Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Exactly. Some sort of special role would be good. That or something to make the rest of them competitive compared to other ships.

I don't see what people have against being able to fit an MJD, that way they could be highly mobile DPS platforms.

Something even crazier would be if they had a built in MJD of sorts. Maybe even one that jumps shorter ranges... You know since they don't have battleship reach.

The main reason for this is I'm worried that the shield ships will always have to give up a mid slot for a MJD and ships like the zealot will be really lacking mids.
Or just give every ship an extra mid and it would fix the lack of modules problem?

I really like this concept of logarithmic power increase (the more you put money on something, the less impressive the return on investment is, while always being positive). CCP learned you can't just scale power with price, because people will pay for the best if it's the case, and put the players unable to afford/fly the costlier ships into other roles (cf t1 cruisers ewar fleets as an example). The idea is to balance the attractiveness of the slight improve with the fact that it costs a ton more. So you can fight outnumbered if you're ready to throw tons of cash to get the upgraded version.

The problem is, right now, having money is not linked to skill or dedication or game time. It's just dependant on sitting on moons. Especially in 0.0. So you'll see people having both numbers and the costly ships. And the low cost ships will just be ignored, like they were a year ago.

The problem with hacs right now is that they're an improvement on a ship interesting only because it's cheap (T1 cruisers). T1 cruisers are worse than most BC/BSes, but they are extra cheap. But giving a slight bonus on those while removing completely the price quality makes hacs useless. They still can't compare with ships in other categories. Ships T1 cruisers don't have to compare to because they're cheap.

There is too many ships doing the same exact things (both in the brawler niche and in the sniper niche). The only way to balance hacs would be to give something really new.

Take example on T3s! T3s are basically hacs with some new possibilities strapped on them, for an extra 500m+. It's a lot of money to pay for a little bonus of web or tackle range, but it makes all the difference: they do something new compared to other ships with the same core role. Add to that some more fitting space to allow more crazyness (like 100MN AB tengus, full tank proteus and lokis for fleet tackle, etc), and you get a viable ship class (except the legion, because it's only particularity is neut and you need to sacrifice it's core role as laser/ham boat to use the sub efficiently. The legion really need a tracking disruptor sub, that would be extra cool and give them something the zealot/sacrilege don't have).

Hacs are Tech3s without the interesting bits. They're bad by design. You can buff them more and more until they're broken, or you can start talking role and reason to exist, and make them something exciting.

On sniper hacs:

If you wanted to make a sniper hac, you could do it by giving them a large agility bonus, to make them playable as warp in/warp out snipers, instead of kitting ships. Or you could scrap the sniper thing, let the attack BCs have the role, and make the "snipe" hacs into viable kitting ships (more speed, 4 mids on the munnin, only one range bonus on the eagle, etc). And nerf attack BCs speed. They have roughly the same speed some of the hacs have with a microwarpdrive. They're battlecruisers. Why is that possible? >_< (before mods).

Or you could make them into, hmm, HEAVY cruisers. The eagle has a resist bonus, but it's completely useless coupled with two range bonuses. You'll either need one or the two others. Could become a fun ship with falloff bonuses? Could become a cool ship with one range and one tracking bonus (to allow railguns at shorter ranges)? You have tons of ways to do good things with them. But none of them imply buffing them without thinking about their real role and reworking them.

Hacs aren't imbalanced. They're badly designed. I know it can be hard to accept errors, but they need more than tweaks and a bit of extra stats.

Which is what several of the HACs already do very well without any new buffs and what T3 cruisers and a number of T1 and faction cruisers do very well too.

But when coming to the task of rebalancing HACs one assumes that you acknowledge that the current situation isn't good enough.

You can make various changes to give HACs a unique and specialist role and they would still be perfectly good in the ABHAC / mitigation tank role, they just wouldn't be so dependent on that to justify themselves.

i tend to agree but i think then you woud have to dual prop fit the ships most of the time which isnt easy on every hull.

Rise is under the impression the diemos would be op.

I'm sorry but they are not. A ship that can close 100km in a little over 30 seconds are not supposed to be able to do it instantly as well. Broken as hell.

Reduction of range on point used on them? What? I wont even begin to explain how broken that is.

You mean like how WoW have had so much powercreep that having a fully tinkered vanilla character vs a decent [last expansion] character is like fighting a Vindicator with an unfit Velator? CCP is the only company I know of in the history of gaming that have done balancing right. Everyone else do powercreep and/or massively fuuuck up the economy. CCP has done neither.

You need to fit up the Thorax and the new Deimos in EFT bro. The only place Thorax is better is in speed, and not by much. Speed is the only thing it's supposed to be better at as well.