Player Features and Ideas Discussion

No CPU problems here? But 800mm plate and 2 PG mods for cruiser-sized weapons.

Clearly because as we all know the Gallente have had it TOOD GOOD for TOO LONG!

Okay so far most of the ships look pretty good....I'm quite excited if the increased damp strength carries over directly to the arazu (but fingers still crossed to actually be able to get a ship under 8-9km locking range without boost...aka my gallentean brethren who actually use blasters can get in range and then get scrammed/webbed/neuted/TD by the enemy after they are in range)

But my question to CCP and the devs focused on balancing. You said somewhere in these pages (and yes I've read all 17 at this point) that you didn't want to specialize for the sake of specialization, but you are inherently taking away what makes Gallente ships versatile....its ability to fit drones and half the time, rely on its drones to actually hit the target and provide damage.

Now you can't with good faith honestly say that Gallente are not the drone users of Eve, so why are you adding "buffs" to all the other ships by giving them drone versatility? Take a look inside starter corps like CAS - a Gallente player npc corp - you'll often find people asking "What ship should I use? What skills should I train?" The almost over whelming response is to train up your drone skills and get into a ship like the vexor or ishkur, then eventually into an ishtar or dominix. Not to mention, almost every ship (pre-winter changes and some that we've seen now) have some form of drone to balance their dps. Let's take a look at the ships shall we:
1) incursus - 5m3 done bay
2) catalyst - 5m3 drone bay
3) Enyo - 5m3 drone bay
4) Ishkur - 50m3 drone bay
5) Every gallente cruiser has 40m3 or more
6) Every gallente BC has 50m3 or more
7) Every gallente BS has 75m3 or more


Having the ability to field some form of ewar drones and combat drones is what made the Gallente hulls creative. When you take away that niche by giving everyone some "Oh we don't want other ships to make gallente feel left out" 15m3 drone bays or 20m3 drone bay, you take away the role that gallente ships have in small scale fleets. Let's be honest, if we're blaster fit to provide real dps, we usually are the last ones to get dps on the target because we're slow, but we can send webber drones or some other ewar/combat drones and those start going right away to help the fleet out.

With your proposed changes to just add crappy drone bays on every ship because it makes them balanced, you're taking away the sandbox feel as everyone just wants to build ecm-300 OP jamming sandcastles. The fact is that most people fill that joke of a drone bay with ecm-300s and know full well they will get at least 2 or more jams off from 2 or 3 ecm-300s, giving them the safety net of being able to warp off if the armor ship actually manages to catch the kiter. And for those who prefer to always bring combat drones, by adding those small drone bays, you are just welcoming more people to shoot my precious dps and kill it when i fly something like a vexor or arbitrator.

So I'm asking the devs when you consider balancing cruisers and ships in general. Just giving small drones bays to everyone isn't the way to go, it's the easy way out. The races are specialized or else I'd be fitting autocannons on my thorax because they fit nicely and don't use cap, but that's not the case. Each race has a play style and backup play style, so keep that mentality going by not making everyone a drone user. If it so requires, give those ships an extra high slot for another gun, but you should be removing drone bays of most ships that aren't green and made to be in your face brawlers :P


Just my two cents from a true Gallentean,
Yun

Arbitrator, you are going to be my new friend coming in the winter expansion. Especially now that TD's are going to affect missiles :D

It'll be on the Vexor.

The arbitrator has the bonus because the curse and pilgrim also have the bonus.

Pretty sure ECM is getting whacked, TDs toned down a bit, Damps an improvement, and not sure about painters themselves.

AHAHAHAHAHAH I'm Down comes at Fozzie with his half cocked EFT theorycrafting and gets stuffed firmly into the hurtlocker.


Yaay you weren't good enough to theory craft against our best while you were IN PL, you certainly aren't good enough to do it now that you've left.

I love the changes. I think bringing t1 cruisers back into the game is something that's needed.

Only having flown an abitrator extensively, as co-founder of the super secret awesome arbitrator recon death squad team, it is the only one I really have any authority on to speak of.

The arbitrator was by far the best solo roaming cruiser in terms of survivability and versatility. I think by giving it an extra low you will be putting it on par with the thorax in terms of combat effectiveness. I'm not sure this is what you want to do, because it is already reasonably powerful.

[Arbitrator, New Setup 1]
1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Damage Control II

10MN MicroWarpdrive I
Tracking Disruptor II, Optimal Range Disruption Script
Warp Disruptor II
Small Electrochemical Capacitor Booster I, Cap Booster 200

Small Unstable Power Fluctuator I
Small Unstable Power Fluctuator I
Dual Light Pulse Laser II, Conflagration S
Dual Light Pulse Laser II, Conflagration S



Hammerhead II x5

Bare in mind this was a few years ago, this was the fit we used to use. It could go toe to toe against most thoraxes because of the TD and ability to dictate range with the neuts. If you optimise the fit, add trimarks, and take into account the extra low, my concern is that it would be TOO beefy compared to the other cruisers.

My humble suggestion would be to remove the stupid token launcher slots, drop a high, keep two turret slots, keep 4 lows and add a mid. This would allow the ship to more effectively make use of its ewar bonus, something which it has difficulty doing thanks to cap managment, while maintaining the brawling ability of the cruiser, without giving it too much EHP.

If you consider this TOO powerful, how about dropping some of the drone bandwidth?

I hope there are plans to carry these bonus changes onward to the T2 Recon variants of these hulls, as it will be strange to have t1 cruisers more powerful than their t2 counterparts.