These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Player Features and Ideas Discussion

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

[Phoebe] Stealth Bombers

First post First post First post
Author
Capqu
Half Empty
xqtywiznalamywmodxfhhopawzpqyjdwrpeptuaenabjawdzku
#21 - 2014-10-16 11:32:59 UTC  |  Edited by: Capqu
god damn i can do a better job in 10 seconds watch


  • bombs now require an activation code before being armed, random 4 digit alphanumeric number that must be entered after launch but before detonation
  • bombs now have an explosion velocity akin to missiles, their damage against moving targets will be significantly reduced and signature radius is less of a factor
  • combat probing time doubled
  • interceptors are no longer interdiction nullified


(i threw in that last one for free)
do u even play this game anymore fozzie

edit: posted less condescending more constructive criticism here https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=5126202#post5126202
Current Habit
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#22 - 2014-10-16 11:34:26 UTC
As if Goku and siege fleets weren't strong enough already (especially with the EHP reduction of structures in Phoebe).
Sokor Loro
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#23 - 2014-10-16 11:36:21 UTC
Yep +1

I eagerly await the tears on the cloaking nerf. People ran sucessful, coordinated bomb groups before that change and they will do the same after. It will be more difficult to set up, stay set up and execute, but tbh all of those things are so trivial now that it's almost ridiculous to complain about it being more difficult.

What concerns me is that these nerfs don't address the isboxer issue, and in fact probably makes it a lot stronger. While I don't think isboxer itself is cheating/unfair/whatever, in the context of bombers it provides a huge advantage.
TrouserDeagle
Beyond Divinity Inc
Shadow Cartel
#24 - 2014-10-16 11:37:30 UTC
and what's with the stat differences? nemesis is supposed to armour tank on 38 grid, and it aligns slower than hound?
Gheyna
Hoover Inc.
#25 - 2014-10-16 11:37:45 UTC
Good thing giving bombers more cargo, can fit more missile for my siege fleet now. Even better with the reduction of ehp from sov structures.
Turelus
Utassi Security
The Curatores Veritatis Auxiliary
#26 - 2014-10-16 11:37:48 UTC
Doyle Aldurad wrote:
I am pretty good with all of these changes but one. These are still Frigates. Making them slower in warp than any generic T-1 frigate seems inappropriate and unbalancing. Suddenly even keeping up with my allies in a roam is a lot more difficult. Making them "slower" I do understand, given you're desire to weaken them overall, but dropping their warp speed that of a destroyer seems completely wrong. You've already made them both notably easier to discover and destroy, plus made their signature weapon easier to evade.

Please remove that aspect of the 'balancing'

I would say a frigate carrying torpedo launchers and massive bomb bays might not be as agile as a normal frigate. P

Turelus CEO Utassi Security

Capqu
Half Empty
xqtywiznalamywmodxfhhopawzpqyjdwrpeptuaenabjawdzku
#27 - 2014-10-16 11:38:47 UTC
CCP Fozzie wrote:
(except when damage bombs are mixed with void or lockbreaker bombs, but that was already a bad idea)


this made me lol out loud in irl

you are hilariously uneducated when it comes to bombing

those bombs were designed to be used together, thats why voids launched at the same time as damage bombs detonate first and aren't destroyed by the damage bombs, and deal less damage to a damage bomb than a same type damage bomb would. in fact you could do slightly larger waves of bombs by launching voids -> damage and having the voids cap out targets before the damage arrived
Porucznik Borewicz
GreenSwarm
#28 - 2014-10-16 11:39:13 UTC
Chiimera wrote:
Great work killing bombing runs completely.

Cloaked ships decloaking other cloaked ships would be fine IF fleet members could actually tell where each other are.

