Ships & Modules

I know the Tech 3 Cruiser rebalance is coming up fairly soon and that there is a focus group engaging in ongoing discussion with how best Tech 3 Cruisers should be balanced, but there is something I would like to know, specifically from one of the developers that handles ship balancing.

This is an image I see often whenever Tech 3 ships are discussed. I believe it dates back to when CCP first did a major balance pass and was meant to reflect CCP's idea of where the different types of ships should fit relative to one another.

Is that still reflective of where CCP wishes ships to be? Or has CCP changed their mind since then?

anyway this is what you want
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=520927&find=unread
has a spreadsheet for you

Ship balance aside, as in terms of pvp effectiveness balance, I'm not so sure where CCP is going with the 'whole picture' of T3s now, I mean including their production and gathering mats for such and stuff.

The prices of subs and hulls themselves, and nano ribbons and stuff have dropped a lot in past 12 months (or a bit longer maybe) period. How 'useful' a newly balanced T3 will also have impact on prices as supply/demand adapts to catch up to the new level (higher or lower, whatever).

Overall though, unless they do something pretty big on the production/harvesting of WH stuff on T3s, I do not see T3 prices climbing up by too much (if it does go up at all that is). Well this may not be fitting to a ships & modules forum, but although people like to say ship price should not come into effect when doing pvp balancing of ships (i.e. it should be more role/specialisation wise balanced), I don't share this opinion.

Ship balance, of something that used to be as high-end and widely used as T3s, with very specific sources of mats to make them, will have an impact on the doctrines, resource gathering, and overall game play meta that goes beyond just ship A vs ship B, C, D balance.

Just my two cents :p

tl;dr - I don't really mind too much how they get 'balanced' function wise, I just hope CCP is also going to look at the price changes over the time and rethink where they think T3s should be, and yes, as Do LIttle said pirate ships are totally out of whack now.

"New faction-specific build components sourced from WH space"

This combined with the other changes make it impossible to predict the demand for, or price of constructing any one of the T3C after the change.

We dont know what this build component is, how central it is to T3C production, or what WH content it drops from, or at what rates.

The "faction specific" part is confusing, as Sleepers arent a faction associated with any specificity to pirate factions.

So deductively, they either drop as random faction loot from Sleepers (which would be odd), or as a drop from Data/Relic/Combat sites of a specific pirate faction in WHs.

Could also be only from Ghost sites, in which case if they are mandatory for T3C production, prices will sky rocket as Ghost sites are relatively rare and require a narrow spectrum of dedicated craft to complete (and rarely can a player hack more than a few cans per site).

I have checked the focus group logs, and most of the people in the focus group are of the mentality that 3 > 2 > 1.

The image I linked contradicts that mentality, so I'd like to know, preferably from one of the developers, if the image I linked to is still the goal.

It really doesn't look that way at all. The Legion and Loki both have a propulsion subsystem that gives them the exact same role bonus as HACs, along with similar bonuses on their offensive subsystems and far more tank with their defensive subsystems.

It's especially jarring when you think about how strong they'll be with those overheating bonuses. They're still going to be much better HACs than HACs are. They're still going to be boasting Battlecruiser-level tanks.

They're still going to be doing what Force Recon were meant to do -- not EWAR, but fitting covert cloaks to travel and lightning covert cynos. Force Recon have bonuses for cynosural fields for that purpose, and yet they're never used for it because T3Cs are better, and will continue to be better. Even when talking about EWAR, T3Cs are going to be better choices most of the time because they're capable of stronger EWAR with substantial tanks, so they're going to last a lot longer than Recon Ships ever would.

You also have the issue of cloaks being a defensive subsystem. It still looks like T3Cs are going to be able to get a good amount of tank with them, but also a ton of damage -- literally Attack Battlecruisers with more tank, the ability to fit covert cloaks, and interdiction nullification. Imagine a Blops bridging in 20 gank fit Proteus right on top of you, and then all of them escaping because there's no answer to interdiction nullification.

Interdiction nullification that people were up in arms over just a while back because of how strong it meant combat fit Interceptors could be -- but suddenly, we're okay with combat fit T3Cs being nullified + having covert cloaks + having be Blops bridgeable + having a decent tank + reach crazy levels of DPS? Nonsense.

One of the biggest issues I had -- no, have with them is that they're still going to be able to fit rigs. Why? T2 ships can only fit 2 rigs and faction ships have less calibration for rigs, but T3Cs have full calibration and the ability to fit 3 rigs?

There are so many things about T3Cs that still need to be changed, otherwise they're just going to be as oppressive as they already are, but no one in the focus groups is really pushing for that. They all seemingly want T3Cs to retain the oppressiveness they have because "playstyle" this and "playstyle" that. There's no real push to make T3Cs actually feel like the Cruisers that they are.