EVE General Discussion

I have seen escalations go as far as 17 jumps. That's still safely behind your intel channels and choke points?

You can go 40 jumps and still be in friendly space.

This is not true at all.

I spent 3 months out in null sec in a cloaky Ishtar. I didn't die once and I made around 20 billion isk running combat sites. It was in the old northern Goodswarm space mostly. Using wormholes and giant secure containers I set up a supply base for it and just used my smarts to stay alive. I wrote a guide on how to do it (Infinity Ziona's Guide to Solo Combat Site Running) or something similiar.

With a T3C like the Proteus its much much easier, don't need a interdiction nullified one either, you just need to set up bookmarks first using a cov ops frig or intie. With the current state of the Tengu you could pretty much blast through any camp without bookmarks because its so tanky they will never kill you before you hit the gate if you decloak (sans heavy nueting and major camps).

"Multipurpose exploration ship" has "exploration" as the primary adjective affecting "ship" which indicates that you consider the ship an exploration ship first and multipurpose second, hence my interpretation of your original comment.

Glad we can agree that these ships aren't to be pigeon holed though.



Only in whatever specific role you're referring to. If the Ishtar is better at everything then yes, the Proteus would be a flat out lesser ship, but that seems unlikely considering at the very least the Isthar doesn't have a bonus to Data or Relic sites, and the T3Cs do, which seems unlikely to change.

The T3Cs weren't particularly designed with anything other than Wormhole PvE in mind, which was designed at around the same time. CCP never look at every possible thing a ship might interact with when putting it into the game, it's impractical. They rely on the players to point out potential major problem spots but some inevitably sneak through the cracks.

It could be argued that the original Tengu was one of these, since it became one of the most popular Level 4 mission runners more or less over night.



I know the Deimos can be effective, it was downright hilarious for a while before they nerfed Medium Rails.

The Ishtar generally has trouble fitting full sized guns while the Proteus gets a 25% bonus to its guns with the drone subsystem and gets around 400 more PG and more CPU along with an extra low slot and rig slot.



I'm really not seeing any statements with much in the way of explanation behind them, certainly not about why T3Cs in general aren't OP. You've said a lot of stuff about your own experiences, albeit in vague terms, and about why you personally don't want the ships to be nerfed, but none of that amounts to much of an explanation.

You also seem to have missed something somewhere about relative ship power levels. If you'd care to refer to the original ship tiericide devblog post that I've linked previously, specifically this graphic which is what is being referenced here you'll note that they're putting T3s on about the power level of navy ships but with more generalization.

Based on what's been done with the T3 Destroyers this means you can have the power level of a Navy ship, but in a couple of areas. For example a Drone Proteus might end up looking a bit like a VNI in terms of drone power but probably tank a little better and either have a cloak, better base stats, nullification, or some additional specialization but not quite at the level of a T2 ship.



Again, I never asserted the Drone Boat Proteus was bad, just generally not eclipsing the Isthar as a pure drone boat.

You're the one who said several times that using a drone boat was disadvantaging you at whatever sites you're running, and as I said I can't really comment on your specific setup or issues without more detail than you've provided so far, and I assume are willing to provide.

If you don't find the Proteus a compelling alternative to the Isthar post-nerfs then I don't think there's anything stopping you from bringing one.

If the Proteus provides more safety from players but doesn't run the sites as well then that's a meaningful trade off and good game balance.

The real answer here is that SP loss is a bad balancing mechanic and needs to be removed. The oldest players don't care, but everyone else is potentially crippled by it if they want to use T3s. That's not a good situation.



People sent their booster T3s through because it required bad luck to be caught, as opposed to near-certain death for everything else. It was never 100% automatic safety. For example, what happens if your T3 jumps in within 2000m of an object and can't cloak? No amount of skill will prevent you from dying. If you jump in too close to a skilled interceptor pilot you get caught and die. The risk is acceptably low in a PvP context where you expect to lose a certain percentage of your fleet every time you engage, but in a PvE context that camp resistance is a supplement to map awareness and avoiding camps, not an excuse for jumping mindlessly into a 50-man bubble camp.



I assume you mean "your" in a general sense, because I have neither alliance bubble camps nor Rorquals. And if by "dropping" you mean "hot dropping with black ops/capitals" then that has more to do with jump-capable ships being powerful than the cloak + nullifier combo.



T3s are not normal cruisers. They cost more than most PvE battleships, and the idea that hull size should be the primary factor in determining what content you can access is obsolete game design. Don't present this like people are going out in 10 million ISK T1 cruisers and soloing high-end content.

This.

Furthermore, if the Ishtar does it better, why not nerf that instead.

The real issue here is people dont like the occassional T3C running past their gatecamps.

They also want T3Cs changed so that they are more useful for their own PvP fleets.

They want them cheaper to build, to drop the SP loss, and be able to fit simultaneous subsystems useful only for their purposes, and the bonuses dropped to where there are only enough for the purposes of their fleets (they dont need the versatility for their purposes).

Essentially they want to change T3Cs from a versatile, expensive swiss-army knife with SP loss;
into a cheap, non-SP loss combat vessel which "loses" versatility in favor of the narrow range of bonuses useful to their fleets.

It doesnt "nerf" T3Cs for their purposes, at all.
Infact it makes them MORE useful for their purposes, at the expense of nomads.

These changes actually BUFF T3Cs for their PvP fleet purposes.
They have everything to gain from this change.

Plus, if T3Cs can no longer effectively operate as nomads, that means less interlopers in their space (or easier to catch), and incentives joining null corps instead.

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PvP fleets dont need the versatility. They also dont need cloak/nulli.
They dont need the full range of bonuses, they only need those for PvP.
The cost is more an issue for them, as they are more likely to lose the ships.
The SP loss is more an issue for them, as they are more likely to lose the ships.

They want the T3Cs changed to fit their own narrow needs, at the expense of everyone else.
They want T3C changed from a multi-tool, into one that caters only to their own purposes.

They paint it as a "re-balance" or a nerf, whereas they infact stand only to benefit from it.

The cloak/nulli issue is hilarious when compared to the discussions on removing cynos from LS.

There many of them same posters felt it was fair and sensible that JFs can lol-cyno past LS.
Apparently that they arent interceptable at gates there was not an issue, but magically it now is an issue with T3Cs.

The hypocrisy and self-serving bias is palpable and pervasive.

These changes would not reduce the numbers or efficacy of T3Cs in fleet combat.
It would INCREASE their numbers and efficacy, as cheaper, no SP loss, and still able to fit the bonuses sufficient to that purpose.
It BUFFS T3Cs for their purposes, at the expense of everyone else.

This and your previous post hits the nail on the head, my alliance does have a T3C doctrine, but we mainly use other doctrines, it has long been pretty evident that the 0.0 blocks hate the ability for people to move freely with significantly reduced risk.

Also many of them assume that the cloaky T3C is nullified, not all are...

baltec1 claims cost and SP have nothing to do with balance.

Yet he wants T3C cost to build reduced, and SP loss removed.

Hmmm!

We toss around dreads like subcaps while the number of supers balloons by tens of thousands. Feel free to keep on saying cost and SP matter.