Ships & Modules

Hi Takeshi! It wasn't a "real" suggestion, it was an example of how to constructively approach issues you have with balance. To single out something like that is almost always troublesome, but it's extra troublesome now as it's part of a line of logic, and the point was to help people see how a such a pattern could look. I'll try to explain it anyway:

Amarr is the "cap race" in how they are the race that interact with cap the most - both the good and bad.

Gallente is the "drone race" - they interact with drones the most, but it's not always benefitial to do that, is it?

The example involved a cap total over cap usage because it was made to illustrate how a similar bonus can be better if it's more allround. A cap total bonus may not necessarily be better for firing your guns, or doing that on the fly indefinately (the aim of any such suggestion should be to largely maintain existing design), but it would extend the uptime, increase the value of certain positive mods and act as a buffer inbetween certain negative mods (eg., it would make just running your MWD better, it would make either running utility neuts or facing them better, and so on).

It maintain the idea that Amarr guns are cap hungry, and should be cap hungry - while dealing with balance issues around it. If the uptime on a given ship would go from 3-5 mins to 10-15 mins you would not be able to "perma", but it would be much easier to manage that cap. That is a straight buff while still keeping the trait and influencing the options around it (the value of cap rechargers, or time until being neuted out). It assumes that most people agree that things like how fast you cap out a subcap with neuts would not be entirely imbalanced even if you extended that time by 4-6 times. It's a much easier concept to "sell" than to say that "only capless weapons work, so everyone should be capless". That would make for an incredibly boring game. Conversely, claiming no one should be capless would equally do so, and is just a vindictive retort.

I enjoy the fact that my Amarr ships require me to manage my cap, but if someone had said it may be too challenging on certain ships that would have been an easy concept to sell to me.


Likewise Lili's comments about the Drake.

I don't necessarily disagree with him that it's too easy to do the things blobs do with them. If someone had put an initiative around making the Drake "more challenging and fun to fly" that would make it easier to sell, and would open up discussion around how to do that in a manner that domino positively. As it stands the approach only seem vindictive and any suggestions appearing feel forced, arbitrary and inconsiderate of balance in a larger perspective.

Claiming Missiles "should get transversal because guns have it and it's more difficult" or "have no accuracy issues" only show a disregard for the differences of accuracy, or incompetence understanding their larger balance. Simple is not outright better, popular is not better. The 10 points of Cap may not be the most extensive approach either, but even though it's just an illustration part of a larger argument, it's still a much more wide-in-scope and constructive "suggestion" than most ideas floating around regarding how to deal with "Drakes".

It doesn't matter if it's the community's suggestions or the ones that have been picked up by CCP - so far any ideas regarding how to deal with Drakes, save the cost-effect of BC, have all been incredibly bad (in- or even counter- effective).

I've said it ten times in this thread already: Look at Tier 3 BC - who did hurt? Did it hurt the Drake, or the Harby?

Look at the RoF for resist suggestion - will it hurt the Blobdrake, or the solo pilot who enjoy flying Drakes?

See? I oppose them because it's bad ideas that hurt other aspects of the game. Not because i like Blobdrakes.

I think it's a travesty that there are no targets for my nano-beam Harb anymore, but it's bad attempts at dealing with Drakes while the actual problems were left festering that did that. We got projection-buffer Sniper BS back instead .

CCP should spend less time on ship rebalance and more time on "Ring mining". Inferno had one interesting change to mechanics, the lowsec changes. The one potentially game-changing part of that expansion.

Did they manage to implement it? Those things would do way way more for Harbs than attempting to slay some "Drake".

Right. It's easy to misunderstand the term "cap race" because it's so vague. I've seen it used in different ways.




Yes a cap amount bonus is sometimes suggested as replacement for the laser cap usage bonus. This is precisely what I wanted to have a discussion on.

The pro is that it would take longer to neut a laser ship dry or cap out from MWD, while still maintaining an emphasis on cap management. You'd need a 10% cap amount/level bonus for this to be a good idea by the way.

The con is that it will not make people want to fit lasers because it's not a laser bonus.

Another con is that a cap bonus just feels bad in situations that don't require cap endurance. Why do I have a cap bonus on the Coercer when the fight is over in 30 seconds?

So all said, I think this is not a good idea. What could be realistically done though is increasing the base capacitor of laser ships while reducing recharge rate by the same amount. The base cap/sec from the capacitor remains the same, but it takes longer to cap out.

What to do about the -10% cap usage/level bonus is still open though. Most would suggest replacing it with a damage bonus.

