f13.net

New dev blog (http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=574) about heavily nerfing speed, with discussion here (http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=831524).

This has the potential to be a disaster IMO.

1) It's very heavy-handed. I know this is a CCP trait, but why don't the try small changes for once, instead of massive nerfs?
2) It's too late. A lot of people have spent enormous amounts of ISK to get their speeds and are going to be very pissed off.
3) Because of 1) it has the possibility to fuck up lots of other things at the same time.
4) It's also not necessary since even "ludicrous speeds" are counterable if you have good tactics and good organisation.
5) It's yet another example of CCP caving in to the loudest whiners. What'll be the next whine target?

And no, I don't fly "ludicrous" nano setups, in fact I hardly fly any nano ships at all, my pvp character is actually a logistics specialist :p

Makes no odds to me anyway, I binned the idea of nanofaggotry in favor of sitting at a gate taking all they can give, holding em and beating the living crap out of em... old skool style  :-)

Speaking as someone who flies (almost) universally un-nanoable Caldari ships and who snipes and does ECM, my tears will be hard to detect.

Edit: I just realised the Eve-O tears on this one will make the carrier nerf seem like a minor tiff.  I cannot wait.

Oh christ this. And that was enough to stop the carrier nerf completely... so chances are high the same will happen here :p

Actually, it only stopped (postponed?) the last part of the carrier nerf.  Carriers still got nerfed pretty well in a few ways (just before I got mine vOv.

Anyway, i see that they intend to speed up the slower EAFs, increase the base MWD speed of assault frigates by about 40%, increase the base MWD speeds of frigates by 750 at the slowest end and 250 at the highest and other great stuff for younger pilots.  You'll still be able to run nanogangs, but with cheaper ships that cannot bring more firepower as well as speed than your enemy can muster at reasonable notice.

Interdictors' slowest mwd speeds are also increasing.  Judging by the way the bottom end of the spread is closing up I am guessing that Caldari are going to be brought up a bit.  Also sweet for me.  Fuck all of yall.

From looking at their chart, though, I don't think they realise just how fast some recons like rapiers can go at the moment.

Edit: Hells yeah the web speed modifier will be cut down to about 50%.  All the better for Bat frigate gangs, which can bring plenty but suffer less from each.  And scramblers will cut off your MWD too, which I always thought made logical sense.

Also 14 Pandemic Legion whine-posts in the first two pages  :geezer:

 :grin: :awesome_for_real: :grin: :awesome_for_real:

Lol yeah I noticed that! Their chart only seems to go up to about 4.5k/sec, which is pretty small potatoes nano-wise.

Holy crap, Kin Rha just got his rapier and they go and nerf webbers.

On the upside, I can fly an arazu with a couple more weeks' training, which with the new, overheated, MWD-killing scrams is going to be lovely, and will work about twice as well as a web at slowing down the same ship, I think?

I don't think anyone will use a nano-setup anymore if it's impossible to outrun missiles designed for your ship class.  That seemed to be the only reason why anyone would be so nuts as to pay 4 billion on implants and gear to outfit a cruiser-level ship.  It's the same reasoning as why no one puts BPO's in a research POS and instead keeps the originals in an invulnerable NPC station.

I think CCP is going for "you pay more, you get more damage reduction due to your speed", but I don't think anyone's gonna go for the exorbitant prices that the top end stuff costs anymore.  Even when prices crash and it all costs a lot less, doubt anyone will go for it.


I think their charts (both of them) only show speeds based on having a T2 MWD fitted, so, no officer gear, no snakes, and no rigs.  As such, it's hard to really see what the top speed has been reduced to.  We'll know soon enough, I suppose.

EDIT:  I kinda agree with the replies in that whine thread on EVE-O that say it'll be a pain to try to get in range for blasters with these changes.  Maybe they need to make the MWD shut down at the end of its cycle, rather than as soon as it gets hit by a warp field, so blaster ships can hit it once and get in range.  It would also make it easier to get out of bubbles, though I don't think 1 MWD cycle will be enough to get a big ship out of a bubble.

Personally, I'd love to see webifiers and warp disruptors have the same ranges as dampeners and ECM.  30km+ (with the specialized ships being able to push these modules to 100km ranges).  If they're gonna nerf webbers to 50% effectiveness, might as well give them range.  But, I don't know what effects this would have on the balance of combat, so shrug, not gonna suggest it anywhere official.

Webbers to 50-60% should be fine considering the slower speeds and non-nano ships. Double-webber rapiers should still be useful.

This nerf is going to make the pulse apoc (and it's cousins the harbinger and zealot) go from godly to OH MY GOD RAPE MACHINE. This goes for *anything* with large optimals and good tracking. With the age of nano gone, anything that warps in from 70km-100km is going to be pretty much invincible.

I don't like this.  I was just getting used to fighting (and beating) nanogangs.  And nerfing webs seems like a really, really bad idea unless they do increase the range, which still seems like a really bad idea.

Yep, one of my first thoughts was: "Woot!  My eagle!"  Followed by "Woot!  My falcon!" and "Woot!  My ares!" due to the scram boost and its bonuses.  Even my never-used-in-anger Cerberuses (all three of them in various places) get boosted, partly because they're not so outclassed on pace, and partly because I can hit from a long way and don't care about tracking.

Heavily minnie alliances are giong to be crying into their online-escort-agency-pimps' shoulders however: UK, Stim and Star Fraction.

This is sweet, sweet music to my ears.  :rimshot: It totally makes sense and I can see pvp'ing becoming far more balanced and down to pilot skill rather than who can get away when things don't go to plan.

Another thing I hope to see from this is a heavy weakening of the nanofag alliances like AAA. When this kicks in it may be an ideal time for us to go south with all guns blazing.

Oh and the Arazu as pointed out elsewhere is about to become a better tackler than the rapier which is cool cause I was considering training for em, now I'm definite, woot drone interfacing V in six days.

Essentially with a T2 scrambler an Arazu can web AND scram at 24 km, faction/overheat/links anything up to 45 km.

1. I heartily agree maybe they should design a new game called "not EVE"
2. Ho hum
3. Yes more patchieness
4. Yes I posted this elsewhere : with the right tactics and derring do vagas and other fast ships are easy to catch by wily inty pilots.
5. See mostly dicks post on the Eve-o forums its a fukin nightmare for intelligent people to make remarks and then get trolled by complete fuked in the head little geek-snot neckbearders. Essentially they should look elsewhere for opinions on their game cause its their forums that are doing the damage in this respect.

