Disclaimer: The following article was submitted by Dracvlad, who was posting comments to the previous Recon Rebalance post that I made and suggested I speak to people who had an issue with the changes and why.
As he was one of the most vocal on that comment section I asked him to mail me with his comments on the changes. I then recieved this email, which was very well written, so decided to post it in full for the readers of EN24 to pursue.
Please bare in mind that statements made in the following article are his and do not reflect EN24’s.
My ingame name is Dracvlad and I have posted for many years on the comment section at EN24, initially as “I just do not know” and then as my ingame name. I have been involved in numerous wars in Eve and had my second account in Tribute when 300 Spartans took down the CFC SBU when they were trying to switch the station on the NCDOT HQ system.
I generally play Eve on the basis of operating in difficult areas and picking my fights because I am normally out-numbered and outgunned, this is the reality for many solo players and many small groups. A key part of this is using avoidance to condition your enemy to start taking you lightly and then punishing them for their laxity, the issue is that once you get known it becomes more and more difficult, however they do tend to be wary of you at that point and do not engage unless they have numbers. My primary focus is to be hard to kill and to not give easy kills, I will not take fights where I have no chance, I will take fights with a marginal chance.
I will not comment on Faction Warfare medium sites as they are not something that I have done, I leave those issues to people who do that, though I think the issue is very similar.
Eve combat is in the main based on getting the drop on the other side, this can range from specialised fits, hot drops, black ops or of the Titan bridged type, to off grid boosting which changes the engagement envelope, or the simple case of adding in either numbers or ships that are combat multipliers. There are significant differences between large fleets and small fleets, in large fleets the most important aspect is logistics and alpha DPS, with E-war used to adjust the enemies room to manoeuvre.
Currently the Force Recon Ships are used in smaller fleet fights as force multipliers and as tools to change the engagement variables, uncloaking a Force Recon and using their abilities can enable you to get kills or drive off people who were looking for easy kills. They are also used to cloaky camp people with the threat of hot drops. This role is not going to change going forward, they will just be better at it and to be honest that was needed. But it is a pretty evident role, so the trade off is their cloaking ability against less combat powers and resilience. The Pilgrim was a good example of this with the bonus focussed on making the neuts more powerful rather than range, while the Curse could do both.
The Combat Recon ships were more focused as being tankier ships without the cloak, to be in the main fight in small to medium sized fleets, they were more resilient and had greater DPS along with the same e-war capabilities as their force recon cousins. Again improving their resilience and their combat powers was needed due to the fact that strategic cruisers were better at that role. With the proposed changes they are more likely to be used in small fleets in the front line and in medium fleets and that is a good thing.
By removing Combat Recons ability to be picked up by D-scan CCP Rise has dropped them right into the role as small gang surprise combat ships, their ability in terms of stealth is in many ways above that of the Force Recons, because you use D-scan to pick up Force Recons as they use gates and leave stations, now you are blind in terms of that key intelligence which is so vital for solo or small gang players. Why give them this ability when that role is taken by the Force Recon ships?
Many people who are able at times to fight with greater numbers in Eve are drooling over the possibilities, these ships make them even more certain of winning however the solo, the solo dual boxer and the small gang has had their engagement envelope severely reduced by this D-scan immunity, it means that these players have to be even more risk averse when they come across a gang with 3 to 4 players not on D-scan. People suggest that players should start probing and of course they will, however for my part I will have to dock up get probing ship, check them out dock up change ship to fight and bang they might now bring them in or I miss the opportunity to fight, the alternative is warp in and ‘oh dear’ a Lachesis, Hugin, Rook and Curse, I am webbed scrammed, neuted and jammed in short order; a loss completely void of fun for me.
Over the years I was belt ratting for fun, the objective is to do it to make a point that you can operate in 0.0, officer, faction and hauler spawns will sometimes give you a nice leg up in terms of ISK, but for me it was never the ISK, I get that doing level 4’s in hisec, the fun was doing and dealing with the people who decide that the space is theirs.
In Stain I came across the most lame tactics, people would bring in an Arazu or a Strategic cruiser and cloaky AFK camp you, the method we used was to have a ratting ship with a cloak and cloak up when they arrive, wait for a bit then move to another system, about an hour later the lame cloaky will come into the system, you wait a bit then move system, an hour later they would come in system again, it was lame land musical chairs. I often referred to this as Eve at its finest, the ability to stop the other from playing by AFK playing, I am sure that those players are off playing another game, but anyway it’s how Eve is.
Over time due to ship balancing the ships I could use for this were reduced, the Drake used to be great for this as you could warp in at distance, align and kill rats, I used to kill rats in front of people trying to get me and then warp out, it was hilarious, by the way that was the out-gunned part. I never came in on the belt warp in, I would make multiple BM’s around the belt and warp to asteroids that would give me a clear line to my safe spot and be close enough to hit the rats. With the nerf to the range of heavy missiles the drake became useless.
After that it was difficult to come up with a suitable ratting ship, the problem was that as the Eve characters aged there was more and more BLOP’s so in affect all that happened was that you were swamped by cloaky afk campers. The aligned drake was the only way to do this, of course people will talk about ships like the Oracle and Naga as being good in this role, the answer is that they are not, you have to operate by moving systems and you need a flexible ship and their issue is lack of drones and an inability to deal with interceptors and Stealth Bombers due to no drones and large guns. They just do not work.
