is PvP balanced?

[Soln]

I've heard that the PvP balance in Eve comes from ship type and fittings; namely, small ships with small signatures are harder to hit by bigger ships.  Some questions because I've never deliberately PvP'd in Eve:

1) is PvP balanced only by ship/avatar?  since skills are needed for fittings and ship piloting I thought this might be true.  If so, is it basically the same thing as balancing equipment in other MMO's, since there are no special abilities by a character class to have to balance?

2) is it really balanced?  is one to one a fair fight between players, or can a bigger ship just gank whomever they want?  I thought with ECM and other AOE-like effects bigger ships still have a large advantage

3) are gangs the deciding factor?  every other MMO I've played, having a good PvP squad usually tipped the balance.

3) and/or is money the deciding factor?  more money, more skills, more better equipment == godmode.  Right now, that's the one thing I'm stuck on and it's bugging me.

[Comstar]

Aas far as I can tell:

T2 ships pawn T1. If he's in t2 and you're in t1, might as well start the self destruct now and save the 15 seconds it will take to die.

Big blob beats smaller blob, UNLESS the big blob is brain dead. This is quite common apperntly. I mean, how hard can it BE for everyone to target ONE target at a time.

If the enemy has T2 battleships with T2 guns, they will sit at 200km range and snipe, and theres nothing you can do about it.

Ships types do matter, you want someone else to be the interdictor, someone else to be the fast intercetpor, someone else to be the scout, someone else  to be the command ship, and someone else to therefore be the primary target (cloaked ships just die of bordem rather than be the primary target).


Eventually you reach really big 300+ blob, and the server starts killing people randomly for even more fun.

[Roac]

1) Character skills allow both the use of equipment, and an increase in performance of the equipment.  For example, while one point might allow the use of a weapon, every additional point (up to 5) allows a 5% damage bonus.  A secondary, and non-required skill, may increase the rate of fire by a simialr amount.  However, this type of skill is not really the same as you'd expect from, say, UO.  There, if you had a skill trained to 50% or even 70%, you'd never do anything to someone with 100%.  In Eve, so long as you can fit the weapon, and use it in the right scenario, you will do damage that cannot be ignored.

2) Big ships do have an advantage.  Very basically, ship skill requirements, size, power, and expense increases left to right:  Frigate -> Destroyer -> Cruiser -> Battlecruiser -> Battleship -> Capital Ships, with a bunch more specialty/support ships available.  Toe to toe, the big ship will tend to beat out the smaller ship, but it's not the same WTFPWN in most games.  Size is an issue, and big is not always better.  Specifically, big targets are easy to hit, and big weapons have a hard time taking down small targets.  Large guns have trouble even tracking frigates, while large missiles deliver only a tiny fraction of their overall potential.  In terms of kill potential, the smaller ships are at a far worse disadvantage however, as there is no possible way for them to carry enough firepower to take down their bigger rivals.  I doubt whether a frigate could kill a battleship while the pilot was afk.  Worse, large ships have the potential to carry with them ordinance which can deal with smaller threats, such as smartbombs (aoe weapons centered on the owner's ship) or drones ('pets' basically, with small-med weapons).  Even so, the capability for small ships to get in and out quickly as well as carry electronic warfare ordinance, make them a threat that no battleship pilot can take for granted. 

3) Often.  In any engagement, numbers matter, and being able to bring 2x as many ships into a fight means both double your firepower and double the hits you can take.  The basic doctrine of military science is that a 2x increase in numbers provides a 4x increase in overall effectiveness, all else being equal.  I don't expect this to ever really change in games.  One thing Eve does provide for is the opportunity for tactical decision making; it may not be the most advantageous thing to bring in a gang entirely of battleships. 

4) Money isn't the deciding factor, but it helps.  It hurts, too; another penalty of big ships is the cost, and the same goes for modules that fit on those ships.  If I bring in a battleship and very expensive tech 2 (T2) gear, I have massive superiority on the field.  I also have orders of magnitude more money at risk than someone in a battlecruiser with cheaper T1 gear.  Ballpark, you can sell isk (game currency) at a rate of about 10m isk = $1.  If I enter the fight with a ship worth 1bil isk, and go up against two guys with ships worth 30m each... well, you get the picture.  I'd have to have a kill ratio of 34:1 just to break even.  The difference is such that I can, without even trying, afford to fit 100 frigates for either combat or electronic warfare, but still cannot afford the purchase of one capital ship and don't have the skills for it regardless.  The usefulness of the cheap ships certainly is limited, but it exists.

