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Player Features and Ideas Discussion

 
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Gallente (+Some Caldari Lovin)

First post
Author
Alticus C Bear
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#101 - 2011-10-16 11:49:58 UTC
I support a lot of the ideas in this thread, Pattern can you please confirm that text in your first post is up to date with your current thinking as there are so many posts now it’s hard to keep track.

Will you be proposing it as an all or nothing idea or do you think you can get CCP to pick up parts of it?

Regarding the rig changes, I would support this over the current position but how would you feel about changing shield and armour to active and passive rig sets.

Passive - decrease speed or agility as proposed
All armour and shield extension/resistance rigs

Active - increase sig radius
All armour and shield rigs affecting active tanking
May need a week omni passive resist rig in this group

This may help active armour compete with shield buffer nano fits.

How would you feel about this, too drastic a change would it affect too many fits and make armour and shield to similar? Just throwing it out there.
Gypsio III
Questionable Ethics.
Ministry of Inappropriate Footwork
#102 - 2011-10-16 12:07:29 UTC
Pattern Clarc wrote:
Some notes:

The tracking increase is as high as it is because blasters do not hit for 100% (with webbed transversal) vs same size/speed targets. Unlike Autocannons or Lasers, there is technically no optimal range unless there is 0 transferral or the target is huge.

Although increasing the optimal range is an option, it creates less diversity between the turret classes, and given that one of the focuses of the op was to make Gallente "better at what we did", impressive tracking at range seemed to be the most congruent option.


Blaster tracking. Honestly, you could whack the blaster tracking increase up a lot more. But I'd still reduce AC tracking, and maybe Pulse too.

Moving sentry drones. Well, this won't be a problem with the Moros anymore. P 200 m/s sentries are far too much like deployable, ewar-proof turrets. I don't think this is a good idea. It would let a Dominix stay aligned while using sentries, for example.

Active tanks - quite happy to see an increase to the overload bonus to boost/rep amount. Your idea of increasing resists also seems to work well though. Would the resist increase stack with hardeners?

Warfare links. I'd rework them all, not just the Gallente ones. The Minmatar ones are far too good. Splitting the scrambler/disruptor range bonus from Interdiction Manoeuvres and moving it to a new Gallente link, for a start. The Minmatar sig-radius reduction link is too powerful also. In fact, I'd look at:

Minmatar: web range; sig radius reduction (weaker than current); AB/MWD speed increase
Gallente: scrambler/disruptor range; scan res/lock range/sensor strength increase; cap regen
Caldari: ewar strength and optimal; shield resists; cap use and cycle time of shield boosters and transporters
Amarr: armour resists, cap amount (with corresponding increase in cap recharge time so no increase in cap regen rate); cap use and cycle time of armour reppers and remote reppers

Some of these would need tweaks to numbers. I've combined the cap use and cycle time of reppers/boosters links into a single link, their effectiveness may need to go down a bit. Or maybe not.

Cap battery thingy. It won't be used for running guns/MWD under neuting, it'll be used for neut-proof tackle. In any case, someone without room for an injector won't have room for a cap battery. It's too binary - cap batteries are hard to fit, but one of these would give a huge advantage. Sufficient neuting should always utterly shut down cap-using modules. I'd go for fiddling with Nos fitting requirements, cycle time and drain amount, to create a less binary situation.

Battlecruisers. One fo the big reasons why T1 cruisers that aren't the Blackbird are worthless is because tier 2 BCs do everything they do, but better. A Drake is a better TD platform than an Arbitrator, a Hurricane is faster and more agile than a Rupture while having more DPS, better tracking and longer range, and more EHP. It's crazy. There is no concept of a "step backwards" in balancing, there is only better or worse balance. Nerfing tier 2 BCs to tier 1 levels helps tier 1 BCs, cruisers and the Deimos and Sacrilege. Boosting tier 1 BCs to tier 2 levels just kills cruisers even more, reducing the diversity of ships in space and the resulting PVP, while hindering newbies who have to train BC skills and spend more ISK before getting into a viable ship class.

