EVE General Discussion

In your first sentance you are describing skirmish rather than assault. Further increasing the speed over parity with the t1 counterpart is creating another class of interceptors... the very definition of a skirmisher.

EWAR resistance shouldn't be a module; for the most part there are already modules that give a certain amount of resistance or cou teract the forms of existing EWAR. As it is, mids are tight on all AFs, this needs to be a role bonus, not some new module.

Medium guns? You are proposing interceptors that have medium guns? I have perfect gunnery skills and a 5% tracking implant and still easily overspeed the tracking of my own SMALL turrets when I am flying an inty. Hell, a few of the faster t1 frigates are capable of it. You don't get high damage from medium turrets at or vs high speeds and angular velocities; you get no damage. This is why destroyers have a lot of small turrets rather than a few mediums. A frigate with medium guns would be useless at engaging other frigates, and at enough velocity to avoid getting hit by cruisers, can't hit cruisers itself.

ABCs work because the projection range of large turrets greatly reduces the drawback of having slower tracking and larger sig resolution on the turrets, and also because they aren't large turrets mounted on a cruiser hull.

I think we should wait for the 08.11. when the T3D nerf comes.
Then decide if we really need a buff to all AFs or if there are only very poor performing ships needing a buff?
I am already thinking they are changing to much in Ascension to be honest.
Let the new Meta settle.
On Grid Boosting
Nerfed T3d
Mining and Production Shakeup( EC )


Later TM

Skirmish vs Assault
Skirmish and Assault are actually similar tactically to me. The difference is normally a line between just there to damage or to have follow up and take an objective.

If the idea is to STAY and pound, then speed is less important and tank is more important but the idea of a frigate that can take damage runs counter to the class, so that definition of 'assualt' doesn't really work well when talking about a frigate. Thus, I can only see the other side of it being 'hit and run' or what is being called skirmishing. I don't know of a class called Skirmish Frigate either.

EWAR
Frigates are very suscptible to EW as even a drone can take down their sensors without module backup help, and given the breadth of ECM types and jamming, a Frigate can't fit one size fits all defenses. So it's luck of the draw if you fit any kind of ECCM and hope it works. If you had something similar to a super target painter that only worked for t he painting ship and let all the weapons track on that, have it cost power, cpu, and a medium slot, as well as being restricted to ONLY AF's and maybe a skill requirement, then you have something that makes the Assault Frigate viable again. When you REALLY have to hit that medium/small target, send in the AF's.

TANK
If the base tank is reduced by 10% but speed bonuses increased, then the AF really becomes a speed tank only ship. It forces it to be flown by a competent pilot and make darned sure it avoids being multi-webbed, but the super webbers out there will still take it down to a killable speed. So it's not invincible, but it means that if it's flown right, it's nasty.


The options I laid out would make these ships very dangerous to larger ships, especially in groups, but they can be countered effectively if you know their weaknesses. If they were slowed down enough, they'd pop almost worse than Stealth Bombers. It's just another variant on the Glass Cannon concept.

Interceptors can't hit that hard, they're for pinning people down.

I agree, and interceptors need a nerf in that field.

They can already run 8.0 warp and have great align times. Those two bonuses alone should be the basis of the chassis, not giving them more damage on top.

I wasnt suggesting any changes to inties.

@Pandora

A frigate with medium guns would only be dangerous to a BC or BS. Due to tracking and sig resolution, medium guns on a frigate won't hit **** if you are maintaining transversal, and if you reduce your velocity to hit your target you get gibbed.
Speed is important to any frigate as the damage avoidance greatly amplifies the limited repair capacity small modules have. If your intent is to stay on a target until one of you pops (assault), being able to retain speed in tackle range is paramount. There arent many ships of any class that don't need to avoid being webbed by multiple sources.

Assault means you force a hard engagement that you will be unable to extract from; skirmish is the intent to never commit 100% to a fight in the attempt to keep the tactical situation liquid. Mobility has nothing to do with this as higher mobility is desireable for either tactic; you can't assail a target you can't catch. AFs don't need to step on the toes of inties by gaining a lot of speed; they just need parity with the t1 base hull.

No "super painter." Hull based role bonus to reduce the effectiveness of ewar targeting you. AFs as an entire ship class haven't got enough mids. You are suggesting to make this problem worse by introducing a mandatory bandage module.

@13kr1d1
I think you misunderstood what i meant, reading Pandora's first post she is basically suggesting that AFs become interceptors with medium weaponry, an idea that I think is a poor one due to turret mechanics. While I applaud any brainpower put to use to fix the liminal state of uselessness AFs have always been in, I do feel the need to point out what should be obvious problems.

It's encouraging to see that no matter how silly some of CCP's idea might be at times, players have far more badly thought out, super overpowered craptacular "balancing" brain farts.

Are we not meeting the quality requirements of General Discussion forum posts?

Have CCP not completely ignored this thread?

I say just do it like what HAC did with T1 cruiser. Bring agility and speed to somewhere in line with T1, just make them tankier and more DPS to make it clear that these guys are specialised for killing stuff. That way people might actually bring them to back up the Interceptors in small gangs for when stuff needs to die. They might actually be able to keep up for once.

I fly the Retribution somewhat. I have Level IV mastery on them, so I keep one to undock in when I fancy it. But after having more experience flying things like faction frigs, T1 destroyers even, and interceptors, I find AF slow, underpowered and clunky compared to a fast Dragoon. They are not what I expected when I started training into them. However, they are beautiful ships and I like to fly them to be different sometimes. But they are just fluff, pretty, mostly useless when compared to other options, and way overpriced.

In most cases a Tormentor can do the same job for much less cost. To fix the problem I would give the Retribution a 10% small energy turret damage bonus, like the confessor. This would make them more desireable, but it would not replace the confessor. I don't know if this would be enough to get people to start flying them, but it would be a start.

Immunity to EWAR would make them indispensable.