[Viin]

I would also like to comment that in EVE, unlike many many games, you *can* take out larger ships with smaller ships. Properly fitted, I think you could take out a BC with two cruisers, three definanetly. You could also take out a BS with one BC, and 2 cruisers.

Unlike WoW, where a level 30 (regardless of class) is never going to be able to do anything to a level 60, in EVE the small guys can and *do* make a difference in battles. Running around with a ECM cruiser and a couple of friends for firepower/tackling goes along way towards defeating lone targets regardless of size.

[Raging Turtle]

An interesting strategic example is the zerg tactics of GoonFleet/GoonSwarm.  Before their current struggles with BoB (current top/most feared alliance of Eve), the goons would swarm their enemies with extremely cheap T1 frigates.  The enemies, who were typically flying much more expensive battleships and the like, would usually simply die to superior numbers.  Even if the battle turned against the goons and they lost 50-100 ships to every 1 the enemy lost, the goons would still come out far ahead financially.   

The reason the Goons can/could do this so well is that they had (I think) the largest corp around, with about 2000 members, plus some helping corps. 

So yes, a T1 ship will generally lose to its T2 counterpart, barring a stupid T2 pilot and a skilled t1 pilot.  But 2-3 T1 ships have a good chance against that one t2 ship.

1v1 battles are uncommon.  Small gang battles happen more frequently, especially in lowsec, and fleet battles (dozens/hundreds) only happen in zero security space.   

[Krakrok]

A T1 frigate could kill an AFK battleship. A T2 cruiser (more damage resistance) could go toe to toe with a T1 battleship. Five or six T1 frigs could easily kill a lone battleship that wasn't fitted to kill frigs. But if someone doesn't bring the modules to keep you from running away they can't kill you most of the time. One sniper can force 15 people to run away. One EW frigate can shut down a battleship's ability to shoot people.

It's really about the modules that people have fitted. You can end up at a sniper fight with a short range ship and then you lose.

The ships themselves are balanced based on how many modules they can fit. For example, you can take lots of armor but then you don't have room for a lot of high damage guns. If you go for a sniper setup then you pretty much have no armor mods so if someone comes in close you're dead.

Bottom line is everything is a trade off (speed vs armor, damage vs armor, damage vs speed, sustainability vs gank, armor vs retreat, root vs EW, $ risk vs advantage) and whoever has the numbers with the right fittings usually wins.

[dwindlehop]

1) Currently T2 cruisers cost as much as battleships or more. T2 frigates cost about as much as T1 cruisers or more. The time to train for battleships is much less than the time to train for T2 cruisers with T2 guns. Time to train for cruisers is less than T2 frigates with T2 guns.

I think as a new player you must always utilize the size mismatch, because as Comstr says the T2 version always beats the T1 version for a given ship class. Either you fly T1 frigates against battleships a la Goonswarm or you fly battleships versus T2 cruisers and T1 battlesihps/cruisers against T2 frigates. Damage and survivability are roughly equivalent between the T2 ship and the T1 ship of the next larger class, like Krakrok said.

2) I don't think anyone mentioned that it is harder for larger ships to target and hit smaller ships. It is possible, even easy with the proper fitting, but that's another advantage the new player has. Also, the AoE effects in Eve are not powerful at all, and are only useful in very specific tactical situations. The same ECM mods that you fit on a battleship or T2 force recon ship can be fitted on a T1 frigate. The larger ships have slightly more biult-in resistance, but ECM is a sword that cuts both ways.

3) Numbers help. Eve does not have game mechanisms that make one player able to take on 10 or 20.

4) Isk is a huge deal in 0.0 warfare. POS spamming and capital ship deployment require isk. I have no evidence to back up this feeling, but I feel like most small gang PvP is not dominated by isk because no one is willing to risk their whole wallet on one encounter. Someone like Farjung who rides a Vindicator (expensive pirate faction battleship) fitted out with officer equipment into solo piracy is rare enough to warrant a lot of attention when he makes a video of it. Instead, you get the situation where it doesn't matter to your enemy how many times you blow him up because he has so much isk unless you can grief him into going away. Most PvP ship setups on the forums make use of exclusively T2 equipment, not the super expensive faction or officer stuff. All T2 equipment is very reasonably priced except for a couple random things where someone has a monopoly, like CovOps cloaks. It's the T2 ships which are expensive due to limited supply.

[Leon]

Hmm, I would personally disagree with a lot that has been said.

