Next major patch announced: Apocrypha

[Amarr HM]

CCP can compete against Blizzard in terms of production schedules and promptness in patching.

Perhaps but currently the T3 ships are horribly broken on SISI with less than two weeks to go, I would imagine they would be pretty important considering the majority of the new content revolves around them.

[Amarr HM]

Ok so I basically harangued CCP to give us level IV subsystem on SISI and whaddya know it worked, the ships seem to be working a lot better now and have a lot more going for them.

All I can say some of the Gallente setups are gonna be sexy a dual repping ishtar/deimos with 20km scrambler range (overheated faction one will get that) and you will be able to overheat for much longer times especially if you have level V strategic cruiser and Thermo Level V the results will be seriously sick. Also said ship looks seriously evil kinda like a hammerhead shark. There's loads of new graphic tweaks to melt your eyes over, hardeners look cool and sensor boosting looks a lot more up to date ++ more I missed I'm sure.

For those testing them out the proteus subsystem layout I refer to is 12132.

[Amarr HM]

I'm scared to think how badass the Minmatar one will be.

[Predator Irl]

I'm scared to think how badass the Minmatar one will be.

Whats skills should we be preparing for maxing out other than the obvious? i.e. HAC V or BC 5 ?

[Amarr HM]

No you should have all the skills already there's a whole new set to learn five of them to be exact, the good news they are only 1x multiplier skills. So basically maxing them all up to V will take about 30-40 days and then strategic cruiser will take about another month to get to V, this gives you 25% bonus to overheating level IV would suffice though. The skills points you could lose will be from the subsystems and a level V will take about 3-6 days so that's the maximum you can lose. 

DISCLAIMER: This is unless you can lose a level from strategic cruiser which is a 5x multiplier skill, though I have seen no evidence of this yet.

[Pax]

I'm scared to think how badass the Minmatar one will be.

Whats skills should we be preparing for maxing out other than the obvious? i.e. HAC V or BC 5 ?

Stupid things like "Shield Operation 3".

Race specific skills:
 
-LEGION-
Drones 3, Gunnery 5, Shield Operation 3

-TENGU-
Gunnery 3, Missile Launcher Operation 5, Shield Operation 5, Mechanic 3 (that's a weird one)

-PROTEUS-
Drones 3, Gunnery 5, Shield Operation 3

-LOKI-
Gunnery 5, Missile Launcher Operation 3, Shield Operation 3

Edit
HAC 5 isn't a pre-req, much rather strategic cruisers share many of HAC pre-reqs.

[Amarr HM]

Basically if you can fly a HAC you can start training for these.

[Predator Irl]

It should be a fairly short skill train for most then. I suppose SISI doesn't give any indication of cost of these ships? Last time I was on SISI over a year ago everything cost 100 ISK.

[Pax]

Everything seeded still costs 100ISK on Sisi.

Supposedly CCP are aiming for strat cruisers to cost 200-500mill (they halved production requirements in the course of the last week), so the most demanded subsystems might cost 100mill each.

[eldaec]

You know what I hate about them costing 200M+?

CCP might make them worth that much on the battlefield. This would suck, because frankly there are already enough cap ships making my own ship seem insigificant, I really don't need more of this bollocks.

[Amarr HM]

I did see a very good report on the esimated material cost and it was in the region of 500-600m, which means about 800m-1bil when they first hit the market. Currently they aren't much better than a command ship in fact they are worse so I can't see any reason to purchase one. The ewar versions will be quite interesting as solo or small gang ships as they can pack a punch while doing the nasty but it remains to be seen how uber CCP will make them.

From what I can see the only bonus they get that makes them stand out is the overheating bonus, for example if you try to make a Zealot type ship you end up with basically the same ship give or take a nice solid 7-4-7 layout using six turrets instead of five. It has faster locking, worse optimal, slightly better DPS albeit with 20m3 of drones, better sensor strength from 15-17, it's wayyy slower like command ship slow and it can rep more due to being able to fit a medium repper. My main dissapointment is in the speed I thought they would at least be as fast as HACs but we'll see, it's all subject to change.

[MahrinSkel]

Frankly, they'll probably have the same status that HAC's used to (before Invention brought T2 prices down) and most Faction BS still do: Effective as hell, but not in proportion to the price, used in 0.0 only by people with too much money, no sense, or both, and made Primary in every fight they're in.

--Dave

[Teleku]

Well, I luckily maxed out my char for exploration, so I'm sort of looking forward to profiting off this  .

Fuck actually flying the god damn things.

[Malakili]

Well, I luckily maxed out my char for exploration, so I'm sort of looking forward to profiting off this  .

Fuck actually flying the god damn things.

This is what I'm looking forward to as well.  I don't plan on flying anything t3 for quite some time, but I sure as hell intend to have a lot of fun initial cluster fuck.