This is also a boost to lowsec pirate gangs, since a target can't typically burn back to the gate jump back through when ganked.  Unless people start equipping T2 afterburners instead of MWD, but then they may not be able to survive the trip.

Overall, I don't like it, because it does sound to me like the whiners are winning. It's typical of PvP games really - whatever is most fun, and often interesting to counter, kills the most people by sheer number of people using it, so the perception is that they're unbalanced and whiners raise the hue and cry so loud that the devs end up caving.

Heh, the EVE-O comments thread linked in the original post here exploded to 37 pages (30,000 views, 1000 replies) in the 7 hours since it's been posted.

Strange, I was just thinking the same thing.  Finished Recon 4 about 30 minutes ago.  The Dev's must have noticed this and figured "If THIS guy finally figured it out..."   (Its not uncommon for me to arrive late to the party in online games.)

However, on the up side, I don't have snakes, thermodynamics (yet), faction MWD's or the other ultra-speed capabilities, so maybe the nerf will give me a better chance to catch those that do.  I'm also not too terribly far from training a sniper Huginn when the situation calls for it, and of course, my Stilletto's and Assault Frigs might actually become more useful.

Speaking of Kin Rha... 2 more days of intense study and (assuming I pass the test) I'll start having more free time to use the thing.

This devblog was worth it for the drama generated alone.

Anything that slows down speeds in EvE sounds good to me ('Corse I stopped playing right at the point I had the skills to fly all the Minmater Speed ships).

This is interesting. Not entirely what I would have done, but close. We will see when the final numbers come out.

I'm on the fence with the exact figures used for OD, poly, nano, but the all the nerfs (and boosts) are inline with what I want. The web changes and scrambler changes are too much, I think. The rapid deployment change makes me sadface.

Woot blobs online

edited for some content:  I'm sure Pathetic Legion and all other nanofags will adapt - but even so it sucks to yet again see CCP cave into whiners who refuse to crosstrain and want PVP made simpler and less interesting.

I'm sorry, but when you can makes ships so fast it starts breaking the game's physics engine, it's probably time for a nerf or three.  :grin:

Sure but it's only a few setups that do that and tweaking snakes would fix all of them without nerfing speed setups across the board.  I'll wait and see but it's looking like a huge nerf is inc.

The one thing I have to say to all this is LOL to all the fools who argued with Gouminondong 2 months back about cruisers vs frigates.

No matter how eloquent his words, or how detailed his pictures and tables were they spent 10 pages in a thread saying cruisers didn't overlap with frigates when it comes to speed.

I'm glad CCP has vindicated our sentiments and are now going to change the base speed of ships.

Going from:

Frigates   1750-2950ms
Cruisers   1350-1750ms
Stealthbombers   800-1200ms
HACs      1450-1800ms
EAS      2550-2900ms
FRecon      1300-1650ms


To

Frigates   2450-3250ms
Cruisers   1350-1750ms
Stealthbombers   1550-1800ms
HACs      1450-1800ms
EAS      2700-2900ms
FRecon      1300-1650ms

Is awesome but as much as I wanted this change CCP needs to look at turrets. I'm not an expert on how tracking works but with the new speeds and the modifications to webs frigate ships of all sizes should be invulnerable to BS. Making them immune to BS turrets ensures the viability of cruisers but I have my doubts on medium turrets being up to the task and it is hypocritical to make changes partially because of the nanoimmunity to missles and most attack drones when those changes create new immunities.



They also need to think about bubbles. WCS should decrease the impact of scramblers to a small degree.

I'm actually dissappointed about the change to polycarbs. I thought they were overpowered in relation to the other rigs that only affected velocity or agility but by fixing polys they also had to change nanofibers which I always thought weren't that hot in general.

Don't count your chickens

I'm on the fence, as a guy that used to run battleship/ command ship gangs and nano fag gangs. Now you have eliminated one playstyle. I say nerfing polycarbs and maybe knocking off 100% of the thruster bonus from all MWDs would have toned things down some. Ah well.

I'm sure glad I spent the last 3 months cross training minmatar ships.

And the now useless Acceleration Control V



But anyway, who is going to fly Minny ships now?

The more I think about this, the more Im not sure it is a good thing (even for a caldari pilot). I like the sounds of the warp scram killing the MWD, but nerfing the speed is going to have a massive effect on the game. Each race has its own strengths, except maybe the poor Amarr chappies, but what is going to be the attraction to Mini now?

What would have been more effective would have been to nerf the speed (or other advantage for other races) if you are cross-trained out of your own race, as from what I understand there are more people using the caldari race than any other. In other words, races fly their own ships better than other races.

The attraction for Amarr pilots was the ability of pulse Apocalypses to wreck nanogangs.  Which won't be necessary now, so everyone should crosstrain to Gallente for the Megathron which is a way cooler ship anyhow.

The age of the Fleet Domi is upon us! TREMBLE IN FEAR.

Or something.

From this thread:

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=833782&page=21#606


Even with the nerf to missile damage vs small stuff I bet that hawks will be way better.  With that, their speed boost and the slowing of the enemy it is looking likely that I will actuallly do the unthinkable and train assfrigs to 5.

I really enjoy flying a Harpy and can't wait to see what this does to it.  Might even make flying a blaster harpy viable.  Orbit at 5km with AB on and do 200+ dps in an AF!  :awesome_for_real:

Actually haven't tried a Hawk yet.

It's good to see they are looking into tracking as well. And while I'm just about ready to move to t2 minmatar cruisers, I kind of like what they are doing here.

As a t2 Minmatar cruiser pilot, I can honestly say I won't covet the nano-Ishtar any more.

Nano ishes were sexy bishes

Tried out my nano ishtar on singularity last night. I fought a friend who was in a torp raven. I lost 5 out of 5 fights. It wasn't even a contest. I got raped.

RIP nano ishtar

Yeah I could have told you that before you started... isn't that right Amarr  :nda:   LoL

CCP have been saying that missile explosion radius and velocity will be nerfed.  I imagine they'll want everything to do at least a little damage, though vOv.

Ah FFS, if they nerf missiles they're gonna kill caldari altogether! As it is, missiles do way less damage than blasters and autocannons. Where is that gonna leave us?

Hm, I'm seeing a trend here.  Gallente FOTM?

No it won't: these changes are a massive buff to missile users right now.  A nerf to explosion radius and velocity would just be to stop LC's ishtar getting relentlessly popped by the mission-runner sitting on an undock with a torp raven.

Although I must admit it would be wonderfully ironic seeing ratting-fit raven pilots saying "cry sum moar" and "lrn2play nub" in local to the people who have spent a year saying "our ships aren't broken, adapt or die noobs" to others.