A relatively new player can easily, easily lock down an enemy ship just by being in a blackbird fitted with a full rack of jammers. Of course it might not kill it, but a 2mil SP person can lock down a battleship belonging to a 46mil SP player just by using a blackbird with racial jammers.

Numbers does help in a battleship fleet-battle, but come interceptors, numerical superiority goes straight out out the window. 3-4 interceptors can easily take down a single battleship. Providing the battleships dont have nos or drones, they could potentially take down an entire battleship battlegroup by simply being unable to get hit.

Battleship battles are mostly about firing and tanking, relying mostly on SP, so I would suggest trying out interceptor groups. SP doesnt matter so much, when I fought you guys during our BI-F13/BGO war, I had only joined Blood Inquisition with barely 5mil SP. Interceptors are a lot more about reflex action, quick thinking and tactical choices of knowing when to engage and when not to. Frigates in general require more player skill than actual SP to fly properly. Sure SP helps, but its not the be all end all like being in a battleship. Knowing how to fit ships for the job certainly helps as well.

Numbers help. Eve does not have game mechanisms that make one player able to take on 10 or 20.

It does, its to be quick, fast, agile and small to avoid all kinds of fire ;)  So long as you know exactly what you are able to kill and what you arent, you can easily swoop down, avoid fire and kill off the softest target before getting distance between you and the enemy. Skirmish warfare is what frigates and stabber/vagabond are excellent for, and if used properly are one of the most difficult things to fight.

T2 equipment, not the super expensive faction or officer stuff.

True, but some people swear by faction mods. I for example and many other hardcore interceptor pilots refuse to fly with a T2 MWD. Its either Gistii A-Type 1mn MWD or nothing. Call it cocky, but with frigates the speed difference makes a HUGE difference as to whether you're going to die, or kill the other guy.




But in the end in EVE, skillpoints doesnt matter, is how well you are specialized with those skillpoints that matter. A 30mil SP generalist will always lose to a 8mil specialist when the specialist makes sure that the conditions are in his favor (which he can choose, being more experienced by specializing in said ship).

 

[Vedi]

Numbers does help in a battleship fleet-battle, but come interceptors, numerical superiority goes straight out out the window. 3-4 interceptors can easily take down a single battleship. Providing the battleships dont have nos or drones, they could potentially take down an entire battleship battlegroup by simply being unable to get hit.

Have you ever found a battleship without nos or drones, though? ;)

I agree with the blackbird thing, though, although if you're unlucky for a bit you're dead - no space to fit much tank on those.

[Merusk]

Have you ever found a battleship without nos or drones, though? ;)

He's a pirate, of course he has.

Also, the summation of everything you're saying, Leon, is "pick your fights carefuly and you can win vs anything."  You're not really disagreeing with anything, since even in your Inty-vs-BS scenario you're agreeing with the "numbers help" point.

Also.. if you're able to solo-kill a 'soft target' in a group of 10 players, you're simply more skilled & quicker-thinking than they are.  You're not saying you could take out all 10 at once; you're saying if you're good you can hit & run without getting asploded.  There's a difference between that an the question posed.

[Soln]

So, I'm not convinced  :-D  I'm not convinced that if I got 100M+ ISK I wouldn't own anyone I come across (within limits).  Particularly if I only hung around 0.4-0.3 space.  Which is basically what pirates do -- prey on haulers and newbs.

Everyone seems to think that time-in-game (for experience and skill advancement) is the constraining factor for Eve advancement.  To me it seems I can just buy whatever I want in Eve and replace it easily enough.  I can buy ships, BPO's, skills, fittings.. whatever I want. And thereby I can basically out compete someone by having more cash (whether RMT or legal in game). 

The big thing I see isn't even the complementing-out of your ship -- it's being able to completely replace the same ship and its entire capability faster than the next guy by having more cash.  What's not true about this?  Only curious from a design pt of view.  Since I wonder if they should also not add AFK mechanics to earn small incomes instead of just skill training as an option.

[Viin]

There is definantly a money element to PvP - but even so, you *can* kill someone in a higher (t2) ship than you, even if it requires a buddy or two. Either way, the $$ risk is probably comparable (3 tier3 vs 1 tier2) but probably more is at risk on the t2 driver. Not to mention there's an insurance parady (you get a much much lower percentage of your ships hull value on T2 ships).

The only $$ thing that annoys me is the folks that buy massive amounts of ISK in order to buy battleships - in a war of attrition this can get annoying.

