Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I'm on the fence with that one, it never sat well with me that Amarr used missiles (vengeance/sac change to missiles a couple of years ago made me whine like an idiot). If done right it could be good and it would also explain the current Prophecy changes. In fact I could very well live with a shying away from missiles and focussing on laser/drones or drones/lasers (with missile support option).

Why is the Myrm a Minmatar drone boat? Projectiles and shield tank really make it shine!

Woo! Was waiting for this ^_^

right then I'll be trying to save some of my more in depth ideas on this for the podcast but I figure I can do a play by play for now and some concerns.


Harbinger: the turret change is most welcome in my mind with a better “peak” for damage for those who want to invest while, as previously menioned, having simmilar damage potential on the way up. At the same time the reduction in cap use should certainly make the harbinger a more friendly platform to fly. My concern here however is with the reduced fitting. The harbinger's main weakness at the moment compared to its peers is its phenominally tight fitting, often having issues working even with focused pulse as opposed to heavy on some fits. I'd like to suggest that the overall fitting reduction be “mollified” a bit to take into account the prexisting fitting issues. Otherwise i'm fairly happy here, the improved drone bay adds a lot of versitility and the improved laser layout and bonus is going to look AWESOME on the ship model. Please ensure all 6 turrets are wing mounted :>

Proph: big winner here, mild confusion in some of of the complaints here though, on one hand people hate the fact that it has only 4 laser and 4 missile hardpoints... but on the other are complaining about the overall loss in utility highs... there is NO issue here. These weapons are unbonused and overall secondary in effect, savvy players will fit HAM launchers and a medium neut in the highs and brick their way to victory ^^

Ferox: lets be honest here, this is a tremendous buff and I'm saying we should keep the 10% optimal bonus here. Yes, the naga outclasses the ferox as a sniper, but I prefer to think of the ferox not as a sniping platform but as a blaster boat with phenominal damage projection. Sit down with evefit and crunch some numbers... a neutron ferox can slug Null Ammunition to ******** ranges, 11km optimal and 11km falloff with a single tracking enhancer. Throw an extra turret 5 lows and the drones into the mix and you'll be lobbing around 500 dps to 11km before you start losing damage and then easily have the ability to switch over to CNAM or Void for serious close range grunt. Combine with the improved tanking ability and you'll have a pretty damn formidable short-mid range slugger. It won't have the raw damage of the brutix, but against a shield brutix it'll have around 50% more tank for around 25% less dps and IT WILL APPLY THAT DPS BETTER ^_^

Drake: honestly this was expected and compared to other suggested changes this is quite minor. It'll have worse acelleration and turn more like a brick with slightly less tank, however it'll still represent arguably the best mix of damage projection and tank in the battlecruiser range. The buffed ferox most certainly takes over a lot of the drakes's roles but that's not really a bad thing, I'm not a fan of “mono” ship doctrines, simply bring the right ship for the right job. The drake is tough dps support while the ferox is the heavy tackle/brawler.

Brutix: hrm... I'm torn here. On one hand I'm not a fan of the 7.5% active tank bonus because of the current state of active armour repping... HOWEVER there is a lot of hinting from fairly credible sources that active armour tanking might be on the books pretty damn soon. Looking at the ship as is for now though, I can see it working. Its gained the 6 lows shared by the myrmidon so finally has the lowslot ability to bring a triple rep tank (for those who love the challenge) or bring a dual rep tank with a slot or two left over for weapon mods. The improved fitting and capacitor are most welcome and the reduced mass should do a lot for the ship's acceleration. Overall good changes but a final judgement can't be said until we get a better idea of the supposed upcoming armour changes.

Myrmidon: so you're telling me i'm getting a battlecruiser I already like... and letting me fly bigger drones with it? SOLD! 100Mb bandwidth is pretty damn good all told and while it isn't 125 (for that glorious 5 ogre wing) I can see the reasons why it hasn't gone there. The myrmidon was essentially the entire reason drone bandwidth was introduced back in the day and I'd rather not see the myrm step on the toes of the already problematic gila and ishtar. The 100mb bandwidth will easilly permit the deployment of a wing of 4 ogres (which will still pack a significant punch, the loss of a turret hurts a little but at the same time the expanded drone bay and bandwidth gives the ship a boost to its “upper” damage potential. I like it. The improved capacitor stats are also most welcome, the big changes will of course spawn from any changes to active armour tanking.

Cyclone: so THAT'S where the hurricane's utility highs have gone! Only 5 launchers is a little meh but combined with the reasonably sized dronebay and the other side benefits I think this will work out fairly well, if not? Quit whining and shove some autocannons in those utility highs. This is an obvious ham platform for pvp work and will be a fairly fearsome heavy missile toy for mission/ratting. The slot layout is particularly effective and I wouldn't be surprised if the cyclone takes over from the drake as the “fast missile” battlecruiser with that extra low meaning an additional BCU/nano/damage control. Overall a good ship, remember folks dps isn't EVERYTHING, damage projection is pretty damn important as well.

