this arrived after someone was discussing in a chat ingame, guy was asking if it was true that Pirate Faction ships were the most powerfull ships (at least PvP wise).
i would beg to differ but if anything it seems they are far too popular in FW plexes, but this is more than just the PvP scene, i think this requires a revision of how we’re handling progression among tech “tiers” or lvls.
Reorganizing Tech Progression:
the old graph of T1 -> Navy -> Pirate with T2 leading to Specialization and T3 to Generalization has to be put in the dumpster, we cannot keep going like this. i’d like to suggest a more even playground for all those types based in the following scheme.
T1:
baseline, not much to say to say about this one however this should be the base from which all other tiers evolve, T1 ships are low in raw power but they have a good balance between fitting, slots and bonuses meaning they can more or less compete for the role they’re meant to thanks to being able to decide between Named or T2 modules.
T2:
the thing with this tier is that there’s no cohesion in general regarding how to design them. some T2 classes have a lot of passive bonuses added due to skills while others are supposed to use a class exclusive module. in both cases these ships also have horrible slots layouts or stats/bonuses to offset the “its better at X role compared to T1 but this means it cannot do other stuff”. in this case i would opt to focus on the module thing, make the ships have slots and stats consistent with their T1 version but ensure that the SP invested on them is compensated by providing further benefits from these modules.
ej: Covert Ops (no bombers) -> slots and stats consistent with their T1 version, Racial Ship skills provide bonuses to its base role (Scanning) while the T2 skill provides improvements on the use of its class exclusive module (Cover Ops Cloaking Device), Role Bonus would apply extra utility for that specific module
in short, the racial bonus of the ship and its atributes would be still based on its T1 variant (instead of being weaker) wile the T2 and Role bonuses are oriented towards its class module, not adding a bunch of extra stat heavy weight stats.
Pirate:
when they were rebalanced the idea was that they would have some kind of inbuild gimmick that gives them a special place of their own while being less skill intensive to fly compared to T2. the problem here was that not only they received a gimmick but also they have higher stats than the norm. the gimmick should counterbalance their raw power so they would have to receive a revision on their racial skill bonuses and their attributes. as it happens with the T2 reimagining their stats would be consistent with their T1 version while their bonuses are more oriented towards that special gimmick built inside the ship.
ej.
Gurista Ships -> Role bonus is 250% across al sizes, Caldari bonus converts to 5% bonus to missile damage, Gallente bonus converts to 10% drone max velocity/mwd speed/optimal range (depending on the size), main stats get more in line with their T1 variations.
the result here is that Gurista ships lean more towards their drone + missile backup style of combat but get way less tankier so its possible to break them when properly focused.
in short the idea is to reinforce and play around those gimmicks rather than adding higher stats to the ships so they can at least be vulnerable if played against properly.
Navy:
being honest, Navy should be a classification of its own rather than being counted on “Faction” so the approach here is that whereas T2 is focused around a module and Pirate is focused around its specific gimmick. Navy changes the bonuses on the ship while also adding a miscellaneous bonus that brings up a fault that was in the original hull and limited its potential.
ej.
Condor Navy Issue (this is an example of a new ship with the new design doctrine)
-Caldari bonus per lvl -> 5% bonus to Rocket and Light Missile Launcher rate of fire, 10% bonus to Rocket and Light Missile Max Velocity
-Misc bonus -> 50% bonus to Rocket and Light Missile damage, 80% reduction in Propulsion Jamming systems activation cost
in this case the Navy Condor keeps mostly the same role as its original version, however, by applying some of the strengths of the Kestrel into its design it gets slightly beefier and capable of doing long range asaults on its targets due to no longer having a Kinetic lock on its missiles.
in short, the racial bonus and the miscellaneous bonus would improve on the original bonuses of the ships not by raw power but by extending its potential acros two possible roles. which brings us to the last part of this thread.
T3:
to be honest the versatility of T3 is too much to handle for me because i’ve never flown one but having seen some kills and evaluating their stats and fittings in simulation programs its obvious that they wouldnt fit properly on this new design graph. so im going to try and do my best.
T3 ships in this new system keep their versatility in mind but they cannot keep being stronger in terms of raw power so they have to get clear downsides to their versatility. the 1st downside is that they would only be above Navy in terms of performance compared to those specific roles, T2 would be top on this due to dedicated skills and modules. the 2nd flaw to T3 would be their stats, having being brought in line with the rest of ships on their respective sizes.
the result of these changes should be T3Cs being in line with Pirate/Navy cruisers and T3Ds being in line with Pirate/Navy frigates or T2Ds.
to compensate this huge nerf, T3 ships would receive a series of changes.
- T3Cs no longer bring a loss of SP when destroyed
- better fitting potential due to higher CPU, Powergrid and Capacitor compared to the other tiers
- Subsystems and Tactical modes may receive slight buffs to ensure the modes perform as it should.
NOTE: this is mostly theorical seeing that i already said that i dont have experience with T3 ships, but its a change required for this suggestion.
The New Graph in Short:
Possible Aditional Changes:
-limit FW plexes to only T1 and Navy ships so new players looking to try PvP dont find themselves overwhelmed by getting against Pirate vessels, at least Navy should be manageable to play against in these cases.
-perhaps make it so certain modules are more efficient on ships of their type (Navy modules work better in Navy Ships, Pirate Modules work better when used by Pirate ships, much like how T2 ships are supposed to benefit from using T2 modules and Rigs), this is a bit more trickier due to the larg amount of module types in the game.
this thread was mainly done by an observation when chatting ingame so there’s not much that i could pull in terms of graphs or stuff like that but rather from a rough analisis of how things seem to go around atm, like the nerfs to Combat Interceptors or the current situations that you can find when doing novice plexes (i like to look at that monthly frigate report, props to the guy that writes and documents the thing).
thanks for reading…
