EVE General Discussion

Knowledge & experience are the most important factors, but rock paper scissors is very much in effect. Your statement about how you killed a Talos is a good example.

You won because the Talos' big papers couldn't hurt your small, fast and upclose scissors. The trick of being a good PVPer is understanding which you are (rock, paper or scissors), what the other guy is and how you might be able to change who's what.

On your place I would be rather concerned why people say that Drifters are bad.

Ship balance and stats are hardcoded.
It underlies all combat in PvP.

No extent of player capability can change even one iota of that(barring SP, which also is hardcoded).

As an extension of that, no amount of player skill in PvP can seat you into a ship you dont SYSTEMICALLY have the SP to fly, or 4o fly it better than your SP applies stat modifers to that ship/fit.

The notion that all ships are only as "good" as the pilot sitting in them, is false.
They are only as good as their hardcoded stats.
The players capabilities are secondary.

What you're saying is that fights are won by using the right strategy, which is helped by someone understanding his own ship's strategy and the others'. A newbie with some practising in that Slasher would, if he had been able to get close, won as well: "orbit 500, scram ship, web drones and kill those first" is not very difficult to teach or understand.

it's NOT necessarily won by who has the most paper dps, EHP or skill points. That means it's rock, paper, scissors.

Actually, that is a direct contradiction. If it was down to the numbers alone, that would define it as rock, paper and scissors. Have you ever played Tom Clancy's Endwar? That is rock paper scissors. EVE is nothing like that, combat is far too fluid and dynamic, and the potential ship fits far too varied, to make it a simple numbers game. Last I checked, you can't turn a pair of scissors into a sheet of paper. In EVE, you can do exactly that.

Again, I'm being dictated to on what PVP in EVE is by someone who hasn't done any PVP in EVE.

No pilot, no matter how good, can exceed the mechanical constraints of the ship they are flying.

Ships have stats completely separate from the pilot flying it.
You cant make a ship do aomething it cant, no matter how good you are.

Ship balance is completely separate from the players that fly them.
Ship balance defines the restrictions on the craft you fly, in relation to others.

Ship stats. Ship balance. Only therafter, does it matter how well you fly that craft.

I fear we have a different meaning on the concept of rock, paper, scissors :)

If you know that a Talos' guns (paper) can't track you because you dual prop (scissors) then you win. If you didn't dual prop then the Talos can switch from Paper to rock if he fitted dual webs. Has nothing to do with the ship stats or piloting as such, it has to do the the strategical choice of fitting to counter a specific type of target and make an educated guess on what the other's strategy will be.

Of course piloting is an important factor but ultimately it's about strategy.

Combat Heron says hello. LOL Helios also says hello, same with combat haulers and the Venture. There's many ships that weren't designed for combat that work just fine if used right against the right type of target and pilot.

Is that why you have so many kills?

Oh wait...

Actually, I did none of that. I just went suspect hoping for a fight. I explained this. I didn't 'throw' anything except my safety to yellow so I could steal his loot and get flagged. Look, I get what you're saying, but that's not how rock-paper-scissors works. Again, go check out Endwar for an example of a rock-paper-scissors game. EVE simply isn't it. There are too many variables. Even if I threw 'scissors' somehow 'knowing' he'd throw 'paper', there's always the chance that I'll slip and cut myself and the scissors won't be sharp enough or I'll accidentally overheat the blades until they melt or something like that. There's also the chance of someone else warping in to help with another small, fast ship.

It really irks me when people make assumptions about me though. No, I did not assume his guns wouldn't hit me, because I didn't assume he had no web and drones; no, I didn't have one seventeenth of a clue what his ability was; and no.... well, yes, but only because there's only really one strategy available in that situation, and that's to take the bull by the horns hope you don't get gored. It wouldn't be the first big ship that I've done this sort of thing with and there have been many instances where I've won and lost.

In any case, it's still not rock-paper-scissors. Everything has a counter, sure, but there is so much of 'everything' that we're gonna need more than just 3 methods of attack, all of them situational and with caveats, to analogise it all.