Upcoming Feature and Change Feedback Center

Hey everyone! If you've read the previous thread asking for applications or our recent dev blog you'll know that we have spun up another community focus group to help refine plans for a Strategic Cruiser rebalance this summer. We almost have the whole group in the channel now and we're starting in earnest.

The basic outline of our goals and early plans can be found in the balance presentation from Fanfest as well as the dev blog.

We'll be using this thread as a location for general community discussion and Q&A as we go through this process.

Anyone can observe the logs of the discussion in the focus group slack through https://focusgrouplogs.tech.ccp.is/

We'll also link other working documents in this thread as we go forward so the whole community can take a look.

Thanks!

Reserved

Yup preserving exploration gameplay is definitely a priority for CCP as well.

Great discussions and points well made from the focus group so far.

I got extremely interested by the Heat bonus mention few days ago. It comes down to a simple fact : a visible bonus is better than a invisible/passive bonus.

Give a ship to someone telling him that overheat damage is reduced by 20% when using armor hardeners, he will be like "cool !" without thinking anything else. You don't have any mention telling you how much time you can overheat until you are at 100% damage, and except doing the math yourself or launching pyfa / eft, it's not something apparent.

Give a ship to someone telling him there is a bonus to overheat bonus, and he will see his scram going from 24km to 36km (assumng the OH is 50% instead of 20%, random number). The pilot will immediately see the difference, and in this case the use of this bonus will feel more rewarding.

This is something which is already listed in your proposal changes and I like it. I am perplex about the overheat damage reduction bonus, such as now, because it feels less rewarding

Regarding the slot layout, I would make a difference between the Legion and Proteus subsystems so that the legion tends to have more low slots than the proteus. For the legion, +2 Mid / +2 Low would then be +1 Mid / 3 Low.

Regarding the Active tank subsystem on the Tengu, I believe "+10% Shield Boost, +10% Shield Boost Benefits" should be read as "+10% Shield Boost, +10% Shield Boost Overheat Benefits" ?

"Increase cost slightly"

Is this form the new item being added to the hull manf requirements?

I was hoping the invension side could be looked at as well. If I'm understanding this correctly, this item is being used to put some cost difference into the hulls like how the racial Hybrid Tech Decryptors used to. Except it's being done on building side instead of invension. Which imo is where the changes need to be made.

Back when hybrid tech decryptors were a thing, the caldari racial variant was so expensive it proped up the intact and malf relic prices because of how inefficient using wrecked relics were. With the rest of the races bouncing between malf and wrecked.

Removing the decryptors made all four T3s cost the same to invent. Then later (or was it at the same time?) we got to choose the outcome of our invension and that basically buffed invension chance by 200% (1/4 chance of what you wanted to 1/1). This is also ignoring the success boosting decryptors we get to use now as well.

So what I'd like to see is Hybrid Tech Decryptors added back into sleeper data sites (Giving them back the only drop that was worth anything) and then reducing the invension chance by 50% (or 75% if you want to go back to how relics used to be priced).

Then maybe I won't have to tell people that run relic/data sleeper sites that the hackable cans are a waste of time.

I would like to see the skillpoint loss die in a fire... Much as I appreciate CCPs "financial benefits" to skillpoint loss, it's a godawful mechanic that dissuades a lot of players from using an entire class of ships that has no place in today's game.

Remove the SP loss and you have more flexibility to play about with defensive options.

Currently liking how things are going with the wip subsystem sheet. Do have to nitpick about the base resist changes down into t3d territory, and truthfully a bit miffed with certain combinations, but overall its actually a fairly solid work and progress set.

legion offense seems weak compared to the others
i guess thats just its thing

The same thing would be accomplished if they increase the value of the subsystems datacores(increased usage/decreased drops), from currently 5k isk (essentially zero)

Jump bumping in to say that all exploration seems to be in a fantastic place with these changes so far. There were doubts we'll even be able to fit cloaky and nullified at the same time, or even the scan bonuses with the covops, or get somekind of lowslot messing around with, but we're pretty ok. I'll still hold my breath until i see the final numbers for armor/shield to check out how it works against Ghost Sites and Superior Sleeper Caches, since that's where EHP actually matters for us, but the big issues have passed and we'll take the EHP hits as everyone else, as well as the agility hits.

Taking a Proteus as an example, we'll have the option of a new fully bonused offensive system if we give up a current lowslot, which will allow us to properly molest Asteros and maybe, just maybe, even Strats. With the RR/burst bonus sub we get the current slot layout, however, we will get a new targetting range lock penalty with the Nullification sub. Depending on how many stabs you run, that may affect you.

Coming back to EHP, it's worth mentioning that we'll get a new 37.5% local rep bonus, compared to the +hp bonus we used to get. With the other nerfs, it'll round to about 10-15% more local rep (considering current fit), and it may prove more useful than face-tanking Superior Archives or Sleeper sites in general. I'm not sure how the tradeoff will work. However, given T3D resists, a Prot will have the same 50% explosion resistence as it always had, which means Ghost Sites will do the same amount of damage to you.

In any case, given tank changes, if you get caught with a full explo fit, expect to not reach the gate in time to jump this time around. Which imho, is fine. Also, if you used a Prot, you'll be happy to know we get 50 instead of 25mbit now, even for the RR sub, not even going into the full offensive one where we get 100mbit. So even when you're not ready, you can still defend yourself against an Astero for example.