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So I actually raged and commented before reading the second half of the blog at all.

Back on the skill tree though, I like the idea that if a character has (for example) Gallente Frigate V, Minmatar Frigate V, Caldari Frigate V, Amarr Frigate IV and Destroyers V, they should get Gallente Destroyers V, Minmatar Destroyers V, Caldari Destroyers V, Amarr Destroyers IV. The same idea for Cruisers/Battlecruisers, and no SP refunds. I think this was the most sane comment in the ones I read.

As for restructuring the ship classes, that's pretty cool, although I think it's stupid to move the prerequisite for Racial Carrier from Racial BattleshipV to Racial Battleship IV. I know that's crazy, but remember that in addition to the Carrier skill, you have to learn a whole baseline skill (Capital Ships) because this is a bigger move than just the next class of ship.

Capital ships are the only ships that have unique skills for their support modules (energy transfer/shield transfer/armor repair), and that distinction exists by having a maximized sub capital skill tree. I'd actually suggest the following change to Carrier prerequisites:

Racial Battleship V
Spaceship Command V
Racial Battlecruiser IV
Spaceship Command IV
Racial Cruiser IV
Spaceship Command III
Racial Frigate IV
Spaceship Command I



EDIT (failed snipe)

You really should have thought the blog through more thoroughly. Instead you're left with angry replies of people who *gasp* crosstrained and a threadnought in the making.

No, learn to read, you'll still keep your Gallente Battleship trained to V with all its beneftis apllied to Gallente battleships you fly. Unless you trained it to V just so you can get in a Thanny, in which case you made a bad decision of spending 30 days of training just to have a slightly better Carrier than other races can offer.

I also wish I trained projectile turrets instead of lousy hybrids, but guess what, I have to stick with them now and I have to consider myself lucky because CCP made hybrids less sucky with Crucible. I would be happier if they reimbursed my skill points, but that doesn't mean my skillpoints put into hybrids are wasted. Training skill like Astrometic Acquisition to V is a waste, training any weapon or ship skill to V isn't.

Hahahaha I love how soundwave is trying to make a point and everyone is just ignoring him and continuing to rant

IF YOU CAN FLY IT TODAY... YOU'LL BE ABLE TO FLY IT TOMORROW!!!

Its nice to see CCP adding new skills to the game instead of rehashing old ones. I too look forward to retraining into what I can already fly.

On a side note its quite funny to see that it now takes less time to get into a dread then a black ops bs. Good thing they fixed black ops bs.

if you are now to give us 3 more destroyers lv5's and 3 more bc lv5's if we had them at 5 before, lv4 x 4 for lv4 ,lv 3 x 4 for lv3 etc etc..
can you just say it mr soundwave and avoid more spam about it, be nice if we can get back to the good part of the blog please

It all sounds pretty good, you probably want to get amarr and gallente on par with minmatar and caldari before you change the skill trees. Otherwise we'll be flying them less than we already do. This new system of skill training will make it much easier to skill an alt for a specific ship much faster than before, good stuff.

I find myself agreeing with Makalu here. You're looking at three options:

1. BC5 will get reimbursed and the equivalent skillpoint will get all players to racial BC5. Result, veteran players are overjoyed and get to keep playing. New players are screwed, as they'll now have to train even further to get the skills.

2. BC5 will get reimbursed for the equivalent of one racial BC5 skill. Result, new players are still screwed compared to before as they'll not only have longer to progress for battleships, but crosstraining is prohibitively harder. Veteran players are screwed as their ships will be unplayable until they retrain a skill they once had.

3. A mix between the two above, and/or with racial BC skill requirements being way lower than intended. Result, new players are still at a disadvantage compared to today. Veteran players will still get the shaft due to them not being reimbursed with the equivalent amount of skills they lost.


Am I still missing something? Are both I and Makalu wrong? Please communicate your intentions to us then, so that we do not misunderstand it.

I think alot of people might be missing something here.

If new "defined-role" ships are getting new bonusses, it's as sensible to attach these to the new role skills as the base ship skill. If you only need Caldari Cruiser 1 to fly any Caldari cruiser, one of the bonusses for the ship can be based on that skill and the other on a role skill. It would then be sensible to reduce the rank of the cruiser skill so that cruiser+role skill rank = old cruiser skill rank.

Similarly with other ship classes. Role skills would be generic ie non-racial. Whether role skills should be class-specific
would depend on how the numbers work out. Alternatively, the role bonus could be a flat bonus which requires a certain level of role skill depending on the class (an EW cruiser gets +20% if you have EW role to level 3, EW BS needs level 5 to get its bonus).

I'm not going to try to think in detail about how the numbers might work out, but if the refund from Battlecruisers was enough to instantly buy 2 racial BC skills to level 5 and 1-2 role skills to 4 or 5 that goes a long way to reducing the problems, either directly or by reducing the number of free SPs that would have to be given out.

Of course, the fact that so many people have cross-trained demonstrates what a mess the current system is. If the new system turns out to be good enough that people don't feel the need to cross-train then the tears can safely be tanked.

First of all: THANK YOU so much for having the balls to suggest some serious changes to the system. Changes of this magnitude are exactly what's needed, and I welcome them. I look forward to the details of the reimbursement of skills as this will be critical to how this will be received by the player base.

I've got three main points:

I'm glad that there's a commitment to make sure that people who currently fly command ships (or dictors) will be able to do so afterwards (through whatever mechanism). I'd also like to urge that, however it's done, it doesn't adversely affect new players to the game. Battlecruiser is one of the best skills in the game currently as it grants so much flexibility - making newbros have to train this four times seems to be a little bit unfair.

I don't know how I feel about the lower requirements for capital ships. On one hand, it makes cross-training capitals comically easy, and it gets players into carriers faster than before. On the other hand, is that a good idea? It's going to lead to some bad carrier pilots and some hilarious killmails. I'm not sure, I can see both sides. I wonder what proportion of people find the need to train a racial BS V a hurdle which they don't take (or at least, don't take until much later in their eve career when they have a better understanding of the game)

The final one is that I'm not 100% sure that I like the removal of progression and the isolation of each skill. For example, currently in order to fly Interdictors you must have Evasive Manoeuvering V (as a prereq for interceptors). This heirarchy of prerequisites from "lower" ship classes is useful as it gives guidance on what skills are important to flying that class of ships and that can really help out newer players. I'd like to suggest, therefore, that the skill requirements be flattened and merged to make sure that evasive maneuvering is still a requirement for dictors (for example) rather than being lost when the requirement of interceptors is removed.