Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Massive wall of your own personal taste passed off as game fact.

Nope.

interesting to know the thought pattern behind some of the balances. it would appear to be in line with the lore too since amarr would only use the best materials and minmatar don't typically have much to them. they kind of look like flying scaffolding with weapons and an engine.

If they performed similarly, I think this thread would be over by now.
If they performed in similar roles, what would be the point of calling one a "destroyer" and one an "assault frigate"?

Frigates are supposed to move around quickly, catch things off guard, swarm in and overwhelm.
Destroyers are supposed to provide mobile, fast tracking point defense.
There is an inherent asymmetry in what they each do. Frigates scout and scan and tackle and transport and provide all sorts of awesome utility functions for their fleet depending on their hull specialization. Destroyers look for things to destroy and destroy them. So, if you warped in on a destroyer in your frigate, you did half his job for him. It seems like bad strategy more than a ship balance issue.
Not saying I dislike or disagree with the balance changes.

I fly the confessor a lot, with a very expensive 10mn AB. With the new changes, it will stop me (and others) from fitting an oversize AB, correct?

Just want to make sure. Before buying/fitting more ships :)

Nope, but you probably will have to re-rig and change up your fits a bit. Per Fozzie in this comment:



Other users have confirmed that you can still fit a 10MN AB but the performance is somewhat diminished and you have to make more trade-offs for the fitting space to make the fit work.



Similar does not mean one isn't better than the other, it just means they are performing similarly. As on the performance of the two is directly comparable.

The roles are similar from observational evidence. There are obviously differences but overall AFs and T3Ds are both fast ships with a good tank and weapons loadout. The T3Ds have the option of performing different roles, they just commonly don't.

I feel like you're taking your role queues too much from real life here. The Destroyers in Eve have rarely provided anything like point defense, and generally act like somewhat squishier Frigates with more firepower. However, these are just based on a destroyer hull, that doesn't mean they need to fill the same roles any more than a modern Missile Cruiser fills the same role as a WW2 Cruiser.

In practice, meaning in the way in which Eve pilots are employing these ships, they commonly fight Tech 2 Frigate class ships and in this match up it is seen as desirable (by both players and CCP, as shown in this thread) that T3Ds not completely overwhelm the class.

People use Cormorants to salvage. People use Procurers as fast lockers in gate camps. I heard there was a dude who mines in a Titan. Anything is possible. This is EVE, baby! But, that doesn't mean destroyers aren't intended to destroy, Procurers aren't intended to mine, and Avatars aren't intended as an unbridled display of e-peen just because people use them for other things.

Assault frigates are dying when they assault a ship whose specialization is to neutralize assaulting frigates. Duh. Looking through the Svipul's kills and losses on zkillboard (plenty of 1MN MWD fits), it is obvious that the solution to 1 Tech III destroyer is 2 or 3 (or 4 or 5 or 6) frigates. This follows a recogizable trend. All else being equal, it usually takes 2 or 3 cruisers to kill a battlecruiser, maybe a handful of batllecruisers to kill a battleship, maybe a squad of battleships to kill a carrier (provided there is no escalation).

Tech III destroyers probably need a few whacks with the Nerf bat to bring them in line, but consider other possibile factors. Maybe people just don't know what they are doing when they try to go toe-to-toe, 1vs1 with one in their frigate. Maybe people who fly around in Tech III destroyers are better than average pilots wanting to use a ship that can better handle a numerically superior enemy. Maybe they're catching more players off guard with their probes. Maybe many people still don't have their overviews (and thus, dscan) set up to show Tech III destroyers or maybe they did't even know such ships were in the game. Maybe many players just have no respect for the hull class and throw themselves into a fight they can't win. Nothing in this game is ever as simple as x needs to = 5 instead of 6. It's always a confluence of dynamics.

BTW, every time a destroyer kills a frigate, another destroyer, a drone, diverts their attack, or deters them from engaging, it's point defense. They don't have to be doing it for someone else. They can just be doing it for themselves.

Except that the specialization of T3 Destroyers shouldn't be to neutralize T2 frigates. They're doing that now because they beat out the frigate at their own game, which is why they're getting nerfed. Again, Tech 3 is supposed to be about generalization, not specialization, and Assault Frigates are specialized combat ships with a bonus to speed tanking. They shouldn't be getting chased down and killed reliably by T3 Destroyers.

All of your supposition is just that, and there's no proof for any of it, but there is plenty of testimonial and numerical evidence that T3 Destroyers just kind of win out over most T2 Frigate and Destroyer class ships right now.

The problem isn't that people are engaging in a fight that they can't win, it's that solo small-ship PvP is currently dominated by this one ship class when it used to have a fair amount of variety to it. That's a problem, both from the perspective of the players and from the perspective of CCP (remember that whole tiericide thing to get un-used ships useful again?)

