Afterburner Speed Rigs

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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Afterburners outside of frigates/destroyers and some cruisers are pretty lackluster and often not worth fitting (unless you oversize them). In PVE they may have a role to use on battleships. In pvp, putting an AB on a battleship or battlecruiser (especially armor) feels like wasting a slot.

At first i was thinking of doing a blanket buff suggestion to either 100mn ABs (which would be bad) or to BS by giving a role bonus (which feels too much like im discouraging sansha ships). So instead i propose making it a rig.

Being careful not to make frigates/sansha too powerful with AB, i would like to propose a new rig for afterburner speed.

Initially i was only wanting it in the large size for battleships, but realized it could find a number of uses in other ship lines. Each rig size would have different speed effects to balance for their size (instead of a blanket %, like most rigs).

Small Rigs:
T1: 8% AB speed increase
T2: 12% AB speed increase

Medium rigs:
T1: 15% speed increase
T2: 20% speed increase

Large Rigs:
T1: 35% speed increase
T2: 40% speed increase

XL Rigs:
open to ideas here, i was thinking 40% t1 and 45% t2 but with cap missiles and tracking, that could be way too strong. Maybe leave this rig not available for caps, or offer it only as a 20% bonus?

Rig Penalty:
10% increase in capacitor activation cost for afterburners

Or

10% reduction in total cap pool (similar to fitting an MWD)

Yes sansha ships could see a decent buff from these, but at the same time you sacrifice tank, agility or other benefits when using a rig (also receiving a cap penalty). It also allows dual prop fits more speed on things like inties, without sacrificing HP for a poly carb/aux thruster/nano.

It would follow restrictions like a higgs rig to only allow 1 to be fit at a time. Mainly to prevent silly stacking fits where we get some kind of 10k/s 10mn AB succubus or 100mn phantasm.

Why?
Cause battleships and 100mn AB are near pointless on most of them. Giving them a 35-40% buff when using a rig would give them a 120-200m/s speed increase. This is important when brawling with big guns to help reduce transversal (with help from a grappler) against smaller targets and helps to speed tank other battleship weapons when in brawling range.

Thoughts?

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ABs are supposed to be lackluster. They have no downsides, they’re cheap to fit. While adding rigs would of course add downsides, they don’t really fit the bill.

An MWD provides you significantly more speed, but it of course has downsides.

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Not to mention the already existing speed rigs also impact how fast an AB makes you go. Plus there’s implants available that affect them.

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The auxiliary thrusters are borderline useless though.

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:frowning: leave my Sansha ships alone.

So how does this help with the only brawling battleship that has an immobilizer on?

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I was thinking the same. Polycarbon engine housing will help you notice that AB working.

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On a battleship? Go from 311m/s with 100mn to 328 m/s with a poly on a Maelstrom. I dont think thats worth a rigslot and im pretty sure i wouldnt “feel” that.

What i propose would make the AB speed go from 311m/s to 430m/s when using the rig.

Keep in mind, this rig effects battleships way more than other ships (it was mentioned several times in the OP).

Id be inclined to allow the rig only for battleships, as medium and small rigs could create balance issues. Mainly with 100mn T3C. Yes nightmares could get a speed buff (about 300m/s), but will sacrifice tank and cap as a result.

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Im not looking to go faster than an mwd BS. Im looking to have actual usable speed with an AB on a battleship. Do you feel its worth using a mid on a mael or abaddon to go from ~100m/s to 300m/s?

With the proposed rig, youd still be half of mwd in most cases, but have a speed that is actually somewhat usable for things like transversal.

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100 to 300 is triple the speed. In an instance where you need to burn say 10km, it would take you 100 seconds. With said example, that goes down to 33 seconds. That’s not trivial by any stretch. It’s a minute where you are not in space at risk of being attacked in an insanely slow ship, or a minute where you’re shooting things rather than burning to a gate. Ideally you’d be burning as you shoot in which case the extra speed would possibly harm your DPS application.

In short, the AB is built for sustained speed improvements, and as a result is not only easier to fit but much more sustainable.

In the case of being useful for mechanics stuff like transversal, use an MWD. That’s what it’s for. You pulse it when you align to a good vector (which is likely exactly what you are already doing).

