What is a ‘balancing discussion’ about ? If a Gnosis is ‘better’ than a Harbinger…so what ? And ‘better’ at what ? Who actually cares that a Navy Augoror isn’t the same ‘class’ as a battlecruiser if it can perform the same task ‘better’ ?
Why is it a problem ? It all gets to be like arguing about how many angels can dance on a pin head…when all players really care about is what is the best ship for a particular task.
So why is a cheap and multi-purpose ship a ‘problem’ ? Especially as you have yourself stated that an Ibis can beat a Titan. Strange how you admit the sheer potential huge imbalance in the game, yet grapple with the piddling and relatively minor imbalance of a few battlecruisers.
If that’s true then the Titan needs to be completely reworked. The tank of a capital ship - especially a Titan- should have been enough to soak the damage immediately.
Better at almost everything. For a lower price. And lower SP requirements. That is a bad balancing because it doesn’t reward the pilot who skills months into the Battlecruiser skills and has to invest into a more expensive hull. Even within the same class of ships.
Balancing isn’t about “tasks” because those “tasks” are completely situational and egocentrical chosen by the user. There is no “problem” if a certain ship is very good at some task. It is a problem if a ship is so good that it performs incredibly well in many situations, making lots of other ships inferior or even ignored. Or at least not rewarded skilling into them, because that feels bad for those people who do, it punishes Omega Players willing to invest months of skilltime to skill a racial BC or BS path and then seeing a simple Gnosis or Praxis outperforming their racial ships in most situations. If a company cares for it’s customers, it doesn’t do that kind of design.
I’ve actually been in a fleet of 40 corvettes that attacked a Blackflag fleet of Leshaks. But as it was a spur of the moment fun gesture and rapid undock, nobody thought to bring a warp scrambler. Undoubtedly a large enough number of these free ships could do the job.
I doubt any sensible pilot is skilling just for a Gnosis. Or doing so for any length of time. Especially, as you say, with the Gnosis not requiring any race skills anyway. Thus the vast majority of skills the person flying the Gnosis would skill for would be skills that are invaluable for any other ship flown.
The laser skills, shield skills, sensor skills, neuting skills, etc, etc…can all be ported to other ships. Given that the Gnosis itself requires so little skills, why would anyone be held up for months in their training for any race ships ??
You are presenting a zero sum game when there isn’t one. Nothing about skilling for a Gnosis, which I have, has held me up in skilling for a Navy Brutix, Prophecy, Navy Harbinger, Phantasm, Navy Augoror, Talos, Tornado, Hurricane, and shortly a Zealot, that I also have all of and am skilled for and am increasingly flying.
The Gnosis has simply been a very handy ship for trying out what modules do and their effect, precisely because you can fit multiple weapons systems to it. And I suspect that was all along its main purpose. Even within AO fleets, the Gnosis is generally a ‘noob ship’ generally for T1 players and most of the fleet rests on race ships like Eagles and Rokhs and so on.
I’ve yet to fly in any fleet that was entirely Gnosis on account of them being ‘so much better than everything else’.
This pretty much sums it up for me. Not only are they creating a problem and then a solution for it that they desire but you dont see massive null fleets, or really any medium sized fleets of gnosis running around owning everything in sight.
Put together some null fleets, some wh fleets, some low sec fleets all armed with nothing but gnosis and prove they are superior to anything that can come up against them.
Its a made up problem with made up solutions. But nerfing is CCPs way of working when they fixate on their newest ‘made up flavor of the month issue’.
The reason they wont work for any large fleets is I believe that supply isnt enough to sustain that kinda losses for long and prices for the remaining few would skyrocket into the stratosphere and stop it from happening ever again.
a) you’re falling for obvious subterfuge. Because no entire fleet consists of the same ship really, so that’s an easy claim to make.
b) Big fleets generally work with SRP or at the very least local producers, if only to turn ore and production into isk and power. SOCT ships are simply not useful for that.
Nit picking on details instead of actual topic is your gold Aisha. Way to shift the conversation away from the point of what I said due to pedantics.
Again, then where is this wide spread usage thats a cancer to Eve? Pedantic much? If fringe cases of single kills is your metric for this “uber” usage and cancer then youre simply pulling at straws to make your argument valid.
95% of forum threads are. Fact is, even if the Gnosis did have any ‘unfair’ advantage in any situation…it is an advantage that is open to all. The only really unfair situations are those where person A has some advantage that person B for some reason cannot equally have.
If you have played eve since 2003 like I have then youd understand that one of CCPs biggest nerfbat metrics is that of overusage. When a market is saturated in terms of ship usages and its become a stale and overused meta without good counters then change is needed. I see no such overusage or meta breaking requirements. Do you?