Split weapons. The Typhoon works. For Eris etc, split weapons aren't the problem, the ship is the problem. As you say, give them an appreciable advantage, such as DPS, or drones, or mobility. But I'd really like to see the variability that results from these split-wepaon ships retained, but as you say, it must be balanced by advantages.
Gypsio III
Questionable Ethics.
Ministry of Inappropriate Footwork
#103 - 2011-10-16 12:21:09 UTC  |  Edited by: Gypsio III
Pattern Clarc wrote:

Caldari Lovin:
Caldari base speed increases significantly. Caldari hybrid ships, especially the cruisers are just to slow to be viable and often whilst existential issues really effect the performance of the Ferox and it's variants.
~30% increase to base speed, for:
- Moa, Harpy, Ferox, Vulture, Rokh, Egale, Cormorant (Whilst the Tengu's Hybrid Weapons subsystem should increase speed by a similar amount).
- Moa and Eagle powergrid increased by 30%
- Moa and Eagle hull re-designed to look less ****.
- See Tiericide for additional changes to the Ferox
- See Fleet Commandships for additional changes to the Vulture
- Combat Blasters for additional changes to Hybrids.


Global:
- As the number of ships on grid increase, the accuracy of scan probe warp to results reduces, resulting in ever greater warp to variances of up to 200km.
- Probing accuracy is now inversely proportional to the amount of time the target has been in one location (grid)" (After 0 seconds, within 200km accuracy, after 30 seconds, 50km accuracy, after one minute, probing accuracy improves to 12km and so on)


Ammo:
- Quake - 25% increase to Artillery alpha, 5% Less damage than RF EMP and 33% less range and fall off.
- Gleam - Decreases capacitor usage by 50% - 5% Less damage than Navy Multifreqency and 33% less tracking
- Javlin - Increases tracking by 33% - 5% Less damage than CN Antimatter and 25% increased capacitor usage

Hybrid Ammo receives reorganisation into 4 parts:




Having trouble keeping track of idea,s but here goes...

Caldari speed. Ranged ships should be slow, close-in ships should be fast. When this relationship is ignored, we have problems - see Minmatar. Be careful that you don't make Caldari railboats better blaster platforms than Gallente. However, the Eagle's speed needs to be better balanced with Zealot and Muninn (why is the Zealot so fast?) - or it should gain a comparable EHP/DPS advantage in compensation for sluggishness.

Moa and Eagle PG - hell yeah.
Probing - sounds good.

Hybrid ammo - options between kinetic and thermal sound good. I'd still be tempted to tone down the projectile damage-type selection though. Damage-type selection is best used in the very small scale combat that Gallente should be best in, not Minmatar, because they have the shortest-range weapons, blasters, least useful in large-scale combat.

T2 ammo. While they need changes, I'd hold off on this until the hybrid changes settle down in game. Your Quake might be a bit too good, alpha is useful. Gleam sounds well balanced though. Javelin might be a bit too good too. Jav and Quake sounds like they might be the "default loaded ammo", which T2 ammo should not be (yeah I'm thinking of you here, Scorch and Barrage), because it means that people have to have T2 guns to be useful.

Oh, new Gleam

"- Gleam - Increases damage - 15% more damage than Navy Multifreqency and 33% less tracking and 50% less optimal range."

Keep the damage advantage to 10%, and use the same tracking penalty as with Conflagration to Navy MF.
Gypsio III
Questionable Ethics.
Ministry of Inappropriate Footwork
#104 - 2011-10-16 12:31:42 UTC
Pattern Clarc wrote:
I hear what your saying about the ammo changes, I guess on the surface there are some similarities but the actual effect of the changes is quite different...

Ok,

I've been looking at Railguns in depth lately. I've got a clearer idea of were they need to be.

The 33% increase to optimal range has now been scrapped.

Railguns now do more damage, and much more damage at longer ranges. True to the RP nature of what most of us consider railguns to be like, ultra high muzzle velocity means, damage attenuates much less at long to ultra long range.

This picture should help explain the changes:

http://www.theskyunion.com/railguns.jpg


Just looking at the damage/range plot, it seems to me that the Rokh is only useful at ranges where everything else is useless. This will lead to Rokh-only fleets in theory, and nobody flying a Rokh in practice, making the Megathron the rail sniper that is actually used.
Pattern Clarc
Citeregis
#105 - 2011-10-16 18:39:13 UTC
draconothese wrote:
some of those changes are good some are bad a lot of them will gimp a bunch of gallente ships such as my beloved albeit sucky proteus i love that ship but the changes your talking about will hurt it badly

a lot of it stems on your agility changes

There are no ship specific changes to the Proteus. It gets a lot of buffs through changes to hybrids and active tanking.