If you want both, fit dual props. I’d argue that’s just as expensive of a fitting decision as taking 33% of your rig slots + whatever calibration cost and drawback cost.

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An mwd is only usable for transversal when kiting, not when brawling (as youre scrammed). An AB is only usable if it gives enough speed to maintain transversal. This why you dont see dual prop BS (except maybe the barg and mach), as the speed is barely usable and not worth the slot.

You can also brawl with MJD/AB, but again less usable on a battleship as youre not meeting speed requirements to pull range on targets (especially if theyre AB fit as well).

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I would argue that unless you’re intending to kite a sieged dread, you won’t be kiting anything in a battleship (save for maybe a nightmare). MWD or no, they’re slow as balls. Anything that’s fit to brawl will be able to catch you.

You’re choosing a very lopsided losing encounter, and then hoping that adding an extra 100m/s to your speed will help things… it won’t. In the case where you’re scrammed by something and it’s speed tanking you, you’re done, no amount of manual piloting will help. Switch to neuts and smartbombs. If they get farther out (cepter/garmur), maybe a grappler.

Overall battleships are very weak in the current meta. I have on several occasions advocated for rather sweeping improvements to them. Giving them an AB rig however will not solve anything. It will just unbalance other classes of ships further, say for example oversized ABs on cruisers. They’re already fast, you just added 300m/s to them. If they’re going to sig tank you, they’ll be fitting one of these too.

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I am sympathetic with problem. Not sure about solution though.

If you want to introduce a rig, maybe the penalty should be fitting related. Cuts out some of the potential problems.

I might just suggest a decreased mass for vanilla T1 BS and BC.

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I kite with battleships, its not their speed, but utility that allows them to kite. A mach, barg and typhoon can kite in the traditional sense as theyre all relatively fast and have utility.

A tempest is relatively slow, but has 2 heavy neuts. You can neut out most faster ships that come in to scram. You also have the grappler available to slow them on their approach.

If i choose to brawl, a grappler will slow a frigate down to below 100m/s in most cases. Lets say i have no AB and go with MWD. Base speed is 111m/s on a maelstrom. Frig web/scrams, so now im about 60m/s. Im done, like you said. With an AB, im at 300m/s, when webbed im about 120m/s. If i can keep the frigate below that number then i might be ok, however, using the grappler, the further away i am the faster that frig will become. I must move away to gain transversal, so id be stuck with a normal AB. If i increased speed of the AB with a rig, then my AB speed would be 420m/s. Reduce that by 60% from 1 web, now im at ~180m/s which gives much more wiggle room to pull range with OH grappler.

Yes its slow, but it would work. So that 120m/s difference is quite important under those conditions.

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Why not attack that problem?

If a frigates webbifier would only have 30% strenght on battleships, that would help much more.

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It would help. Though im doubtful that would ever come to fruition.

The entire meta has been built around webs/scrams/ewar in their current format. That would mean changing almost every EWAR module and how it scales with size. If webs get lessened effectiveness when on a frigate, then what about TDs, damps, neuts and ECM? Will a sentinel still be able to apply meaningful cap pressure on anything above a dessie?

Its a huge change that effects almost every ship in the game. CCP hasnt even finished tiericide, idk if they can rebalance all the EWAR for every ship interaction. It may also push us even further into caps online. A capital web would get a bonus on smaller targets (since youre implying a scaling mechanism), which is literally every subcap.

So yes, it could help and actually make things like griffins less annoying (assuming ECM is scaled the same), but i dont see CCP changing it anytime soon.

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No, I mean webs and only webs.

A jet-ski pilot will not be able to stop a US Navy aircraft carrier with a fisher net or slow it down.
It makes no sense and it never will make sense.

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stasis webs aren’t nets?

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Based on their description, it’s a fairly accurate term.

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Fair, but to be anal about specifics, they also say they entangle the target. @elitatwo’s statement about using a jetski to slow down an aircraft carrier with a fishing net would imply that the net is being used by the jetski to slow down the aircraft carrier (a tug of war if you will), when it’s more like “we just threw a net into their propellers and now ■■■■’s not working right”. Except in this case it’s made out of energy.

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