Looks like the nanonerf is coming

[Amarr HM]

Ok if you look at all the Vaga fits they either have to compromise Cap for tank or DPS for speed or vice versa. Once they are neuted and webbed they are dead in the water you should train for a Curse if you have a grudge against them. Just cause you haven't learned how to deal with a certain problem doesn't mean it should be nerfed. Also my nanoishtar would crumble a lot quicker than your Cerberus against a Vagabond the only hacs that would be good against them are the Amarr ones. Currently there is no defence against missiles except speed you can't disrupt them and ECM won't work against FOFs. The cerberus is a mean DPS support ship in the line of an Ishtar.
 
You are looking at this from a biased point of view my ship can't kill x ship so they should be nerfed instead of hmm I can't kill that ship with this ship so I should train for another ship or try another fit it's a-typical of the whining that got us into the argument in the first place. Eve is just about to get a lot slower in every regard everything you do will take a lot longer to do, those things you found laborious like hauling will be more risky and laborious. Everybody will be hit by this in some regard because CCP obviously think every pilot is flying around Poly IIs and Snakes. This is the worst idea CCP has had since making the Dominix powder blue though I do see a point in nerfing the uber high end speed possibilities and I like some of the changes.

[Slayerik]

One strategy I kinda thought of for continued nanofaggotry would be the arty/rail/beam nano, with nano-Arazus to lock down from a safe-ish distance. Rapiers to keep shit at distance as well.

Would be a kinda 'keep at 35ish and watch the muninns / deimos / Zealots / Cerbs  rape' ... who knows.

[VickeVire]

Just a thought... will this make T1 'support' ships a viable option now (and not just cannon fodder)?
We all know the rule is fly T2 ships or don't bather showing up (T1 exception is T2-fitted BS)

[Endie]

Ok if you look at all the Vaga fits they either have to compromise Cap for tank or DPS for speed or vice versa. Once they are neuted and webbed they are dead in the water you should train for a Curse if you have a grudge against them. Just cause you haven't learned how to deal with a certain problem doesn't mean it should be nerfed. Also my nanoishtar would crumble a lot quicker than your Cerberus against a Vagabond the only hacs that would be good against them are the Amarr ones. Currently there is no defence against missiles except speed you can't disrupt them and ECM won't work against FOFs. The cerberus is a mean DPS support ship in the line of an Ishtar.
 
You are looking at this from a biased point of view my ship can't kill x ship so they should be nerfed instead of hmm I can't kill that ship with this ship so I should train for another ship or try another fit it's a-typical of the whining that got us into the argument in the first place. Eve is just about to get a lot slower in every regard everything you do will take a lot longer to do, those things you found laborious like hauling will be more risky and laborious. Everybody will be hit by this in some regard because CCP obviously think every pilot is flying around Poly IIs and Snakes. This is the worst idea CCP has had since making the Dominix powder blue though I do see a point in nerfing the uber high end speed possibilities and I like some of the changes.

Don't drink the nano kool aid of "lrn2play nub".  Everyone knows the theory of how to defeat nanoed ships, and it is simple when you have numbers on them and they're not that good.  But the fact is - and I keep saying this and nobody argues substantively - that if a fifty-man nanohac gang rolls in then they know that it takes forever for the people who had no warning to come up with a sane response.  The mixed fleets with BS, nanos etc that we see all the time, sure.  But some people are forgetting that Tri occupied Provi, for instance, and there was no period during that month or so when they couldn't crush anything that CVA had outside of cyno-jammed systems (and even then it took Goonfleet turning up to save them, or they 100% would have lost sov).

It's a game.  People should stop whining and wailing and find a new strategy.  Most people here have played enough MMOs to just face up to the fact that their Creature Handler/Pally/EQ Druid just got nerfed, and that there's no point in wailing about it.

And if you really want to go fast, fly one of the new frigate specs.  Yes, you have to balance DPS against speed.  Suck it up, folks.

[Phildo]

Just a thought... will this make T1 'support' ships a viable option now (and not just cannon fodder)?
We all know the rule is fly T2 ships or don't bather showing up (T1 exception is T2-fitted BS)

It's a mistake to think this way.  While it's true that an entirely T1 fleet will lost to an entirely T2 fleet, some T1 ships (blackbird, vexor, arbi for example) make for VERY effective support in small gangs.

[dwindlehop]

Yeah, what Phildo said. Don't fly in fleets. T1 rules small gangs.

[bhodi]

Ummm, what Phil said.

