Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Love it . . .

\ö/ first pointless post!!

Then again, we can always pull the upgrades back and undo the changes . . .
By creating a faction version of the maruders . . . eyyyy then we have this version . . . and the new version

Except that your definition of "up close" is "at ridiculously short ranges" and there are counters existing in the game now to prevent a fight from ever getting to that point. In every other case though 90% webs basically say "and now I'm going to hold you in place and beat you until one of us is dead". Never mind when they're actually applied outside of your 1v1 scenario.

Besides, from the sound of it your issue is more with either Large Blasters or the turret tracking formula.

You need to type "Soon™" or people might think you actually mean "soon". Most people don't consider 2+ business weeks to be "soon".

I just came back after almost two years.

Before I left, I dabbled in both lowsec PVP and ran hisec carebear missions in a Vargur.

CCP is trying to fix what ain't broken. Marauders were initially designed to be carebear mission running ships. Or at least that is how they existed for years with no major complaints. To the extent they fell into disfavor, it was because the super-specialized Noctis overtook their tractor/salvage bonuses, at which point a pirate faction BS+Noctis on a dual-boxing, dual-monitor setup became superior for min-maxing carebears.

I continued using my Vargur and never trained a Noctis because I don't have that kind of dual-monitor setup (nor the space for it). Running back to grab a new ship for salvage always seemed like it was wasting a lot of align/warp time to me, and besides the design philosophy of the Vargur minimized my losses to ninja salvagers, as generally there were only frigate and maybe some cruiser wrecks left over for them even while I continued running the missions.

FWIW I used the ship's shield rep bonus to run a 4-slot tank that I fitted to be resistant to disconnects. A Vargur is expensive and my router goes on the fritz sometimes, so I didn't/don't want to lose a nearly billion-isk hull and another 7-800mil in mods because I disconnected while tackled by an NPC frigate. If I DCed, I wanted my tank to be able to sustain long enough for me to log back on. No it wasn't cap stable but several minutes was well enough for my purposes. That still left room for an AB and tracking computer; while I could've easily gone for a more aggressive 3-slot tank the more conservative fit saved my ship on at least four occasions where I had to scramble to relog into the game. Hey, if I lost my ship, I wanted it to be my fault, not my router's/ISP's! (a feeling I hope any capsuleer can understand)

Now I return to find CCP trying to repurpose my main carebear ship, and doing a poor and schizophrenic job at it.

They want to make us fit a bastion module, but they give us an extra highslot for it. That is all well and good.

But they also want to pigeonhole us into fitting MJD, but we still need to get to gates 25-40km away while our base velocity takes a heavy nerf. So that means we need two prop mods.

And now they want to shoehorn a webifier bonus, if I want the ship to synergize with its bonuses, that's 3 mids. Before the standard tracking computer, which brings us up to 4 non-tank mids on a 6-slot, shield-tanked ship.

"But--but--T2 resists and Bastion!"

First off, I run mostly in Minmatar space. Against a lot of Angels. T2 resists won't help me much against Angels, and I'm losing hardener slots to boot. And Bastion fucks up my range for reasons I will now get to...

I'm now expected to MJD to 100m away and pop stuff. (This seems to be supported by giving the Vargur enough PG to fit arties.) But the wrecks are now 50km too far for me to reach them with my tractor beams and salvage them--thereby defeating the original salvage-missions-as-you-go philosophy of the marauder class of ships. Oh, and one of our bonuses now is really only applicable to 10km range, maybe 15 if I went for moar faction bling (which I must also balance against the suicide gank risk).

Yeah that's schizophrenic. Not to mention the entire idea of fitting a ship that will still be there if you happen to DC in the bonus room of Angels Extravaganza just went out the window. Because I come back to find that CCP is re-engineering the ship class around 2 midslots getting taxed away by redesigned hull "bonuses" that don't fit with each other.

If CCP is rebalancing marauders around not staying within tractor range, then yeah any reason (that still exists over a Noctis) to take a marauder over a pirate ship for mission running just went out the window. If CCP believes marauders are obsolete for PVE because they got overshadowed by Noctis, then buff the role bonuses to tractors, maybe add a role bonus for salvaging, and see what happens.

Don't get me wrong. I see potential into what CCP is trying to do for PVP. Instantly repositioning sniper ships with lots of high slots available for cynos/neuting/smartbombing anything that gets too close? Interesting theory. Do want.