There are some very legitimate concerns being posed here about T3 Destroyers invalidating Assault Frigates as a class, so please stop dismissing them as "well they're supposed to kill frigates!" Especially when CCP is in the middle of tapping them on the shoulder with the nerf-bat to address exactly those player concerns.

I get what you're saying here, but there's actually a good reason for doing it this way.

Lowering the number of guns actually serves as a nice counter-balancing buff to some of the nerfs introduced here. It reduces cap use, ammo use, and the overall cost of the fit (albeit fairly minutely on that last one). It also makes it harder to squeeze extra space out of the fit with weapon fitting rigs on certain configurations.

Has anyone mention the very large buff the t3 dessie ability to heat it's high rack with this change? Why not adjust mass and relook at prop mode bonuses, as right now both current t3 dessies are able to instantly align to warp by swapping from prop to other modes, which is absurd.

I think the balance changes to make t3d balanced have to go way further than they do now as theyre still a flat improvement above t2d and t1d.
At the same time I feel that the concept of "versatility above all" has a lot of unused potential.

First just flat nerf the damage bonuses these ships get as together with the slot layout and fitting resource they allow t3ds to outdps t1ds and t2ds way too much and make them flat better. They also dont even need that kind of damage to fulfill their role of being a frigate killer as they are going to have different tools available afterwards. Its still going to be able to outdps their lesser tech counterparts but its going to require some tradeoffs.

Confessor:
Amarr Tactical Destroyer bonuses (per skill level):
7.5% (-2,5%) bonus to Small Energy Turret damage
10% reduction in Small Energy Turret activation cost
5% reduction in module heat damage amount taken

Svipul:
Minmatar Tactical Destroyer Bonuses Per Level:
7,5% (-2,5%) bonus to Small Projectile Turret damage
10% bonus to Small Projectile Turret optimal range
5% reduction in heat damage generated by modules

Adding of course the 50% bonus from the Fozzie post.


Second thing I would remove the damage projection/application bonus in sharpshooter mode from both ships as those are a bit too powerful in the case of the Confessor and a bit dull in the case of the Svipul. We could have so much more fun things instead while retaining balance and following the versatility theme. Sharpshooter mode should be renamed afterwards probably.

confessor "whatever mode" would look like this:
25% bonus to tracking disruptor effectiveness
100% bonus to sensor strength, targeting range and scan resolution
Might aswell bump it up to 33% tracking disruptor effectiveness. Important is that its less than Sentinel and 33% is a bit too close to the Sentinel bonus.

Svipul "whatever mode" would look like this:
100% bonus to Stasis webifier optimal range
OR
33% bonus to target painter effectiveness
100% bonus to sensor strength, targeting range and scan resolution
Now the web range bonus is a very strong bonus but the core is here that its going to be half as much as a fully trained Hyena.

Next lets look at the tank modes which are too powerful at times and some decisions straight not balanced and boring.

Confessor Defense Mode
20% bonus to all armor resistances while Defense Mode is enabled
20% bonus to armor hitpoints while Defense Mode is enabled
Im not quite sure if its possible to code the hitpoint bonus that way. It would go well with the general direction of heavy amarr armor tanking. About the resistance nerf: I have no idea how CCP could think that a 33% bonus would be balanced in any way especially after nerfing old resist bonuses down to 20% instead of 25% because they were too strong.

Svipul Defense Mode
20% bonus to all shield and armor resistances while Defense Mode is enabled
20% bonus to ship Signature radius while Defense Mode is enabled
The svipul is getting the signature radius bonus of the Confessor which would allow for old Stabber Fleet issue inspired gameplay and generally offer more options for armor tanked svipuls aswell as open interesting tradeoffs for shield tanked svipuls regarding the amount of tanking rigs and mid slot modules used. Generally a more interesting bonus on the Svipul than on the Confessor.

And last lets look at the Propulsion modes:


Propulsion Mode:
50% bonus to maximum velocity while a Propulsion Module in Propulsion Mode is active
20% bonus to ship inertia modifier while Propulsion Mode is active
The first bonus is a bit silly formulated, please correct me on this one, you get the idea. The idea is to drastically tone down their ability to signature tank as the propulsion mode offers too much base speed at the moment allowing them to effectively signature tank and therefor hard tackle better than Assault frigs. Fast hard tackling in gangs/fleets should be left as a role to Assault frigs.

I am not going to touch on base ship stats as those are a bit too far reaching for a forum post and there are people there getting paid to do that.
Afterwards they wouldnt be better than any of the tech 2 hulls frigate/destroyer size in any way, but more flexible than them fitting the theme of versatility.



LYK DIS IF YOU SUPPORT THE GENERAL IDEA, PLEASE SUGGEST IMPROVEMENTS.

Edit:
If you think that the Sig bonus on the Svipul is too strong lets try a shield regen bonus equal to 75% of the shield regen lost due to the possible regen nerf.
Edit 2:
The web range bonus if at all should probably be weaker aswell, rather 75% or 50% even, if at all.