Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Without a damage bonus on the Bastion, you're not really doing the marauders any favours with these changes. Sure I can sit there and be immune to E-War, and tank like crazy but to what end? In PvE it may cut some corners and make things faster - in PvP; people will just bring more to break my tank and my 55km optimal neutrons did F all anyway...

Also you don't want them to go faster than pirate BS - yeah that's achieved pretty well. But why not out-damage them? These are ships that cost around 1 bil and you're going to force them to sit still for at least a minute - why shouldn't they out-damage the pirate BS in this mode? A Machariel can move like a mad man while applying DPS, why should the Vargur not be allowed to out-dps while not moving at all? It makes no sense whatsoever to make the Bastion and then balance it around pirate BS as the marauders would be in a totally different niche with it

Also why give us a new skill to train when this could easily (and logically) be combined with Tactical Weapon Reconfiguration?

This sounds like something for the Black-Ops revamp, not the Marauder revamp.

Its not like they really care, my blops still uses the great jump portal generation skill to about absolutly no effect whats so ever.

This is just to put in more training time.

the bounus will make it nice to collapse WHs though ideal ship for thoese c5/c6 holes that went under 50%, where you dont want to put that moros through anymore. Its like the closing hic, just a stage earlier, and faster.

Seems to be the only use for this kind of ship to me rigth now. That and ******* that falcon, hopefully the falcon is pointed somehow, because that thing cant point ****.

Hmmm... this is really innovative. It's going to be interesting to see the fits that come out for PvP.

I have some thinking to do...

Sounds real good and, i'd like to see them in pvp. Tha bastion module is a great idea.


But don't forget that there are many people using them in PVE. Removing the web bonus is a good thing, but it can render the paladin useless against npc. The optimal bonus is not too useful, give us a tracking bonus instead.
Of course with pulses, the optimal is very important, but at the moment only 2 ships can use effectively the tachyons, and one of them is the paladin. If you remove the ability to kill small ships with drones (because of the drone bay nerf), and hit close targets (no web bonus), tachyons will die.

In order...

Because damage application trumps flat damage sometimes and if you deployed in a situation where they could do that then that's kind of your mistake. It says on the tin "Niche role, use with caution" not "kill everything I-win button, use all the time every-time"

The pirate-BSes are not particularly known for their speed beyond the Machariel. The Pirate BS ships are, per this chart from the original ship re-balancing dev-blog, meant to be better versions of the T1 ships. The T2 are supposed to be more specialized. Right now we have this problem where the Pirate Battleships are stepping all over everything by being good at pretty much everything to a wide and absurd degree and that's probably going to change with the rebalance to make them just better T1 ships with good fittings but no major specializations.

Because it's not particularly logical. The Bastion doesn't use fuel and the Siege Module doesn't want a duration bonus. Plus Marauders don't exactly lead into Dreadnaughts in any sort of logical progression.

Ok CCP you want feedback here we go.

First this is BOLD, and that both pleases me and intrigues me. Bravo for that.
I don’t think anyone saw this coming so again Bravo for that.
For PVE yeah you have given people a lot of reasons to use this.
Ok here is an idea for you, two new modules you can only fit one at a time.
One a mini siege module, you get a bonus to Damage and tracking goes way down.
In other words it turns into a mini dread without the rep bonus. This module would be more useful for PvP then anything else. The battleship siege module in all other respects acts like the siege module on a dread.
The other module is a triage module
Again just as a triage module on a carrier you get the bonus to local reps but not to remote reps as that would crowd out the logi. And it would make sense to add the range bonus when using the mod but not with the siege module. You can use one but not both. Hitting a tower that won’t be defended? Siege it is. Want to run some sites in a WH? Triage is the way to go.
Adds more then just a little PvP element to the ship and its roles.
You can even use the modules skills to be of benefit to dreads when that balance happens.

The MJD focus runs counter to the salvage effect (tractor range particularly). The salvage effect makes Marauders best suited to short ranged weapon systems in general, it's almost impossible to see the coincidence of ranges as not designed in.

With the Kronos in particular I disagree with the bonus change. The replacement of the Stasis web bonus with a Blaster range bonus (Falloff encourages blasters) runs entirely counter to the long, MJD range the ships are perhaps shifting towards. If rails are to be encouraged then it should be an optimal range bonus.

It's almost entirely irrelevant as there is no tanking problem running L4s, so the additional tank during bastion mode is unimportant. It's only the range bonuses that make a difference, but it's not a huge one, really.

And I'm sitting in a Vindi myself. These changes make me shiver for the future, as the web bonus is one of the main reasons I love that boat. If it loses it, I might as well use Navy Mega for half the price.

As for the changes themselves... I'm torn. On the one hand, that Kronos reaches out to 81 km with null in Bastion mode, even without any mods. Add a few TEs/TCs and you're talking over 100km with a blaster ship and an effective combat range over 50km. However, on the other hand, these marauders are more or less built for a sniper role and I like my ships to be "in your face", with decent mobility and just enough tank, like the Vindi.

I guess the real question is - do they live up to the name "Marauder"? Well... I guess that thing has a Bastion module too :p

Anyway, here's my opinion:

I like the Kronos and the Paladin, both make excellent hulls for a number of very interesting fits, both long and short range. Funny enough, I think Kronos has more in common with Rokh than with Megathron line now.

Vargur, I'm not so sure about. Its counterpart is supposed to be the Tempest, which is fast, light, whereas the Vargur is now a lumbering beast, similar to the Maelstrom. I don't like it, that's all there is to it.

Last but not least, Golem which can't decide what it wants to do. Don't get me wrong, the TP buff is long overdue, but we're talking of a ship that's supposed to be used at 100 km, with no target painter optimal range bonus and the only marauder to retain a damage application module bonus. Why?

Beyond this, I think the "mini dread" tag that seems to be popular around here isn't fair. Dreadnoughts use the Siege module to vastly increase their dps, which makes them awesome at... well... sieges. Marauder doesn't get this, it's just a lot tougher to crack. The problem is, tanking ships aren't very popular - look at the Rattlesnake and tell me how many times you see one running about, both in pve and pvp. Why? Because the tank you need in pve needs to be "just enough" and in pvp, you want to be mobile, not stuck at one place. Bastion in null for instance screams bomber runs and I'm just not seeing why I'd use them over Tier 3s for high sec pos sieges.

I don't know, the more I'm reading the OP, the more it strikes me as if the class doesn't really scream "OMG, I WANT ONE!" for any particular situation. Certainly not something that would be worth two months of training.