Player Features and Ideas Discussion

No, but we/they are resistant to certain ideas. The right proposal will generate thought, and probably still get trolled. Later on they'll possibly reconsider it in a different light that applies to them, and then maybe they'll reintroduce the notion themselves with some changes. Its happened before.

My thought, is that it should be a larger boat, and it should be different from other boats.

Similar existing ships in game:

~ Black Ops: Widow and Panther.

~ Any Stealth Bomber

~ Also, any ship with Cruise Launchers and/or Torpedoes.

It's all a matter of perspective really. What could make a ship different from all of these, effective in its role, interesting and desirable to fly and use in fleets, and not be over or under powered in such a way that it becomes impractical to leave in the game?

I'd say cruiser sized, with Black Ops Cloaking capabilities, a greatly diminished targeting delay after cloaking, greater speed than Black Ops when cloaking, inability to Warp when cloaked, bonuses to either Cruise Launchers to increase Alpha against larger ships, or bonuses to Torpedoes to do the same.

Either that, or a new Launcher like the Bomb launcher which can only be fit on that particular ship, requires targeting, (unlike the Bomb Launcher), and does high Alpha with a really slow refire delay; though maybe not as bad as a Bomb launcher at ~2 minutes.

Definitely not a frigate or super small and fast ship though. Submarines are large, (mostly), and require a great deal of maneuvering to get into position and fire. They aren't generally very fast, and they are limited in their field of fire, (something shared with the Bomb Launcher), in addition to not having much in the way of alternative armaments in most cases.

So you want two smaller than frigate sized ships, requiring less than a month training time, to be able to kill a BS in two volleys. For the sake of trying to be balanced lets switch it to four volleys.

I checked my Rokh buffer build and I can get about 45,000 pure HP when you add in Shield (28k), Armor (8k), Hull (8k). I realize the EHP is higher (184k) but lets assume your ships kill so fast only the pure HP matter.

Each of your ships will need to dish out about 12k of damage per volley to reach the level of lethality you are talking about. I'm not talking about DPS because you insist your ships are so fragile they will only get about one shot off before dieing.

For simplicities sake lets call your weapon a MOAB and the ship a corvette.

The MOAB is a single shot weapon and the ammunition is too large to fit inside the ships cargo bay.

The Corvette hull has fewer HP's than a frigate, is faster, and is not able to cloak. So like a dedicated rookie ship.

Corvettes are supposed to be fast so lets give them 500m/s base speed, 2k with AB, and 3k with MWD.

This ship would enforce the need for a fleet to be diverse by ensuring destroyers or other anti-frigate fit ships were used to guard against corvette attack.

Corvettes would have to be banned from firing in Hi and Low sec due to the ability of a heavily tanked fleet member to work in close and create a warp in point. Basically a warp bubble will be your first line of defense against these ships.

The max range for the MOAB would have to be something like 2k.

Probably have to give the corvette a cruiser size sig radius to allow defenders time to lock targets and fire.

MOAB would need to have a huge explosion radius to prevent using wave attacks against cruiser/frigate defenders.


Now, with all of the above being used to help balance the corvette lets consider the final problem which is almost impossible to balance, effectiveness of adding more ships.

Take two fleets with an equal number of pilots. Fleet 1 is a hundred man fleet with a core of 50 BS, 20 Support ships (logi, dictors, and recon), and 20 anti-corvette cruisers and 10 frigates. Fleet 2 is a hundred man fleet flying 99 corvettes and one recon.

Fleet 1 is sitting inside it's warp-bubble with the BS at the center and the other ships ready to move out to provide a shield against corvettes. Fleet 2's recon finds fleet 1 and provides a warp in point on the edge of the bubble.

99 corvettes warp to the bubble and begin their attack run. A large bubble has about 40km total distance so the corvettes only need to travel 20km to get to the BS. We'll go with AB so the time it takes to cross the 20km is 10 secs. Figure 5 secs to get a lock for our 20 anti-corvette cruisers and another 5 secs to destroy each ship. So each cruiser can kill one corvette before firing range is reached. Figure the frigates got one kill each as well. So 30 corvettes are gone when the remaining 69 get in range of the BS. The BS have smart-bombs which kill off half of the remaining corvettes leaving 34. Those 34 corvettes destroy eight BS before the next round of smart-bombs finishes the small ships off.

99 ships lost for only 8 kills sounds great.

But figure the corvettes only cost at most 2mil to purchase and fit. So that's 200mil worth of ships against the 1.5-2bil worth of BS (figuring each BS costs somewhere around 200mil with fittings).

The corvette pilots have a relatively close base so they are able to reship and reengage with another wave of 99 ships before replacement BS are able to get to the fight. Except this time the reduced firepower results in 10 BS killed. Each successive wave of corvettes will pull down the power of the regular fleet until all of the BS are destroyed and the corvette pilots can bring in their own mixed fleet to finish off the survivors.