[Pax]

Don't  condemn the ships before subsystems 4 & 5 are out.
Word is of cloaking boni and Khanid Legions.

The ability to be cynoed around by a black ops would be pretty neat, too, but that's wishful thinking.

[Amarr HM]

Don't  condemn the ships before subsystems 4 & 5 are out.
Word is of cloaking boni and Khanid Legions.

The ability to be cynoed around by a black ops would be pretty neat, too, but that's wishful thinking.

I won't condemn them til they are fully balanced, but new subsystems won't save them in their current state. The problem is in their base stats they are as slow as command ships and have less base armour/shield than your average HAC even if you build them to perform like a HAC.

[Amarr HM]

Where do tech 3 ships fit in?

I think I have to answer this in more detail and explain our current limitations and goals.

As you know we're limited to three subsystems in the March 10th release. The fourth subsystem will then follow very shortly. With the first 3 subsystems we're trying to create useful baseline setups options, which don't stray far off the racial flavor that currently exists in EVE.

Strategic Cruisers are not meant to take over roles. They're not supposed to be better than their Recon counterparts. They're not supposed to be better than their HAC counterparts. They're not supposed to be better than their commandship counterparts. They are meant to fulfill multiple roles. They are focused on heat, which means they are meant to fulfill those roles properly for a (not so) limited time.

Selecting which bonuses belonged in the first iteration was not an easy task. We had different racial sensor strengths in the first release, it got cut. With three subsystems, we knew one would have a racial EW bonus, we just couldn't justify it. Once we've got a solid baseline, we can start thinking about the fourth variation (which I believe will enter the game before Tech 3 ships become a common commodity).

We've got plenty of ideas (too many) concerning the roles for the upcoming subsystems, but I'll leave that discussion for a later thread.

The assembly of the ships has become a great annoyance to me. Even though having proper descriptions with correct bonuses in-game will make things much easier; I still think the usability is a bit off-putting. Hopefully in the future we can combine the assembly window somehow with the fitting screen and add information about bonuses so you can see the bonuses and slot layout as you go.

While I’m at it I might add something about the prices of Strategic Cruisers. The goal has always been to have them considerably cheap, around the price of tech 2 cruisers. The subsystem cost will be about 1/8th of the hull itself, we want people to own multiple subsystems to mix and match as they see fit. If the price gets out of hand (we can’t even predict it accurately ourselves) we’ll do something about it.

What we’re looking for from you guys is inconsistencies in attributes and bonuses. Tell us why the attributes don’t make sense with the bonuses and what we can do to improve them.

PS.
I'm falling in love with Proteus 13131 (fitting screen top to bottom).


PPS.
I'm at home now without access to a Singularity client, but I'll be in tomorrow and will hopefully be able to give you some numbers.

It'll be interesting to see if they end up priced the same as T2, then they wil definitely be worthwhile and the heat bonus is pretty nice.

[gryeyes]

Does anyone know the status of ambulation? I havent played for 6+ months so am pretty unaware.

Also, has there been any word on the status of their other MMO?

[Simond]

Strategic Cruisers are not meant to take over roles. They're not supposed to be better than their Recon counterparts. They're not supposed to be better than their HAC counterparts. They're not supposed to be better than their commandship counterparts. They are meant to fulfill multiple roles. They are focused on heat, which means they are meant to fulfill those roles properly for a (not so) limited time.

Translation: They're going to be hanger queens for people with more money than sense. Much like every other ship they've introduced in the last few expansions bar HICs.

[Pax]

Is it me or does Nozh sound somewhat disappointed with the entire strategic cruiser concept?

[Reg]

They'll be fabulously expensive and within a month of their introduction the people dumb enough to go into building them will be whining that there's no profit in it. Just like the tech 2 battleships.

[Amarr HM]

There's currently a few fits on the Gallente and Amarr ship that are nuts, like you can configure seven turrets but it's impossible to wrangle even seven of the smallest sized ones on and still have PG/CPU for the MWD booster and tank, you also end up with some horrible slot layouts like 8-4-4.

[TheDreamr]

Is it me or does Nozh sound somewhat disappointed with the entire strategic cruiser concept?

Sounds like he's relatively fine with the concept, but tired of having to repeat those simple bullet-points to the FoTM crowd who'll immediately get one, watch it explode to vs. competently piloted T1 cruisers and spend hours on the forums frothing at the mouth they aren't better than a HAC / CS / <insert FoTM here>.

[Goumindong]

There's currently a few fits on the Gallente and Amarr ship that are nuts, like you can configure seven turrets but it's impossible to wrangle even seven of the smallest sized ones on and still have PG/CPU for the MWD booster and tank, you also end up with some horrible slot layouts like 8-4-4.

