The tiericide locomotive is well on track so far. Retribution ship changes are already packed and ready to be delivered to your personal fireplace on December, the 4th.
With the bulk of our work out of the way though, this begs the question, what are we going to do now with all that precious free time? Eat marshmallows on the CCP office balcony? Impossible, it’s snowing outside. Break CCP Fozzie’s fingers with the Nerfbat™? Already done. Fondly trim CCP Unifex’s hairs while singing dirty French limericks? No can do, he is desperately and irrevocably bald.
Well, guess that leaves us no choice but to move forward with future balancing plan then. Let’s assume 2012 is not the end of the world, the universe and all things we hold dear, and let’s take a peek into what we want to start tweaking next year.
Battlecruiser operational
Yes comrades, battlecruisers are indeed next to get through the tiericide revolution. Let’s face it, they had it coming, as current tier 2 variations perform too well while tier1s are found wanting. With this in mind, the plan is to adjust total slot layout to 17 on all of them and split them into two categories depending on their expected role.
First, the attack version; they favor speed and damage over resilience, which fits the current tier 3 battlecruisers extremely well.
- Oracle, Naga, Talos and Tornado: are mostly fine, except for the mobility which is a little too high, and signature radius, which could be increased a bit. Apart from this, little needs to change.
Second, the combat flavor, which follows in the footsteps of the frigate and cruiser variants – made for front line duty, they have a good balance of firepower and resilience.
- Prophecy: expected to be changed to a drone boat. This is a role revamp that will radically modify its slot and fitting layout. It will most likely have less bandwidth but more drone bay than the Myrmidon.
- Ferox: we would like to reinforce the sniping nature of this ship, most likely by replacing the shield resistance bonus with a hybrid damage bonus. Nothing is set in stone yet, as we need to find ways to ensure it doesn’t compete with the Naga.
- Brutix: this ship role conflicts a bit with the Talos, mainly because the latter is more mobile and packs more punch. We want to explore options on how to turn the Brutix into a more reliable close-range brawler, while the Talos keeps a kiting advantage.
- Cyclone: ancillary shield boosters have significantly improved this ship performance; however, it won’t hurt to make sure it’s in a good shape before moving on.
- Harbinger: assuming direct control. Problems on this ship are tied with the shield versus armor tanking issues, which need to be looked at.
- Drake: once again, blame the modules, not the hull – while missiles are being looked into by CCP Fozzie, shield tanking is the root of the problem here.
- Myrmidon: this vessel is mainly fine, but it couldn’t hurt giving it a bit more drone bandwidth and bay to make it more of an improvement when compared to the Vexor.
- Hurricane: counting CCP Fozzie’s adjustment to its fitting, the cruiser boost should reduce its over-the-top versatility, especially if battlecruisers slot layout is altered to 17 as mentioned above.
That’s the big lines for battlecruisers. As usual, your voice will be heard through feedback threads posted on the proper forum sub-section when the time is right. It is also worth noting that we will adjust ship mineral requirements as we continue with the rebalancing.
You sunk my battleship
Next on the ship rebalancing queue, battleships suffer the least from the current “tier” system, and most of them are fairly well balanced. However, some still require a little face lift, since we are one year into the future and we have the technology.
As usual, we would like to keep up with the ship line classification we have been using for frigate, destroyer and cruisers so far. This is not designed to arbitrarily pigeon-hole vessels into narrow roles, but to provide a basic line of operation for anyone to understand and follow through. The ship role and purpose on the battlefield will still greatly be influenced by the choice of modules, rigs and ammunitions you make.
First, let’s have a look at the disruption line, which only has one ship so far:
- Scorpion: fine at the moment, it dies fast in fleet of course, but that’s what the ECM role brings to the hull anyway.
Then, we have attack battleships, where most of the changes will be:
- Armageddon: this ship is performing well at the time being, and thus we have little reason to alter it.
- Megathron: just like the Thorax on the cruiser level, the Megathron role will be changed slightly to make it less resilient, but more mobile so to make proper use of blasters. Think of it as a ship closer to the Typhoon in terms of speed and agility. Next to a Talos, it will be more durable, more flexible, but still cumbersome to have in small gangs.
- Typhoon: this vessel is very good when you possess all skills on earth and beyond trained to 5 – for being a jack of all trades, it has nothing really going for it. That is why we would like to change its role to a missile platform. Next to the Raven, it would have less range, but more mobility for more close range in your face damage.
And finally, combat vessels. They share the same functions as explained for battlecruisers above, so without further delay:
- Apocalypse: is behaving well at the moment, so there is little point in changing it.
- Raven: the king of the hill lost its throne a while back. That’s mainly due to cruise missiles being terrible in most situations, and torpedoes not always being usable with a slow, cumbersome hull.