Ex CSM member & Designer of the Tornado. Gallente - Pilot satisfaction

Perdition64
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#106 - 2011-10-16 18:50:55 UTC
Pattern, you're part of Aperture Harmonics, how do you think your changes would work in a wormhole environment? Would we see Gallente ships being able make more of an appearance?

Loving the changes btw. :)
Pattern Clarc
Citeregis
#107 - 2011-10-16 19:03:21 UTC
Alticus C Bear wrote:
I support a lot of the ideas in this thread, Pattern can you please confirm that text in your first post is up to date with your current thinking as there are so many posts now it’s hard to keep track.

Yep, the OP is up to date. If your new to the thread, the suggestions on the first page will reflect the most current version of the set of suggestions.


Alticus C Bear wrote:
Will you be proposing it as an all or nothing idea or do you think you can get CCP to pick up parts of it?

I think these elements are the most important.
1) weapons system changes (including changes to spike/hybrid ammo)
2) changes to the hulls of gallente, caldari blaster ships as well as roden
3) changes to drone carriers
4) active tanking

Following on from that in a later patch
- Tiericide of Tier 1 BC's.
- Assault Warfare gang links + commandship boost
- Warp to, lock range and probing mechanics change
- Tech 2 ammo for long range turrets



Alticus C Bear wrote:
Regarding the rig changes, I would support this over the current position but how would you feel about changing shield and armour to active and passive rig sets.

I don't what you suggested would be game breaking, but it wouldn't be popular as shield buffer tanking is actually quite niche, and isn't that strong (beyond a few classes) breaks a lot of established RP in regards to how and why ships are shield tanked.

I guess I wanted something a little more targeted, providing active tanking armour ships specifically, with no speed reduction overall when compared to plates.

Ex CSM member & Designer of the Tornado. Gallente - Pilot satisfaction

Cpt Fina
Perkone
Caldari State
#108 - 2011-10-16 19:10:27 UTC
Tier 1 BCs doesn't necessarily have to get buffed. It's the tier 2 ones that need small nerfs.
Pattern Clarc
Citeregis
#109 - 2011-10-16 19:26:03 UTC
Gypsio III wrote:

Blaster tracking. Honestly, you could whack the blaster tracking increase up a lot more. But I'd still reduce AC tracking, and maybe Pulse too.

Ideally. We'd need to change the tracking formula.

I'm going to be looking at a few charts to see just how blasters do in an orbit. I should have a refined view for how blasters should operate. (perhaps in orbit)

Gypsio III wrote:
Moving sentry drones. Well, this won't be a problem with the Moros anymore. P 200 m/s sentries are far too much like deployable, ewar-proof turrets. I don't think this is a good idea. It would let a Dominix stay aligned while using sentries, for example.

As sentry drones don't move until you recall them, and when you recall them they no longer shoot, this isn't exactly the case any more. Maybe 200ms is too fast, but it should be somewhere between 50ms to 200ms - as opposed to the 5ms it crawls at now. Although yeah, since having a Moros with drones this will be an issue.

Gypsio III wrote:
Active tanks - quite happy to see an increase to the overload bonus to boost/rep amount. Your idea of increasing resists also seems to work well though. Would the resist increase stack with hardeners?

No, but the individual mods will have a stacking penalty with each other and perhaps DCU's.

Gypsio III wrote:
Warfare links. I'd rework them all, not just the Gallente ones. The Minmatar ones are far too good. Splitting the scrambler/disruptor range bonus from Interdiction Manoeuvres and moving it to a new Gallente link, for a start. The Minmatar sig-radius reduction link is too powerful also.

I guess the commanships could be a balance patch all on to it's self, however I'd steer away deliberately trying to nerf things unless it's absolutely necessary.

Gypsio III wrote:
Cap battery thingy. It won't be used for running guns/MWD under neuting, it'll be used for neut-proof tackle. In any case, someone without room for an injector won't have room for a cap battery. It's too binary - cap batteries are hard to fit, but one of these would give a huge advantage. Sufficient neuting should always utterly shut down cap-using modules. I'd go for fiddling with Nos fitting requirements, cycle time and drain amount, to create a less binary situation.

