Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Still doesn't change the fact that it is way unbalanced.


Hey newbee, want to pick up a hauler spawn?

Gallente Industrial.

Want to grab your jetcans from the ice anom?

Gallente Industrial.

Want to pick up all your planet goo in 1 run?

Gallente Industrial.

Want to just generally haul stuff?

Well, you already have Gallente industrial for the awesome specialized ships, so keep with it and get an Iteron V.


Want to truck ammo to a combat site?

The current doctrine is blockade runner and blops bridge.
Maybe a basic cyno alt with Minmatar Industrial I, and don't expect it to come back because it will die for no other reasons than being a Hoarder near ships with guns.

well. the dst could have been interesting except for ccp putting the unscannable hold on the blockade runner

and also the armour dst concept is kinda ruined by the whole 'needs cargo expanders' bit because of 'give it a small bay because people are going to cargo expand everything anyway' bit because of the 'cargo expanders stack exponentially bit'

well that's the way imma seein it atm

when it comes to combat ships fitting a cargo expander that has a fixed bonus... i'm pretty ok with that considering they lost a slot

yeah there's an issue with frigates getting holyshit how much cargo does your tiny ship have. i can see highsec everywhere magnate/atron haulers everywhere

I don't know, CCP doesn't seem to have a problem letting me stick a pair of Panthers into the ship maintenance array of my nidhoggur to more or less double its fuel capacity.

But see, now you're the one crying 'overpowered' because the 'large alliances' are thinking of ways to use these ships that are advantageous to them, but not to the little guy. I'm afraid I have bad news:

The large alliances will always find ways to take advantage of opportunities the little guy doesn't have. Mostly, it'll be in the form of things like 'we have enough dudes to do this' or 'we have enough money to do this' - which is really the same thing, because you only have the money if you have the dudes to make the money or hold the space needed to make the money.

If you think CCP is going to level that playing field, you really should look back over the history of EVE and consider the concepts of 'sandbox' and 'emergent gameplay' more.

As for making it easier for large alliances to make supers goes... do you know what the only real checks on the production of supercapitals really are? It's really two things. 1)how long is going to take? (because let's face it, you can only crank them out so fast, and nobody has infinite production facilities), and 2)is someone else trying to kill it in the womb? Because everyone has enemies, and if your enemies know one is aborning, they'll likely take the shot if they can.

Minerals? Resources? Logistical workload? Yeah, those are headaches. But what makes the large alliances successful in general is their level of organization and ability to get large jobs done. So that's already playing to their strengths.

Ultimately, that's the real root of the 'unbalance' that larger alliances enjoy: larger alliances only got larger because they solved their organization problems. And that gives them the ability to leverage something far more powerful than game mechanics - manpower.

A solution to that would be "These modules only fit on industrial craft" but then it is unfair to those who use these frigs for hauling today. Again something to look at in the future but I think many will agree with me that we need other things in EVE changed first.

no, -if- cargo expanders are an issue they need to be looked at at the same time as industrials because of the close connection (especially if cargo expander mechanics are limiting design freedom on industrial balancing)

it's like balancing a titan without considering bridges or doomsdays

No I am saying overpowered because it is using the ship as a giant mineral can in a carrier which as far as I am aware not what was in the topic. And doing so gives a big advantage to those who already have too much.

As opposed to the ships themselves which were designed with these specific roles which was listed in the topic.

Many people argue that titan bridges are overpowered. But the last change to it was to the tracking if I recall.

To change expander means they have to do T2 right now as well. That has got to be well beyond the scope of what they intended.

The specialized ships are solutions to ships that never get used and glaring differences in mining and PI tasks. That was a separate issue that got solved in this pass without having to bring in art assets and other delaying factors.

No, see, that's just it: it really doesn't give us all that much of an advantage over what we already have. The real advantages we have in that scenario are:

1)We can get that much in minerals. How do we get them? Well, it's probably not one guy selling that. It's one guy selling it for a corp, or alliance. Or, more likely, buying it in hi-sec for a corp/alliance project. So that money being spent is already an aggregation of the benefits of manpower.

2)We can move that much via jumpship - carrier or freighter, it doesn't matter, we've got the infrastructure, be it cyno alts or beacons - and beacons actually represent more of our advantage when used right, because to safely jump to a beacon means you need eyes in the system. Jumping to a cyno alt, the alt provides those eyes. Jumping to a static beacon, either you need to move someone there, which is the same as a cyno alt, or your alliance needs to generally have people there who can let you know 'it's safe' - and then you need to have the communications infrastructure to send the request and get a response. And that means intel channels, because let's face it, Alliance chat gets pretty spammy sometimes.

And those advantages? That's organization, and personnel again. Because really, the carrier move? It saves a little time, and a little money, but the far more important and advantageous step in the process is the ability to bypass gates by traveling back and forth via jump-drive in the first place.

You know thinking about this I got to say this is an aspect that would be interesting to look at in the future. It would give more meaning to moving the specialized haulers to ORE and then doing a new balance pass to incorporate that into the standard lineup.

I am agreeing with a goon? In this topic? WHAT!?

I think the difference between 'balancing cargohold expanders' vs 'balancing T1 cruisers' is that changing T1 cruisers didn't change T2 cruisers at all. My scythe being a valid logi hull doesn't make my scimitar into a mining cruiser. But if you balance the T1 haulers by crippling the Expanded Cargoholds, or the Cargohold Optimization Rigs, then until you get to the 'yet to be balanced' point in time, the T2 haulers are crippled.

So the T2 haulers would need to have the same fix applied at the same time, in order to offset any change to the modules and rigs that both ships have in common. Because they'd need the same offsets, just to be - in effect - unchanged. For exactly the same reason that you said:



Because the T2 haulers are no less closely linked to the cargo expanders.