But this radical new experiment--let's call it what it is--needs to be split into a different hull like say, Sleipnir and Claymore.

That's one good post, albeit i don't share your POV (the Noctis totally blasts marauders out of the water, they can't compete with 4x tractor + 4x salvager) and further I'm a sniper so the MJD bonus is sweet to me.

That said, my marauder is a Golem (and i replaced it for pirate BS ages ago) and the idea of using tank slots for webbers is completely silly in my book. We need bonuses that don't rely on wasting tank slots, period. And in my view, the marauder class "beauty" should be to excel both in ranged (class bonus) and close (bastion bonus) combat. The class asks a hefty price to users, and should reward them in kind.

BTW, with a MJD bonus, you can double-jump your way to a gate faster than otherwise; just picture a isosceles triangle whose equal sides are 100 km and the base is the distance to gate -with the bonused MJD, you will run that distance in 2 minutes.

Well the Noctis was introduced shortly after I had trained my marauder so I arguably fell victim to the sunk costs fallacy. I still fly it mostly on the principle that one ship is more convenient than two, and trade efficiency for that convenience. (Just as I traded some applied DPS for some ability to tank DCs in my fit.) Although at minimum a marauder is a nice FU to ninja salvagers. They can salvage the frigates because I already got the battleships.

My intent wasn't to actually refit my ship to use webbers, but to illustrate how silly the web bonus is and how badly it conflicts with the idea of sniping.

I think marauders were originally intended to be all-in-one mission ships. Before the Noctis, they excelled at this role. But the Noctis overshadowed them by specializing in what was previously a marauder's utility. As pirate ships applied more DPS, this left marauders functionally obsolete--really expensive, and for the price there was always another ship (or combination thereof) that was better.

Strictly speaking, 3-4 utility slots will never be as efficient as a Noctis' 8, but it would nonetheless be nice to see the role bonuses catch up so marauders can tractor from 100m too--especially if they're now supposed to be fighting from that range. Adding a % bonus to salvage chance to our role bonus would also be nice, to at least help narrow the effective salvager disparity even if it won't close it.

As far as the MJD bonus goes, technically this is true--however as the game is now, when I'm burning to a gate I'm also salvaging. With MJD trig, I lose that. And I'll still be waiting for MJD to come off cooldown. If I don't MJD, I'll be burning to the gate at the approximate speed of a carrier (as opposed to my currently respectable 470m/s). Maybe. LOL. MJD is obviously new since I was gone to the game, but I like the fit I had, a fit that had no need of MJD.

Don't get me wrong. I don't object to having the versatility to decide to fight at 100km or 10km. But the current costs that CCP is asking us to pay for that versatility (after we already paid the price in SP and ISK) will destroy what remaining role marauders have for carebears in the hopes that maybe a PVP experiment succeeds. If I'm fighting at 100km in a ship that I trained for intending to salvage as I fight, I want to be able to grab those wrecks at 100km for the proper hoover treatment.

I'd like to say this, since a lot of people seem to be unable to see it, you are not in any way required to fit any of the bonused modules at all. those bonuses are there to give you options and allow for the ships versatility. If you sniper fit with mjd. dont fit a web, no problem. dont like the idea of using an mjd and a prop mod? dont fit the mjd. You use a noctis instead of the tractor/salvage fittings? don't fit them.

Stop trying to kill these ships versatility. They didn't have it before and it's great now. Just remember,"I don't need this bonus for my playstyle. So, rather than demand the ship cater to me, I just won't use it"

*duplicate post*

A bonus you don't use is making you pay the price for balancing it, and takes the place of a bonus you could use.

That said, maybe marauders could get the same tractor bonus as Noctis? They already have the sensor range to use it, and having only 5x small dornes could just bring in salvage drones and rely purely on DPS to deal with enemies of all sizes (back to damage application bonus when in bastion mode...).

i just think adding e-war to non e-war specialist ships (besides pirates) is bizzare ... especially after Ytterbium saying that webs weren't very useful on these ships earlier in the thread .

I think the first iteration was much more like it with a few tweaks would have been great specialization now though they seem to have many specializations and geared more toward RR T2 resist heavy tackling battleships... and kind of stepping on pirate battleships somewhat rather than separating them like is needed.