- Dominix: still remains a popular ship. It is fairly good, except for the drone mechanics themselves, which are terribly outdated. While we are not certain when this can be tackled, it definitely has high priority on our to-do list.
- Tempest: we are mostly fine with it at the moment, no major change planned.
- Abbadon: a nice ship with fine purpose in fleets and large gangs.
- Rokh: is also all good, very competitive with the Abbadon
- Hyperion: the hull could be improved, but again most of the issues come from passive versus active tanking problems
- Maelstorm: has a good role as well, no need for major changes
Again, mineral requirements are most likely to be tweaked as we go through the balancing process. Below you can see how all tech1 ships come together with the new tiericide overhaul.
Click to enlarge
I love it when a plan comes together
As announced at the beginning of the year, skill requirements will be modified when we are done overhauling tech1 battlecruisers and battleships. This consists of:
- Breaking Destroyers and Battlecruisers skills into four racial versions with an identical training multiplier (thus making it four times harder to get all races trained)
- Changing skill requirements for Racial Cruisers from Racial Frigates 4 to Racial Destroyers 4
- Changing skill requirements for Racial Battleships from Racial Cruisers 4 to Racial Battlecruisers 4
- Changing skill requirements for capital ships from Racial Battleships 5 to 4, but introducing or increasing other skills to keep the same overall training time requirements
We are doing this for two reasons:
- Make ship progression more consistent over all sizes, instead of having a mix of racial and generic skills
- Allowing for faster tech2 specialization, and slower multi-racial diversification. In EVE Online, while you as a new player will never catch up with the total amount of skill points a veteran has, you can still be on the same level by specializing. This is precisely what we want to promote here. For instance, currently one needs Amarr Cruiser and Battlecruisers 5 to fly an Absolution, after the change the same pilot will only need Amarr Battlecruisers 5 (on top of the other skill requirements).
Reimbursement details:
- Let us repeat again: if you could fly it before, you will be able to do so after the change. Technically it means if you are able to fly an Oracle by having Amarr Cruisers 3 and Battlecruisers 3, we will remove the Battlecruisers skill from your character and give you Amarr Battlecruisers at 3. If you had Battlecruisers at 3 and Caldari Cruisers 3 instead, you would not receive Amarr Battlecruisers but the Caldari Battlecruisers skill at 3 instead. The same principle work with the Destroyers skill.
- With the way nested skill requirements work in EVE, it also means that you will still be able to fly an Apocalypse even if you don’t have the Amarr Battlecruiser skill trained at 4 after the change. It won’t matter as long as you have the Amarr Battleship skill at the proper level.
With this in mind, it becomes quite obvious to focus on training the Destroyers and Battlecruisers skills before the change to get the maximum return effect. We highly recommend you start doing so now.
Command and conquer
When we're finished with tech 1 hulls we are going to start looking into more advanced roles, starting with Command ships. They are seriously lacking at the moment for two reasons: first, regular tier 2 battlecruisers mostly fill the same combat role for less expensive operational costs, and second, tech 3 hulls are just plain better at gang link boosting.
Our goal is to make them appealing to fly as a whole, not something you keep inside a POS forcefield while watching your favorite TV show. For this reason, we want:
- Tech 3 ships to be able to carry more gang links at once than Command Ships, but with less effect
- Tech 3 ships to be able to carry some gang links while still maintaining some combat capability
- Command Ships to carry fewer types of gang links than Tech 3, but with stronger effects (specialization over generalization) – if fitted with gang links, they have less combat capability than Tech3 hulls.
- All Command Ships to have a combat role on the field on top of having the possibility to be fit for a pure fleet commanding platform.
What does that mean in practice? We are removing the distinction between “fleet” and “field” Command Ships. All of them will now have 3% bonuses to two Warfare Link fields and be able to fit three warfare link modules simultaneously (instead of 3 for fleet versions only). That also means that the previous fleet Command Ships will be rebalanced to fit combat roles. Want to use an Eos as a truly effective drone ship? You can. Or the Damnation as a sexy Khanid missile platform beast? Be our guest. All that matters is the specialization choices you make before undocking by deciding to fit gang links or not, not something forced to you from the arbitrary "field" versus "fleet" hull.
Tech 3 treatment will focus on making them more generalized. Their Warfare Link bonuses will be reduced from 5% to 2% effectiveness; however they will have bonuses to three racial Warfare Link fields while being able to fit three Warfare Link modules simultaneously.
As a side note, as we announced a while ago, we are not pleased by having Warfare Links work outside the battlefield zone, and will be investigating options to move them on grid. Command and Tech3 ships providing that much of an advantage should commit to an engagement instead of being safely parked inside a POS bubble.
Here is a picture summarizing the text below as a tl;dr version:
Click to enlarge
Well that’s pretty much it for now, remember this is just a vision for the beginning of 2013 and as such, not final. We have more balancing changes to be planned and released, so keep your eyes peeled for updates.