See, this is an interesting can of worms.  Instead of making one or two small tweaks, they're CHANGING EVERYTHING!  If they nerf explosion radius, msisile velocity, gun tracking, etc., then nanos will be just as effective as before and nothing will change except that now my battleship won't be able to hit regular cruisers either.

fukfuk fukfuk fukity fukfuk fukit  :tantrum:

Where you belong? Empire AFK runnin level 3 missions.

If adapt or die means that I have to revert my training to fly a craphouse turtle Battleship everywhere then I'm gonna put up a serious whine. Are they gonna bring up T2 insurance cause I think it will be more worthwhile fly a vexor from now on if my Ishtar doesn't have the survivability I have trained it for.


Yeh Pred was testing his torp raven on my Ishtar I hadn't notice my cap had run out and my MWD switched off which basically meant my Ishtar got two volleyed. So bad enough that it crumbles with MWD switched off CCP have made it so its pants with MWD switched on aswell doesn't bodewell with me. At least the old way noob pilots could be given a task of tackling an ishtar which is pretty much defenseless against tacklers now its defensless against carebears.

I never will understand why they make these tweaks.  Maybe nanos are overpowered now, maybe they're not.  People who have the skills do fly other ships now sometimes, so they are clearly not an IWIN button.

Making all these changes, and the changes necessitated by the changes, and the changes' changes' changes will introduce a crazy amount of risk that someone else finds some super powered combo and/or makes something else almost obsolete.

Give me "the devil you know" any day.  Yet, every development house does this - makes sweeping changes to address some minor issue and runs the risk of screwing up their mechanics even worse, but in another direction.

I say they should just introduce the changes to webs and scrams the whole thing is wayyy to much. Are CCP saying that their game is pants and they are losing subscribers?

You are right in the 'don't change something that isn't broken' department even when nanohacs were obviously stronger than intended and you are right that they are opening pandora's box with all these new changes. But I like a rebalancing like this, it keeps things fresh and forces people to adapt to a new playing field, leading to new tactics and new setups. As long as they don't pull a SWG and rip the heart out of the game, rebalancing like they intend to do keeps things exiting for me.

I might be way off on this but they have talked about introducing new ships after they managed to better define the roles of the existing ones (especially making assfrigg/ewar frigs more useful), so maybe this change is a prelude to the introduction of new ships.

I'd say they make these big changes partly for the lead programmer who expressed such disappointment over the CSM proposals not bringing any sweeping changes. It's pretty obvious he likes big challenging projects and finds the mundane task of fixing bugs and polishing code to be beneath him. I used to work with a programmer like that. The only way to actually get product out of him was to assign him a couple of clean-up programmers who finished and fixed what he wrote.

Someone like that wouldn't be lead long in my organization.  Massive changes to game mechanics because of ennui?  Professional.

Quotin' myself. Just saying.

CCP *always* overdo everything. EVE is such a finely balanced game and they come along with fucking sledgehammers and fuck everything up. It's very depressing that they never EVER learn and adjust things slowly, carefully, gingerly.

EVE.... an awesome game that has to be regularly defended from it's own devs.

The 8 guys in a garage mentality is harder to break than you think.

oo god...the gingers....

Just been on SISI using my nano-ishtar I jumped into FFA got pwned by four battleships though I was orbiting at full speed (2km/s). Oh well the fun is over I guess we gotta sit like turtles and taktikalise. Any other good MMOs out there?

Thats the problem, there isn't shit else.

What? Don't want to play WoW after WOTLK?

I can see it already, chat will be -

[Player1] Death Knight LFG.
[Player2] Death Knight LFG.
[Player3] Death Knight LFG.
[Player4] Death Knight LFG.
[Player5] Death Knight LFG.
[Player6] Death Knight LFG.
[Player7] Death Knight LFG.
[Player8] Death Knight LFG.
[Player9] Death Knight LFG.
[Player10] LFM, FULL ON DEATH KNIGHTS

I heard tabula rasa shoots your sperm into space.

I played Tabula Rasa in beta and it made me not bother buying it when it was released.  :heartbreak:

Same here, but I had a good time for a while. At some point they managed to totally screw up balance and it was as if I was the guy in quake with the rocket launcher while everyone was on slow pills. It sure was entertaining for a while, I was running through an mmo in god mode.

I can very much pinpoint where the game died for me. I was having a very good time, after the initial trouble with the movement keys, the introduction into the gameworld was really well done although I didn't get the whole rune thing. The fact the mobs would keep spawning landing  all over the place made for a good atmosphere and I was really enjoying myself until I got the quest to kill ten boars.
My initial tough was 'haha, great parody' but then I had to spawncamp those boars for 45 minutes to complete my quest and the game died on me.

Ops, got a bit carried away there.
yea, nano's.
They are almost tougher cruisers now, aren't they.

The difference will be in the time it takes to move: 15km back to the gate, 20km out of the bubble. These will become significantly longer.

I want to see whether an AB HAC can keep an orbit up on a BS while within web range for damage reduction. Perhaps someone is reporting on that, but I am too lazy to sift through forum posts.

Well Ive been on SISI and I confirm if things are the way it stands HACs are near useless in Nano form. Which is great if that's what you really wanted, it's kinda like batman killing the joker and then wondering why his life suddenly became dull.

100+mil isk cruisers with slightly better resists.

Quotin' dis.  I like to read about tactics when I take a break from working for 20 minutes.  I like to theorycraft in my head in order to take my mind off the last 100 metres of vertical ascent when on the hills.  The game had stratified and things had become staid.  I like change, and the fact that some people don't like adapting just adds a certain piquancy to the mix.  It's not as if real life sees warfare become static and immutable: pretty soon your hitherto unbeatable phalanx is going to meet a legion (insert "you see, Eve is a lot like..." here).

I'm with Raph and his Theory of Fun here: finding the pattern and getting good at it is great, but then you need a change at that point or else you eventually get bored, no matter how high your wtrange, game-enabled sense of self-esteem.  Of course, MMOs do sometimes attract the sort of people who rather enjoy repetition, and who will find and grind the path of least resistance.  But the problem is that even they - with the joy of repeatedly and effortlessly pwnzoring Bruce's remote rep gangs (which should have been a valid counter, although they weren't and were therefore dumb because of that) - don't realise the freshness is gone until they unsub.