I'll be having another look at this, however any improvements to Nos often disproportionally boost capwarfare in relation to blaster combat. But no, there needs to be a module that scales up better with higher neuting whilst it should be possible for a ship to, whilst sacrificing a number of slots, fortify their capacitor in the same way one would do so for their tank.

Ex CSM member & Designer of the Tornado. Gallente - Pilot satisfaction

Pattern Clarc
Citeregis
#110 - 2011-10-16 19:44:58 UTC
Cpt Fina wrote:
Tier 1 BCs doesn't necessarily have to get buffed. It's the tier 2 ones that need small nerfs.


Gypsio III wrote:
Battlecruisers. One fo the big reasons why T1 cruisers that aren't the Blackbird are worthless is because tier 2 BCs do everything they do, but better. A Drake is a better TD platform than an Arbitrator, a Hurricane is faster and more agile than a Rupture while having more DPS, better tracking and longer range, and more EHP. It's crazy. There is no concept of a "step backwards" in balancing, there is only better or worse balance. Nerfing tier 2 BCs to tier 1 levels helps tier 1 BCs, cruisers and the Deimos and Sacrilege. Boosting tier 1 BCs to tier 2 levels just kills cruisers even more, reducing the diversity of ships in space and the resulting PVP, while hindering newbies who have to train BC skills and spend more ISK before getting into a viable ship class.

I'm sorry but I fundamentally disagree.

Tech 1 Cruisers, Frigs, Destroyers aren't flown primarily because there not fast enough and don't have enough staying power. Hell, interceptors aren't really flown any more just because speed was so important to those ships staying alive whilst most frig pilots fly them only to fight other frigs, or have become drami pilots.

Tier 1 BC's have never been frequently flown for similar reasons and additionally because they weren't fun to fit and got completely destroyed by battleships. Nerfing Tier 2 BC's down to tier 1 BC level will just push more players back in to battleships again like 2-3 years ago. Check the prices of the Domi and ask why would anyone fly the Myrmidon if it performed as well as the current brutix?

You've also got to realise that the player base responds disproportionally to nerfs. I'm not suggesting *unleash the power creep* - but nerfing things just because their popular and not because there broken isn't a good way of going about things.


Quote:
Split weapons. The Typhoon works. For Eris etc, split weapons aren't the problem, the ship is the problem. As you say, give them an appreciable advantage, such as DPS, or drones, or mobility. But I'd really like to see the variability that results from these split-wepaon ships retained, but as you say, it must be balanced by advantages.

The typhoon only worked because players can choose to focus 5 out of 8 hardpoints in stead of 4 out of 4. It didn't work when it was split down the middle and it was boosted until it did. Like I said before, 50-50 split weapons suck most of the time, and no, people know exactly how your going to be fit. Eris now gets 6/6 split, which is fair, as the sabre will always be better.

Ex CSM member & Designer of the Tornado. Gallente - Pilot satisfaction

Pattern Clarc
Citeregis
#111 - 2011-10-16 20:03:23 UTC
Gypsio III wrote:

Having trouble keeping track of idea,s but here goes...

Caldari speed. Ranged ships should be slow, close-in ships should be fast. When this relationship is ignored, we have problems - see Minmatar. Be careful that you don't make Caldari railboats better blaster platforms than Gallente. However, the Eagle's speed needs to be better balanced with Zealot and Muninn (why is the Zealot so fast?) - or it should gain a comparable EHP/DPS advantage in compensation for sluggishness.

Caldari hybrid ships will be competitive with where amarr and gallente are now. Gallente will be faster now, but not faster than minmatar ships on average. Gallente ships will have significantly more agility however which will differentiate it from Caldari and Minmatar.

Fundamentally, if we're committing to the concept that blasters are close range weapons, ship hulls need to be compensated to be naturally in tune with the usage of the weapon system. Which means more speed. In sniping mode, beams will still out damage caldari rails whilst Gallente rail ships will become competitive, but just won't get the range or do as much t2 turret dps at close range.


Quote:
T2 ammo. While they need changes, I'd hold off on this until the hybrid changes settle down in game. Your Quake might be a bit too good, alpha is useful. Gleam sounds well balanced though. Javelin might be a bit too good too. Jav and Quake sounds like they might be the "default loaded ammo", which T2 ammo should not be (yeah I'm thinking of you here, Scorch and Barrage), because it means that people have to have T2 guns to be useful.