If you PvP even a little, you will realize right away that just because you have a good ship/weapons that by no means does that guarentee a victory. I've lost a AF to another AF just because I was goofing off and not paying attention - it should have been a fair fight but I was caught off guard.

As we've been saying, tactics and strategy are very important in the game - equipment might give you the edge in a fight, but if you act stupid (which is what causes you to die 90% of the time) it won't help you enough!

[Leon]

excuse the mass quotings :D

Have you ever found a battleship without nos or drones, though? ;)

He's a pirate, of course he has.

....You're not really disagreeing with anything, since even in your Inty-vs-BS scenario you're agreeing with the "numbers help" point.

....You're not saying you could take out all 10 at once; you're saying if you're good you can hit & run without getting asploded. 

Well, as a pirate (kinda sorta), I've seen some REAL strange setup. Ever seen a shield-tanked brutix with warp stabs in lows? Or a shield tanked armageddon. Some things just make you go "wtf?". They arent common, as my current wartargets are NOS, CVA, PIE, and Merch Industrial (CVA supporters) so seeing a crappy setup in those gangs is next to non-existent.

In the inty vs 2 frigs, 8 cruiser scenario, its not about being able to hit & run of simply warping in, trying to snipe one then warp out, its about keeping your tranversal high that you are unhittable. No cruiser, no matter how skilled or high SP is going to be able to kill an interceptor with a transversal of 4km/s (using average interceptor speed). Numbers help to an extent, to only make killing things faster, but they certainly arent the be-all-end-all. Now for big cruiser size+ ships (unless stabber/vagabond), then numbers DO matter. For interceptors and skirmish warfare.... not so much. Interceptors and skirmishing ships will always have the advantage due to be able to choose their battle. Choosing which fight is good to engage and which one isnt, is tactical experience that anyone can get from pvp experience, so long as you review what went wrong when you blow up. And the more experience you have, the less numbers matter unless you end up fighting some massive 0.0 400 vs 600 man blob. I'm an interceptor specialist so most gang size I'm talking about are between 4-6 engaging enemies of up to 20 man big (30 in the case of NOS, fun vid i made of that too :P)

Numbers might matter as in you might not be able to kill ever single one of those 30-ships with your 4-6man group, but so long as you have caused more isk damage (ie killing 3 ceptors for the lost of none), then thats already a good step in the general progress of the war.

So, I'm not convinced  :-D  I'm not convinced that if I got 100M+ ISK I wouldn't own anyone I come across (within limits).  Particularly if I only hung around 0.4-0.3 space.  Which is basically what pirates do -- prey on haulers and newbs. Everyone seems to think that time-in-game (for experience and skill advancement) is the constraining factor for Eve advancement.  To me it seems I can just buy whatever I want in Eve and replace it easily enough.  I can buy ships, BPO's, skills, fittings.. whatever I want. And thereby I can basically out compete someone by having more cash (whether RMT or legal in game). 

Thats the stereotypical vision of pirates though =/ (or if the pirates are really crap and arent able to engage anything else). You can gatecamp and blow up haulers all day and meager isk, but its far more fun to actively go fight wars. Haulers are just targets that scream "SHOOT ME" at the gates, but personally, I'd rather go kill something else.

The big thing I see isn't even the complementing-out of your ship -- it's being able to completely replace the same ship and its entire capability faster than the next guy by having more cash.  What's not true about this?  Only curious from a design pt of view.  Since I wonder if they should also not add AFK mechanics to earn small incomes instead of just skill training as an option.

Also true to an extent that ISK means a lot more than "time played". I see out-of-game isk buying to be almost cheating as they are gaining unfair advantages over people that play... but if CCP endorses then *shrugs*, not much I can really do except disagree on it. You could instantly buy a couple hundred mil, and boom, insta vindicator with faction gear. But like with most things in other MMOs, if you dont know how to use it, then you arent maxing out the potential of the gear. You could have all the uber WoW loot, but if you dont know how to play your class properly, no matter how uber the gear is, you'll still suck. Same as in EVE to a degree, no matter how rich you may be, if you dont know how to fly your battleship with all that faction gear then you'll die fairly quick. Only difference is that because gear is destroyed on 'death', isk is extremely important to sustain your activities.

Some are good enough to go pirate in a t1 frig to take on battlecruisers and thus make money through ransoms, but not everyone is that uber, and I'm certainly not (rather, piracy is not my area of expertise).

In WoW you grinded your levels, in EVE you grind the isk to sustain your activities. Having more is an advantage, but to an extent.