New ships would be great. Lots of them. I've got an enormous stockpile of datacores that I can't be bothered to go and collect while the prices are so low and the only thing I can think of that'll raise their prices is a whole load of new things for people to want to invent :D

Well from a purely Caldari perspective (I KNOW, I KNOW, but hear me out) the problem with nano ships isn't that they go way faster than us, its the fact that if you put for example a cerb vs a vaga, we all know the outcome every time and its nothing to do with skill.

The problem is, the nano's can't be HIT, let alone damaged. They aren't speed "tanked", the are speed "invincible" which is not a fair fight in anyone's books. Yes I think the nerf is a great idea, but from what I've read CCP have overdone it as usual.

IMO they should only nerf the speed (or increase the ability to hit them) to a point only where they have equal resistance to damage as their tanked counterparts. But the problem with CCPs approach is that they listen to all the whiners until they will get to the point where there wont be any variations between any of the races.

I'm waiting for the stuff Nozh was talking about to get fixed before passing any judgment.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

(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.

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.

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?

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.

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".

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 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"  :uhrr:] 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.

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.

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

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.  :awesome_for_real:

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?

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)

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

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

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

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

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...

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.

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.

Logoffski time!

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.

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.

Yeh that would have worked too anything but what I actually did would have worked.

Making battlecruisers awesome for pvp while creating an entertaining and rewarding niche for those who fly hac's would be a brilliant move to close the gap between younger and older players. If they can balance this right it could do wonders for their player retention.

What's up with battlecruisers?  I think I missed something.

They've been the bastard stepchildren of the ship classes since the beginning.  Big enough to take full damage from battleship weapons, not fast enough to dodge them, and not enough firepower to dominate cruisers the way destroyers do against frigates.  Since Invention dropped the price of HAC's enough to make them something other than a mission-runner's toy and Carriers took over for running Gang modules in fleets, they've been pretty much useless.

--Dave

Figures that I only just now bought an Ishtar.  I'm contemplating putting it back up on the market.  I'd never meant to nano it, was gonna use it as a speedier Dominix for mission running, but if HACs are hurting that bad on Sisi I'm inclined to scrap my designs of flying an Ishtar and Zealot.  I can fly battleships; going around in a HAC was just an expensive fondness for cruisers and their agility mingled with a desire for something closer to a battleship's tank.

They might be useful as anti-frigate support in a fleet after the nerf. The problem will be cost effectiveness. A battlecruiser will have more survivability, and about the same firepower. You lose around $120 - 150 mil every time a hac gets popped, or 20 - 50 mil when a BC pops. Which one would you rather fly?

Seems they have fixed the inertia on SISI non nano ships aren't effected anymore which is a really good thing and nano ships feel a bit more like the old style with just less speed so this is a good compromise so far. I ran an armor tanking Ishtar in FFA1 I managed to 1v1 two zealots and a devoter before getting blobbled so its an improvement.

This might tickle you, Amarr's carebear whine example number 1

[ 2008.08.07 12:01:38 ] Amarr Holymight > Was there changes to the inertia?
[ 2008.08.07 12:03:45 ] Kepakh > yes
[ 2008.08.07 12:08:34 ] Amarr Holymight > oh good
[ 2008.08.07 12:14:38 ] Kepakh > well, it depends..
[ 2008.08.07 12:15:09 ] Amarr Holymight > on?
[ 2008.08.07 12:18:10 ] Kepakh > You warp faster so it will be difficult to catch anything....along with ludicrous speed we got now...
[ 2008.08.07 12:20:43 ] Amarr Holymight > Don't be a noob
[ 2008.08.07 12:21:13 ] Kepakh > huh?
[ 2008.08.07 12:22:32 ] Amarr Holymight > Faster warping affects every ship in the game not just these guys going ludicrous speeds
[ 2008.08.07 12:23:01 ] Amarr Holymight > Don't nerf the game just cause you want to catch some guys who keep running away from you learn how to tackle instead
[ 2008.08.07 12:23:12 ] Kepakh > ...
[ 2008.08.07 12:23:40 ] Kepakh > Seems like you are the first time on Sisi since patch was applied..
[ 2008.08.07 12:23:57 ] Amarr Holymight > Nope been on it plenty
[ 2008.08.07 12:24:24 ] Kepakh > Well, you can try to catch me when 50km away
[ 2008.08.07 12:24:53 ] Amarr Holymight > Your on SISI bro it's not a real game scenario
[ 2008.08.07 12:25:18 ] Kepakh > Huh?
[ 2008.08.07 12:27:27 ] Kepakh > I am gonna fit AB+Scram+Web and just start warping away lauching at you burning your cap while MWDing towards me with ludicrous 1.5km/s speed. If you still manage to put a point on me, I will just laugh even harder when turning tank+neuts on you...
[ 2008.08.07 12:27:47 ] Kepakh > that is patch supported gameplay..
[ 2008.08.07 12:28:21 ] Kepakh > laughing*
[ 2008.08.07 12:29:03 ] Amarr Holymight > Get a life

Tinfoil hats at the ready...


http://www.eve-search.com/thread/601088/page/7#190

I imagine that they realised how much time to fine-tune these are going to take, and didn't want to block other releases ion the meantime.  Forking would be... undesirable.

I threw a fit together last night to see what they were talking about its a Crow with max speed fit does about 52km/s then I looked at all the ways of reducing it to 20km/s or around without effecting the game for everyone.

Domination Overdrive Injector
Domination Overdrive Injector
Domination Overdrive Injector

Gistii A-Type 1MN MicroWarpdrive

Polycarbon Engine Housing II
Polycarbon Engine Housing II

Heres my suggestions

First change x-boosters to only effect sig radius as suggested in blog seems like good tradeoff.
This brings it down to...
43.9km/s

Change Polycarbons Mass -10% for T2 & Mass -5% for T1 they were overpowered in the first place.

36.6km/s

Skill: Skirmish Warfare - 10% velocityBonus split this to -5% velocity and -5% inertia bonus

34.9km/s

Module: Skirmish Warfare Link - Rapid Deployment 28.81% (Nozh wrote 38.8%) speedFactor reduce this to 18%, it was way high to begin with.

31km/s

Pirate Implants - Snake - 53.63% velocityBonus change to circa 45% won't make them useless
Shaqil's speed enhancer - 8% speedFactor leave it
Zors custom navigation 5% speedFactor - change to effect some other attribute like inertia or sig radius

26.5km/s

Nanofiber Internal Structure -  -12.5% massBonus
Overdrive Injector System - 22% velocityBonus change to 17%

23.9km/s

Overheating

Overheating MWD - speedFactor +50% change to 33%

Voila

21.3km/s

Overheating isn't viable ship option only lasts for short burts so the base speed of this ship is 16.5km/s that sounds pretty inline with a ship & pod that costs 10billion. Ludicrous speed is reduced over 50% without affecting Eve too much.

