Player Features and Ideas Discussion

These changes sound interesting!

Is the imicus getting a hull redesign with the winter expansion? It needs it badly

Hey CCP Fozzie.

You're doing an epic job. Keep it up.

Only feedback I have is that the 50% range bonus is a bit meh. It won't really see any use as these things will be data scanning at < 2500m to scoop and run.

I can't really think of any other role bonus that would be useful without overpowering though

Maybe push the data scanner cycle time bonus into the role bonus and give the ships a mobility bonus of some kind.
Mobility bonus per level options are:
-10% MWD capacitor penalty
10% MWD/AB duration
-10% MWD/AB capacitor use
5% agility

Risky ones:
10% Max ship velocity
10% AB speed boost
5% MWD speed boost

Good morning everyone.

Thanks for all the feedback so far, it's been great to see so much interest in these ships.

I'm gonna address a few of the themes I'm seeing in the feedback as best I can (sorry about the wall of text):

A lot of you have been mentioning that the role bonus to codebreaker and analyzer optimal is of limited use. The bonus was intended to be a quite minor convenience effect that was noticeable but not too powerful, with a secondary purpose of helping reinforce the idea in new players minds that these ships can be used for hacking and archaeology. We feel the bonus meets both of these goals fairly well, although we are open to changing it as we go forward. I however do not expect that it will be replaced with something as powerful as a tanking bonus or miniprofession success chance bonus.

On a similar topic, many of you have pointed out that a ROF bonus to the miniprofession modules is less powerful than a success chance bonus. I completely agree with that, however we decided early in the design that there were already so many methods to gain success chance bonuses that adding another would make too much of the content trivial.

On the subject of the bonus to probe scan strength I tend to agree with those of you who have suggested that it can be increased without stepping on the toes of Covert Ops ships. We'll take a close look at the options for increasing that bonus somewhat and let you know what we decide.

Many people have mentioned cloaks in their feedback, either requesting a cloak bonus of some kind or discussing how the two highslots on the Imicus hurt its ability to fit a cloak. We do not consider cloaking to be part of the core use for these ships and therefore we're not likely to add a cloak bonus. Keep in mind that these are not covert ops ships, they are updates to the tech one probing frigates all of whom currently have just two highslots. Cloaks are of course an option, but we do not expect the lack of a third high to be a significant blow to the Imicus.

On the subject of tanking, I understand that the proposed design does clash with the current descriptions of the ships ingame but we do plan to change those descriptions and a fast exploration ship that sacrifices armor and shield generators in order to fit in more scientific gear and extend range seems to me to be just as valid of a sci-fi trope as a heavily defended support vessel. We may have some room to increase HP a bit, but I do not expect it will hit the EHP of a combat frig.

Some of you have voiced concerns that a drone focused vessel for Caldari pilots skews skill training, but since the skills invested will be in scout drones I expect they will be useful skillpoints throughout the pilot's career. If these ships used heavy drones or sentry drones which have a skillbook of their own that Caldari ships rarely use, we would have considered that a problem. As it is training for three light drones does not seem like wasted SP to me (and my first character was Caldari (mission running in a missile Ferox like a boss)).
I also do not believe that ships like these detract from the power or usefulness of the Gallente race in any way. Gallente remain the masters of drones, with Amarr and Minmatar behind them and Caldari in the rear. Introducing ships with unbonused light drones for each faction does not take anything away from the Gallente race, and all of you Gallente drone purists are going to have something to cheer about in my next frigate balance thread, I promise.

Finally there has been a lot of excitement about the concept of a pure science vessel. I mentioned it in the OP because I do really like the idea and like that these ships could someday serve as a stepping stone. That being said we have no hard plans for a ship of that nature so I can't promise we'll make one and if we do it will likely not be for a while. Details like whether it would be a cruiser or frigate, racial variants or a single SOE ship are all fun to brainstorm about but I can't provide any answers because we simply do not have any design planned at this time.

And something that makes life a bit more convenient. You can activate the modules a bit earlier and then move in to pick up the loot as the module cycles. It's supposed to be nice but not to bring down the house.

thx for your answers. much appreciated :)

but hints about revamped ewar, some unpublished ideas for combat frigs and now awesome new gallente drone-frig.
you're such a tease and you know how to build up expectations... ;P

Give 'em an innate warp core stab strength of one point. Encourage rookies into lowsec exploration? :D

(Give 'em a gas harvesting bonus?)

I seriously disagree with the idea that these frigs should be limited to hisec. It's vital for EVE to do every little thing possible to encourage new players to leave the hisec starter systems as early as possibly, and out there you want a cloak on exploration vessels.

Not being able to fit the exploration hislot trio of cloak, probes and salvager seriously limits the usability of Imicus and Helios for exploration. Please reconsider this.




The problem in giving all ships drones and still claiming that Gallente are the "drone masters" is the fact that at best this mastery is only evidenced by 50% more dps and HP on the same set of combat drones, on a few selected ships.

Flight of Warrior IIs on Cane: 80.4 dps, Myrmidon 121 dps.

In case of all other drones, Gallente ships are (for some reason) treated just like all other ships, ECM drones work just well on all ships- except that the so-called drone boats lose much more dps than the other ships when using EWAR drones.

So why not re-establish the drone mastery, and extend the drone dmg bonus to cover all types of drone effects?

This, really. All ships should be viable outside of highsec. If it can cloak (even just a T1 cloak) and fit combat probes, that's good enough to fill a scout role in a roaming gank squad. Exploration outside of highsec, however, remains a serious problem that's going to keep these ships from filling their natural role. It's an issue with covops ships, too. Finding a site is useless if you can't do anything in the site as well.

umm... a few comments here

1) these were great ships for throwing an extra alt or two in a cloaked/probe launcher fit one of these to leave in an inhabited wormhole system to be able to find it again (if for example your main gets ganked and you need to find your way back to your whomhole home).

2) They ARE the precursors to cov-ops. You guys did a great service to newbies with your attack frigate changes (even if you didn't realize it). Most player who go from standard T1 frigates to interceptors need a few weeks to a month or so to adapt to the way you're supposed to fly these ships. The new T1 attack frigates now have performance envelopes that actually resemble true interceptors and so can and should be flown like them. This should allow for a smooth transition to interceptors when a newer player gets to that level. It would be nice if you could do the same service for the transition from T1 scanning frigate to the cov-ops.

One suggestion here would be a role bonus to remove or reduce the movement penalties of the non-cov-ops cloaks. That way the newer players could get used to moving around on grid in a cloaked vessel at speed without the OP of being able to warp cloaked.

So then why not have the Role Bonus have to do something with the Probe Launchers? Some suggested reduced CPU need for probe launchers (aimed at fitting Expanded Probe Launcher) and what not. I think it would be good to have that type of bonus and it let the older players fit Expanded probe Launcher for deep space probes which they have skills for, and let the new rookies have a bit of wiggle room in fitting modules within their exploration frigate's cpu limit.