Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I realise posting so much criticism in this thread without offering constructive feedback on what I think the issues are / proposed solutions is pretty hypocritical so I'm going to attempt to remedy that with this (hopefully) constructive feedback post.
So here goes, these are what I feel like the main unaddressed issues are with bombing atm, in order of importance.

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ISSUE:
Bombers warping fleet-doctrine meta. Far too strong against destroyer/frigate sized hulls and shield doctrines which leads to a prevailance of low sig, huge tank armor doctrines and the complete disappearance of any frigate/destroyer doctrine that cannot tank 2+ waves of bombs.

EXPLANATION:
Bombs are one of the few weapons that only look at one aspect of a ships mitigation through evasion: signature. Most other weapons that can be mitigated by evasion are mitigated by both signature and speed. Armor doctrines only penalize speed, shield doctrines only penalize signature, thus armor becomes the only viable choice in a meta where bombs are used at any reasonable level. Similarly most frigate/destroyer doctrines main defense is speed, which is completely negated by bombs.

POSSIBLE SOLUTION:
Make bombs care about both aspects of evasive mitigation. Add an explosion velocity to bombs, akin to missiles, so that shield and armor can both mitigate effectively and so that small ships relying on speed don't get obliterated. After this change mitigation for every moving ship would increase, but for shield doctrines far more than armor, and smaller class doctrines more than large. Also consider adding armor honeycombing for shield signature.

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ISSUE:
Bombers are able to near-immediately bomb a fleet landing on grid by, making it very hard to fly doctrines that rely on light tank and sniping to stay on field.

EXPLANATION:
Combat probing fleets landing on a grid and warping your bombing squad over to them is too easy. A bombing bomber can even comfortably fit an expanded launcher, meaning you don't even have to work in order to have easy access to combat probes. [common bombing fc fit for reference: https://zkillboard.com/kill/40443783/ cynos offline]

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS:
Make bombers unable to fit expanded launchers without large sacrifices (perhaps a cpu reduction + a torp cpu usage role bonus?).
Make bombers warp much slower (1.5 AU/s).
Make combat probing harder. Perhaps remove the ability to warp your fleet to a result, and require the prober to warp there first. Perhaps make it so the warp to range is not reliable. Perhaps increase the time it takes to combat probe.
Don't know how to achieve this without affecting other areas of the game too much, but I think combat probing is too strong in most areas anyway.

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ISSUE:
Syncronized bombing by one person with multiple clients, ignoring fleet formup time/effort.

EXPLANATION:
Bomb wave comes out at the same time (much less reaction time for targets, in a normal wave the bombs will always be slightly staggered even with a countdown).
"FC" can always know where the entire bombing squad is at all times without any communication required, greatly reducing the time between runs.

POSSIBLE SOLUTION:
I don't have a viable solution to this, assuming no direct counter-synchronisation options are used [i.e. arming code on each bomb]. Banning ISBoxer from being used in conjunction with bomb runs is something most players would accept, but I understand why CCP do not wish to pursue that avenue. All I can say to this is for CCP to please reconsider their stance.

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ISSUE:
Some bombers more valuable than others.

EXPLANATION:
PG on Manticore / Nemesis absurdly low compared to Purifier, Nemesis also lacks CPU for no real upside. Slot layout on Hound/Purifier much better for bombing. Damage bonus means combined with the way bombs work means you only really want one type of bomber in a fleet, restrictive for new players.

POSSIBLE SOLUTION:
Bump Manticore / Nemesis PG to 40. Purifier down to 42. Change bomb damage bonus on hull from racial to universal damage so people aren't punished for not having the right bomber - still restrictive enough due to limited cargo space plus being unable to reload cloaked. Consider moving purifier to 5/2/4 and Nemesis to 5/3/3.