A Vaga with similar setup is reduced to 18.5 km/s from 35km/s. The high end setups cost billions and are only availaible to people with ridiculous cash to blow and alts/buddies with uber gang skills so in the rarest of rare occasions you will see a crow do 16.5km/s (21.9 w/overheating) sounds fair to me and not physics engine breaking I would imagine.

Guess I should hold on to a few of my ishtars.

Wow a new LC avatar!

It was inevitable.

Wow a new Slay avatar!


Ganking for God and Country.

America, fuck yeah!

My concern with all of this is that I'm not sure why we care about Crows going 52 km s^-1.

Are fast interceptors really a problem?


Imo they need to leave the modules well alone, add somekind of universal penalty curve to top speeds (something similar to the stacking penalty eg. top speeds of 5k are reduced by 20%, top speeds of 10k are reduced by 40%, and so on the way up). Then exempt interceptors from the penalty. Job done.

This.



Hey, I figured with the Olympics and shit...represent the U S of A !!!!

Eldaec did you read nozh's blog? Who are this we?


I used a crow as an example of the fastest ship going the fastest speed if I could get that down to a more palatable speed then it would obviously filter down through all ship types preventing ludicrous speeds across the board. I wasn't saying any particular ship is a problem merely trying to prevent ludicrous speed


This is easy speed up drones and missiles aswell as slowing down ships don't just go straight for the jugular vOv.

Also note Nozh's blog is full of hyberbole and misinformation I don't know who the guy is but he doesn't sound like he knows much about Eve as its played currently.


Who told him this cause they lied to him.


There's no way a HAC can outrun an interceptor with the current system and you could have twenty interceptors for the price of a HAC what system of logic is this guy using here to draw this conclusion. For instance I could say, why buy a battleship when I could buy a carrier its more durable and tanks way more? something has to be done about these carriers being better than battleships or noone will use battleships anymore!

Also note when I said Crow as fastest ship I meant fastest shiptype before the pedant brigade steps in.

What!

In!

The!

Fuck!

When I left the game, I think it is almost two years now, it was considered a feat to push interceptors to 10-12km/s. Now it's 50km/s? How fucked up did the game become by now?!

The only crow going 52km/sec is the one that is fitted with 6 billion worth of mods.

In other words, they don't exist except on sisi to win speed records.

Not only that but it needs a high-SP buddy in a command ship (specifically a Claymroe) in the system with him to pass on more ridiculous speed bonuses.

And the Crow is not one of the faster interceptors.  Try it with a Claw some time.

I still don't know why I care that someone can spend hundreds of millions of ISK to get something that might as well not be there.

What the fuck is an interceptor going to do to anyone whilst travelling at Mach 153?

The minimum orbital radius at that speed is around double the ship's targeting range.

On a flyby you'd be in the interceptor's targeting range for approximately 1.5 seconds, disruptor range for 1.0 seconds, and weapons range for more or less 0.5 seconds. I don't care that I can't hit that guy because he can't do shit to me either.


tbh, I'm not convinced there is any sub-light speed that could make an interceptor overpowered.

Now if you could get down to sub-half-second align time along with crazy speed, things might get interesting. Equally if you could start to get into the range of 10^15 m/s top speed, that would be cool, at that point interstellar direct flight starts to become practical.

Sader is the fastest whats ur point?

Just that you can conceivably get an interceptor even faster than the one you posted.  Just reiterating what I was talking about in corp the other day for t'others to see.

Ah ok ;) yeh sader does 60km/s think claw does 58km/s thats prolly the max speed possible.

What Eldaec means, I think, is that the blog was directed mainly at cruiser-class ships that could move at frigate-class speeds and maneuvrability.  10-billion-ISK theorycrafted crows that orbit far outside disruptor and weapons range aren't really a threat to anyone, beyond being nice scouts.  CCP say that the point of this is that they want ships to be hittable by the drones and weapons that were designed to engage them, which seems fair.

I'm all for the nanonerf, I'd much rather fly t1 ships than spend 200mil+ on a rigged HAC.  Those 200mil losses fucking hurt, even when you've got 3 commas in your wallet.

Ah if that's case apologies Eldaec, I just see it as a nerf to Ludicrous speeds but there is some amount of divergence on the HAC/cruiser class ship.

Pretty much.

And the blog is right about HACs.

It's just silly to be also nerfing things that are already balanced even at 116000 mph.

Well if you means HACs then I disagree if you mean Vagabonds then fair enough.

I didn't think the nano problem was with the speed of interceptors.  I thought the problem was HAC's that were able to engage and disengage at will which provides a disproportionate advantage?

This is just conjencture please provide evidence.

Are you saying that the point of nanohacs is not to dictate the terms of the engagement?

No I'm saying that people are making suppostions that the blog was based on these statements without showing me any hard evidence. Also all I'm reading in the blog is that ludicrous speeds need to be nerfed, so I'm presuming til someone proves otherwise your comments are conjecture or maybe you have some inside knowledge you aren't willing to share.

Nano-HACs are EDIT: made to dictate engagements. They aren't designed for DPS (which they do pretty good at) or tanks. The are awesome for deep roams in enemy territory where being slow = being blobbed. They are expensive, and very effective. Their expense is countered by the fact that you can escape many situations.

The rich heavy PVP guys will just find another way to dominate less coordinated groups, be it command ship / recon gangs, Turtle BS gangs, w/e.

A nerf was in order, but I don't agree with killing an entire playing style.

Fuck off.  Everything you have said is conjecture, it's all conjecture.  The point of fact is that super fast interceptors don't do anything that bothers anyone while super-fast HAC's are overpowered.

I'm not using conjecture I dissected the blog & used quotes from it to formulate an opinion or maybe you don't have enough command over the english language to understand what conjecture means. Oh wait ....

Unfortunately, given your point, you fucked up that quote pyramid rather spectacularly...  :grin:

ouch busy watching the return of the premiership!

Anyway I think what I'm saying is your points would sound less filled with conjecture if you could somehow put forward an argument based on the blog rather than the reasons you particularly want to see a speed nerf. It just sounds like you are grasping at straws here and I am failing miserably at quoting you  :why_so_serious:

The worrying aspects I see in the blog are:

1) They seem to think that the threat of nano ships is that they can't be hit whilst in range, but really the threat is that they can choose to be in or out of range almost instantly.