I ran a gang a while back and fought a HAC gang with even numbers with cruisers. We killed:

http://killboard.goonfleet.com/km/231763 Falcon
http://killboard.goonfleet.com/km/231761 Zealot
http://killboard.goonfleet.com/km/231756 Sacrilige
http://killboard.goonfleet.com/km/231758 Rapier
http://killboard.goonfleet.com/km/231759 Rifter

Then we ran and regrouped. Round 2 was helped by the addition of a pulse abaddon:

http://killboard.goonfleet.com/km/231775 Tempest
http://killboard.goonfleet.com/km/231778 Sacrilige
http://killboard.goonfleet.com/km/231776 Rapier
http://killboard.goonfleet.com/km/231777 Ishtar
http://killboard.goonfleet.com/km/231772 Crow

Look, HAC gangs aren't invincible, all you need to do is fight smart, have a decent amount of ECM, stay together, and target the non-tanking ones first. Having a warpin helps. We lost 2:1 in that fight, yes, but we were in cruisers with even numbers. We destroyed them in terms of ISK, and, more importantly, sent them home with their tail between their legs.

[Amarr HM]

Kool aid? I choose to fly a nano hac from time to time but it ain't my favourite form of transport quick but expensive, I would hate to make an error in my Ishtar already lost one to carelessness. The reason people chose to nano their hacs in the first place is cause they tank like shite in line with their price tag so its the only viable way of fitting such an expensive ship without compromising tackling ability and its capacitor. Also I think that by nerfing Nano at the low/mid level you are removing a playstyle from the game that people use to navigate through hostiles systems and guerrilla warfare won't be part of the game. I heartily agree snakes and polies should be nerfed so as pilots can't go ludicrous speeds but the current feel of SISI is horrible, lets see if they balance it. What I currently like is I can change-up my playstyle with my current skillset one day I can fly my Neut domi and then I can fly my nano hac its two completely different styles and I can do both to some amount of proficiency I would hate for my Ishtar to feel like a glorified Vexor I like that it has it's pwn flavour.

My response to your 50-100 man Tri nano hac gang is that this is an expensive frigging fleet and of course Providence pilots wouldn't know how to handle this most of them are Drake pilots ratting and getting pwned half the time. The reason I haven't responded to this before is that I feel its an insular view of the game to keep putting tabs on one specific situation you didn't like, plus I wasn't there on that particular day so it's hard for me to give a value judgement on it. I don't know we'll see but I think it's a shame to see the HAC downgraded to having no role pretty much the way the assault frig is now & I worry also about the ability of tacklers to take on larger ships if their MWD is gonna be switched off. BSs are currently pwning HACs and BCs are pwning inties and the inertia of nano ships feels very sluggish jumping through systems is gonna take a looong time now, no more I'll be there to save your fat rorqual ASAP.... we are coming to help you, nearly there, one system my fat turtle pig is still aligning...oh you're dead hmm.... lets go shoot a POS?

If it comes in I'll deal with it. it's only a silly internet spaceship game but I still believe speed is one of the main attractions for many pilots and it's fun, much more fun than waiting two hours for a system to load and not getting on a kill cause my modules won't activate or cat n' mouse battleship fights where nobody engages in the end due to overtaktikalisin.

[Endie]

The reason I haven't responded to this before is that I feel its an insular view of the game to keep putting tabs on one specific situation you didn't like, plus I wasn't there on that particular day

(a) It's nothing to do with what i like: it's a situation that has lasted for ages, and which the devs, fortunately, agree is past being healthy.

(b) It wasn't a day it was a month (or slightly more in fact).  A whole month when CVA's advice was "don't engage, bore them, hope they go away" except for the two or three big pos ops.  CVA are good, but they quickly worked out that they simply couldn't fight back against Tri's nanoblobs, up to the 100-vaga gang that drove CVA's superb sniper fleet off the gate.

Edit: CVA, not IAC.  Too much time in Curse and Catch right now.

[Sparky]

don't engage, bore them, hope they go away"

If they nerf speed (note: not just nano setups) as is currently being proposed you'll see a hell of a lot more of that.  Who'd jump into a "snipers at optimal, tacklers on the gate" camp without overwhelming numbers post nerf?  Stupid dead people is who.  There's often not routes around these camps so we'll be seeing more logoffski or endless boring games of chicken, unless CCP also drastically reduce the size of bubbles or whatever.

[Amarr HM]

In response to (b) Still though it added/adds an interesting element to the game something you still remember obviously and it's a shame that we are going the direction of the bland to appease the masses(Caldari). Plus Tri might have used a 100 man nano gang on CVA for a month but hey fair Baldricks to them, sounds like a lot more fun than behind the lines Pulse apoc primary calling. Also people remember when Elliot Manchild flies in with his nanomachariel things like this add character to an otherwise bland glorified chatroom with knobs.