The goal here is with t2 ammo we really get to really differentiate the weapon systems. Quake may be too much alpha, but I'm not really sure what else to give it. Also, looking at the penalties more closely, it'll have much lower range and less dps than RF EMP, which would mean people would generally carry that, and prefer to use that for most situations. I admit that the numbers may need tweaking however I'm rather confident that the general concept is where those ammo types should go.

Ex CSM member & Designer of the Tornado. Gallente - Pilot satisfaction

Pattern Clarc
Citeregis
#112 - 2011-10-16 20:08:35 UTC
Perdition64 wrote:
Pattern, you're part of Aperture Harmonics, how do you think your changes would work in a wormhole environment? Would we see Gallente ships being able make more of an appearance?

Loving the changes btw. :)

T3's, Bhaalgorn's and the occasional caps are mostly what we fly. If you look at my KB you'd see I fly proteuses and loki's quite often. In W-Space, EHP is king, so I don't really see much that directly changes anything in that space beyond the active tanking changes.

Ex CSM member & Designer of the Tornado. Gallente - Pilot satisfaction

Gypsio III
Questionable Ethics.
Ministry of Inappropriate Footwork
#113 - 2011-10-16 20:11:16 UTC
Pattern Clarc wrote:


Gypsio III wrote:
Battlecruisers. One fo the big reasons why T1 cruisers that aren't the Blackbird are worthless is because tier 2 BCs do everything they do, but better. A Drake is a better TD platform than an Arbitrator, a Hurricane is faster and more agile than a Rupture while having more DPS, better tracking and longer range, and more EHP. It's crazy. There is no concept of a "step backwards" in balancing, there is only better or worse balance. Nerfing tier 2 BCs to tier 1 levels helps tier 1 BCs, cruisers and the Deimos and Sacrilege. Boosting tier 1 BCs to tier 2 levels just kills cruisers even more, reducing the diversity of ships in space and the resulting PVP, while hindering newbies who have to train BC skills and spend more ISK before getting into a viable ship class.

I'm sorry but I fundamentally disagree.

Tech 1 Cruisers, Frigs, Destroyers aren't flown primarily because there not fast enough and don't have enough staying power. Hell, interceptors aren't really flown any more just because speed was so important to those ships staying alive whilst most frig pilots fly them only to fight other frigs, or have become drami pilots.

Tier 1 BC's have never been frequently flown for similar reasons and additionally because they weren't fun to fit and got completely destroyed by battleships. Nerfing Tier 2 BC's down to tier 1 BC level will just push more players back in to battleships again like 2-3 years ago. Check the prices of the Domi and ask why would anyone fly the Myrmidon if it performed as well as the current brutix?

You've also got to realise that the player base responds disproportionally to nerfs. I'm not suggesting *unleash the power creep* - but nerfing things just because their popular and not because there broken isn't a good way of going about things.


I would say that a big reason why T1 cruisers and destroyers aren't flown is because of tier 2 BCs. They cannot survive in a world of tracking-enhanced Hurricanes, being more mobile than an armour Rupture with more, better-tracking, longer-range DPS and more EHP. Likewise Harbingers and Drakes. Tier 2 BCs are better than cruisers at being cruisers.

Tier 1 BCs haven't really been flown since the introduction of the Tier 2s in, what, late 2006? But I seem to recall that they were popular enough then. I remember buying my first Ferox, naming it HMS Hood, then losing it 20 minutes later on jump-in to lowsec. In today's environment, I think they'd still be attractive ships - still well superior to cruisers, just with the margin of superiority being less. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the Cyclone, for example, it's just that the Hurricane is better all-round. The Prophecy can do 466 DPS with 70k EHP, it only looks bad next to the Harbinger. The Ferox would is a much better sniper than the Moa, it's problem is that the arty-Hurricane is much better than it.

TBH, getting people out of tier 2 BCs and into BS would be a good thing, I think. For one thing, the BS would have much more difficulty tracking cruisers, destroyers and frigates, making these classes more attractive too.