That would essentially achieve nothing, except make Tier 1 and Tier 2 BCs just as obsolete as cruisers. The reason is very simple. Ignoring the HML Drake, the new Tier 3s make far superior kiting ships and far superior anti-large (and medium, really) ship option then existing Tier 2 / Tier 1 BCs. The only reason to fly a Hurricane over an, eg. Talos is (except price) the ability to carry small-ship counters. Remove that, and the Tier 1 and Tier 2 become just as obsolete as cruisers.

How to make cruisers worthwhile is another question. One option is increasing the prices of battlecruisers. For instance, if rigs were further tiered (so BCs have their own rig size, and destroyers as well), it would increase the price difference. Additionally, a cruiser rebalance is somewhere in the pipeline. Hopefully, it will result in cruisers being more viable as a class for one and the 'bad' ones being more viable compared to their peers within the class. There are ways to achieve this.

A lot of issues regarding usage of ships boil down to cost-efficiency. Naturally, this is not of equal importance to all, but BCs are in good part so popular not because they're the most versatile (which they are not), or have the widest possible target selection (which they don't) or because of somehow superior stats. They are so popular because they have such good stats at an affordable price (and SP cost).

Select Battleships, for instance, have an even wider target selection (from a solo perspective at least, or very small gang perspective) then BCs. The issue is naturally price differences. You really could fiddle with the popularity of direct combat ships by adjusting pricing.

All level 5 was used for clenliness of comparison. So what if you are missing energy management 5 and that perma is 20-30 minutes or whatever. It means you can still turn on the mwd and forget about managing your cap. As for the mid, again at level 5 skills (everyone should have weapon upgrades 5, but energy uprgades 5 maybe not) you have 33.5 cpu left. Tackle mods could fit there, or you could pop in a 1% cpu implant and pretty much any ewar mnodule will fit. The fit is not bad - because it is used. It is another symptom of an easy to fit ship and lazy to use and thus overused.



FFS the slot was left empty because it could be filled with pretty much anything (see above). It could be tackle, but it doesn't have to be because there is this thing called a fleet and dedicated tacklers, if you had bothered to read my whole post without starting to fume over your precious drake getting a nerf. As for neuts, every ship is hurt by neuting as it should. Point is the drake fleet can zip around with no cap worry. Something a Harby can't do.

The Harby not only sacrifices dps to fit a similar sized (but armor) tank to equal a drake, it does so with reduced dps from downgrading guns, with much reduced range, and less mobility. There are ******* reasons the beefy Harby is not sitting at the top of eve-kill usage.


Thank you for restating the obvious points that undergird pretty much everything I post about the Drake. As for the 1v1 point, this game cannot be balanced around 1v1 because it is not a 1v1 game (and I think you underestimate the dualing capacity of a Drake v other BCs). Anyway, all in eve love and war is fair, or if not fair should be expected. Including gang mates warping in, falcon alts, and hot drops. That is eve.

Having just read the new csm notes and particularly the ship balancing section it is well apparent that Yterbium is going to snuff out the Drake fleet phenomenon. Unfortunatley the dev team appears to be somehwat anal about it and won't get to BCs for another year or so, even though that is the biggest problem area. For those of bitching about the Cane it too is slated for a snip (or neuting and thus the dual neut Cane may be gone or weakened).

So sadly we are consigned to yet another year of Drake usage disparity. I still am waiting for someone to tell me what harm would be done to the game if as a quick and balanced interim step, all tier 2 BCs had their base hp stats reset at those of the tier 1 in their race. Tier 2 would still have all its fitting and slots and bonuses. The hp could be sdjusted upward later in the comprehensive phase for all non tier 3 BCs if that was deemed worthy by the dev team.

It would hurt the Harby probably more in comparison to the Prophecy than it would the Drake in comparison to the Ferox, but really what would be the harm with more fat space chickens than Harbys in game. And it just might be enough of a tick off the Drake ehp to kick it out of blob ship status to the benefit of all of us.

edit- before the tier 2 BCs the game was not overun with BCs. Tier 2 BCs were the new crack. I loved them too. The 125m3 bandwidth Myrm got nerfed very fast. As it should have, only it should have been set at 100 and not 75, and lost a turret hardpoint or something. The Drake was ignored because at the time people were simply so embroiled in discovering the ridiculous pve regen fits and retards were trying to bring those to pvp battles and getting told to gtfo. It did dawn on people though that the resist bonus and mid range dps was quite nifty particulaly after the rig changes and sniper BSs were nerfed through scripts and probing changes. So anyway, BC usage would probably be more balanced (i.e. less prevalent) if the hp and thus ehp got a slight snip.