I just tried a few things on SISI I must admit I enjoyed that the dogfighting has slowed down this is something I can see working, but I do feel that the T2 overdrives and nanofibers have been nerfed beyond recognition, potentially eliminating guerrilla style warfare to the eve-history annals. The Ishtar on SISI goes from 1.5 km/s with MWD - 2km/s with nanofit & polies so nanoing isn't an option there at the moment. The only viable option in a BS slugfest scenario (ffa 1) is to turn it into a drake with Drones and Smartbombs and try and stay out of range of the Battleships using a MWD (til a Stimulus member jumped in with his Lachesis), if in a real scenario tacklers were involved my Ishtar would be rendered useless, plus I may as-well be flying a Drake.

If I'm right and in-turn HACs would be eliminated from 0.0 combat by player choice on a general basis, the way people refuse to fly muninns/Deimos regularly because they are basically a Turtle in the wrong pond, I'd like to hear why you think this is good for the game?

[apocrypha]

I have come to accept that an adjustment of speed isn't necessarily a terrible thing, but my main problem with this is still CCP's stupidly heavy-handed way of going about it.

Yes, nerfs are a fact of MMO's, particularly so in MMO's with any decent amount of pvp in them, but that doesn't change the fact that big nerfs really piss players off. A lot. Your Creature Handler comparison is a good one Endie because I remember that nerf well and I remember the number of people who just stopped playing SWG because of it. Now these proposed speed changes are nowhere near the size of the CH nerf, but they're still far too sweeping and will change far too many things along with them. Surely MMO devs know by now that avoiding huge nerfs if they can is sensible?

I'm not saying that I think swathes of people will ragequit if these changes go through as they are now, I'm just saying that I wish CCP could find a way to implement changes that were more surgical and less sledgehammer.

There is still the possibility that they're trying to use haha psychology like the carrier nerf - propose huge insane changes, wait for the uproar, dial the nerfs back a lot and then go "see, we listen to our players! We r cuddly devs!" but that approach implies an inherent dishonesty towards and disrespect of your players which would be a shame.

[Predator Irl]

There is still the possibility that they're trying to use haha psychology like the carrier nerf - propose huge insane changes, wait for the uproar, dial the nerfs back a lot and then go "see, we listen to our players!

I think you could be on to something here. The devs know everyone nanofag will kick and scream no matter what the change, so if they hit everyone with a massive shock, when the real nerf is applied they all go "Oh thank god, its not so bad".

[Endie]

In response to (b) Still though it added/adds an interesting element to the game something you still remember obviously

Sure: I went and spent more time on my GF character.  Some other people spent time on Sisi.  DF lost a quarter of our members because the newer players just died if they came to Providence.  It was great!

I do feel that the T2 overdrives and nanofibers have been nerfed beyond recognition, potentially eliminating guerrilla style warfare to the eve-history annals.

I see this from the PL guys in particular all over Eve-O: "oh noes, it's the elimination of guerilla [and, about a third of the time, "gorilla"  ] warfare", and "welcome to blob online".  The usual hyperbole.  Of course, that's just so much bollocks.  What we do in our roams is "guerilla warfare", whether we go to Tercios, or the roams through Curse and Great Wildlands, or whatever.  And we've never once had nanoships on them (invariably, even our inties have failed to catch the vagas and rapiers we've encountered and I've had to break it off because of the certainty of them dying to kiting).

Yes, our smaller ships are more vulnerable, but that's good: people use dto invincibility will, until they work out the next FOTM, have to deal with the chance that they might die.  My heart is in healthy condition over this, and not even slightly bleeding for them.

For a while at least, there will be a rock to the nano scissors.  We'll maybe be able, for example, to take small Bat Country gangs into AAA space without the absolute certainty of a massacre.  That is what is good for the game about these changes. 

Edit: And yes, aopc, I agree that the age-old MMO approach of "start heavy, then ease off" will be at play here.  But the fact is that the game will be changed substantially at the end of things, and I can't wait to see what it's like afterwards.

[Amarr HM]

Ran a Sim on SISI with nanohac gang trying to run a BS gatecamp with large bubble. My Ishtar got popped before it could get out of the bubble and align by a single pulse apoc not a single tackler in sight. I haven't even once started to say blob online but I do see this pushing in the direction of fleet survivalism & small gang or fast in fast out Guerilla warfare, is not going to be an option anymore. Also as I said HACs won't have a role anymore as they will be easy prey to T1 ships worth a third of their price or less. Hyperbole this is not.