You're right though, the playerbase would rage at the idea. And for that reason, CCP won't dare nerf them. Tier 2 BCs have become too important to people - precisely because they're too good, too flexible... too overpowered.
MeBiatch
GRR GOONS
#114 - 2011-10-16 20:17:12 UTC
i tend to agree with gypsio about bc's... but not totally... i think there needs to be a nerf to tier II but a slight boost to tier I...

balance them out... some more then others like the brutix only needs a slight boost but the prophecy needs a big one...

moreover 5 heavy drones on a myrm might be too much but 4 would serve it nicely and not make tier i bs's not so usefull...

There are no stupid Questions... just stupid people... CCP Goliath wrote:

Ugh ti-di pooping makes me sad.

Pattern Clarc
Citeregis
#115 - 2011-10-16 20:17:31 UTC  |  Edited by: Pattern Clarc
Gypsio III wrote:

Tier 1 BCs haven't really been flown since the introduction of the Tier 2s in, what, late 2006? But I seem to recall that they were popular enough then. I remember buying my first Ferox, naming it HMS Hood, then losing it 20 minutes later on jump-in to lowsec. In today's environment, I think they'd still be attractive ships - still well superior to cruisers, just with the margin of superiority being less. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the Cyclone, for example, it's just that the Hurricane is better all-round. The Prophecy can do 466 DPS with 70k EHP, it only looks bad next to the Harbinger. The Ferox would is a much better sniper than the Moa, it's problem is that the arty-Hurricane is much better than it.

TBH, getting people out of tier 2 BCs and into BS would be a good thing, I think. For one thing, the BS would have much more difficulty tracking cruisers, destroyers and frigates, making these classes more attractive too.

You're right though, the playerbase would rage at the idea. And for that reason, CCP won't dare nerf them. Tier 2 BCs have become too important to people - precisely because they're too good, too flexible... too overpowered.

Tier 1 BC's weren't popular at all and were either ignored or a stepping stone before moving on to commandships. I personally flew the brutix once or twice back in 2006 and died once or twice in it and didn't think about training up the skill beyond 3 until the myrmidon came, which at the time became my favourite ship. Before then HAC's did more than what BCs did at the time but with a lot more speed, and thus being worth the 5x premium.

Players prefer flying *faster* more agile ships so it would be a bad thing for overall player experiences shifting more people into battleships.

There needs to be a greater gap in the MWD speeds of ships. There just far too close together, and too many ships of big size classes overlap across the lower ones, especially between destroyer, cruiser and Battlecruiser.


(For bonus points work out the speed difference between the slowest destroyer and the fastest BC with MWD's and nano fit.)

Ex CSM member & Designer of the Tornado. Gallente - Pilot satisfaction

Pattern Clarc
Citeregis
#116 - 2011-10-17 00:20:13 UTC
I've just been looking at damage graphs for blasters and it seems like the original changes I proposed are more or less spot on.

Some additional things. I highly recommend increasing the drone bay and bandwidth of the Rokh, Ferrox and Eagle by 25mb/m3, whilst the moa's drone by increases to 15m3. Beyond throwing away there bonuses, increasing slots or overboosting blasters, there was really little way to make them competitive damage or range wise vs any race even with the tanking bonus included. It also fits the model of Blasters now requiring additional drones *just in case*.

May post graphs/sketches tomorrow.

Ex CSM member & Designer of the Tornado. Gallente - Pilot satisfaction

draconothese
Independant Celestial Enterprises
#117 - 2011-10-17 06:36:16 UTC
loveing the ideas i just hope with so many ideas and changes flying around no ship gets left in the closet thats why i am worried about my proteus is all 1 change can throw a whole ship into the trash heap
Pattern Clarc
Citeregis
#118 - 2011-10-17 20:00:55 UTC
Daily bump - would recommend reading walls of text... Although this is somewhat of a summary

Quote:
I think these elements are the most important.
1) weapons system changes (including changes to spike/hybrid ammo)
2) changes to the hulls of gallente, caldari blaster ships as well as roden (+grid, speed changes)
3) changes to drone carriers (more drones to the eos and myrmidon)
4) active tanking (increased rep bonus and + resistance to overloaded state)

Following on from that in a later patch
- Tiericide of Tier 1 BC's.
- Assault Warfare gang links + commandship boost
- Warp to, lock range and probing mechanics change
- Tech 2 ammo for long range turrets
- Cap warfare balance