+1 to this all the way! Let me see cloaked gang members in space please.
El Space Mariachi
Zero Fun Allowed
xqtywiznalamywmodxfhhopawzpqyjdwrpeptuaenabjawdzku
#29 - 2014-10-16 11:39:27 UTC  |  Edited by: El Space Mariachi
The other changes are pretty neat, agility nerf is good and standardisation of fitting and cargo is nice (although Nemesis and Manticore will always be garbage at bombing) although the HP increase is a little puzzling as I don't really think they needed any more. They're all negligible compared to the huge change that is the cloak mechanic change though. Either way, I don't see myself or any other members of my alliance other than our ISboxing CHEATERS bombing anything for the forseeable future. I'm sure baltec fleets the world over are rejoicing.

Can't say I'm too bothered overall, bombers were clearly far overstepping their role as a force multiplier and becoming an I-win button in a lot of situations. I feel that fiddling with decloak mechanics is the wrong way to go about changes though and would just make them useless. I would advocate instead for a reworking of signature radius mechanics so that bombs don't spell instant death for anything shield tanked or below a cruiser, but are still competitive.

I like the anti-capital void bomb though, although it's yet another nail in the coffin for solo roaming in an active tanked battleship as if getting swarmed by 600 frigates wasn't enough already. Now one bomb will completely kill a Marauder's capacitor and leave it dead in the water.

Altrue wrote:
Interesting changes, definitely a nerf for multiboxers (at last!) even if they are not the only ones penalized. The anti-capital bomb seem a bit too weak in my opinion though, and I'm not a fan of the reduced warp speed, but the rest sounds nice, challenging and fair for everyone.

GOOD JOB. Big smile


You can configure ISboxed bomber squads to not decloak each other (with a little difficulty) under the new changes. You cannot do the same for 8 people working together in any reasonable amount of time as they now cannot take squad warps, have no way of telling where they are relative to other cloaked fleet members other than hoping and praying that they're ALL smart enough to follow orders, didn't warp through each other and got the ranges right. It's a lot of factors to go wrong when one person accidentally doesn't warp at the right range. The cloak change is a nerf to both ways of bombing, but it hurts non-ISboxers a lot more and will make bombing incredibly difficult in practical terms without third party software.

edit : ok apparently I misunderstood about the capital void bomb, it's going to be incredibly difficult to hit a stationary BS so I guess that's ok

gay gamers for jesus

Thatt Guy
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#30 - 2014-10-16 11:39:48 UTC
Nice job ruining bombers! Good thing I don't use them!

Also good job nerfing every single cloaking ship in the game, I'm sure blops gangs are going to love this.

In the history of bad ideas, this is right up there with "hey ya'll, watch this!"

To the ISboxer whiners already trolling this thread, hahahahahahahahaha!

Haters gonna hate, Trolls gonna troll.

Current Habit
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#31 - 2014-10-16 11:41:47 UTC
With the decloak-changes why should we bring real people if we can multibox bomber wings?

Right now they don't have an advantage over mutliboxed bombers and with the decloak-changes the chances for ****-ups are considerably higher with real people compared to multibox'd accounts.
Ryu Chaos
Top Gun.
Alt Alliance
#32 - 2014-10-16 11:47:33 UTC
Canenald wrote:
This is really a big nerf not a rebalance. The boosts are totally made meaningless by nerfs. More bombs in cargo hold and faster reload mean nothing if you can't bomb efficiently.

Bombers have a nice role of a totally separate force that can't decide the main battle but still has a large impact on it, much like the real world aircrafts of the previous century and cavalry in the earlier history. Bomber superiority is a valuable advantage, much like real world air or cavalry superiority. As a result, players have developed anti-bombing roles for ships, such as seboed interceptors and instacanes, much like the anti-aircraft guns and pikemen of the real world.

As it is, the virtual skymarshals of EVE have an interesting strategic choice of putting warm bodies into either main doctrine ships or bombers. Nerfing the bombers themselves so much while giving mainline ships additional means of defending themselves will make this choice a no-brainer. It's like tanks that can shoot down aircrafts and regular medieval infantry that can stop charging horsemen with their shields.

