Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Personal taste I guess, but to me simply waiting for a couple of weeks to pass isn't particularly rewarding. I prefer achievements requiring dedication and practice, such as becoming a quick and effective logi pilot or succesfully handling a 1v3 against similar size ships.

I love frigs and dessies and will probably continue to use them for years to come. They're just not the proper tool for certain jobs.

My point is, I can and will wait patiently for my new toys to train. But who's benefiting from the wait?

Me: I'll fly what I can and maybe go to the beach some more if I don't feel like undocking an af for the 10,000th time.

My mates: will have one less pilot in their hac gang.

My enemies: will have one less dude to shoot at.

Industrialists/traders: will have one less derpy pilot buying ishtars or guardians after he whelps them.


Just sayin that month-long timesinks (especially for relatively common gear) on average decrease, rather than increase, most people's enjoyment of this cool game.

You cannot achieve what you apparently want to achieve with a poorly trained ship. While you maybe know about all the support skills. However, other pilots don't (which usually ends up in terrible ALODs). Your "one less mate" in your Hac gang is going to fly a poorly trained ship (why is there a combat CS in a HAC gang to begin with?), which only holds the HAC back; your enemies certainly find another ship to shoot in your fleet, one that can actually hurt them; Industrialists and Traders won't mind, because a dead terrible CS pilot is a one-time customer and after his loss doesn't touch the ship again.

Therefor, having the skills shortened or deviated from the role of the ship for a very High End (content) ship only causes terrible piloting.

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If you had read my other post, you'd see a "role", not a "use". But I let it slip. IF you don'T want to train viable skills for a ship role, just because it requires you to put on another implant or because "*colorful vocabuar* this!", then this is your choice. Their use, however, is not in the slightest diminished by having trained link and booster skills.

You have to train them because they fit the role and intended use best, you have to train them because you need them for advanced equipment for this ship (that you don't want to use does not mean that you should not have the skills for it.), and you have to train them because there are no better skills to create a proper time sink.

Ok, point taken about the more general thinking.

You'd lose out on a quite some damage, yield, tracking, range or damage application and tank for the HAC and basically any ship. As said before, if you can sit in a ship quicker, the contemporary players tend to ignore the EVE fact that you need more skills to fly something properly than just the ship, i.e., they'd neglect tanking, damage and other support skills. That then leads to terrible piloting. In my opinion, "acceptable" is not enough if you pilot a 150M+, or even 200M+, ship and if their (new players) "dream ship" doesn't perform in the way they think it should (because of lack of skills and knowledge about the ship and fighting in EVE in general), it just leads to more frustration.

could support taking armour skills off minni/caldari,
shield off amarr/gallente,
e-war off minni/gallente,
skirmish off caldari/amarr

but just like needing propulsion jamming and some science skills for hictors, it makes sense to require leadership skills for command ships.

They do if your squad commander dies in your small CS fleet, and you in your wonderfully skilled CS can take over that role and provide at least some boosts. It also matters on the way when your squad is, for whatever reason, separated from the wing/fleet commandered part of the fleet (bubbles, bracketing, etc.) and you can give some boosts. A roster of several properly leadership skill trained pilots also eases up the constant struggle to get wing/fleet boosters and gives the alliance more choice.

Players fly 100+ player Tengu fleets because of the unique abilities of the T3 (can be made unscannable, is faster and more agile than a BC, etc.); they fly 100+ people Ishtar fleets because of the drones; they fly 100+ BS fleets because of the Alpha; they fly 100+ people carrier fleets because of their abilities. People, however, also fly sizable CS fleets with great success, but these people are highly skilled and know what they are doing - and they (supposedly) don't need "unskilled" pilots. In the end, if you want to fly this high end ship, you have to train for it and have to train skills that actually suit it's role. I could agree with replacing some leadership skills, which don't make a lot of sense from a racial point of view (shield for Amarr/Gallente or Armor from Caldari); however, you would have to find a similarly long replacement skill, because you cannot take away armor/shield from Minmatar, that makes sense. Logistics V is not suitable, nor is HAC V or Armor Resistance Phasing V.

87 days to put one of my alts into a command ship, and al with onlu spaceship command 3 met on prereqs. This is not, in any way, a massive time sink. For a game where people routinely create training plans that measure into years, this is pretty quick.

Here's a compilation of the effects of a command ship:
10% targeting speed boost
10% targeting range boost
10% shield HP
10% armor HP
10% agility

The above is just from having you assigned booster, and applies to everyone under you. This is also befors you put any links on the ship. Combine all this with a bit of firepower and good tanking and I see no problems at all with this ship taking less that 3 months to sit in, especially when the above boosts don't require you to leave the POS to turn them on.

Command ships are fine as they are. They fit their role perfectly.

Effort has nothing to do with skill training. Waiting for a 3-week skill to train requires exactly zero effort. Did you know you can even not logon? It's just a timesink.

Let's be honest here: long 'prerequisite' skill trains (anything over a week or so) are a pain in the arse for any player, new or old.

Anyone thinking 'yeah less than 3 months makes so much sense for this really cool ship' or 'I really need a nice 4-month train to fully appreciate the awesomeness of that other ship' is just brainwashing himself into acceptance.


There might be an actual solid argument for month+ prerequisite skill trains, other than ccp's desire to keep players subbed, but I honestly have yet to read one.

CCP seems to realize this as well, since they routinely simplify/reduce lvl 5 prereqs. Recent examples are Thermodynamics and Carriers.

You exaggerate and muddy the water here quite a bit.
Starting from 0 SP:
It takes 71 days to sit in an Onyx (T2 caldari cruiser)
It takes 104 days to sit in a vulture (T2 caldari battlecruiser)
It takes 115 days to sit in a Golem (T2 caldari battleship)

it currently takes 104 days to sit in a vulture. That is not 5 times longer than it took before the BC changes. It did not take 21 days (starting from 0 sp) to sit in a Vulture before the BC changes. You're conflating being able to sit in one CS with being able to sit in all of them.

Given the absurd level of tank and non-negligible firepower and damage projection these ships posses, they are very well positioned in terms of overall training time. Furthermore, multiple entities already fly vulture and sleipnir fleets. The requirements are clearly not a significant barrier to entry.

Currently, the T2 racial BCs sit between T2 racial cruisers and T2 racial BS in training time. This is appropriate.

Heck, if you're a CS boosting your fleet and you don't have T2 warfare links I'm not sure you should be the booster anyway. And the skill requirements for a CS are not the requirements for the T2 links. Therefore the selection of required skills for the CS hulls looks incorrect. Having one blanket set for all the ships does not make sense. Each ship should have a specific selection of boosting skills required to sit in it.

But hey I'm one of the pilots who injected CS before warfare link requirements were added. Specifically because of this issue.

people tried the same argument when they re did carrier skills.

"I dont want to train JDO to V and JDC to IV, I'm never gonna use them!"

If you want a ship that has a role as a booster it is completely reasonable to expect to train those skills. I could easily argue to get rid of Jump Portal generation from training a titan because i dont necessarily have to use it.