[bhodi]

That scenario is flawed because pulse apocs are even more broken than nanohacs.

[Jayce]

There is still the possibility that they're trying to use haha psychology like the carrier nerf - propose huge insane changes, wait for the uproar, dial the nerfs back a lot and then go "see, we listen to our players!

I think you could be on to something here. The devs know everyone nanofag will kick and scream no matter what the change, so if they hit everyone with a massive shock, when the real nerf is applied they all go "Oh thank god, its not so bad".

This is the Blizzard approach, and it works.  You can call it dishonest but I call it managing expectations.  It makes sense when you consider that you never nail it on the first try, so your choices are nerf too hard and later back off (popular) or nerf too easy and later make it worse (way less popular).

[ajax34i]

What's the point of doing that, though?

If they just nerf the amount that's needed, they get the whining on the boards and some playerbase loss.

If they announce a huge over-nerf, they get a huge amount of whining on the boards, and then when they announce it's not going to be that bad, they get some more whining on the boards, plus half the community fighting the other half, with accusations of fanboy and I quit thrown about.

If they nerf a little, and they nerf a little more later, they get a little whining and then a little whining again.

[amiable]

I haven't logged on for a while, but I remember a persistent problem in EvE is that HACs in general tend to become the end-all be-all ship.  I think part of this change is an attempt by CCP to encourage more mixed fleet usage where folks roles are well defined.  HACs were designed to be small elite group operators, not fleets of wtfomgbbq pwnage.  If you want to crack an alliances defenses you need to send in a balanced fleet with a good plan, not 100 HACs with the same ship design.   

A nano ship as an individual or in a small group isn't a problem, because of the trade-offs in DPS/tank that individual ship had to make.  It becomes a problem when the number of nano's gets greatr than 30-40 or so, and are able to bring significant DPS to bear while being nigh untouchable.

[LC]

The hac falls somewhere between a cruiser and a battlecruiser now in strength. I tried out some popular tanking ishtar setups last night. I lost to the drake every time. I did very well when I changed over to a myrmidon with 78,000 effective hp though.

[kildorn]

What's the point of doing that, though?

If they just nerf the amount that's needed, they get the whining on the boards and some playerbase loss.

If they announce a huge over-nerf, they get a huge amount of whining on the boards, and then when they announce it's not going to be that bad, they get some more whining on the boards, plus half the community fighting the other half, with accusations of fanboy and I quit thrown about.

If they nerf a little, and they nerf a little more later, they get a little whining and then a little whining again.

There's something to be said for keeping the playerbase infighting amongst themselves instead of the company always playing the badguy. I don't totally agree with it, but it's a way to divert attention if every time someone flames your company they get flamed by players who think the other player is the enemy, and the whole company complaint gets derailed into uselessness.

That said, I like the idea of non nano HACs, I just think the skill requirements and materials costs of them are too high for their place in the food chain. Pretty much my same issue with AFs. They're slightly more durable versions of their T1 equivalents, but still have all the drawbacks, plus shitty insurance high costs and high skill requirements.

[Amarr HM]

Bhodi CVA pwn nano hac gangs with pulse apocs on TQ at the moment, so i think if you said that to any of them they'd greet it with it derision, I don't fly them so I don't think it's a subject I want to get into plus I think its beside the point, same thing would have happened if it was any BS/BC.

Yeah there is a good chance CCP deliberately nerfed the speed to the max to see where they could draw the line, but I don't think they have drawn the line between what is ludicrous speed and what is a sensible speed so we are left guessing and perhaps they'll find a balance somewhere where we are all happy so therefore I am going to state that I am not happy with the current speed of things on SISI, if there was a compromise between what we have there and what we have on TQ fair enough.
I would suggest they only nerf the high end speed possibilities like Snakes, polys & fleet bonuses and maybe a tiny nerf to the midrange average player possibilities like base speed, T2 modules. This way you wouldn't see the so called ludicrous speeds and it won't hugely effect the game in such a way to drastically change it. I've spoken to quite a few ppl on SISI who agree with this funnily enough all from nano alliances like Stim and SF and they have said the same thing nerf is needed but this is perhaps too extreme.

[Jayce]

I wonder if they should give a buff to afterburners, at least the T2 versions.  Right now from what I can tell there is a huge gap between the best AB and the worst MWD, which contributes to their stated problem of there being no contest when it comes to setups.

[Teleku]

There is still the possibility that they're trying to use haha psychology like the carrier nerf - propose huge insane changes, wait for the uproar, dial the nerfs back a lot and then go "see, we listen to our players!

