Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Agree on the Incursus: It would be better suited with a Tracking Bonus or something more Gank-oriented.

Disagree on the Mining Frigates: Rookies could Take out a Merlin with mining lasers. Would only be missing the Cargohold bonus, the Cap use bonus (Merlin has a Significantly better Cap anyways), and a single drone. Untill frigates 3, the extra laser results in higher yield. And by that time, they can move on to a Cruiser.


Only having 2 mids is a major Weakness, however, if the punisher had 3, it could easily become OP (The 'Newer New Merlin')
Besides, its a weakness that can be compensated for by particular fittings - Medium Pulse Laser IIs with Scorch and a Pair of Tracking Enhancers let it hit out to about 15km - MWD and Disruptor Sold Separately. Or Even Beams (That are actually pretty decent on frigs)

unless you accept significant power creep across the board, the only viable solution is specialization. but traditionally that is the domain of t2/t3 ships, so if you want to make t1 frigates relevant, something has to give, no?

currently, the main reason for someone to fly a t1 frigate is them being new and not skilled enough to fly anything else.

but an over-3-days-old player will use t1 frigates for exploration and mining* and thats it. for combat, you get handed a destroyer with the last advanced military career agent mission, and that gets you through the SoE epic arc just fine*. the only reason a newbie would want to fit a t1 combat frigate for pve is running the 1/10 plexes in hisec and that one lvl2 drone mission that you can blitz.

*unless you fly amarr, of course.

the other reason to use t1 frigates is that they're dirt cheap and easy to produce.

this is where the t1 combat frigates come in, for small-time lowsec piracy on a budget or newbies tackling for their fleet mates in the corp they just joined. cyno duty and (cloaked alts) gate scouting fall into this category as well.

what i would like to see are frigates for those other specialized roles that are currently absent:

- by now there really should be frigates for hacking/archaeology/salvaging. these are pretty standard activities most newbies dabble in, and i really can't see why we don't have ships with a bonus for that yet. yes, ninja salvaging/looting other peoples lvl4 missions falls into this category as well. why not take that one non-probing bonus away from the t1 versions of the CovOps and give them a bonus to those "profession" modules? (yes, racial differentiation is tempting here, think amarr analyzers and minmatar salvagers, etc. i don't know if newbies should be encouraged to cross-train right from the start)

- then there's the support role. why don't we have logistics frigates? why does someone dedicated to playing support need to get into in a cruiser to get that job done even half-assedly.? being the one t1 logi cruiser in a frigate wolfpack... no fun ;)

- what about an "executive" frigate that improves the racial leadership bonus provided by the pilot by x% per level of frigate skill? these ships could even have hardwired baby versions of the command links battlecruisers can fit. the mining foreman version would be a second ORE frigate. i mean, there is a starter profession with certificates going into this direction, and the first dedicated ship is a battlecruiser and you need to skill 2-3 weeks just in leadership skills to actually use one gang link.

hm. putting sov structures behind deadspace gates that limit ship size based on sov level could be interesting. level 1 sov = frigs only, and so on. the question here would be whether this does anything for t1 frigate significance, since currently those size restrictions always allow the t2/t3 versions of that hull size as well.

if they went in this direction tho, the "role" ships i mentioned above would suddenly become very meaningful

exactly. no combat ship does, unless you have a gang to cover up for your shortfalls.

post nuked. thanks ccp.

The ret is a very viable and survivable ship if you fit it correctly and pick your engagements. Especially given the damage projection and quick ammo swap it's not too hampered by the loss of a web. Personally, I fly mine as a nano ship with a 22km optimal, and it's fairly capable of handling anything from a frig to a bc.

Also last I checked, the slicer is a pretty viable ship (also another favorite of mine), even with the lack of a web.

What is the eta on the eos getting 5 heavies and its 5th mid slot back?

well if they removed all ewar bonus from t1 hulls as its a specialization and buffed EAF's and yes the frig logi could work...

So far I'm quite happy with the frig rebalances aswell. I still feel you should have lowered pulse grid use rather than boost punisher grid but oh well.

Focus on the rest of the frig overhaul I like. It'ld be nice if you could do all the others in one go AND plan some develop time for the second or third expansion down the road (i.e. not immediately) to revisit the T1 frigs as a whole and rebalance them. By that time you should have enough statistics to see how they fare.

More versatile rookie ships is ineresting but if you're going to make those ships representative of a race as a whole, then you should make them available to all players, independent of race.

Ore mining frig is definately needed but there is already one in the game (kinda sorta)

Four new dessies sound very nice! Are you also planning to introduce the racial dessie skills with these?

All in all I'm quite happy with how this has turned out so far. Keep up the good work Ytterbium.

Actually, i think the merlin should have won just about all of those engagements. There were 2 ships with any sort of tank. Obvs a brawling dps/tank frig should be able to kill a paper-tank frig.

As far as the rifter goes, i think its good that a merlin can challenge a rifter. It could before the patch, but now it has a great chance.

And seeing as how the firetail was basically just a rifter...