Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Thank you for responding, I'm glad your response to my well thought out counter-argument was :killboardstats:.

You once again, missed the point.

Like I said previously, the people proposing these new ships, fail to realize how they would impact the game outside of "their own playstyle"; Balance is important, even if your sole PvP experience is with RvB.

Making Risk free PvE ships with horribly exploitable layouts, since your proposing a ship that has 8 mid slots, and at least 6 highs; couple this with having a racial variety for tanking, and you just created the ultimate subcap. Take a hard look at the difference between cloaking recons (their fitting grid, weapons after Cyno/CovCyno, Probe Launcher, Cloak) and their mids/lows. Serving their purpose you might have a gun (if your one of those that MUST have turrets) and practically no offensive capabilities at all.

The game already has a dedicated Exploration ship, they are CovOps, and do their jobs suprisingly well. You're just not going to solo kill anything with it though.

@ Xolve:

You see, i am open for criticism and prefer a non-emotional discussion. What I am not open for is, when somebody with an elitist attitude comes and starts nitpicking on details without regarding the whole picture what I am trying to say and adds personal attacks to that. You stated things again that I never wrote. Whats that with 8 mids, where do yo have that from? I wont bother to quote everything anymore.

Anyway, if you try to stay reasonable I am willing to give this a new start. Still a chance there to save that thread, since there are people who bring actual arguments.

For starters, lets forget the example I made since that caused more confusion than anything else it seems. Focus on the general idea instead.

It is tiresome for a single account player to do longer exploration runs, this is a fact. Now exploration is not really a profession with a reliable income and the isk/h is compared to incursions and a good missionrunner kinda meh. It is very luck based. Regarding this, I think that it is reasonable to get a ship which actually lets you explore.

I am not feeling like I am exploring when I fly through lowsec. I need to dock the whole time. It sucks when you have to switch modules site after site. In my opinion it takes the flow out of flying through space and searching for treasure. I would like to remain independent from system infrastructure and go deep in space. Currently, I cannot really do it.

So I want a ship that defines this profession like a Hulk defines mining and a Marauder or faction BS defines a missionrunner. The current ship options work but there isn't a single ship that works like I proposed. Well, actually a Marauder would work. Only till it meets its first gatecamp though. A BS hull is way too slow to escape something, even with MWD+ cloak trick. It cannot enter many plexes in low. Also, its not exactly cheap so the usual explorer cannot afford to blow one ship every couple of days maybe, depending on where you explore. There are regions where you can do this with relative security, I know one myself, but you are tied to a couple of systems.

This is why I thought of a BC hull, it seems like a solid middle ground for me. If the proposed ship was too OP, lets discuss another one that would be more inline. Lasers and drones only because I'd like it to be ammo independent. One can create a ship for all 4 factions ofc, but then it lacks the independency of ammo.

It should offer good damage application without being too strong. An Ishtar has good DPS on paper but in reality heavy drones are sloooooooowwww and sentries lack the punch in bigger plexes. This is why I wanted a 50/50 split between drones and turrets. Ishtar with railguns is not exactly great abd has fitting issues.

A covert ops cloak is not really necessary if it is considered too strong. However the ship should be agile enough to use mwd+cloak to have escape possibilities in gatecamps.

I'll write some more later on if I get an idea.

Yes, low and nullsec have their problems but solving this is not easy at all, if even possible. I am not sure if CCP manages to fix them in a reasonable amount of time, so I try to be realistic here. Besides, I still don't think that my ship would be out of balance. It's just a matter of laying the borders among which it should be created.

I'd think of it as a SoE factional ship, since they also provide the launchers. Let's say its a faction battlecruiser from Sisters of Eve. We don't have a faction battlecruiser in game yet so it would be a start.

Then let's take a couple of ships which you can already use for exploration and compare them. I tried all of the ships I'm going to list:

---> First, there is a Pilgrim, which can fit a covops, drones and all the exploration modules at once. This works and is independent of infrastructure since it doesnt need to dock. Its DPS are nowhere near enough though to complete a 5/10 for example, in a reasonable amount of time. I used that ship for some escalations into nullsec to get through the inevitable bubbles and gatecamps in the entrance systems. Works, if you just want to pop the overseer.