I think you could be on to something here. The devs know everyone nanofag will kick and scream no matter what the change, so if they hit everyone with a massive shock, when the real nerf is applied they all go "Oh thank god, its not so bad".

This is the Blizzard approach, and it works.  You can call it dishonest but I call it managing expectations.  It makes sense when you consider that you never nail it on the first try, so your choices are nerf too hard and later back off (popular) or nerf too easy and later make it worse (way less popular).

Machiavelle actually talked all about this strategy in The Prince.  I think it was in the chapter where he was explaining why it was better to be feared than loved. 

Random question: Though I'm not actively playing still, I've been skilling up, and recently got myself to where I could fly a Vega.  How will these changes effect that?  Is it a big nerf to them, or are they still going to be good solo'ish/small group PvP ships?

[Phildo]

You can't nerf Amarr battleships because then the practically only redeeming value would be the Curse/Pilgrim and the Guardian.  (this is assuming that a battleship nerf effected their dreadnaught as well)

[Amarr HM]

Zealot is currently a good ship and Sacri always was, infact the nerf makes the zealot a better HAC than the vagabond.

[kildorn]

I wonder if they should give a buff to afterburners, at least the T2 versions.  Right now from what I can tell there is a huge gap between the best AB and the worst MWD, which contributes to their stated problem of there being no contest when it comes to setups.

It would be nice if ABs were slightly less cap intensive for such a relatively low speed increase.

[Endie]

Bhodi CVA pwn nano hac gangs with pulse apocs on TQ at the moment, so i think if you said that to any of them they'd greet it with it derision

That's what Bhodi said: they're even more broken (ie even more over=powerful) than nanohacs at the moment.

[Amarr HM]

Ah right at first I thought I must have misunderstood that apologies Bhodi, knowing nothing about sniping here but yeh they are pretty uber from what I can see.

Way to be a martyr for the cause eh ... one volleyed after a calamity of errors on my part, http://f13.7mph.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=2535

[Endie]

As you probably now know, nanohacs are really expensive things to fly in laggy fleet fights.  Admittedly, the lag in ZX wasn't bad - a few seconds instead of minutes - but you were a braver man than I to fly something valuable and agility-centred when there was the risk of flying in a straight line with a big sig radius...

[Amarr HM]

I wasn't actually playing at the time game kept crashing while I was with CVA hiding in a SS, so I just logged on quickly to switch skills I saw a red inty inside the CVA fleet so I (stupdily) decloaked to help, but literally one second after I did it I realised what was about to happen, when the red fleet dropped on us lag fuked me up for & some reason I tried to recloak in my panic, then wasn't aligned etc. mixture of tiredness, stupidity and extremely bad timing.

[LC]

It's a good time to start training up battlecruisers if you haven't already. You might be able to get it to 5 before the patch.

[Phildo]

I wasn't actually playing at the time game kept crashing while I was with CVA hiding in a SS, so I just logged on quickly to switch skills I saw a red inty inside the CVA fleet so I (stupdily) decloaked to help, but literally one second after I did it I realised what was about to happen, when the red fleet dropped on us lag fuked me up for & some reason I tried to recloak in my panic, then wasn't aligned etc. mixture of tiredness, stupidity and extremely bad timing.

Logoffski time!

[apocrypha]

Well I'd certainly be happy if this indirectly boosted battlecruisers. They're nice ships imo - cheap and versatile.

"Managing expectations" is a good way of looking at it Jayce, I like it. The more I think about it (and the more I read this thread) the more I'm mellowing on the whole thing. It really doesn't affect me greatly (apart from maybe slightly devaluing the Minmatar pvp character I'm training up to sell) and if it means I start using battlecruisers more then that's cool with me.

[Pezzle]

I remember the 100 Vagas.  They reshipped to avoid a standup fight and entirely negate being catchable (and beatable).  I also know the balance problems that arise with pulse apocs (so do the rest of us in CVA).  How long before CCP changes it?  I do not know.  The nano craze has been out of control for a good long time, the pulse apoc does not have the same game impact.   

The nano change HAD to happen.  This has been a long long long time coming.  My objection to the nano craze has never been simply the speed.  ISK does not equal balance in EVE.  Ship classes were made entirely obsolete.  Risk vs reward etc.  Ships need roles.  Blurring the lines a bit is ok.  Obliterating the lines and peeing on the heads of those flying something else is not. 

I am not sure if the proposed changes are entirely correct, but as a very well trained inty pilot I can tell you something has to be done.  At least part of the change is in the right direction.