble camps, there needs to be a way around them, and until bubble spamming gates is no longer a thing, there needs to be a ship or ships that counter it. Except on either hunting fits, or fits that explore, the nullification sub doesn't see much use to my knowledge - it's fine to keep around as is until such a time as giant bubble camps aren't 'free'.

Anchored Bubbles
I don't like the idea of them generating killmails. There's already enough killmail bloat for all the structures in the game. On one hand yeah, it would make people have a 'cost' for spamming them, but on the other hand they would just use alts to do so. I also do not like the idea of static timers on them. Rather, make rats attack them. If someone wants to hold vigil over a bubbled gate for as long as they please, that's what they want to do, for whatever reason, they should be able to do it as long as they can actively defend them. Maybe this is too much strain on the server - it has long been an observation that rats typically cease acting ratty (shooting drones, etc) when a player (even cloaked) is not on grid with them. However, I feel it would be interesting - players can set them up, players can defend them, but if they are left alone long enough, rats, including drifters, will get to them.

It's hard to get an exact measure of what is acceptable and what isn't. The stray bubble on a gate left behind occasionally has effects way beyond what its original owner intended - this is very EvE-like and cool! However the 300 bubbles people will put on a single gate that are there forever and ever...well that's wrong! Slow guaranteed attrition to rats would do much to make the big bubble camps require maintenance, especially if drifters become interested in them more and more over time, while they would not remove so many random bubbles from space that it becomes overly boring to travel. If there was some sort of attrition mechanic like this, or even just a limited time they stay anchored, then it would be time to pull nullification from the T3Cs.

Nullified T3s :
Nullification on T3s is IMO ok. They cost a lot, have warp and align times that allow them to be caught and you should get something for the investment you put on the field.
The only thing that is questionable is nullified + covert.

Nullified Interceptors :
I can only immagine that nullification was given to interceptors to strengthen their role as the ship that gets the initial tackle on something. And it worked very well for that particular role and I think interceptors should be unchanged in that regard.

However, interceptors are still able to put out some dps and in larger numbers are able to bring down allmost any target. The so called combat-interceptor is a real problem, espacially in regards to fozzy sov. One of the reasons why no one bothers to use assault frigs is because combat-interceptors are the way better choice.
Nullification was given to interceptors to spark out more content. But as they are now, they create less content because they are able to elude every enagement that they dont want. The only real counter to combat interceptors is more combat interceptors.

How can this be addressed :
Remove nullification from interceptors and introcude a new passive highslot module that gives nullification but disallows all weapons and e-war except webs, points and scrams. You dont need DPS to fulfill the role of a superfast tackle ship.

Bubbels :
I have seen dead end systems where the gate was covert in a clusterfuck of bubbels 24h. Thats just stupid. I am very mutch for bubbels to have a timer. Even a long timer like 30min or 1h would do the job.

Yeah, this is a good point. Killmails for bubbles would end up having little value in controlling their proliferation.

Give us killmails for each killed butle like other structures do and we will get them sorted for you.
A lot more of them would have been killed if that was the case.

T2 interdiction bubble being a expensive ammo and Launcher but should work for all or most nullified ships.

Just couple of ideas to add to the mix.

Anchorable bubbles:

These need dealing with, as some areas of ratting space are just cancerous to try hunt in and when it means you jump into a system and spend 30 secs having burn out of the bubbles so you can warp it makes this no fun.

While I do think its a valid method to secure space, Have them give KM's, only last a certain amount of time before needing to be deployed again, and have rats able to shoot them. Would go along way. Or just having it so you cant have more than one within a certain range of each other.

Interdiction nullified ships:

Ceptors are fine, Maybe dropping the nullification from the combat ceptors and just leaving it on the fleet ones could be a good idea. But as peolpe said a group of smartbombing BS's on a gate can really ruin a ceptors day. when people do ceptor fleets that is one option and people are right to point that out BUT!! i dont think its a reason to remove it from ceptors.
Some have even said make it so being nullified means you cant use scram or web etc... That idea is just idiotic, having a ship that can run through bubbles and get initial tackle is a great thing for the fleet and means ratters can't be entirely afk.

T3C's are fine with being able to use nullification subs as it pretty much gimps the ship except for some very niche uses dont think looking at this is needed at all.

Nullification for other ships:

Having a small cargo bay ship that is nullified would be a good thing, the Blockade runner i feel should have this while it would need a smaller bay to compensate for making it harder to kill.