Pretty soon every defense will turn into simply sending waves and waves of corvettes to kill off as many big ships as possible. Then once the attacker is dedicated to fighting corvettes the defender brings in a regular fleet to pick apart the much weaker anti-corvette fleet.

Capital ships will be even more susceptible to massive corvette fleets.

Any fleet not in a bubble won't even have a chance since the corvettes will be able to warp to 0.

What happens when you make a welp fleet of corvettes though and bring several hundred to a fight?

In the end pretty much every major fight will be determined by who can field the most corvettes to use against BS and Caps.

The problem with the PT boat concept being used in Eve is IRL doesn't have warp ins or lock times. When PT boats are seen on radar or visual the crews can begin firing almost immediately. Evasive maneuvers can be used to help dodge torpedoes. A BS has more guns of the proper size to kill PT boats than a destroyer does. The PT boat is limited to combat in areas with restricted terrain, short travel distances, and against targets of opportunity.

The problem with your idea is that the only outcome is to make the corvette OP or else people won't use them. Why would someone pilot a ship that is almost guaranteed to die, may or may not destroy a target, and is only effective against a certain size ship? Instead why not fly a ship that lets you observe the fight while still contributing?

Then use a 'horde' of bombers and kill their entire maelstrom fleet instead of loosing all your ships for one.

Basically OP its a bad idea that is superfluous anyway as we have bomber which have a similar, but much more effective, role.

EDIT yes the battle report is ****** up look at all the irc maels with 16 people on the killmail. That was one bombing run that obliterated their fleet.

In that case, why don't we get rid of 90% of the ships in Eve? Pretty much *any* ship's job can be done by some other ship, and every ship has strong similarities with other ships. So let's just get rid of *all* of the superfluous redundancies, that way the devs don't have to continue wasting time balancing these dozens of ship types.

Oh this should be good, examples please. And not 'can do the same job', makes the other completely and totally pointless with no advantage what so ever.

Agreed with all of the above. Single target bomb with increased damage = good. Entire new ship to shoot it = bad

I happen to agree with this. So how about we split the difference a bit?

Strategic Bomber.

Non-covert capable
Destroyer hull
Twin bomb launchers
4 torp launchers
And not enough room in the cargo hold to reload the bombs.

Something like this would still be a glass cannon, and wouldn't necessarily over balance things by introducing something that doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the current progression of things. Would this work to keep both sides happy?

It's keeping with how the proposed PT boat would work. Wouldn't work without some kind of distraction, or a covert warp in to bomb range. By not allowing a covert cloak, it should help balance out the extra bomb it drops. It's also keeping with the current progression of things in Eve. Stealth Bombers, while heavily armed for a frigate, are lightly armed in comparison to the targets they're designed to go after. A Strategic Bomber, while very heavily armed for a destroyer, would have a reasonable armament in comparison to what it's designed to go after.

If you want RL comparisons, the Stealth Bomber is the B2 bomber in use now. Useful for taking on small groups of targets. (Precision attack craft, new bomb for it?) The Strategic Bomber would be more in line with the B-52 bombers used for carpet bombing a target. Useful for devastating larger groups of targets, not to mention being a bit more of a threat to capital classes. (Paired bombs dropped to wreak untold damage to large groups of battlecruiser and battleship class targets, no bomb changes needed for this.)

Do note that I said some *kind* of distraction would be needed. Never stated what that distraction would need to be. And in a blob level engagement, 10 to 12 new ships arriving won't be noticed necessarily right away. At least until the bombs start flying.

And you're right, I don't bomb regularly as I don't get the chance to on a regular basis but the comparison does still stand. A stealth bomber, while capable of doing a lot of damage to a large group, is better suited towards hitting a smaller group with 3 or 4 bombers rather then trying to take on a massive group of maels like you demonstrated that they are capable of in larger groups. Just because you can throw numbers at something doesn't mean it's the best way of doing it.

Try looking at it from a different point of view. Don't look at it as a harassment tool like the stealth bombers can, and do, get used as. Look at them as a heavy assault cannon. Extremely brittle, but a few can change the tide of a battle within a couple of seconds if they get their first bombs off. These would be more like the old Stealth Bombers then anything, they get on grid visibly and then cloak to get into position. If the targets spread out, or warp off, in response then the bomber has succeeded in doing it's job. And it did it without having to fire on a target. This would also potentially have the effect of bringing back some of the older bomber pilots who don't like how things changed on the Bombers. Anything that adds additional tactics to the game can't really be all that bad a thing.

Yes they would there are 500 people looking at there overview *someone* will notice.



No it isn't as it is actually easier to hit large groups with bombs. Fly the ship. Please.



The current stealth bomber fills both roles. And no one ever used the old stealth bombers which proves my point, as no one will use these either. If they remain on grid for longer than 10 seconds they will all die, and without the cloak it will take them longer than 10 seconds to land and line up for the run. It is pointless and would be a waste of dev time that could be better spent on other things.