Hehe, T2 ships certainly seem the be all end all when you're fighting them, but is it worth having one? Sure that shiny Cerberus of their might have uber resists, and might kill 3 of your cruisers without effort, but in the end, the Cerberus is a 260mil ship with an insurance payout of 17mil. Add the fittings, lets say all T2 (heavy missile launcher IIs are 6mil each) and you're looking at maybe another 60-100mil in setup. Of course you could fly a cerb with T1, but that'd be one hell of a waste of an expensive ship. On the other hand, a cheap blackbird with racial jammers only costs about 6mil total, fitting included, and you get back about 3-4mil in insurance, allowing you to lock down that cerberus and make it unable to fight. Add a cheap tackler and it wont get away. Then get a nossing cruiser and kill its tank. Theorycraft Online perhaps, but T2 ships are specialist ships. They are excellent in their roles, but in the end, a Cerberus is just a cruiser and frail as a cruiser if a megathron goes up to it and nos'es it. A Harpy/Hawk may be tough as nails to crack, but in the end, its just a frigate. Nos it, web it, and it goes down VERY fast. 24mil + 10mil fittings killed instantly because a MWDing thorax with some nos worth 10mil total pwned it.

So the question goes back to "is it balanced?"

Dunno, is it? Does it have to be? Not all ships cover the same role. People are quick to say the Crow is an overpowered interceptor and isnt balanced... but thats only because they try to use more specialized interceptors in generalist / dogfighting roles where the Crow shines. Likewise, using a Crow like a specialized Blasteranis will only end up disappointing you. The Crow is just popular because it can be flexible, but it certainly isnt specialized unless you really make it. But once its specialized its utter crap at everything else.

In the end, in my opinion, some ships are just better than others because they shine in the more common roles (be it fast attack, tackling), but I'm more inclined to say that the more underused ships "suck", merely because someone hasnt come up with a good role for them yet. The Ares, for example, certainly needs a few tweaks, but its far from being 'the suck' that people on the EVE Online forums make it out to be. Then again, most of the EVE Online forum whores arent exactly interesting to look at, they're too obsessed on flavor of the month setups and lack imagination *shrugs*.



Sorry for the long ass post :P

-Leon

[Jayce]

To crib from Pilate: "What is balance?"

Is it
-the ability to pwn everyone with pure player skill (ie, very skilled player can own multiple enemies)?
-the existence of a counter to every ship/tactic/weapon?
-isk parity (this is a new, and cool concept on me - the idea that if you have a pwning ship it can be so expensive that to break even you have to, statistically speaking, never die)?
-between two players of equal skill points, player skill doesn't matter?
-between two players of equal skill points, player skill is everything?

This might be a question for the game design forum more than for this one  , but I think it's interesting how different people are defining balance here.  It's also, on a side note, making me jones to try out Eve again.  Damn you people...

[Krakrok]

-the existence of a counter to every ship/tactic/weapon?

I'm voting for this one. Same reason why Guild Wars is balanced.

[Comstar]

Well in that case, I would say it's not, as from what I understand, the counter to EW dosn't work too well? However, ignoring EW, I think it is?

[Yoru]

An effective counter to EW is FoF missiles. Or drones, if you get them out and on target before getting jammed.

Or a buddy.

[Rithrin]

-the existence of a counter to every ship/tactic/weapon?

I'm voting for this one. Same reason why Guild Wars is balanced.

Its pretty true in EVE, but a lot of counters involve bringing friends along to pick up in areas you can't counter. The counter to a BS could be frigates, but you'll need more than just your own.

[Sparky]

However if you use the "more warm bodies" counter you'll usually be killing ships worth many multiples of your fleet.  I disagree there's no counter to T2 sniping BS other than more T2 sniping BS.  Covert ops for warp-ins or interdictors with oversized afterburners work pretty well.  Usually the snipers will be far enough away that warp-ins work even if you're on the same grid.

[tazelbain]

-the existence of a counter to every ship/tactic/weapon?

I'm voting for this one. Same reason why Guild Wars is balanced.

Also, neither game locks you into a character setup.  So, if you try X skill and its not to your liking, you can change your setup without losing a lot time. 

[JoeTF]

GW is limited to 8v8 duels. Not 8 pirates vs. one mining apoc. Or 20 gatecampers vs 1 battleship. Or 100 blob vs 150 blob.

I loved the part about being able to kill BS without NOS, target painters, drones, smartbombs, antiEW and midsized guns. And of course without buddies(LOL!).

Better than WOW, still unbalanced as hell.