Nullification:

Nullified Ships, especially in combination with very agile hulls like Interceptors or cloaking devices, are just not fun and way to risk averse. Nullification, if it has to be in the game, should come from a Module you can fit on certain hulls. Also, it should give a drawback on agility, depending on the size of the hull (Frigate gets a higher Penalty than a T3).

I would like to see as less nullified Ships as possible. Especially on Hull sizes smaller than cruisers or ships that are very agile or able to cloak in general.


Anchorable Bubbles:

I like the approach with the Fuel consumation. Make every bubble have a fuel bay and let is consume a small amount of fuel (depending on the size of the Bubble). So Bubble-Barriers are still valid, but need at least a minimum of maintenance.

I am for their being a high slot module or a rig that would make ships nullified. I would like to see the T3 subsystem nullification stay. To balance interceptors, maybe make them where do hardly any dps. Replace their weapon bonuses with e-war or navigation bonuses. I truly believe nullified blockade runners and DSTs would increase the population in null.

What BLOPSers Think about Nullified T3s:

I predict there are two groups of people who will have strong negative feelings about nullified T3s. They will be either gatecampers because they will find covert cloaky nullification OP. Or small/large scale fleet consensual pvp people in null and wormholes will have negative feelings about them because they will find combat capability of nullified T3s OP. If you completely remove nullification from T3s some of these people will be happy and I admit that the changes would probably provide them a slightly more interesting and meaningful gameplay. I offer a solution in the end which works to solve issues of BLOPSers and fleet warfare people but not for gatecampers, which is the best I could come up with.

Here is the catch.

Given that how Eve should be an interesting risk/reward game (which rewards risk-taking), nullsec with the current state of local is really safer than it should be for PvE ships (on another note it is also not rewarding enough IMHO). The only thing you have to do to survive is to dock when someone comes in local. And on top of that you have intel channels, bubblefucked gates, system wide cyno jamming, etc etc. I'm not even mentioning botting activities, which in my experience either CCP or Eve community as a whole (because we don't report them enough) is inefficient in combating this. But the fact is a carrier or a super will see a roaming enemy fleet coming from miles away, and if not, then notice it in local, and dock. This mechanic that completely relies on carelessness on the part of owners of the PvE ships in null is already something that should be replaced with mechanics that rely on creativity and outplaying each other, which is an issue for another topic. But moral here is nullsec is already a safe place.

Aside from ragerolling nullsec static wormholes (which is accessible only to few WH groups who you will notice keeps killing PvE supers), perhaps the only way to even have a chance to catch/kill these PvE ships is to use a nullified covops Tengu with a blops fleet. Because a nullified Tengu is fast, combat probe capable, and it doesn't take 30 precious seconds for it to burn away from the bubblefucked gate, which is even more time for a PvE ship needs to warp off, who already has time enough without nullification. And if you ever go to null, you will notice %95 of main ratting systems have bubblefucked gate. Nerfing anchorable bubbles is not a solution here, because if you make them expire they will just renew it, and if you completely remove them those who rat in billions worth ships will %100 have the means to spare some alt toons to bubble their in gates. Yes there will be systems which won't be paying attention, but overall you will make nullsec even safer, especially for those who are not careless. But this is not a good thing because there is no interesting mechanic where the hunter can outplay the careful null group. And in my experience the carelessness mechanic is also unsustainable in a sandbox game because people GROW careful after few mistakes, and the average experience/carefulness level of PvE'rs in Eve nullsec is not static but steadily increasing.

Thus if you nerf covops nullified tengus, you will blow a HUGE hit to BLOPS gameplay, and make nullsec even safer, which should be highly undesirable. Furthermore this gameplay (especially active hunting) is more interesting and fun than gatecamping, which is a rather lazy method of finding kills. So you don't really want to nerf BLOPS to buff gatecamping, which will force more people to play Eve in a more lazy and less creative way.

Bottom line is that you can try and find a solution to combat capable nullified ships, but this game should maintain a combat probe/covert cloak/covert cyno capable nullified ship as an option if you want to avoid making it less interesting. By definition this also has to enable those who want to safely carry precious low volume cargo through null but if gatecampers think this is lame, well BLOPS groups will think it is a decent price to pay to keep the nullsec the risky place it should be.