Hope that helped and many thanks for your time!
- CCP Ytterbium
"Myrmidon: this vessel is mainly fine, but it couldn’t hurt giving it a bit more drone bandwidth and bay to make it more of an improvement when compared to the Vexor."
+1 respect for CCP
I for one wouldn't mind seeing a Myrmidon with a full flight of T2 Ogres. Might make them actually worth avoiding, or for using as something other than bait.
Ogres are Battleship class drones. Why should a Battlecruiser have a full flight of Battleship drones?
It's too slow as well. It was one of the few Gallente ships that did not get a speed boost when the blaster buff came out. The damn thing flies like a brick, you can only catch people who are dumb enough to hit 'approach' on you.
The Phoon, Prophecy, Caldari HACs, Hyperion (Unless you want to leave it a PVE boat) and Harbinger all need work. What you're proposing for the Typhoon and Prophecy will, I think push them further into the realm of 'there's better ships for that'.
Please leave the skills alone. If we need spreadsheets to figure out how to make a profit building ships, other players can certainly be asked to figure out a training queue.
Shield hyperion. Nuff said.
But the Typhoon and Prophecy are both already in that realm. Especially the Prophecy. The Harbi is alright, but eclipsed by the Hurricane.
Right – I'm saying trying to push a 'generalist' but rarely-used hull into a specific role (esp these two 'worst of' weapons systems) isn't going to see them utilized more. What would, IMO see them both get used more is to give them both a tracking bonus OR if you're going to make them missile boats (if you INSIST) give them a bonus like the Golem's to knocking small targets out of the sky, and a 10% missile velocity factor.
The Prophecy is overtanked in my opinion; I find it impossible to get a 1v1 in one as everyone thinks it's a trap. A shame really, I'd scare them with the dps it gets from being blaster fit. If they do change the ruddy thing, it should be either an e-war platform like the Arbitrator, or a missile platform. I don't think the Amarr have a decent T1 missile boat, instead having to wait until T2. It doesn't really make much sense.
I like the Phoon for the same reason another commenter likes the Cane – it's very versatile. A Phoon with torps, neuts, a solid buffer and a MWD will give almost any ship a good run for its money. Or with 800's and torps, webs and dual reps. Or a nanobeast to rival the Machariel. List goes on.
I want to see faction battleships and marauders changes…….
And I want pirate and navy battlecruisers
Seriously, it be nice to have the power at a price option at the medium level that doesn't include a lot of skill training, like the tech 2 and tech 3 ships.
Over the top versatility? (In reference to Cane). Forgive me for sounding brash, but versatility is what allows the players to be creative in their fitting approach. I love encountering a cane not knowing if its a shield/nano fit, or FML/armor fit…. or AC vs. Arty… or pure DPS vs dual nuets. Cruisers and down I can understand having specialized roles, but the name BATTLECRUISER suggests,"don't take me lightly… I'm the linebacker of EVE… I'm unpredictable."
Just food for thought. If we overspecialize ships to fit particular roles, then they may as well just come with permanent modules, since they are made to be shit fit with anything else. Respectfully, let the players be creative, and loosen the reigns on "ROLES." My shitty intuition would expect the rebalancing team to look at the ships that are never used. The point made with the Phoon is excellent. Rather than nerfing the highly utilized hulls, maybe explore why other hulls aren't being utilized. This might be the more effective option to balancing the number of waffles in space.
Fully agree, Eve will turn into a predictable spreadsheet war.
Ship A1 is counter to B1
Ship A2 is counter to B2
etz
etz
MMM. i agree with your conserns but i would like to see T1 ships fit a certain role, and have the T2 and T3 to be flexible. This would make ballancing easyer and still leave loads of room for supprices.
Something like, T1 ships fit 1 role, T2 ships fit 2-3 roles, and T3 could fit 4+ roles.
I just jizzed in my pants….command ship changes
Can't wait for them to get to tech 2 cruisers.
Vagabond, Ishtar, Muninn rebalancing, oh yea
I have a feeling CCP "might" give us some more battleships to fill in some roles or change how the scorpion plays. Although i could be wrong on all accounts, i bet CCP is looking at the Disruption tab and only seeing the scorpion…and wondering what they should do about it.
If CCP is continuing to create roles for the ship that are easily identified, i don't think it would be too far off to say they may add 4 more BS hulls to cover up the empty spaces in the Battleships attack and disruption areas.
Minnie TP battleships!! haha. "Frickin LASERS!"
I'm all for the Megathron hulls getting a speed boost, they aren't exactly known for being the best tanks anyway. They are just exactly mediocre at tanking anyway(Navy Megas insane armor HP aside), and just ever so slightly not fast enough to make Blasters worth a damn.
Drake nerf, Myrmidon buff.