[Megrim]

You are misinterpreting 'balance' as something to be rationalised at 1=1. There are different kinds of balance. The aforementioned bs with mid-sized guns is useless against another bs.

[Vedi]

It's pretty simple, actually.

In Eve, pretty much any means of attack has a counter. There is a counter for the counter, and so on - the paper, scissor, rock model. You can't fit everything, so you can't fit counters and counter-counters ad infinitum. You can spend ISK to get something expensive, which can cover several modes of attack (but not all) or be better at its role, which may mean that if you use cheap equipment, you need several people to counter that. In other words, more people counters more ISK and skillpoints, and vice versa. For any decent fitting, you can identify encounters you will defeat, but also encounters that will defeat you.

There is balance in the sense that there is no strategy that does not have a weakness or dominate all other strategies. There is not balance in the sense that some strategies will succeed more often that others.
There is not balance in the sense that ISK or skillpoints do not matter.
There is not balance in the sense that some strategies are more popular than others, and hence you might win more if you choose a counter to that.
There is balance in the sense that you can contribute as a newbie.
There is not balance in the sense that bringing too many people will crash the server, so there is a limit to the usefulness of cheap newbies in huge fleet battles.

Player skill is important both in fitting the ship (some combinations of modules are suboptimal), tactics and strategy (recognizing when to figh and how), politics and dealing with the market.

[Jayce]

Better than WOW, still unbalanced as hell.

These kinds of statements were what I was trying to address in my post.  It's easy to say "omg it's unbalanced" but harder to quantify exactly how.

Your post seems to indicate that numbers shouldn't matter?  100 blob vs 150 blob vs 400 blob should all have equal chances at each other?  20 gatecampers vs 1 battleship should be an equal fight (and you'd want to maintain the equality of 1v1 battleship fights too, I would think). I think you could make a game that would maintain that "balance" but it would be pretty contrived in its combat mechanics.

If I misunderstood what you were getting at, please correct me.


I tend to think of balance as defined that one build (skills + equipment) does not dominate all others.  Usually this means that high-end gear dominates other gear. WoW (for example) is better than other games in this area but still pretty bad (purple-geared PvPers generally > blue-geared, but this can be made up somewhat by coordination).  It sounds like Eve does have equiment that is better than others but it's correspondingly more expensive, introducing a balancing mechanism.

In fact looked at that way, the meta-combat is that of my ISK vs your ISK.  That's where the real balance comes in.

[Roac]

Better than WOW, still unbalanced as hell.

It seems to me that you will only be satisfied with giving it the label of balanced if every encounter were to be resolved by a coin flip, regardless of anything else.

To me, a there are a few things that contribute to being unbalanced.  Games where a few months of play ahead of competition makes you untouchable is unbalanced (see most games with lv50 vs lv40, etc).  Games where one template crushes all or nearly all others (tankmage or some such).  Games where expensive equipment rules, AND where you cannot ever be rid of that threat (no loss on death). 

To be sure:
Money matters.
Skill points matter.
Template matters.
Numbers matter.

However, there is not one "I Win" button.  Even if someone entered with a 3y char flying a Titan with a billion in implants, you will certainly lose 1 on 1 if you fight it out.  You might be able to get away, you can certainly outmaneuver it on the game map, and there are serious drawbacks to using such a character as you are risking the equivalent of about $10k in real money in the process, or thousands of hours of work.  There's a good reason you don't see everyone who is able flying a Titan (for that matter, they have almost never been seen at all). 

To me, balance means you have options available.  Even as a newbie, Eve has that.

[Soln]

I don't think there has been much of a FOTM in Eve has there?  if so, that shows something is working

[Leon]

I don't think there has been much of a FOTM in Eve has there?  if so, that shows something is working

Flavor of the month ships? Plenty.

I dont really pay much attention to those FOTM ships. They are inovative at first, but once that setup spreads and everyone uses it just because their friend's friend told them it was good without experimenting themselves.... they soon become cookie cutter.

As an example :

October - December 2005 were the months of FOTM  plated rocket crow.

April - Present 2006 were the months of the FOTM stabbed-up Vagabond HAC.

Those are the only two i really paid much attention to.


There was a FOTM "Jaegerbomb Claw" that went around when people tried to take DrunkenOne's claw setup, but I never really flew claws so I didnt look too deeply into it.

[WayAbvPar]

April - Present 2006 were the months of the FOTM stabbed-up Vagabond HAC.

Yep. Every wannabe pirate on the seven seas is flying a Vaga these days it seems.