Lastly, I would like to notify you guys at CCP/CSM. Because gatecampers outnumber blopsers, and everyone is interested in solving their own specific problems, the majority of the feedback in this thread might suggest detaching covert ops cloak from nullification. It doesn't mean these players have considered different kinds of gameplays and the balance among them, which should be of utmost importance for you guys. It really worries me when you rely on quantitatively superior feedback, rather than qualitatively superior feedback, and even the CSM election system is reinforcing this issue.

o7

EDIT - POSSIBLE SOLUTION FOR T3Cs:

Make it so that nullification subsystems can only be fitted together with covops subsystems and doesn't work with any other offensive subsystem. Covert ops subsytems already bring a nice limitation to the combat capability of any T3C, so mandating nullification to only be compatible with covert ops entirely solves the issue of highly combat capable nullified ships in fleet warfare. Meanwhile it will not affect any other T3C balance issue, nor require a change in subsystem visuals etc., so it will be minimum hassle for CCP.

Meanwhile this solution maintains BLOPS groups' capabilities, which shouldn't be nerfed as I already argued.

It will not solve gatecampers' issues with covert cloaky nullification, but as I argued these issues should be posterior to not only issues of BLOPS gameplay but also the risk/reward balance in nullsec for the reasons I have provided above. Also, if you take away nullification from T3Cs, it's not like people keep carrying those PLEXes in T3Cs. They will be forced to access other solutions such as jump freighters, which will not change anything in a gatecamper's life. Overall covert cloaky nullification for T3Cs does more good than bad for this game.

Questionable. If you took away the nullification of T3Cs without adjusting bubbles, people may grow even more complacent, and feel even more secure behind a bubble camp. Speaking from my experience at least, 95% of the time, the hunter being good has nothing to do with catching something - it has to do entirely with how much the target is paying attention. If they did not have to fear a nullified hunter, my prediction is they would grow vastly more complacent and less aware if they have bubbles out. We live in an age when most of the good ratting ships are either oversize prop, have MJDs, or can rat 100% aligned - the very instant they feel threatened is the very instant they are off grid - this alone is another problem for a later post of course, but the heart of the matter is their reaction time determines the success of the hunt. Anything that makes them feel safer potentially serves to lower this reaction time.

While I agree they should not remove nullification on T3Cs until bubbles are not 100% 'free' interdiction, if they did remove it before doing so, it wouldn't be the end of the world for blops - not by a long shot! There are many, many other choices for hunters, and ones that have proven track records in some of the most heavily defended space in the game.

I think there's the possibility for a few new mechanics around anchorable bubbles, and I especially like the idea of a decay. My thoughts on bubbles:

We already have a variable range on anchorable bubbles, and, intuitively, that range steadily increases from a small tech one bubble of 5km, all the way through to the large tech 2 at 40km. If CCP were to introduce a decay on bubbles, I would hope to see the time-frame fall some in roughly these intervals.

small tech 1 - 3 hours
small tech 2 - 6 hours
medium tech 1 - 12 hours
medium tech 2 - 24 hours
large tech 1 - 48 hours
large tech 2 - 72/96 hours (couldn't decide if it should double at each new tier)

I would suggest the faction variants of these bubbles would have a time-frame falling halfway between the tech 1 and tech 2, in the same way as range is currently set up.

It could also be an interesting mechanic to have the range that the bubble will disrupt at slowly decay after, say, half the lifetime of the bubble, allowing for it to still be usable, but increasing the skill required to place a bubble for maximum effectiveness. I do believe there should be a hard lower range cap, though, at between 10 and 20% of the maximum range - so for a small tech 1 bubble, the lowest disruption would be 1km, whereas for a large tech 2, it would be 4km - this is 20% and 10% respectively, with mediums falling somewhere in the middle.


As for nullification, I've always felt that the blockade runner lacking nullification is an odd design choice. Obviously deep space transport ships have a built-in +2 warp core strength, an I feel that the blockade runner should have something to compliment this. That said, I would probably also remove the combat capability from blockade runners, making them agile and difficult to be caught, but also increasing the amount of skill and attention pilots would need to pay when moving a blockade runner.

I also wouldn't want to see any more combat-capable cloaked+nullified ships introduced to the environment. Flying such a ship is currently the realm of Tech 3 strategic cruisers, with other combat ships just being one or other. This introduces a cost and skill element that combat style, which I think works and should remain.