Player Features and Ideas Discussion

For the last time in this discussion:

HICS AND HACS HAVE MORE DIFFERENCES THAN ONE LETTER.

They do COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS. Because HICs have clearly defiened roles in EVE, no one is saying they suck, and no one is saying that they're OP. Funny how that works huh?

The problem with HACs is that they DON"T have a clearly defined role in the game at the moment, being shittier DPS boats than T1 cruisers, only slightly less fragile, and with a few exceptions being unable to do anything BETTER than the T1 counterparts (IE the Cerb and range, the zealot and everything about it, the ishtar and insane drone madness, and to a lesser extent, the munnin and alpha arty). Unfortunately the 'attack' line of HACs got ****** over, having anemic DPS, ****** tanks, and less mobility than their T1 counterparts.

Fozzie, Rise (can I call you Rozzie, like some kind of Hollywood couple?) PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MAKE THE DEIMOS, SAC, and EAGLE BETTER THAN THEIR T1 COUNTERPARTS AT SOMETHING. I don't care at this point if the Deimos either does more DPS, or has more tank than a thorax, as long as it does one of those two things better than a thorax.

I don't think anyone's asking for 10x better. We all get the philosophy of incremental performance increase for exponential cost. What we're asking for is:
1) ~20% better than T1 in the HAC specialty, and
2) AT LEAST as good as T1/Navy in ALL OTHER areas (except maybe speed tradeoff for tank).

This is, of course, assuming that the specialties chosen are interesting and relevant.

...

No pressure, Rise.

"Some" pressure won't hurt ihm. Besides, i've seen some reasonable, well thought or atleast dedicated responses written down in this thread. I bet most of the people here have spend more time thinking about the subject than he did. In my book that kind of devotion deserves it's own share of RESPECT. I guess we're all going to see how respectful HE is going to treat the HAC Upgrade.

Best wishes

heh actually you do realise that they did give the T2 ships definitive roles. They gave them a role called Heavy Interdictors, which involves one of the T1 cruiser hulls (one for each race). This is a specialty, the thing that makes it different. They made the Recon ships, which has been even more subdivided and given one of the T1 cruiser hulls also (its a specialty also).
They made the Logistics ship, which is the extreme version of the T1 repairing ship. A specialty.

Then they made the Heavy Assault Ships, taking 2 hulls from each race (One that has already been used in the Heavy interdictor Category, and the one that was unused), and they try to do this microcasm between the two. one of its roles being completely overtaken by the cheaper T3 battlecruisers, the other not being up to par with their upgraded cousins, the T1 cruisers and Navy cruisers. Now they could try to give them even more definition, which makes people wonder why they would spend 180 million isk on a uninsurable hull, for a few percentages of possible improvement over their T3 battlecruiser or t1 cruiser and navy ships, or they could just chuck the hulls that have already been defined in the Heavy Interdictor category, and Really make the Heavy Assault Ship That much more defined.

The bulk of the HAC's are deemed crap at the moment. You fly a Deimos, you have a death wish, you fly a Ishtar, its for PVE. You fly a Sacrilege, people think your somewhat crazy or wonder why you just didn't fly a maller for -90% of the price.

The HAC's put themselves in this situation because it is nearly impossible (not totally impossible), to balance these 8 ships within themselves, and within the sphere of the T1 cruisers and Navy Cruisers, and the T3 battlecruisers.

Chuck the used hulls, make the old hulls a merger between the removed HAC and the Current Hack, and now each race has a viable ship.

Will CCP do this. Not a chance in hell. It was a poor design choice when they made T2 HAC's initially.

Not even remotely.

HAC's used to be the premier ship of choice for a roaming gang (and for some fleet work).

Modification to the game mechanics and new ship classes introduced since then have severely limited their role, but initially they were brilliant.

The original hallmark strength of the class was either speed (or range) and firepower, or durability and firepower... wrapped in a highly mobile hull that could cover territory quickly and allow superior positioning and engage/disengage capability.

I think it's time they got back to their roots.

I know that there were issues when an AB bonus was seriously considered for Assault Frigates. However perhaps it SHOULD be considered again for HACs.

Such a bonus on a Cruiser size hull might actually work in a much more balanced fashion than it would have on a Frigate sized hull.

Vagabond pilots might have an aneurism though.

Hard to hit them with what?

Cruisers are SUPPOSED to be hard for BS sized weapons to hit. the MWD sig bloom bonus doesn't go NEARLY far enough to address this.
Frigs would still be able to pace AND hit an AB-fit cruiser, and the whole point of fitting an AB is to make yourself harder to hit, so cruiser vs cruiser would play out as intended.

An AB speed bonus would at least make HACs the only cruiser able to AB sig tank with a degree of proficiency

EDIT: Though I disagree with the premise of giving ALL HACs the AB Speed boost bonus. 4 Tank, 4 Kite, imo

You forgot about 100mn AB scimi/tengu.

Agreed on the latter.

However an AB bonus would not bring back the nano era. Any number of vessels would still be able to catch and hold them while running a MWD, though they would need to be careful to do it from long point range (unless they were sure they could lock it down securely).

What other form of combat, pve? I want the HAC to be useful as a small/medium sized roam ship - for solo fun it'd work with these propositions aswell. What would you change? You can still fit a mwd on it, you'd still need more speed, tank, resist to ewar or more slots for anything useful if your midslots are already taken by prop mod, web, scram. Nobody forces you to use the AB but it would support the sig tank of the HAC and give it a decent boost to set it apart from their T1 predecessors. I'm not asking for a 100% increased performance, but at least some cool feature to make it worthwhile.

Nobody is saying HACs don't get used - the zealot and muninns are used, the other ones are pretty rare. Most of us are just saying - if we do a tiericide which is intended to support the distinction between roles and classes, it'd make sense to see what HACs should be able to do and then apply boni / attributes that would help that role.