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I really don't want to see non-isboxed bombers become obsolete but I that is how the changes in Pheobe are currently poised.
Instead of attempting to make bombers harder to use and more finicky while remaining disproportionately effective versus shield/armor/frigate doctrines, my solutions would diminish their impact on the meta allowing new doctrines to evolve, while allowing their relevance versus current doctrines to remain in a slightly weaker state.
Bombers certainly don't need the HP tweaks. The align time nerfs I agree with, the bomb flight time nerfs are fine too - however these two nerfs don't affect what bombers are good against and what they warp the meta towards, all they do is affect bombers power level. While bomber power level is an issue, it is not the main problem with bombers and I hope I have proven that with this post.

Can you imagine the additional server load?

its a good idea tbh, and it wouldnt require much more server load. a little over 2x as much as currently - a scan at the start, then a scan at the end, and any results that have moved by 100km~ or more aren't warpable

Yeah, the two server checks make sense.

I'd still really like to see a siege ship that can fire multiple bombs at once, battleship class.

Normally you dont play baseball in the winter, but you guys are swinging that nerf bat like its the MLB.
Can we just solve the core issues here rather than putting another nerf on Deck?

HP increases on bombers is useless, theyre frigs they die very quickly
12 second bombs means bombing will be virtually obsolete vs anything thats not a pod
Agility decrease? Like they didnt align like pregnant bathtubs already
Decloaking eachother? I can see it now "You decloaked me!" "Oh sorry I Didn't See You there "


This is by definition a stealth ISBoxer nerf thread, in a thread about stealth

The defender missile did have a value once upon a time before CCP Tuxford and CCP Xhagen were in the Band of Brother's ship rebalancing team and gave every missile a turret tracking attribute that does make any sense.

Anyhow, even back in the day when no missile have a turret tracking thingy on them and was a boolean hit or no hit thing they were not disbanding goonswarm, did not rule EVE and the big fleet fights were fought with...

Rail-Megathrons and Tachyon-Laser Apocs.

Wow, now that is a revelation of some magnitude, isn't it?

How could the powerblocks of the old not have taken that all-powerfull advantage for their own sake and only fly Ravens all day long?

Imagine that!

Missiles did have 100% or 0% application and were not used in large scale pvp.

Shocking, but the truth.

Now why is that?

Because you can (nope not could you still can but there is no reason to use them anyway) shoot them down with defender missiles, torpedos and citadel torpedos take two defender missiles to shoot down.

Or you can make them explode with smart-(I hate that word for an energy pulse weapon)bombs. Also very shocking relevation for some of you.

I think the anti capital void bomb needs to be seriously looked at and in its current form it will be broken beyond belief. I live in a Wormhole so most of my thinking regarding this change will be in the eye of a wormhole capital pilot. My main issue is the amount of cap that will be neut'd by them and the lack of defence options available without fielding smartbomb fleets.

A CCC rigged Archon has 81K GJ of capacitor before Mindflood, with mindflood it has 97K.
If one bomb removes 15K cap then (81/15=5.4) 5 bombs will pretty much nail the capacitor of a an Archon, thats 6 bombs with mindflood.
A T1 Semiconductor fit Moros has 99K GJ of cap, with mindflood thats 120K GJ
Therefore it will take between 6 & 8 bombs to completely dry a Moros

In a C6 Red Giant with a bonus to 100% of bomb damage which also translates into 100% increase in cap neut'd then it only requires 3 bombs to nail an Archon and 4 bombs for a Moros. Thats ridiculous, given you can only field 3 capitals into an opposing wormhole and they aren't cheap at that. I don't see why only a handful of bombers which can easily be used on alts can have such a massive effect on what is a very 'high end' ship.

On a side note maybe you have found a reason to buff the Capacitor Battery? Making ships more resilient to these capital neut bombs might be a good idea.

Still though this will definitely cause alot of friction in Wormhole combat as far as capitals are concerned.

We use bomber fleets in near every fight, this impacts us too.

I'm guessing you don't fly bombers in Empire? The nerf to mobility seriously impacts their ability to fly with roaming frigate gangs without gimping said gang's most important asset: mobility.