The solution was frigates, destroyers, assault frigates, cruisers, and HAC’s, the importance here was the ability to jump gates if needed and these ships with their increased DPS were cheap and effective, the only issue now was clone costs and med bays, which was a major issue in Stain. The trick for me was to fit for stealth with a cloak or fit as a PvP ship that could take on and kill the people that were trying to get you.
CCP Rise and CCP Fozzie have over the years decided to get rid of more than one utility slot, one important aspect was having a cloak and a salvager, so you could salvage that faction spawn and of course cloak up to hide from the more numerous natives. They removed all of them, the last ship that had this was the Phantasm and now it has one. With that ability gone I changed my approach to being more in your face combat, sitting down I wanted a ship that had advantages which would enable me to operate in the belts, but be strong enough to deal with smaller ships and the medium sized ships but be able to get out against anything heavier. The Phantasm got my vote, it was quick with the AB so the scrams could not stop me dictating range, I could kill any SB or interceptor that came in on me, my tactis around belts made it difficult for people to get cloakies into position, the Arazu and Proteus was what I feared most, because they could keep you on field longer for the blob. But on their own the Arazu would die and the Proteus would be either avoided or neuted, yes I had a neut on the Phantasm rather than a cloak.
A Curse is a serious bad ass ship even now before it gets buffed, the neuts have range and power and while the pilgrim will get the range it will not have the neuting power. For my part the realisation hit me that with the S-scan changes the most dangerous ship for me could warp in without me getting eyes on it like a cloaky but it was so much more than a cloaky ship, before people had to setup to blob me and to hold me there and it was difficult for them to do. With the changes they can get in on me at the belt, I cannot kite I have to mix it with the rats, I use pulse, so I can now be shut down and defeated by a dual boxer using a Lachesis and a Curse.
In effect I have now run out of possible options, I cannot see any way around this, except to die to a Lachesis and Curse, now the Assault Frigate, Destroyer, Frigate, Cruiser, HAC approach are all destroyed by the D-scan immunity. People also suggest that the time is the same as warping down while uncloaking to lose the de-cloak timer, it is not, I get at least two to three seconds extra in terms of knowing that there is an incoming as compared to a ship arriving on grid, try it out…
So I made my point on that thread, the issue is that CCP Rise has given high level stealth abilities to a medium fleet combat ship with combat multiplies, it has a massive unbalancing effect.
I had been in hisec doing level 4’s getting ISK up to go back to Stain to have fun on my own terms, I was going to buy multiple Phantasm BPC’s and give it a go, that change ruined that. It is evident to me that Eve does not cater for the solo or small group player, so after chewing through his refusal to listen to reason I de-subbed my accounts and am now grinding in Elite Dangerous.
All the people who are praising this change see it from the point of view that they can use it in a position of dominance, they increase their dominance, but the solo or small gang player has had their engagement window almost totally closed. I can see why people like it, heck I have recon ships 5 on Dracvlad, but it is bad for the game to give the same sort of stealth abilities to what I would define as medium level combat ships.
Of course I will get people making comments about belt ratting and the like, but I was creating content, now I see no point and have left the game, the question is what will you end up with in Eve, just the gankers, griefers and power gamers?
When Eve was the only kid on the block they could afford to act stupid, now there are proper multi-player space fighting games and though Elite Dangerous needs more work to be multiple player, it will get there, the combat is fun and I have a chance of getting out if I am losing, the interdiction method is brilliant. I have also played Arena Commander and love it, that game has great potential. Eve has the superb market system but in many areas it is boring to play because so many people are more interested in stopping others from playing or looking for a perfect kill, such as BLOP’s dropping a solo ratter, the D-scan immunity just adds more tools to that sort of player, which is not a smart move at all, it will also have a very negative impact on exploration too and in all of this it was such a pity because Eve was looking like it was moving in the right direction.
I will continue to follow Eve, and as time goes by I am less and less likely to come back, and on a final note, all of the people I play Elite Dangerous with are ex-Eve players, so much for the person on that Eve forum thread who declared that Eve players do not play Elite, all of them expressed the sentiment that this D-scan change was gross stupidity and all of them said that it reinforced their decision to stop playing Eve as being the right one.
Dracvlad
As I said in the comments and within the article itself, opinions are to be expressed and whether or not you agree with them it is always worth listening to them. Dracvlad makes some good points within his post, that those without an alt may well become more risk averse to warping to fights if they cannot see what could also be on the grid or that while swapping to a prober and back again the opportunity for a fight may well disappear. However if you are attacking in a belt in 0.0 or anywhere else where you are the attacker, there is never the 100% guarantee that your targets backup is not waiting in the next system or that there isn’t a couple of force recons sitting cloaked 50km off your target.
Sometimes you have to just roll the dice in PVP, especially if you are out roaming solo.
Everyone always has pieces of advice which are handed out after, say getting ganked in a plex or in a mission or belt, one of them has always been ‘You should watch your d-scan more’ and this will still be the case for probes. However the new top piece of advice should probably be ‘don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose’ as watching dscan will no longer be the be all and end all. I am not saying d-scan is defunct, I am just saying it will not be the failsafe 100% reliable tool it used to be and I think a lot of solo and small gang pilots will have to accept that.
My thanks to Dracvlad for being involved in the discussion and I hope more people will become involved in such discussions with the writers of EN24.
If you have anything that you think should be reported on EN24, please contact me at @mail_lite on Twitter, email at [email protected] or Eve Mail me in game.