Hurricane: oh dear! Diddums! You'll have to fit 1 neut instead of 2 now! How on earth can we possibly contemplate such loss and woe! Its not like we've still got the MOST DAMN VERSATILE BATTLECRUISER IN THE BLOODY GAME ANYMORE. ~grumble~. Its slightly less agile.. fine. It still has a double damage bonus on its projectiles which still have arguably the best dps/range/tracking balance around, it can still both shield AND armour tank and is now fairly special in being one of the rarer ships to sport utility highs.

will talk more on the next Fly Reckless

Am I reading that right? No speed increase for the brutix? It's slow as all hell right now, and desperately needs a boost to mobility. You probably don't need both gallente BC's to get the armour rep bonus - take the rep bonus away from one of them and give it something offensive.

I thought the Drake was getting a range bonus to missiles in place of that 5% resist bonus. I don't think the caldari need two ships that are defensive BC's. Not too keen on that anachronistic kinetic damage bonus either.

Ferox, medium rails still suck so 1 extra turret isn't going to help all that much. Ship itself looks okay tho.
Prophecy, I love it.
Cyclone, looks good too
Hurricane, well.. don't nerf it too much, it was pretty well balanced already.
Harbinger, more of a glass cannon I suppose, but no objections here.

Looking good, EXCEPT the Cyclone. 5 mids just isn't enough for active tank WITH missiles, unless you plan it to be pure asb boat. MWD, shield booster, cap booster, invuln, scram, but where is the web supposed to go? Instead of invuln? Damage from 5 launchers is already not that great, no need to nerf it further by not allowing use of web while using ships bonus for active shield tanking.

I would like to know one more thing. When Devs are tweaking PG/CPU etc. I assume they are checking outcome fitting some mods. I assume those fits are something very common.
In case if I am correct, could we please get those fits to better understand what is the idea of specific adjustments and what are they based on. One doesn't just change attributes blindly right?

NEW AI? So you are talking only about PVE version? Or am I missing something?

I think it worth reflecting a moment on why Retribution was such a well-received Expansion. CCP took a load of unfashionable ships and made them more powerful. We started seeing people excited to see what they could achieve - we saw Arbitrators killing Redeemers and Vargurs, we saw Caracal gangs beating Tengu gangs. Suddenly what mattered was how good you are not how rich you are. People got excited.

With the planned BC pass you're not going to excite people. Most of us will just put our Drakes and Canes away in the hangar and not take them out again. I could spend 80m on a t2 Drake or on 3 T2 Caracals. Why would I fly the Drake?

I do realise that professional game design is something of a rearguard action against mudflationary tendencies. Power creep. But at this point it's inevitable. Inferno gave us T3 Battlecruisers, Retribution gave us T2 Cruisers that were better in almost every way, power creep is part of Eve's development and it's what players want.

Also buffing ships people don't fly up to the level of ships people do fly isn't really power creep, it's just adding diversity.

The next big picture issue is where do the T3 battlecruisers fit in. If these combat BC changes go through then won't everyone simply fly the better Tier? - which is against the point of Tiericide. Or will there be drastic nerfs to T3 battlecruisers to put, say, the Naga down to the level of the Ferox?

If you are planning to bring T3 BCs in line with the other BCs this balance pass is putting the bar too low. These ships are bad by Drake/Cane standards, no one is going to want to fly a Talos that's as weak as a Prophecy.

Now onto some specifics.

Capacitor parity really hurts high cap use boats. Active tank, hybrid guns and lasers are at huge disadvantage if the ship doesn't have ample cap to support the playstyle, especially as neuting someone's cap is a popular and effective playstyle as well as a feature of Blood Raider and Sansha rats.

There are three medium-sized missile weapon systems. Why are the two medium sized boats only bonused for two of them. If someone wants to put Rapid Light Missile Launchers on a Cyclone they should be allowed to

The fixed bonus isn't good. I've never met anyone or got a kill where someone had a link in a standard BC. Possibly that's because too much of the bonus comes from the Mindlink and ship bonus which I understand you have plans to address. But when balancing these the fixed bonus should be viable, possibly a 1% bonus to one group of effects would not be unreasonable. So a Ferox could give 1% bonus to shield links without treading on the toes of serious command ship and T3 link pilots.

Hybrid turret optimal range is a bad bonus for the Ferox. With Blasters optimal range bonus adds to little. There's not much real difference between 2k optimal and 3k optimal - either you control range in which case you can apply full damage or they control range in which case you apply full damage if they're dumb. (I know some people brag about their blaster Feroxes but those are kills gained by the other people making errors). With rails why would you use a Ferox over a Naga? The plus point of medium guns over large is tracking which becomes moot at extreme range. Ferox needs a different bonus, it's simply a mistake to choose it in the current meta.

Regarding the Brutix and the Myrm, do we really need two active armour tanking ships? Active armour tanking is currently the least popular of the 4 main tank styles. Also the Gallente ships have significantly higher sig radius than the other Combat BCs.

So in conclusion I do like some of the new directions (missile Cyclones etc). I do think balance passes are good for the game. I don't think that pulling the strong, popular ships down is the way to do it - I think balance passes in Eve should be about bringing the unpopular boats up to the strength of the popular ones, particularly as the last two expansions saw really powerful ships being really exciting to the players.

I think the Cyclone will be OP... Nice change to the myrm and the brutix tho.

Question: Are you trying to bring back hull tanking?

Yes i was talking about PvE, but i guess the same applies to PvP where bringing heavies means you lose the utility from ewar drones.