2) They seem to think that speed is a problem in many ship classes, where actually it is just (particular) HACs.

I'm now confused on whether Amarr is saying HACs aren't a problem (barring vagabonds), or saying interceptors are a problem as well as HACs, or that he's just saying CCP thinks anything that flies faster than missles is bad, or that he thinks anything faster than a missle is bad.

I agree that the blog says CCP think anything flying faster than missles is bad. I disagree with the blog.

Eldaec my stance would be that HACs are only a little too fast, I agree polies are overpowered and that the amount of stacking possible to speed is way over the top so I'm not against a Nano nerf as long as it is treated liberally and it doesn't affect certain parts of the game. My interceptor experiment could have been applied to a HAC it wasn't to suggest that any particular ship is a problem but to demonstrate a way of reducing mid-high end speeds without affecting the average pilot I merely happened to use an interceptor that's all.

The same changes applied to a Vaga reduces it from 44km/s -19km/s and an Ishtar goes from 23km/s - 10km/s (roughly speaking). So what I've noticed is that only the Vaga can reach speeds where the shipclass boundaries are muddled. On an aside I do not agree that a ship being able to choose his terms of engagement is a problem if it can be countered with some ingenuity and I'm not sure wherein the problem starts here. Falcons are probably the worst arbitrator of this kind of behaviour and they hardly use speed at all.

10km Ishtars? Theory crafting is all fine and good but.....

WTF kinda implants you running?  Anyways, I know guys that flew with full snakes and lost em....I think if you put billions into your head, take them into hostile space and risk them, that it is ok to get a bit of an advantage.

Shit, I'd like to see a 43km/s vaga.  My 200M ISK vaga setup went around 7 iirc.

(http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd50/jam3ie/vaga-1.jpg)

Just add 20% for the x-instinct booster then speed is 41.76 km/s to be exact.

Heh, if someone wants to fly that, I say go right ahead.

Even Reg could only afford to lose a couple of those.

The ship isn't the expensive part - its the full snakes with shaqils

Well yeah, and if you just got your 40km/s vaga popped, theres a pretty good chance you can kiss your pod goodbye.

43 km/s ship... and people don't want a nerf?  :cry2:

Come on. With faction/officer gear, there is plenty of completely ridiculous shit that you can do. That doesn't mean that the game is broken.

For example, here's a wyvern that permatanks 10178 DPS and twenty-one T2 heavy neuts. A 22nd will break the cap recharge, but it will take more than an hour.
(http://www.filedump.net/dumped/wyvern1219068403.jpg)

Or a claymore...
(http://www.filedump.net/dumped/claymore1219068514.jpg)

Jaysus that Claymore is badass.

Yes, but since it has better fittings than Shrike's titan, it's a touch theoretical...

Since we are theorycrafting itt, depending on what the projected effects are, it should be improvable.  It only has a squad commander, whereas with a wing commander and a fleet commander as well, each in caldari (7.5% bonus per level to shields), amarr (7.5% bonus per level to cap recharge) and gallente (7.5% bonus per level to armour amount) titans running each position you can boost the tank even further.  That's also less theoretical than the crazy fittings on that: I've been on ops with three titans in ang (albeit only two types).  I dunno if they combine, but I suspect they do, rather than the titan needing to be FC.

Ok I hadn't really looked at it before but the web changes have screwed up Large turrets to some extent. You can now fit a BC with an afterburner orbit a BS at 500m and you won't be hit for anything by the large turrets as long as you maintain a speed of 100ms+ This is even better if you are in a HAC & AFs and inties will also be able to do it though drone damage will probably kill you. I'm not sure how missiles will work at that range though I imagine they are probably still fine.

I noticed you almost need no tank now to rat. I do my stuff in an Ishtar with AB and the BS rats can't hit me for shit (even with missiles). I'm armor tanked and the only time I actually go below 50% shield is when there's several cruiser rats shooting at me. Me like.

If you have an AB on your BC, you're never going to make it to 500m in order to avoid their turrets

Not necessarily true depends from where you start if you get a dropin right next to BS or similar ocurrence by the time he gets lock you'll be right on him and anyway these days you can always use a MWD and an Afterburner. But I do see it's not exactly a fully workable situation even though you are tanking his turrets you're pretty much condemned to fighting til the death or til reinforcements etc..

Not necessarily true in a cruiser or frigate. In a BC though, you're not going to make it.

Ok here's my reasoning generally a close range fight, say at a gate, starts with two pilots locking and approaching each other. So if one ship is going 800m/s (battleship) and the other 1.2km/s (battlecruiser) by the time the battleship locks it 4.5 seconds x 2 km/s = 9kms, now we won't take into account momentum because align time slows the process down. So now the BC has only to tank damage for another 1-2 km @ 200m/s 5-10 seconds. Altough if you are the battleship pilot and think quick enough you can of course kite from a BC (strange as that may seem) and stop him getting in point blank range which is pretty horrible method of thinking for blaster ships.

Then to boot a BC waiting at an undock point of a station they can be right on top of you or what about being probed out and someone drops right on you it's very easy to get in close to a BS we don't all fly snipers all the time.

Assuming the BS isn't going the other way, the BC actually goes 1200ms/[1,000 is about right for a plated harbinger at maxed skills and its slightly faster than the gallente options].

Blaster ships simply need to stop thinking that 500m is their optimal range, its fucking 5km for a neutron thron and vs smaller ships you always operate best in falloff.

That also assumes that the BS doesn't have a web and scram and isn't a hyperion[mwd, ab, web, 1pt, injector or, mwd, web, 1pt, 2pt, injector] or Tempest. And isn't fitting heavy ECM drones.

Not a lot of room to maneuver for blasters or autocannons you have to keep distance at 1-3km with autocannons and 1-6km with blasters to do optimal damage this is tough as you are usually a very very slow ship and orbiting is out of the question. It's mainly the mega that's fucked cause it doesn't have enough mids to cope with fitting two webs to do the job it's setup to do although if you drop a cap booster and don't rep you could risk it. The mega could do with a better tracking bonus or maybe as I've suggested elsewhere create a shorter range web that has more power like 5km 80% (never gonna happen) or perhaps even make webs scaling so the closer you are the more it webs 90% at point blank to 60% at 10km (would this create lag?). Anyway I just finished training T2 large blasters and a little concerned, I do think that you should at least be able to hit a BC at these ranges so the tracking formula must be borked, wouldn't you think increasing ship mass would also increase sig radius?. Anyhow I'll adapt just some opinions on what needs to be looked at.