Oh, and there's Ishtars. We all know they are OP. Their greatest disadvantage is that they work better with shield tank, which works worse with bombs. Efficient armor tank is the most compelling reason to choose another HAC. Well, not after you nerf bombs.



no its gotten to the point that you cannot field shield battleships at all, and most armor battleships either. Nerf is good and should happen.

@RyuChaos_

Burneddi
Avanto
Hole Control
#33 - 2014-10-16 11:47:40 UTC  |  Edited by: Burneddi
CCP Fozzie wrote:
New Anti-Capital Void Bomb:
This is the first toe dipped in the water for smaller AoE (and therefore more aiming required) dumb weapons, which we think have a lot of potential in the future. It's a void bomb with the following stats:

Armor HP: 600
Explosion Radius: 4000
Energy Neut Amount: 15,000
Flight Time: 15s
Velocity: 2000m/s
AoE Range: One Meter

This thing is most useful against very large ships, and has to detonate right on top of a target to have any effect. We don't expect it to take the world by storm but it should be a very good option for harassing capitals, especially with small numbers of bombers.

This thing needs to have its stats revised.

First off, the explosion radius is way too large. With 4k explosion radius and only 15k base neut amount, that won't put a dent in an Archon's cap; it'd take literally a dozen bombers with these bombs to cap out a single Archon. It's a little better against supercaps, but still not stellar. Maybe that's the intention since you "don't expect it to take the world by storm", though, but I don't see a lot of point in introducing intentionally bad mechanics that no one will use.

Anyway, I guess it's a start. Bombs like this which require more aiming but have a higher reward for hits have the potential to be the first bombing related mechanic that humans are better for than multiboxing software, but have the issue of not really being the AoE weapons bombs are supposed to be.

I was hoping these changes would have something that actually thwarted ISBoxing and promoted actual humans playing the game, so I'm a little disappointed. Since apparently it's impossible to ban cheating in this game, how about adding a captcha to bomb launchers? Every time you launch a bomb, you have to type in a random 5-number launch code.
wheniaminspece
The Caldmarr Inquisiton
#34 - 2014-10-16 11:48:14 UTC  |  Edited by: wheniaminspece
as a bomber fc who turned to isboxer because it was a lot easier to do it myself, i have some opinions on these changes.

CCP Fozzie wrote:

Cloaked Ships Decloaking Each Other:
The change that allowed cloaked ships to pass through each other without decloaking was made back in 2012 to make bombing easier. With the last few years of evidence to look at, it becomes clear that organizing bombing runs has become a bit too easy.
This change will add some more complexity to organizing multiple cloaked ships, as well as returning the old gameplay of attempting to decloak other players with your own cloaked ship.
We know that some players are going to be unhappy with the way this makes their gameplay more challenging, but bombing was very viable before the cloaking change and it will continue to be very viable after.

this is my biggest problem with these changes, and i think it's absolutely horrible. i'm still going to attempt to ISbox by warping to a bookmark at default ranges, then warping down to a target and bombing. what this TOTALLY removes is the ability to warp your fleet around, and the ability to position yourself before a bombing run while cloaked. i'm guessing this is aimed at isboxers specifically but it's a very flawed solution. if you want to stop people isboxing bombers, simply make it something that you aren't allowed to do. why are you so reluctant to ban ISBoxed bombers that all bombers have to pay for it. if anything this is MORE of a nerf to real players due to the added friction and complexity.

oh here's another thought, did you know that cloaked ships can be decloaked by warping through things? or when things warp through them? because i can't WAIT to be decloaked by a cloaked ship warping through me, it's gonna be great.
CCP Fozzie wrote:

Bomb HP Reduction:
We're decreasing bomb HP to 96 armor and 20 hull, and increasing the racial specific resistance on the bombs to 99.8%. This keeps the maximum number of bombs in a wave the same (except when damage bombs are mixed with void or lockbreaker bombs, but that was already a bad idea), but makes it easier to destroy bombs with smartbombs. Notably this puts the total bomb HP to a level where named or T2 medium smartbombs can destroy them, providing more options for cruiser and BC fleets to defend themselves.

