Player Features and Ideas Discussion

It is ONLY rigs. that proteus is still strong but no where nearly a monster as a proteus with rigs. It will die to a well used and well fit battleship if it simply uses it old tactic of sit and fire everything without bothering about the incomming damage.! And that is a HUGE improvment

It also promotes a ship that wil b exchanged into other cofnigurations much more often

Certainly somethign less strong then you. Show me brutix hitting 70 km away targets with that dps.

And here we find the failing in the OP's logic. Nothing in EVE is, or should be, balanced around 1 vs 1 "honourable" combat. EVE is balanced around my group fighting your group. As many people have already patiently explained, there are limited circumstances where the T3 cruiser comes out superior. Just because the T3 cruiser is better in certain specific situations doesn't mean it is overpowered. Just because you can't kill it 1-on-1 doesn't make it overpowered.

If any region of space is considered "well off" it's the Nullsec blocs. So, look at what is flown in Nullsec. You have ISK that flows like water AND a lack of W-space constraints. You have small, medium, and large sized fleets, and they are constantly throwing those fleets at each other, keeping what works and eliminating what doesn't. As much as it pains me to admit it, there is more fleet vs fleet battle happening in Nullsec than is in W-space. If T3 cruisers were the best that money could buy, you wouldn't see anything else flown out there. They have special purpose T3 doctrines, but the every day ship-of-the-line is not the T3 cruiser.

The biggest reason for a T3 cruiser in W-space is the mass: cruiser-sized hulls have low mass, meaning you can shove more of them through that collapsing hole than you can other types of ships. There are two advanced cruiser-sized dps options: T2 HAC and T3 cruiser.

The second primary reason for a T3 cruiser is the tank. In W-space, with most action occurring within 5-10k of a wormhole, you get high dps applied to targets rapidly, especially if dreads are present (not unusual). Higher tanks allow parties to stay on the field and fight longer, rather than popping instantly. In W-space, we don't have the 1000-man fleet battles that they do in Null, so increased fighting time per person is more fun than finding your way back from Hisec only a few seconds after you land. Your brick-tank T3 fleet would melt in any other region of space to a nano kiting gang, and to many other types of fleets. That nano kiting gang would melt trying to brawl on a wormhole.

As people have been trying to tell the OP, ship use is situational. Because of the style of combat and the specific circumstances surrounding wormhole interactions, T3 cruisers are very common in W-space. And guess what? That's probably where CCP intended they be used, since their components come FROM W-space. And there again, it shows how CCP got W-space "right", down to the ships that are produced there often being the best tools for the job there.

You use the right tool for the job. As the posts in this thread show, that's not always a T3 cruiser in every situation, or even most situations in the game. Mostly just in W-space.


T3 cruisers have some areas where they are a touch too powerful; Tengu has a little more of this than the others. They also have areas where they are lacking. It's nowhere near the "Apocalypse" that some make it out to be. You could go a long way to fixing much of this by removing a single rig slot accompanied by minor tweaks, up in some cases and down in others.

And don't forget that CCP does indeed use cost as a balancing factor; look at the vanilla BCs vs the faction BCs if you need confirmation of this. So, for a ship that costs 3-5 times as much AND includes skill point loss when it explodes, I'd expect it to outperform in many areas, if not in every one.

Which is exactly what we said during the HAC rebalance the issue isn't the T3s, its the HACs.

Not really, legions can spider tank and that lets them compete with the HACS. Coupled with cloaking, command bonuses, interdiction nullification... Giving HACs the same bonuses so they can compete would be a disaster. Thinking of HACs ignoring bubbles just seems way way OP for one.

That's not what I wrote/meant.
I'll break down the intent of my OP into small bite sized easy to understand mini-sentences.


T3's are going to be nerfed (Fozzie has stated as much)
Individual subsystems are not balanced against other alternate subsystems.
They should be versatile generalists.
Specialist ships (aka Tech 2) should outperform them.



pretty much sums up my original intent, apologies if it wasn't particularly clear in the first instance




[edit]

fleet/gang composition is actually something I have though about
consider these 2 scenarios

you run into fleet/gang A
2 Recons, 2 Logistics, 6 HAC's
even before shots are thought about being traded, you know exactly which ships will be your primary targets

you run into fleet/gang B
10 T3's (2 configured as recon, 2 configured as logistic, 6 configured as HACs)
until combat actually starts, you have no idea which T3 is using what

my thoughts on this were based on post T3 balance hopes
Fleet B would have an initial tactical advantage, to which you would have to quickly reassign targeting priorities
but that small delay might be enough to give Fleet B the chance to remove 1 or 2 key ships from the fight

as things stand, fleet B is just a pipe dream

No I played D&D as well.

...as it stands HACs "might" beat a battleships in an even fight. Fleet for fleet though they have counters, that is fine. That can go either way depending on comps.

Not what I worry about, honestly. You are going to be hard pressed to catch me alone in a battleship, and if you do you likely have me, because battleships are **** alone.

Now put a 10-15 man BS gangs against HAC gangs and you have a different story, specially with active reppers....the HACs go away or get smashed.

This is a good post. Much better than empty complaints about things being OP. I would support some change to this subsystem.

The T3 cannot fill all those roles at once. Please show me the cloaky, interdiction nullified, spider-tanking, DPS monster of doom T3. It doesn't exist. HACs don't need to fill every role a T3 can perform in a specialized configuration.