Ex CSM member & Designer of the Tornado. Gallente - Pilot satisfaction

Kai Lae
Karmunism Limited
#119 - 2011-10-18 12:14:19 UTC  |  Edited by: Kai Lae
I posted this once on scrapheap before it imploded. IMO it's probably the most in depth collection of gallente issues done, though ofc I could have missed something. The supercharger idea I wrote up here IMO is not viable when I think of it, but some kind of burst speed mechanic is required to make things work right. If CCP only addresses blaster damage, it simply won't do enough to make things work. Kudos to pattern for attempting to get things rolling, I'll post my stuffs below (would go into it moar, but I need to go to work):

This is going to be a long post. If you don't like that, then don't read it, though I hope that people will.

As most people are aware, the title "king of the hill" in PvP in eve is pretty nebulous. As the game goes on and things change, the FOTM changes, and things that were once good become bad, and vice versa. However, what has been true for some time is that gallente as pvp ships have been fairly lacking, mostly due to balance related issues. The goal of this post is to systematically identify the issues that they have as a race and identify them for correction, so Vuk can take up the issue as part of the CSM. This will allow them to step out of the shadow that they currently live in of being identified as "mostly crappy" and allow them to take the place they should have on the eve battlefield, while not becoming overpowered.

The first step is the identification of the areas that need to be addressed. These are (in no specific order):

1. EW ships are ineffective at their job. Dampeners are considered to be mostly useless.
2. Blasters as a weapon are far outclassed by mostly everything in game, for a variety of reasons.
3. Slot configurations on some gallente ships over frigate size is unideal, which compounds the issues identified in point two above.
4. Current rig design/balance penalize gallente type playstyle/ships more than others, because of the specific types of tactics that are required for use in these ships.
5. Railguns need some thinking about. Currently rails are defined as "mostly not horrible" which means, if you can fly another race and use another weapon that you likely have a better choice for whatever fight you're going to be getting into.
6. Tank bonuses for gallente ships are simply not effective enough in today's eve environment, for a variety of reasons. Passive tanking >> active tanking, however gallente ships (and some minmatar ships) are set up to active tank.
7. T2 ammo used by gallente ships is junk, with the exception of spike. Javelin and void are currently being redone by CCP so for the purposes of this discussion I will not touch on them much, but null is also poorer as a choice than all other extended range, short range ammo which is a problem.
8. Drones have several issues that require them to be looked at in order to achieve the maximum effectiveness that they should have.

These are the general issues that gallente ships face in game. While not of course totally inclusive, and while not identifying specific issues that various hull classes have, I believe that correction of the above will "fix" gallente, as well as address several other areas as well that are not specific to gallente, thus improving eve in general. We'll start by taking each identified issue, explaining the problems behind it that cause it to be a problem, and how I believe they should be corrected. Therefore:

#1. Sensor dampeners. Once upon a time in eve, sensor damps were considered to be an ubermodule. They were fitted to damn near everything, in a fashion quite like warp core stabilizers. Burn eden ravens were running around with full racks of them fitted in their mids. However, CCP then decided to double nerf them - first they reduced the maximum effect of the dampener to roughly 55%, and then then applied scripts to them so you had to choose which effect that you could employ. The result of this is that while you saw an end of BE ravens you also saw the end of sensor damps on ships such as the lach. While rooks and falcons got their EW strength boosted when jammers were redone, the lach/arazu got literally nothing. As it currently stands now as an example, it is only possible to dampen a hostile logistic to a maximum of about 13-15km lock range with the current dampeners - and only by applying 3 of them to the same target. This means that they are generally ineffective in being able to prevent spider tanking for instance as most ships in fleet are closer than that. A rook or falcon with a full rack of jammers likely will be able to incapacitate multiple opponents with the EW it carries; a lach or arazu will only be able to shut down one ship, at best, and only if the fight is at range. The confirmation on the current status of these modules can easily be found by checking killmails. For a simple example, I checked killmails on our killboard for the 30th. While the sample size is quite small overall - 11 ships - the results I believe are very informative. Of those 11 ships, only 1 had sensor dampeners fitted, or just over nine percent. The others all were either shield tanked, or fitted other modules instead; in one case one individual made the choice to fit a target painter and a ECM module instead of dampeners, which is a telling sign in my opinion of just what value that they think that sensor dampeners are worth. This on a ship that is supposedly designed to employ them and has bonuses for their use.

