Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Poor Firox... such a red headed stepchild. So now it's a poor man's command sniper? I think you should give it a little bump to max velocity, or reduce it's mass, if that's the case. Just my 2 ISK.

I continue to question the wisdom of this approach.

Amarr - 3 full flights. Wise? Not particularly. With what drone costs, carrying 3 full flights is overkill in most cases. Not to mention that most ships tend to get popped before the second flight gets munched through.

Gallente - not even 2 full flights? Again?! Wise? Not particularly. For one, this completely removes the "flexibility" of a drone boat in the field. And makes logistics a nightmare, as a single hot warpout leaves your drone capability at 75% of optimal at best.

Can't you guys even consider the happy medium? That is, 2 flights for Gallente AT LEAST? I know this "doctrine" has been around for a while, but it doesn't sit well, with me at least. It never has.

[

What about 5 turrets and 100 bandwidth on a Myrm? That looks an awful lot like a split weapon system. In fact, ship for ship, Gallente seem to get a lot of split weapons "love".

Now the active rep bonus on BOTH ships? Surprisingly, I'm OK with it. Assuming you guys have plans to address the obvious issues with active vs passive tanking, and specifically active armor tank. But if no such plans exist, perhaps the rep bonus is not the way to go.

Dang. What did the Harbinger ever do to you? I don't know that the increased damage is going to make up for that heavy hit in fittings and tank. If the PG hadn't been hit so hard, I could see a future of heavy pulse Harbingers a la 425mm Hurricanes, but now I just see them struggling to break even and still stuck in the focused medium rut. I'm perplexed by the CPU drop, too. It seems like you're going above and beyond taking a gun's worth of fittings off of it.

I was hoping the Prophecy would come to something after the Venture kicked it out of its god-given role as a gas harvester, but I am unimpressed with its new role, but that might be me just feeling sad that the whispers of recon battlecruisers never came to pass.

A lot of these changes seem to hinge on mysterious upcoming alterations to various modules (medium rails, active armor tanking, drones?). It would be nice if you could let us know as soon as possible what all of these changes are, because that is very relevant to the feedback loop.

So double repair bonus, the more you have, the faster and more you repair, at the more cap cost.
When I was new, I always wondered why having more SP makes me less cap-stable.
Not sure I like it. Pretty sure I don't like it! Armor tanking shouldn't be fixed by making the bonus assymetric compared to shields.

10% drone tracking:
On top of everything else, that's a bit much. If the bonuses were 7.5% each, maybe.
Too sudden burst, would require some drones to be altered perhaps, specially with the new drone destroyers out.

Plate reduction:
So what if I don't fit a plate on it due to some sheer folly, like shield buffering or active tanking?
Giving speed and/or inertia would be better maybe. Or just not going there.

this would give the myrm the ability to sit at range with its drones and snipe while having a decent burst tank so its no op.

while the brutix would inherit an ability to fit a 1600mm plate and be able to fly as if there were only an 800mm beter agility speed etc so it can pounce on its target as intended.

it would give u an active or buffer option on medium blasters that are both very viable.

And still no info about fixing active tanking.

Minmatar - Typhoon, Cyclone, Naglfar,

You're on the CSM and you don't even know which ships have split weapons systems?

Phoon will be reworked into torp boat supposedly.
Cyclone "only" has two utility highs, with many of us here calling for +1 launcher.
That the Naglfar suxx with two unbonused and two double bonused, is meh.

I spy a surprising number of odd or defunct bonuses still being there. I thought these were the primary targets for change? Very few people are going to really enjoy the snipe bonus on the Ferox, and the Brutix rep bonus is only going to be useful in novelty solo fits like the triple rep Myrmidon today. Myrmidon has enough versatility because of its med slots and auxiliary weapon system that it is hard to complain, but the Brutix doesn't enjoy that same luxury.

Also it's funny to read spoiled minmatar players complaining as if their ships fitting has been butchered. The changes recently has only put them in line with other races. It used to be that you barely had to care about grid or CPU when fitting a cane, and that was ridiculous. Both Cyclone and Hurricane are going to stay excellent, Cyclone might even get a reputation as the new Drake of PvE because of the damage projection, drones and bonus.

Overall I think the more fundamental role changes like the Prophecy and Cyclone ones are very interesting, but I had expected much more of it. I also think this will be very successful in diversifying the killboards, although eventual fotms are inevitable as always. Next station for the BC train is the removal of off-grid boosting and the resulting demand for cheaper links in small inexpensive fleets. Let's hope that happens soonish.

I took the time to run some math on the Harbi.

If the goal is to get newer players to move of the ladder to Battlecruisers while still training medium turrets and T2 modules, the Harbi takes a big hit.

For players who are 5'ed out - the Harbi gets a good buff, but most players who are 5'ed out will probably chose to fly better ships.

I suspect that the Harbi will be end up getting little use. Fitting a Harbi with L2 and L3 skills will be tough with the reduction in CPU.