Most pleasing.
the drake will be come useless if both missiles AND the drake's shield tanking are nerfed.
if both get nerfed noone will bother build or fly drakes.
nerf either missiles or tank but not both
Oh dear, noone will fly drakes, OH THE HUMANITYYYYY!!!…. No, but honestly, If I never get to fly Drake again, it'll be a 100 years too soon.
In short: if you unsubbed because the Eos was useless, you'll have to wait to at least summer next year. Don't resub. EVE is dying…
Just kidding.! I was thinking of unsubbing come december but damn, CCP's RP machine is making a fine job. And the new login screen: youtu.be/SsuP-4gKU0A
FFS, shiny stuffs…
From what I'm seeing in the DEV blog comments there's going to be a drag out all Forum screamfest over the T2 Command ship & T3 OGB booster bonus NERFs
Getting popcorn ready
I for one am glad the Amarr ship will get the armour & skirmish bonus because the INFO gang links suck ^_^
As much as I love command ships, I'd rather see T2 cruisers get adjusted first. It's probably being driven by the politics surrounding off-grid boosting, in addition to how fleet CS's are under-utilized.
Ytterbium also hinted at some of the disparity between armor and shield tanking, and the possibility of a balance pass. It's a shame that this didn't happen before they went through all of the ships. Perhaps it's time they gave Gallente a more general armor tanking bonus, rather than an active bonus that's becoming more and more impractical in the face of logistics backed fleets and increasingly impotent local tanks. Maybe change the rep bonus to also apply to reps received from logistics.
Question for the skill changes: Which skill do I get, if I have BC @ lvl 5 and Amarr Cruiser @ lvl 3? Is it 'capped' to Amarr BC 3 or what?
Question considering the skill changes: What happens if someone has BC Skill @ lvl 5 and Amarrr Cruiser @ lvl 3? Does he/she get a 'capped' Amarr BC Skill @ lvl 3 or what?
Raivi , that is ccp fozzie, answered that. You get them by the bc skill, so if you have all four cruiser skills at 3and bc at 5, you get all racial bc skills at 5.
Do we get a skill to be able to use two different mindlinks at the same time?
Pretty sure that bonus command ships/t3's will fit just one type of links, the ones to match the mindlink, at least during fleet battles.
Soo I have Minny/Caldari/Gallente and Amarr cruisers at level 5 and battlecruisers at lvl 5, does this mean they will take my battlecruisers skill away and give me lvl 5 for the racial battlecruisers skill across all of my races being as I already have the cruisers at lvl 5?
Same skills here and if they don't – I'll feel like I've been fucked.
Sounds like CCP is looking at all the posts from the crying whining carebears and nerfing the fuck out of ships. Drakes die all the time. Hurricanes die all the time. Leave them alone! Like it was said above regarding the hurricane i like not knowing how its fit. Having the general bonuses to ships gives players the chance to make their own fit rather than making every ship have a cookie cutter fit. STOP NERFING EVERY SHIP.
I think the issue is that drakes and hurricanes are 90% of the battlecruisers used in pvp. There trying to change that.
I can understand that and tbh the harbinger is decent however I rarely see Brutix or myrm anymore these days. But instead of nerfing the good ones how about buff the bad ones.
so..if im getting this logic correct,current battlecruiser drake and cane are to cheap and good,so we are nerfing them and buffing the even cheaper tier 1 versions.
???????
what they're trying to do is make all bc's a technical same tier. There will be no more tier1-tier 3. Instead there will be assault/attack bc's. Its an effort I approve of because it is an attempt to make all their hulls useful in one aspect or another. Maybe we'll see more brutix/harbies.
The first part your stating is somewhat true. Shit happens.
Harbinger: assuming direct control.
Make the loki link bonus the same has the tengu! Both Shield and Armor bonus doesn't make sense… we don't usually dual tank our ships! If i'm armor tanked I would pick a legion or a proteus, or if I'm shiled tank I will pick a tengu. So… 2 electronic link bonus and 1 tank bonus for each ship.
Question: if I can pilot all the Battleships and have Battlecruiser skill in lvl 5, after the change I'll have all the racial skills of Battlecruiser at lvl 5 too? And the same will occur to the Destroyers skills?
It seems like CCP is trying to designate a roll for each ship. That is stupid. Part of the attraction of EVE is you can modify your ship so that your enemy doesn't know what is coming. Yes Drakes have missiles and Brutix is blasters, but you can modify the fit. It seems as though CCP is trying to deny pilots the ability to change the role of their ship. That is stupid. Then all a fleet commander has to do is ask, what ships are in the fleet and he will know if they should fight or not. The simple reality is large fleets need to be consistent in shiptype so that a fleet commander can effectively maneuver in the battle. It's terrible when CCP tries to change the game they obviously no longer play to fit their mental picture of what the game should be. They are so out of touch with what actually happens in the game….and their logs show nothing!