No, not really. You're messing up your hit formula, falloff really is not that bad to be in. Long range t2 ammo on large neutrons gives 27km of effective range and long range t2 on ACs 36k. Short range ammo works easily between 5 and 15km for nearly all sizes.

Battlecruisers have over twice the sig of cruisers, just get a bit farther out and rape them, revel in the fact that a blaster ship can reduce the damage incoming from large lasers a whole lot, that electrons and ions are easy to fit and offer huge tracking boosts. That its going to take them a lot of time to close the distance and that you can spread it simply by flying away from them or attempting to follow their orbit.

With scrams shutting off MWDs and webs not being as strong, close range high tracking weapons have received a large boost.

The mega doesn't need more tracking, if you need more tracking, fly a Hyperion, its got 5 meds for a second web,[increasing your tracking and ability to dictate range], its faster, it tanks harder and it does just as much DPS.

Seriously if you are using blasters you really don't want to be using Iron and null pfft totally crud DPS and tracking, oh and I'm not really discussing falloff so it's a moot point.


Bit hard to move if they switch off your MWD and dual web you... think Myrmidon. You don't want to be orbiting with blasters your main defence is your DPS.


That's why I suggest using an afterburner and orbiting at 500m/s large turrets won't hit you for shit unless your are dual webbed.


Hyperion doesn't come close to same DPS  unless you gimp it, if like me you want to passive tank a whole bonus is wasted they are pretty much made for dual repping and has even worse tracking than the Mega so wrong an a couple of counts there I'm afraid.

Also don't confuse this for blasters are broke erm fix it nonsense it's that now you can exploit all large turrets a lot easier since they lowered web power . Turret based battleships will have to fit two webs now to ensure being able to hit targets in an up close slugfest.

This thread is now for Gou and Amarr to theorycraft until THE END OF TIME.

 :awesome_for_real:

I'm coming back with graphs then you're all screwed.

No, its not a moot point. Turrets have falloff for a reason, long range tech 2 ammo exists for a reason. Use them. No, seriously, use them


Only if what you are shooting at is smaller than you. If its the same size or larger you want to orbit. Why? Because that maximizes transversal velocity. Why is maximizing transversal velocity good? Because you are very likely to have better tracking than them.[AC's excluded, though that wont matter, they will be running away from you. The Megathron is the exception to this exception since it has exceptional tracking]


That is why you ignore everything that is said for no good reason? Getting to 500m is not easy. You have to get there first through about 10km of blaster fire against a ship that should also be maneuvering to reduce transversal and increase range.


Actually, due to the tier 3 HP bonus, the Hyperion has nearly as much EHP as the Megathron in a full passive setup. Unrigged, a Hyperion with 1 plate has 5.6% less EHP than the Megathron. Rigged, its 9.4%. [1600mm, eanm x2, DCII, 2x MFS for Hyp, 1600mm x 2, eanm x2, DCII, 2x MFS for Mega]

The Hyperion will do 4.8% more DPS when fit with Ogre IIs. When fit with a mixed drone set[5 warriors +2/2/1 and 4 ogres + 5 warriors in the mega] its 6.9% and when fit with ECM drones only its 14.1%.

The Hyperion loses some ability to out-transverse BS guns since it loses its tracking bonus and is a lot bigger, but gains more ability to dictate range in both speed[lower base mass + 1 less plate = faster and more agile], and the extra med slot. This allows it to both reduce transversal better against smaller ships via disabling, and dictate range and initiate transversal[by reducing the enemy battleships ability to counter maneuver] against similar sized ships. It is simply a lot better at doing whatever it is you want to be doing against the particular target and that out weighs any raw performance boost when dealing with a blaster ship[I.E. a solo/small gang ship]

Now, as a solo/small gang ship, it is better when repping. But that is only because repairing is far superior when alone[and not horribly out numbered] than a passive tank is, especially when carried to its full tech 2 exploitation potential.

If i have to come back with graphs. I will kill myself. And when my tainted spirit finds its destination, I will topple the master of that dark place. From my black throne, i will lash together a machine of bone and blood, and fueled by my hatred for having to explain this shit again, this fear engine will bore a hole between this world and that one. When it begins, you will hear the sound of children screaming - as if from a great distance. A smoking hole of nothing will appear above your head, and from it will emerge a thousand starving crows. As i slip through the widening maw in my new form, you will catch only a glimpse of my radiance before you are incinerated. Then, as tears of bubbling pitch stream down my face, my dark work will begin. I will open one of my six Excel spreadsheets, and I will plot the graph that ends the earth.

Uhm, fascinating. Matar and    blaster-fans in one thread.





Wasn't falloff range 50% miss rate?

Does anyone actually fit blaster/AC battleships outside of sisi?

Funny fact - I actually considered fitting AC Hurricane (as a damage support) a while ago, in between contemplating 5DD proof BS and using bombs to kill Titans, but then I realized it would have like 1.9km optimal, which kind of made the whole exercise pointless.

One serious question - what are theoretical advantages of blaster/AC ships against gankgeddons and torp-ravens?

It's moot cause I wasn't discussing falloff you're the one who brought it up, it doesn't fit into the equation. I'm talking about angular velocity at close range and not being able to web smaller ships so you can at least hit them at all with large turrets. You basically have 0 DPS unless you dual web them check it out if you don't believe me. T2 what? Null doesn't even do 80% of the damage of say multifrequency, has 80% the range and half the tracking why would anyone settle for this crapola as a short gap is beyond me.

On the second point, as a BS blaster user you don't want to forfeit your DPS by orbiting this is how you deal with active tankers & missile users you need to strike them down fast and hard so they can't keep repping up, therefore wetting down your DPS negates your abilities more than theirs.

Sometimes you don't have to get to 500m you are already there eg. dropins and waiting at undock points I said that already.

fuck blasters Im training lasers anyway  :grin:

Again it's not about blasters people keep focusing on that it's about the behaviour of large turrets at close range and the need now for three webs and yes I use a blaster mega to good effect versus other battleships solo sometimes.

You can be Gallente or Matar and fly them? :P Not everyone has a 60 mil SP main hehe

The range on a standard T2 Neutron Mega that I run is solid. The tracking is good. The 5 T2 Gardes I run are nasty.

Optimal 4.5k , 13 falloff - 1250 DPS ....Good enough for rape. Plus the Gardes (or Curators) extend your effective range.

Yes, Optimal + Falloff your hit rate is 50%. You'll hit about 50% DPS at about 60% hit rate.