Ive read every single post on here, except your hidden post, and you make an argument of price and overuse compared to other doctrine ships. Yet No doctrine makes use of the gnosis, sunesis or praxis and it is only fringe, underused cases that seem to be your issue. Youve argued about skill issues, or rather lack of need for skills to use the ships themselves and how that is somehow unfair.
I could posit a case for the lack of skills needed from a CCP point of view as they do like keeping people skilling and having such ships as end game content by certain people doesnt promote continuous skilling… which of course requires one of, or all of, omega, skill injectors and PLEX. Again another metric for change by CCP.
Something being unfair for those who use it and abuse it is only an issue if too many people are using and abusing it. Yet this use and abuse, in your opinion, seems to be a factor of its too easy to use and too variate a role so the nerfbat needs to be used upon it.
So I asked you where all this use and abuse is and you countered with attacking Glorias pedantics, not even mine and swore I didnt have an argument. Again trying to shame me into silence.
I’ve been here since 2003 Beta, on and off obviously.
We’re going to use CCP’s logic, decisions and actions and use those as a measurement of reasonableness and sensibleness now are we? Please say yes, it’ll be funny.
Null entities are based in their industry, it’s what they get their power and wealth from. They gather resources, turn those into ships that preserve their power and control and if ships get destroyed the insurance iskies flows back into their local economy. For that to work you need to be able to produce LOTS of ships, like a lot lot. Doesn’t work with SOCT ships.
Beyond that, null entities want their members to advance into bigger and better doctrines over time, they are not helped by using ships that require no ship skills because it doesn’t entice their clone soldiers to train said ship skills. Also, generally, people who can’t fly the main doctrine ships can fly other stuff that’s also needed and helpful.
A large alliance that wants to go places is not going to use SOCT ships for its main fleets.
It is underused in null fleets, it’s NOT underused in smaller engagements.
It’s too cheap for what it does, it’s too powerful compared to its normal counterparts.
If not many players do some specific play style but within that play style there is one ship, module or mechanic that is way better than the others, it needs adjusting. Just because in the large scheme of things it’s not an issue doesn’t mean that in the micro cosmos of its niche use it’s fine and shouldn’t be changed.
If it’s not that great, I’m assuming you don’t use it. So why do you care so much?
While I do enjoy all this bickering back and forth, I’m out of popcorn. So, let’s just all fleet up for some Gnosis-on-Gnosis violence. You’ll get a few kills, it removes some of them from the game, everyone wins…
Large Scale Ship stockpiling/replacing in Null (which is the space where the large-fleets are mainly used) is done locally with the existing infrastructure and production lines. Praxii are mainly redeemed and sold in Jita, but nobody with a sane mind is going to import hundreds or thousands of Battleship hulls with DSTs or JFs from Jita to Null. So one big point is simply “availability”. Anyting else can be produced on demand in basically unlimited numbers. SoCT ships can’t.
Second point is that the larger the fleets get, the more important fat buffer becomes to at least give Logis a chance to catch someone against the enemy fleets Alpha. And one of the few downsides of SoCT ships is that they aren’t good at this particular thing. They lack pure passive buffer since they neither get Resist boni nor the Plate/Extender Role Boni other Battleships have.
Third point is that many Doctrines are focused on one special trait, like extreme tank, extreme range, extreme alpha etc. And for special purposes - especially when used in large numbers - there are better alternatives, despite being more expensive.
However, out of Nullsec you can absolutely see a clear dominance:
L4 missionrunning for all those not able to afford a Faction-Battleship or a Marauder. Praxii have basically made all other T1 Battleships redundant. Some years ago you could see beginners in Dominix, Armageddon, Apoc, Typhoon, Raven etc. make their first steps in L4s, today you can just use a Praxis and you will get better results straight over all features.
LowClass WH PvE and Rolling. 90% in the hands of Praxii if a BS is used. I see Praxii every day that roll or rat in C1-C3. Multiple times. I see barely other T1 BS for rolling, but pretty much never for ratting. The praxis again overshadows any other T1 BS here.
Baiting. Nothing baits better than a Gnosis or Praxis. Period. If you see a Gnosis or Praxis being longer than usual in the same place, it has literally written “BAIT” all over it in red letters. No other ship comes close to obliterating an attacker that misjudged the situation.
After all, there isn’t much to discuss in my opinion. A BS with freaking 21 slots (!!!), full SP-free Boni on all weapon systems, enough PG and CPU to fit multiple Ancillary SBs or a complete capless-damage profile - with a free scanning bonus on top is simply not in good balance with all the other available T1 alternatives. It’s absolutely obvious that this is too much power for such a cheap hull.
My Marauders don’t even have 21 slots… they top out at 19. The Rattlesnake tops out at 18 slots. And both (particularly Marauders) are considerably more expensive and require substantially more skill training.
