EVE Alliance Tournament Discussion

There's some great discussion in another thread, but I wanted to make this thread focused on just brainstorming ideas. The other thread is focused on one particular meta and I want to see if there are others people are interested in changing.

We tweak the rules between tournaments to encourage new setups, different fights, and generally challenge our competitors to come up with new strategies. We'll be starting that discussion probably by the end of the week over at SCL HQ, so I'd love to get some thoughts from our competitors and viewers before we do.

What would you change? What would you ban? Points values? Modules allowed?

Here are the current rules for comparison:

http://www.syndicatecl.com/rules.php

Merlin Maulus and Griffin should cost 3 points
Haulers should cost 1 point

Post-balance I absolutely think Ewar frigs need to be more points, maulus/griffin/crucifier simply are too powerful for such low points (sorry Vigil you get shafted). More point granularity within ship classes would see more imaginative setups, as well.

Single elimination best of 3 is a really fantastic design, if logistically horrifying to compete in. I think you can alleviate some of the burden and increase the overall quality by alternating matches. So on the final day when there was PL vs GHSC and Insurance Fraud vs Reputation Cartel to format could be PL vs GHSC game 1, then IF vs RC game 1, then PL vs GHSC game 2, IF vs RC game 2, etc etc.

Definitely this. They still make EAFs look ridiculous at 5 points, though.

1 point noobships with the new pirate ships would be way out of control.

The Taipan can get 4k EHP and 110 dps.
The Immolator can do 80 dps at 16km with Scorch and 2.7km/s with very comfortable cap.

I've not tinkered with the other ones, but if we allow them we'd have to look at them very hard.

Ah ok, I was not familiar with the pirate rookie ships and their stats. Still think haulers could use some love :3

Thoughts on the following:

Pirate BS -- 20
Marauders -- 19 (18?)
Faction BS -- 18 (17?)
T1 BS and Black Ops -- 16

I'm kicking that around. Maybe Black Ops at 17? I think it makes sense to break the BS hulls out into 4/5 tiers anyway, regardless of the exact point values. I'd need to sit down with our entire roster of tweaks to see what it does to various popular comps, but yeah.

I think the current points system is a bit limited, I don't really see why you can't have griffin cost more than vigil for instance, what's the big deal ?
And why are all ships 1 2 3 etc can't we have a 1.5 point ship ?

This looks pretty good

Well for one thing the Maulus has an 89km lock range with leadership skills applied, so 90 would cost it the lock. The Griffin has about half a km lock range advantage, but about a 30 mm scan res deficit if I recall correctly.

That said, you probably fit a sig amp in the lows of a Maulus if you're truly worried about it.

End of the day, that comes down to the meta of selecting the right tool for the job. But as we saw more than once, the Griffins can overcome Maulus if the team is comped properly. AFs or boss frigs like the Merlin can counter ewar frigs easily if the ewar frigs don't focus their ewar on them, and if they do, the same effect is achieved as the main ships in the setup aren't suffering the effects of the ewar.

But I imagine your post was rhetorical and you were making a point. I just felt like splitting hairs.



As for splitting the tiers out by shiptype Tyrrax, it would be possible to do, but the work for all involved reaches ridiculous levels. You're talking about, for instance, in the case of frigates, 6 non-faction frigates per race for a total of 24 frigates to be individually looked at. Now factor in cruisers, BCs, BS, and tech 2 and 3 variants and you're literally talking probably north of 150 shiptypes. It'd be mind-boggling. As it is, granulating by tier is pushing it. Balancing by individual ship would be insane. End of the day, it's up to CCP to balance the ships by "type" (since "tier" is supposed to be gone). It's enough to say that Griffins, Maulus, and Crucifier are all relatively comparable and thus it makes sense to lump them together. The Vigil may be a half step below them and will get slightly overpriced, but the levels of granularity involved in account for that in the points system would be beyond what I think we want in terms of complexity. It's up to the captains and teams to decide which ships are and are not worth the points, and come up with setups accordingly.

And as we saw in Week 2, some teams are willing to do that. PL brought Sins after everyone underestimated BOBS, and they performed impressively with them, in fact using them in the same way they used the more expensive Golems, and doing so with equal success.