Using blaster/AC ships for gang work isn't efficient, they are more for solo/very small gang stuff where you want to take out ships your size or larger and are doing everything yourself, more or less. Drones help in killing smaller stuff and as just plain DPS support. ECM drones are always a strong option in this type of play.

In short, the smaller your gang is the better they are. If you fly with lots of ships when you fly then they will be useless.


Auto-canes are very good light combat support in small gangs. They can serve as both primary DPS in a nano-gank fit[i think they can still do this, haven't checked, but pre patch you were at about 2000m/s, and 800 DPS] and can run a generalist tank and still be maneuverable enough.

Barrage is your friend, with it, your falloff will reach about 15km which is plenty to kill cruisers and get outside the range of blasters.

If your gang is larger than 10 people you will probably be better off with an arty cane. If its bigger than 20 you're definitely better off with an Arty cane


And I am saying that it takes them time to get to that close range and that because of that, falloff is always important. Its never a moot point. If you're fighting something smaller than you, you will usually want to be in falloff. When its smaller than you[the BC for instance], you have a massive DPS and EHP advantage. They will universally have a lower range than you[E.G. a Neutron Mega does more damage than a gank harbinger at 20km] and the only way they are going to be a threat is getting very close.

Your assessment that there is a problem ignores every mitigating factor that is there simply to complain about these types of situations. Battleships are not here to wtf pwn everything and if a BC gets in on you to 500m and you don't have anything to deal with it[like maneuvering, or med slots, or ECM drones] you're going to have some problems and there is no problem with that.


This is just a flat out lie. That being said, yes, lasers do more damage at longer range than blasters. If you want to fly ships that are designed to be primary gang DPS, don't train for the solo/small gang DPS ships.

Also, the idiom you are looking for is "stop gap", and yes, that is exactly what this seems like.


It depends entirely on the ship you are dealing with, getting transversal is advantageous against missile ships now[since its the only way you can maintain that speed if he stops as he should], but yes, sometimes you want to reduce transversal and sometimes you want to increase transversal.


Yes, and sometimes you land at 800km and sometimes you land at 15km. This is just the luck of the draw. You can wait at undocks just as easily as they can

Wooooshhhhhh! :headscratch:

Well if you don't have a problem with it fine good for you but don't throw the same futile arguments over and over to deter from the main point, no it's not hard for a BC to get up close to a BS it's piss easy especially now webs only work at 60%.


Yes my idiom was wrong it was late, glad you felt the need to point that out. But the point stands and no I'm not lying (what a strange thing to say) a geddon fitted with Amarr Navy Multi does 855 w/guns and with same skills & similar fit a mega does 745 w/null now range is similar though optimal range is 20% less. Tracking is half that of Multifrequency so it's pretty gimped by comparison as a short range ammo choice, it's not lies it's de facts.


You don't want to fight tranversal wars if you are using large blasters unless you don't give a crap about winning the fight. I would like to see the mega get a web power bonus, similar to marauders, instead of tracking bonus that would be sweet.


There is no luck the undock point is the same every time you watch the ship and follow him you will be 500m from him everytime if your covops is landing 800km from a target you got some serious shit skills. And yes of course I can take advantage of this I think you are mistaking me for complaining as opposed to someone who just opened a discussion on something I deem to be flawed and will most likely partake in exploiting it myself. Look at the facts everything else is extraneous to this... large turret tracking at close ranges now needs multi webs to hit. I didn't bring this up as a whine so your arguments and nitpicking are a bit silly though I did enjoy reading the part about excel sheets, in conclusion try and least understand where the person you are arguing against is coming from.

This is some of the finest Sir Bruceing I've ever seen.

You keep saying this and it keeps being wrong.

Let me spell it out for you.

T h e   t r a c k i n g   i s   n o t   w o r s e   f o r   t h e   b l a s t e r s.
[quote
You don't want to fight tranversal wars if you are using large blasters unless you don't give a crap about winning the fight. I would like to see the mega get a web power bonus, similar to marauders, instead of tracking bonus that would be sweet.[/quote]

Yes, you do. Its everything you want to do in a ship with a tracking bonus on the best tracking guns in the game. Good lord the ship might as well be called "transversalwarthron" because of the amount that it screams to use transversal. Now, they are some times when you do not want to use transversal, like when you're fighting smaller ships, when you're fighting smaller ships you use your falloff to allow you to reduce transversal.

Before QR fighting for transversal was pointless, but that was because webs were 90% and two webbed BS were stopped in their tracks.[2 webbed bs will have roughly 16 times more transversal against each other than they did pre patch]



Then don't sit 500m off the undock. Or when you undock into him, coast and make him follow, this perfectly sets up the kite that you want against a smaller ship.

What is "Sir Bruceing"?

Jesus christ dude you never listen, it's not the turret that has the tracking problem it's the ammo Null has a 25% tracking penalty learn how to play and come back with an argument.

Yes, and blasters have >25% advantage in tracking over lasers. As well, at those ranges, tracking is not such a big deal, it isn't bad until you get in close.

E.G. Tracking at 5km is 3 times harder than tracking at 15km. Such if you're at 15-20km, the 25% tracking penalty on null is more or less irrelevant. It doesn't start hurting till you come in closer [where you should be using anti-matter].

E.G. Neutron blasters without a tracking bonus[I.E. not a megathron] have a .0405 rad track with null. Megapulses without a tracking bonus[I.E. anything] have a .042 rad track with multifrequency. Now, call me foolish if you will, but .042/.0405 =/= 2 But that is just me, in fact, its only 3.7%, which is when dealing with tracking, almost nothing. A megathron with neutrons and null will track at .0556 rads. A full 32.5% better than megapulses.

If you're downsizing guns to ions or electrons the gap gets even bigger. Even if you downsize to dual heavy pulses, since they get a relatively low tracking boost compared to megapulses.

Look, the issue is simply that you're wrong. Null has a use, its stop gap to be used against ships at range. Its useful in that regard, the tracking penalty is not significant and you shouldn't have issues tracking ships at those ranges if you're flying smart. You should use null every time you get >15km and intend to keep the target it there[except for maybe against frigates].

Well using Null nerfs your DPS < lasers and not to mention operating inside your falloff so this is a horrible solution to the blaster problem no matter which way you look at it. Only on the mega does null actually track better than faction ammo lasers and jaysus you got me back talking about blasters again stop that.

No, it is a perfect solution for what you are complaining about. Fighting in falloff is not "a horrible solution to the blaster problem" its the solution that should have been happening for 5 years. Just get a little bit more range when shooting small targets, exploit transversal against larger ships. Yes, you have to maneuver blaster ships now.