Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Got this idea stuck in my head after reading a bunch of forums on caldari-minmataer factions ship. Make it a thukkar "pirate" faction with the following bonus's. It doesnt seem balanced but the best way for me to shake the idea is by seeing proven (or lack there of).


Minmaater bonuses (per skill level):
10% bonus to projectile damage
Caldari Cruiser bonuses (per skill level):
15% bonus to sheild booster amount
Role Bonus:
50% bonus to ECM range
50% bonus to salvage rate

So a rook?

Well, I would agree with the sentiment that without an ECM strength bonus, ECM is worthless.

That said, choosing between fitting ECM strength and DPS is the same trade-off that any EWAR bonused ship faces. Trading ECM for tank is again a fitting choice that ECM boats must face.

Take a look at the rook.

It's obviously shield tanked, what with it having a whopping 3 low slots, and the mid slots must be split between ECM, utility, and tank.

I'd LOVE to see the Rook get an extra low slot, but I confess I've never actually flown one; the sacrifices just seem too significant compared to more useful (and reliable) boats like a Curse, Huginn, or Lachesis. Which, incidentally, can fit an armor tank and actually leverage their ewar bonus to great effect.


Instead of a new ship, why not just buff the Rook a bit?

I never quite under stood this, why does a ship need to fill a niche? I say this because if you look at all the eve ships on a spectrum, everyone all ways gravitates to certain ships due to the min-maxing nature of eve. we end up with ships like assault frigates and cruisers being pushed out of there niches by other ships. balances of course eventually occur to make them relevant again but then what happens to the ships that displaced them in the first place? now they are displaced in a niche. given the sand box nature of EVE online, making ships to fill a niche dont make sense to me but rather they are just an inevitability of how capsuleers use the ships. Now obviously CCP has made ships to fill certain roles in order to make all ship hulls relevant... My point is ships are being added to EVE when all there doing is displace other ships from there "Niche". CCP seems to be more focused on content then balance...

to be honest im not as concerned with the relevancy of a ships use as much as i am with relevancy of lore. I rather see more ships introduced to expand on the lore. the only other thing that would make any lore sense then ECM would be a bonus to target painters...Target painters are good for what they do, but for what they do there are many other peices of equipment that can be taken that are far more relevant to a ship in combat. plus projectiles with target painters sounds like a sniper kind of rig, that something that already exist.

but you do bring up good points on why ECM range wouldnt make too much sense.

Thukkars are known for roaming so there combat would probably be more along the line of hit and run as minmatar ships are not exactly known for there ability to tank.

The balance issue with pirate factions is that Gallente is involved in 5, while Amarr, Minmatar and Caldari only in 3. Also, we have no Caldari-Minmatar combo, so the pirate faction "balance" is out of question.
For the niche, a railgun sniper with target painters could be an option, as target painters don't get too much bonus - not even the Loki had bonus for them, and probably won't have after the redesign either.
Or, as Thukkers are nomads with no base, they could be a logi faction, since they have to repair everything on the move. Bonus for ECM and remote shield boost from Caldari, remote armor rep and speed boost from Minmatar. Can have either armor or shield tank.

Personally I think the factions and ships are messed up, especially as we go up in size.
T1 frigates seem to be the most balanced: each faction has a tackler, an e-war, a logi, an explorer and 2 damage dealers for the 2 weapon types of the faction, one of them has a tank bonus too. Except this isn't true, because Amarr only gets energy weapon bonuses and no secondary weapon bonus, so even the frigates that supposed to be kind of the same for each faction aren't balanced as well as they could. Even the corvettes that are supposed to be exactly the same aren't: they should have bonuses for the 2 weapons of the faction, the e-war of the faction and the defense of the faction, yet Amarr (and this time Minmatar too) fails to do it's job.

...

OCD in cooldown mode.


What is the niche of the attack battlecruisers? If having large weapons on a medium ship is a niche, then why shouldn't we have destroyers with medium weapons, and battleships with capital weapons? That would be a niche too.
If the niche of SOE is cloaks then shouldn't the Nestor be a black-ops instead of a logi?

By the way Minmatar: wouldn't the game be more balanced if Minmatar ships would be optimized for shield tanking with a shield booster preference than the current half-armor half shield mess? People keep saying that specialization is better than being a jack of all trades. If Minmatar as a faction isn't specialized for any kind of defense (active shield tank in this case should be the niche of the whole faction) shouldn't it have the worst tank in the whole game?
To be honest, it's quite hard to follow the rules of the game if the devs keep ignoring them regularly.