---> Then we have a typical Ishtar/Gila exploration package. Both do the job, I flew them quite a while. They have the drawbacks that they cannot fit all the needed modules at once without sacrificing something. Also, you lose DPS if you decide to not fit the guns/launchers and then it becomes tedious. I did some bigger plexes in the Ishtar using heavies and sentries only and it really becomes boring if you need to chew through dozens of BS.

What these ships have in common is that they are not really limited by range since they use drones and you can fit them with most exploration modules to a degree. They also don't need ammo or not very much if you decide to use weapons on Gila/Ishtar. They can speedtank everything a lowsec site can throw at you, if not webbed. No scan bonuses sadly.

---> Kings of the hill for exploration are T3 of course, with Tengu being the best choice of them. A Tengu can scan, kill and tank everything in its sleep, damage application is not a problem. As described, the only thing that bothers me is the constant redocking to refit and refill. There are many other ships that can be used for exploration as well but they don't offer any significant attributes that would make them worthwile.

What I would like is a ship that lies somewhere between a Pilgrim and a T3 in terms of damage, tank and overall usability. It's up to you to judge when it starts to becoming OP. How much DPS should it have and to which range should it be appliable? A covert ops Proteus with rails and drones can do around 350 for example, or more with faction ammo. My Legion fun fit from page 1 does 415 with scorch and drones. Both to around 20 km with guns and drones. A covert Tengu would do over 350 with heavies or over 400 if you decide to use HAM's and throw rigors and flares in the rigs to actually harm frigs with that.

So would it be unreasonable to aim at 400-450 DPS and around 30-40 km range? I don't think that this would have a serious impact on PvP.

Since it would do a bit better than the covert ops variants of the T3 damage wise, I offer low scan resolution and low sensor strength together with rather bad agility as PvP drawbacks. Since it is a faction BC it would cost accordingly to justify the performance ofc. Add something if you still think that it's too strong.

This can be achieved with modules/rigs currently in the game.

So what are we looking at exactly here for bonuses?

Fitting:
5 High Slots (3 Turret Hardpoints)
4 Mid Slots
6 Low Slots (?)


Ship Bonus:
+50m3 of cargo space per level
+5% Success chance for hacking and salvaging per level
+5% Probe strength per level

Role Bonus:
+25% Hybrid Turret damage bonus
-50% CPU need for fitting Expanded Probe Launchers


I think this about covers your request McRoll. I would imagine the damage output wouldn't be overly amazing, but enough with enough hardpoints for a probe launcher/salvager. Has mid slots for Prop, Web or Point, Codebreaker or Analyzer and is obviously armor tanked, with enough slots to augment dps?

I still think this ship shouldn't be CovOps capable, and can sacrifice either a turret or a utility slot for a regular cloak. This is also roughly based on the current pirate ship layouts, and I still think it should be a cruiser, faction battlecruisers have yet to be implemmented by CCP, and for obvious reasons.

The trade-off in this game is that with great dps, your tank suffers, and vice versa. I'm just trying to understand your proposal really... and I fail to see the merit of a swiss-army knife flying in space with a NPC Faction logo.

Its just too likely to be abused, if you want something more viable then a T3 I suggest you hit your skills harder and optimize your implants..

Bump, because I want to hear some other opinions as well.

And PLEASE make sure you actually read what I wrote earlier and understand it. Thanks.

this should would be almost impossible to kill, it shouldn't be this safe when in wormholes/ nullsec, nothing should

I think the topic should be that exploration has no dedicated ship for the job, even T3's fall a little short, yes I have a Legion so I'm not clueless. Technically every profession needs a Hulk esk ship that can do that particular job well. It can run the sites, scan, hack, salvage, and open magnometric site cans all in one package, without having to sacrifice tank to do so. DPS is another matter, I do agree with the marauder like layout and dps bonuses (referring to the 100% damage increase w/ turrets) . 300-500 dps sounds good, just make sure the skill and price requirements match that. I know a Loki pilot that pulls 700-800 dps (on paper) so in comparison this is pretty tame to what there is already out there.

HOWEVER I do not agree with it being able to carry a cov ops cloak on top of all that.