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Seconded, for great justice. I want a definitive answer from CCP, with no ambiguity or having to 'read into it' in general. I want to see someone say "Well, since we're thinking about swapping generic dessy and BC for racial versions, we're gonna give all players who trained these skills the corresponding racial skills at the same level they've trained the generic ones to." How hard would that be? And until I see that, I can't believe the soothsayers claiming that all will be well! After all, the updated Devblog seems to hint (to me anyways) that when the dessy and BC skills go away, they're just going to do a sp refund for the skills in question. This doesn't work for me, as I regularly fly canes, drakes, myrms, etc. and don't feel it's fair that the ships I have will become useless as I don't have enough sp to go around to make it worthwhile to ship up in them (I.E. no bc 4 in a given race).

Edit: And before someone tells me to go back and read the dev posts for my answer, I say again: I want a DEFINITIVE answer on how it will work (sp reimbursement, or level cross-over).

Many thanks for keeping us updated. Please consider linking to the quoted post in the very first post of this thread. Most folk are not going to go through 40 pages of text to find it, which is unfortunate because it addresses the vast majority of concerns.

Please also consider linking to Mittens' post.

Edit: But when balancing ships, please do not pigeonhole them into roles without a very good reason. It is one thing to provide the overall role. It is another to force players to only use a ship in a certain way. Just because certain ships are more popular then others, does not mean that there is a balance issue. And player creativity should not be sacrificed in order to achieve an ephemeral "balance."

If you're trying to appeal to ridicule, at least try to disprove.

Where's that dislike button people have been asking for?

CCP is getting back on track, dude. They don't have a magic wand to suddenly fix everything that we've been wanting in this game for years. This dev blog is proof that they are trying to fix things (along with the Crucible expansion and the iterations since then as well). They're not trying to fix anything by simply increasing training time, but by creating roles for ships to fill and then balancing them to fit within those roles so they're useful.

Already is! But still thank you for the good idea.

+1 to CCP for finally making all the useless frigates/cruisers and feroxes something applicable to the damned game. I (and many others) have been stating this for years in the F&I section.

Jump Freighters will continue to require Level 5 because they are T2 (all T2 require now and will according to the devblog continue to require Level 5).

The Question about freighters is relevant though (I personally don't care as I have the prerequisites). I personally think they should continue to require Level 5 as they are a significant step up from their "skill predecessor". There should be SOME commitment. It already only takes about a month to get into one anyway...

This is my main problem with this as well.

I have no problem with racial dessy/bc skills, it always confused me why those weren't around in the first place. But I really don't like this ship classification idea. Let us define what's used for what. After all, as has been evidenced, WE are the ones that play the game.

The particular role bonuses for ships already help define what they are good for. This just sounds like a dumbing down of the game.

Not that this will make a difference, we all know it's going to be rammed through anyways.

Good grief, 40 pages of posts already.

Sorry if I repeat anyone previously, but I haven't read the whole thread.

My first reaction to the early part of the blog was..... "Oh great, a skill tree massive change that will inevitably mean more training to fly the ships we can fly currently....just what we've all been begging for....WTF (sarcasm)"

Further reading though suggests you CCP funambulist boffins might actually be doing these changes for the right reasons.... Reasons such as the current tier system breaking dow2n every time you add a new ship, and to reinvigorate and find useful applications for the masses of currently useless (and correctly overlooked by players') ships that for slot layout and/or base stats dont compete with the better more useful ships of their class.

This approach will hopefully see a return of more unique racial flavours to ships and fundamentally shake up the game allowing for a better, more expansive list of useful current ships with a potential for easier expandable base of future ships. This all makes good sense.

The major concern I have is CCP timescales.

You appear to be keen and ready to go with rolling out skill system changes (fine), but what use is that to us players if the ship lines are not brought up to date?

By proceeding so (inevitably) slowly in a 1 by 1 manner of balancing you're really going to make a mockery of game continuity. Today the taranis is excellent, tomorrow it might be awesome, but the following week the 'new' rifter is actually better.

In summary CCP:
I forsee you embarking on this journey on a bright sunny day, full of vim and vigour, walking down a clear path towards the promised land of some balanced ship Utopia, only to find the surrounding environment changes unpredictably and dramatically with each step, and unsurprisingly a few steps in you're in a mire with storm clouds gathering round and great pressure upon you to speed up before you sink further into the mire, however with each step the path ahead becomes less clear.

My message to you is this: Tread very carefully CCP.

I feel you might be better for example trying to bang out the massive required ship changes in big blocks of ships like week 1 - All t1 frigates, week 2 All t1cruisers, week 3 all t2 frigates. week 4 all t2 cruisers etc etc
You'd need to move THAT quickly imho to actually keep true to any ideal of a full rebalance/restructure of ship classes.

Thats all I have to say about it for now though. Cheers.

This is a good question. I'll probably train cruiser 4 in all races just to be super sure and I suggest everyone does the same.