People keep worrying about "niche role" and "balance" while many ships refuse to follow their niche role, and looks like we never had a real balance here to break.

This is something ive been ranting about for a while but concluded CCP cares little for our opinions. I wish they would take all the Minmatar ships and bring them on line with each other in terms of there capabilities. For example, i like to play Minmatar ships with missles. so looking at my options for missles ships i have the following.

Frigate - Breacher
Destroyer - Talwar
Cruiser - Bellicose
Battlecruiser - Cyclone
Battleship - Typhoon

So i start with a breacher and its a decent ship to start with, i have my missle bonus and a bonus to sheilds to make it tanky. then we upgrade to the Talwar were the ship seems to be more focused on speed tanking...ok a bit of a change but ill work it. then i upgrade to the bellicose were i have a bonus to target painters...well now im feeling more like a support then anything but ill make it work. then i move on to the Cyclone where hey im back to missle bonus's and a nice sheild tank again and i finally finish it all off with the Battleship Typhoon...wait a sec i got no skills in amour at this point...

I feel what happened was that the guys at CCP went through every ship in the game and gave them bonus's to ensure they have a "niche" in the game. they made a rule saying no two ships have a similar bonus making them too close in fucntion where they both could complete for a "niche". they then went through every faction starting with Gallante, then amarr then Caldari and finished off with Minmatar. hence why Minmatar has such a hodge bodge of ship bonuses as not to be too similar to other faction ships.

The reason why ship need a niche is so we don't get completely useless ship that have no point to existing or ship made obsolete because the new ship is just trampling over other hull's niche. A big part of why the AF are dead right now is the T3D being flat out better at anything an AF used to be used for.

Your proposition is essentially a mash up of some racial bonus from 2 side that have no direction. It's only possible use would be lolbait and even that...[/quote]

I get what your saying but let me explain a different way. The Typhoon, what niche does it fill? its a BS with a bonus to missiles and projectiles. but the Minmatar already have a projectile BS that gets better bonuses, and the Raven can out do the Typhoon with missiles all day. The only thing that makes the Typhoon different from the two mentions ships is the Typhoon is armour tanked compared to shield. Now note that when it comes to BS's the Gallante and Amarr have ships that can out do the Typhoon in armour tanking. So the Typhoon doesn't necessarily fit a niche that already isn't filled. Yet its still used.
If the point of making a ship is to fill a niche then CCP would have to rework all the ships from the ground up and make them significantly different from each other to fill those roles. this raises the question of what niche do the new CONCORD ships fill? I see a large demand for a cargo ship between transports and freighters but this "niche" has been and left for years? a Niche is obviously not the driving force for CCP to introduce new ships. enlighten me and tell me what would you recommend as a niche that needs to be filled?[/quote]


Wait can you really not think of anything the phoon excels at better than any other BB? Or even any other ship? Or were you just being hyperbolic to make a point

Every if that were true a ship that already exists but has no niche is not the same as adding one that fills no gap. If anything it reinforces my point. Adding a ship to the game isn't just "okay we'll put in a new ship" and poof it's there. It's time and resources that are not being used elsewhere. And it's not just a one time investment either. Ccp have added in ships before simply on a "wouldn't it be cool if" and i can only thunk of one tune it paid off and is not simply a constant drain on the game.

This is the result of rebalancing things "one ship at a time" instead of doing them in groups of similar ships.

Again you are proving my point and reinforcing the position many of us hold.

There are already to many ships.

However rebalancing a ship has rarely ever and i would love you to give me an example that caused ANOTHER ship to lose any niche. However i can provide several where adding ships did just that if you need me to.

Your point about niches shows you do understand that niches exist. And my point is that a web hybrid is nor one of them.

The phoon kills cruisers I a way no other ship in eve can for example and is a particularly strong counter against many of the kitier ones if flown right. Another is a strong counter against many sort range BB that outrun other long range platforms like the raven or rhok. It's niche has nothing to do with projectiles or armor or shield. But how all of its stats play off one another. From minimal cap usage and high speed to its rhml and flexible use of mids lows and even highs that make it very adaptive. Something not found I many other BB ego generally only fill one our two rolls.