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Kai Lae
Karmunism Limited
#120 - 2011-10-18 12:14:31 UTC  |  Edited by: Kai Lae
As already stated, the sample size in the above case is quite small, but based on my unscientific observations in the past, I believe that if a full case study was commissioned to study killmails en masse the results would not substantially change. The conclusion is therefore simple - players don't fit them because they're considered to be crap, and mathematical study in this area in comparison to other forms of EW (with the exception of target painters) backs up this conclusion by the playerbase. I'll also add that CCP itself has previously stated that these modules are underperformers; they presumably have intentions to look at them somewhere "in the backlog" which probably means never, unless prompted. At any rate, how to address this? I believe that dampener effectiveness needs to be boosted on platforms that are specifically designed to employ them. The bonus per level should be increased from 5% per level, to 10% per level. This would result in a theoretical maximum effectiveness of dampener power at 85.1%. This however assumes 2 things; first there's a boosting eos in gang. Second, the lach/arazu is using 2 T2 dampener rigs. Using a more normal configuration - no eos, 2 T1 rigs - the result is 70.29%. Either of these is a sufficient level to reliably shut down targets and allow for a lach or arazu to use dampeners as a real weapon, and not decoration. I would therefore recommend that this improvement be considered as a way to restore the lach/arazu to it's rightful place as a EW ship.

#2. Blasters, blaster ships and blaster tactics. Currently overall blasters are generally not worth it. There are several reasons for this. These are, the short range of the weapon, combined with the fact that the damage from the weapon system will be delayed due to the necessity of having to move the ship to range to employ it, as well as lastly supposedly on the design document the DPS of blasters is superior to everything else by a wide margin changes over the years have largely negated this as reality in game. This has resulted in blasters basically being regarded overall like rockets are - they exist but they're not that useful and few employ them, because of the effectiveness issue. The question therefore is how to change these factors so at the very minimum they're considered to be somewhat useful, if not common as a potential fitting on gallente ships. There have been many ideas thrown about on how to do this; adding range, tracking etc. However first thing that should be done, in my opinion, is to first define a simple question - what is a blaster? Or perhaps better question, what should a blaster be, what characteristics should a blaster have. I believe that blasters should have the following traits:

A. Blaster range is point blank. If at all possible, you should be ramming the hostile ship with your own to ensure they're as far into your optimal as you can get.
B. Blasters are not mid range weapons like lasers or even autocannons and will never have the engagement ranges like them.
C. Because of 1 and 2 above, you will have to, under normal circumstances, move your ship to engage an enemy target. You will not start in range of the enemy during a fight.
D. Blasters should have facemelting damage. If you reach the preferred range of a blaster ship, the result should be normally that the opposition gets obliterated. Other ship should go down very quickly at this point; counter blaster tactics should NEVER be how to fight a blaster ship in his preferred engagement envelope, it should be how to prevent him reaching it with the possible exception of anything employing neutralizers or tracking disruptors. In summary: blaster ship damage should be significantly higher than anything else possible.
E. A blaster fight is a fight to the death. You're going in and either they're going down or you are. This is the eve online version of thunderdome where 2 ships enter, and one leaves. There are no half measures.

These five characteristics above are how blasters, I believe, should operate. Now that we've come to a decision on how blasters and the general methods that blaster attacks will employ, what are the problems with this currently in game? Unfortunately currently as eve is they are legion. Since blasters have such short range, you must move your ship to the correct engagement envelope. This means that unless they're also blaster armed, you'll be under fire for your entire run in period because every other weapon will outrange you. To make such an attack method actually worthwhile, the DPS that you end up dishing out on the end of this run must be so much higher that you negate the fact that for the entire run in period you're doing zero DPS and he's getting in free shots at you that you can't currently return. This currently is openly questionable. A quick analysis demonstrates this fact. Using EFT and comparing a muninn, zealot, and deimos - all with L5 skills, medium short range guns of the largest type, and 3 damage mods, using nonfaction close range ammo - reveals some interesting facts. The DPS breakdown is the following:

a. Muninn - 447 DPS
b. Zealot - 498 DPS
c. Deimos - 545 DPS

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