mixing void bombs with damage bombs is completely viable since void bombs explode a few seconds earlier. i often mix in 4-5 void bombs (enough to cap out any subcap in the game) with a couple of damage bombs and it works great. not really sure why this change is necessary at all, i guess you want bombs to be like missiles where they are all destroyed by a single medium smartbomb? i suppose killing bombers while they bomb you and bubbling all around isn't enough of a defense against bombers.
CCP Fozzie wrote:

New Anti-Capital Void Bomb:
This is the first toe dipped in the water for smaller AoE (and therefore more aiming required) dumb weapons, which we think have a lot of potential in the future. It's a void bomb with the following stats:

Armor HP: 600
Explosion Radius: 4000
Energy Neut Amount: 15,000
Flight Time: 15s
Velocity: 2000m/s
AoE Range: One Meter

This thing is most useful against very large ships, and has to detonate right on top of a target to have any effect. We don't expect it to take the world by storm but it should be a very good option for harassing capitals, especially with small numbers of bombers.

might be cool i guess, i'm a little skeptical about the 1 meter explosion range lol.

anything i didn't respond to i think is a decent idea. some of these changes are just horrible in my opinion. bombers deserve a lot more thought put into them than this. if you simply want people to stop using them then i think you might accomplish that goal successfully.
Wild Things
Wilderness
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
#35 - 2014-10-16 11:48:25 UTC  |  Edited by: Wild Things
I do hope that this isn't the only change to DICs and HICs in this patch. Scripted HIC points need to prevent caps from taking gates, otherwise fighting on a gate in lowsec is going to get even more frustrating than it already is.

Good changes overall though.

edit: my face when announced in a separate forum post at the same time

In this moment, I am euphoric.

MuraSaki Siki
ChuangShi
Fraternity.
#36 - 2014-10-16 11:48:38 UTC
just asking the reason,
would it be better to adjust the bomb launcher stat, instead of doubling the bomb deployment skill effect?
Elmnt80
Life. Universe. Everything.
#37 - 2014-10-16 11:50:16 UTC  |  Edited by: Elmnt80
CCP Fozzie wrote:
New 10km Dictor Bubbles:
This is a new ammo choice for dictors that act just like the normal aoe bubbles except with a smaller range and +50% bubble lifetime. These are intended to be another option that fleets can use to pull in hostiles (especially bombers) at desired ranges and should be quite useful for bubbling your own fleet. We will investigate the option of adding an equivalent Hictor version at a later date, but the system that WDFGs use for their scripting doesn't easily lend itself to this sort of use so no promises.


Would it be possible to add these to the syndicate LP store as a faction version instead? It would actually give the syndicate LP store a desirable item, which it currently lacks and would help spur content in an area of space currently lacking. It also would not be out of place given the nature of the syndicate LP as it is currently.
muhadin
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#38 - 2014-10-16 11:50:39 UTC  |  Edited by: muhadin
As someone who runs alot of accounts at once, and has used isboxer. I don't even know why ccp allows isboxer to be used.
The first major red flag should be that ISboxer is run on Inner Space which is used for botting in eve. The problems are not bombers, bombers were probably one of the most balanced things in eve. The problem is isboxer. Bombers already have counters to them, many bomber fleets have died, and there are too many nerfs to bombers all lumped together.



Also +1 on new dictor bubble.

"Love the Life you Live, Live the Life you Love"

Bjurn Akely
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#39 - 2014-10-16 11:51:06 UTC
Does not look bad at all. The only niggling thing I have in my little brain is that with decreased mobility the bombers feel less Covert Operations. But that is probably something I can live with.
Janeway84
Insane's Asylum
#40 - 2014-10-16 11:51:36 UTC
I love all the changes here except cloaky ships uncloacking each other, Its a nerf to WH Pvp Sad
Cant you just make sure bombers can get uncloaked when cloaked and leave other cloaky ships out of it?