There are some good gallente fits. The Amarr ones all suck, you can get 6 turrets without the cap to fire them or the slots to make your ship half decent, or you can get 4 turrets and slum around with tech 1 cruiser DPS and more slots.

You an make 8/4/7 gallente blaster boats however with 6 or 7 turrets...

[Fordel]

The Real question is, how good do they mine? 

[eldaec]

If he has new roles for t3 ships, what the fuck would be wrong with putting them on new t1/t2 ships?

If he doesn't mean new-to-the-game roles, I don't see how they aren't linearly better versions of existing ships, which is also tiresome.

[Hellinar]

If he has new roles for t3 ships, what the fuck would be wrong with putting them on new t1/t2 ships?

If he doesn't mean new-to-the-game roles, I don't see how they aren't linearly better versions of existing ships, which is also tiresome.

I read it as saying they aren't better than existing ships in any particular role, but that they can switch roles easily. Your recon ship becomes a HAC becomes a command ship as needed. But the focus on heat means they only do that well for a limited period. T3 is giving you flexibility not power.  Be interesting to see if that works out.

[ajax34i]

No, it sounds (to me) like they wanted T3 ships to be like WoW shamans - able to perform as DPS, healer, tank, or CC without the need to dock (respec).  But what they're implementing is more like druids, where you need to dock to change from tank spec to healy spec.  But anyway, without using wow-speak (some may hate it), it sounds like the two major things that T3 ships have going for themselves are:

- they can perform multiple roles (even if they have to dock to change roles).
- no more recognizing, just from the name (Arazu!!), what your enemy is capable of.

The last one is going to disadvantage veterans somewhat.

I don't know why they're going for the whole "lose skillpoints if you die with your ship" bit - if they wanted to implement permanent soulbound purples like WoW has they should have just done that.

And what they think is fun for PVE'ers isn't.  For me, for example, is not the complexity of the raid boss fights that I enjoy, it's new scenery, and entertaining quest lines / lore.  Content, in other words.  EVE won't have new scenery, and CCP doesn't have the time or manpower for the amount of content required to attract or keep me there for long.

I'm looking forward to trying to deal with the threat/aggro mechanics they're building into the AI, without any taunts or threat-controlling abilities.

EDIT:  I also get the feeling that they're trying to implement complex AI just for complexity's sake (to show how good they are at coding it), rather than for the purpose of entertaining players and making PVE encounters "fun."

[Fordel]

The biggest flaw I see with their new 'smart' AI, is the NPC rats still have magical powers like endless cap and bullshit ECM.

[Amarr HM]

There are some good gallente fits. The Amarr ones all suck, you can get 6 turrets without the cap to fire them or the slots to make your ship half decent, or you can get 4 turrets and slum around with tech 1 cruiser DPS and more slots.

You an make 8/4/7 gallente blaster boats however with 6 or 7 turrets...

Yes totally agreed the Legion sucks most out of them all. For the 8-4-7 fit I imagine you would need to use the defensive SS III & it gimps your armour by 33% without giving you a mass reduction and worst of all it's bonus is to your drone hitpoints (by far the worst bonus of any subsystem). In this case you are better off with defensive SS II which will give you an 8-4-6 layout, a repper bonus and 33% more armour, you're basically being railroaded atm, but they will hopefully fix these issues, I would like to see a mass reduced variant so you can build a lightweight but fast version of these ships as an option.

[Amarr HM]

No, it sounds (to me) like they wanted T3 ships to be like WoW shamans - able to perform as DPS, healer, tank, or CC without the need to dock (respec).  But what they're implementing is more like druids, where you need to dock to change from tank spec to healy spec.  But anyway, without using wow-speak (some may hate it), it sounds like the two major things that T3 ships have going for themselves are:

- they can perform multiple roles (even if they have to dock to change roles).
- no more recognizing, just from the name (Arazu!!), what your enemy is capable of.

You should add the heat bonus, that is going to be pretty spectacular on some combos.

[Amarr HM]

They've fixed up the Legion you can do some nice things with it now and having just lost one I lost 67k SP this time from a level IV subsystem which is about 12 hours training so not so bad actually.

[Endie]

They've fixed up the Legion you can do some nice things with it now and having just lost one I lost 67k SP this time from a level IV subsystem which is about 12 hours training so not so bad actually.

Are the training times accelerated for the ship skills?  That's almost a full day's training for me in a conventional level 1 skill with an implant clone in my best skills.

[Amarr HM]

Yes your right that's over a days training no I think the skillsheet is bugged it was showing me 12 hours but lot of glitches on SISI atm. I lost another one yesterday messin about with uber passive shield tanked Proteus' and this time was only deducted 37k which would be 14-15hours with top skills.

[Murgos]

If we whine enough we can probably get the skill loss thing scrapped.  A few dozen dedicated board warriors can probably get it done in a few weeks, just fag up every thread on eve o and divert it into a whine on skill loss.