Player Features and Ideas Discussion

No ship should ever be perfect. Such a ship would massively imbalance the game. Imagine a ship that was relatively small, but powerful enough to be either first or second choice for everything in the game. Imagine if such a ship had everything you could ever want in a ship. Small sig, speed, high resists, plenty of capacitor, powerful long-range weapons that took no fitting ammo or cap to use, was completely ewar immune...

...oh. No wonder we have a problem.

I have no idea what you just described, nor how a 96km tractor bonus causes or fits into that...


My argument is still that Marauders were intended to salvage on the go, but with the introduction of Bastion, they out range their tractor bonus significantly.

Either take the bonus and give us something useful, or buff the bonus to be effective.

That MTU makes the 100% bonus null and void

the literal only reason to take a tractor on a Marauder is to grab mission loot, but those are so few and far between that it's pointless.

DED plexes. Grabbing the overseer loot as you warp. Pulling a particularly tasty faction wreck or even an officer wreck. Lots of reasons why you might need to be using a short range weapon system, like blasters, torps, or ACs, for the damage or tracking, while using the bastion bonuses to add projection to 20-50km, where the tractors still work. Or project out to 150, MJD (using another class wide bonus!) to 50, slow boat 2. WOW. Its like you are forcing it into one single role dictated entirely by l4 mission running, and ignoring EVERY other aspect of what these ships can do.

Except that in all of those cases, especially when out of high sec, you're much better off taking a t1, faction, or pirate BS for the mobility alone.

You keep making suggestions like this as if Marauders are widely used in all forms of PVE, and disregard the fact that they're less preferable than pirate, even in high sec.

The only reason to choose a Marauder is for the easy mode of bastion, which decreases your survival chances in PVP due to immobility.

Now, let's reconsider these ships for what they really are, lvl 4 mission runners with increased risks everywhere else.

...and don't give me this risk vs reward crap, as compared to Pirate, that argument is irrelevant.

I support the old Marauder class to be brought back to life. Is this relevant?

Well, I usually run faction missions along with anti-pirate missions, so looting for me is kind of part of the package deal. That said, while I agree with Joe that the 2x range on tractor bonus not as practical as it once was (and wasn't really all that and a bag of chips before anyways), I would rather see it replaced rather than buffed. Maybe a salvage drone speed buff?

Dear Joe,

As I said above, Marauders are not designed for Level 4 missions. You are that guy using a samurai sword for mowing your lawn and wondering why the lawnmower works better. Marauders are designed for killing other space ships and laughing hilariously at small fleets, until those fleets bring neutralizers. Then they die. Horribly. Eve is not balanced around high sec PVE - or any PVE for that matter.

They do happen to have some very good PVE uses - most notably in hard 0.0 complexes. Key things to consider here: they tank like a beast. They can MJD away from trouble - yet still project excellent DPS out to a good range. They are immune to electronic warfare, which makes them damn near the finest choice possible against the sensor dampening, tracking disruption, and jamming that pervades the harder complexes. Try taking a pirate battleship into a Blood Raiders 10/10 - it generally will not end well. A Marauder, on the other hand, handles it with grace.

The tractor beam bonus complements the ships' abilities to survive the hard complex because, when combined with the MJD bonus, it makes the Marauder ideal for looting it in a timely manner.

Marauders are not that common for other 0.0 PVE because going into Bastion mode in an anomaly is a terrible idea. Anomalies also do not require much in the way of tank. That is why people use ships with more GTFO ability and higher DPS to run anomalies.

For high sec missions, Marauders are also not the optimal choice. Quite simply, you do not need that much tank for a high sec mission. Mobility and more DPS are superior in that part of the game as well.

Marauders come with some well-designed drawbacks: Bastion mode requires them to commit to the field. But if you commit to the field, you can do some fun things with them.