Well considering the plate reduction this might have unintended consequences.
I don’t think any of you saw the tests back a year ago with the T2 Eris? That ship has a plate reduction bonus already. It can be done in oversized plates especially high roll abyssal plates. Doing a little work and thinking I was able to get that ship to near cruiser armor EHP on a much smaller hull.
If the NeX gets the plate reduction you might be able to get that ship to fit BS level [large] Abyssal Armor Plates which will probably put its tank into BC level territory. If not low level Battleship EHP.
This is a factor that might need to be considered because it will have ramifactions.
I would not disagree that the plate mass reduction bonuses look really tempting for other ship classes. But the knowledge of how abyssal up tier modules can be abused and messed with, has me highly reserved on this line of thinking.
Its fairly okay on the Eris, but even then its something to consider carefully. I think NeX is probably the highest tier that bonus should go. If its for Battleships I think it should be a PG bonus for plates. Because if you get Plate Reduction Mass bonus and you have alot of lows…need I point to a potential for Nano-Abyss Plated Ship? Which might not be in the best interest of game balance.
Drone comps and especially sentry comps have some pretty obvious counters. Such as bombers just bombing your drones off grid. And if your comp is moving, you can’t just keep scooping them. After a few bombing runs, suddenly the ishtars are out of drones and they are no threat.
For heavy drone comps, then having SB’s in the opposing fleet’s comp will also slowly destroy the drone blob until the ishtar’s become ineffective.
In regards to the ishtar getting a tank bonus, I think it would end up overshadowing more expensive options, such as the Eos. You could potentially replace the sentry or drone control range bonus with something minor, like plate mass bonus, but I don’t think the Ishtar needs a dedicated tank bonus as that will just slot it back into a strong spot in the meta and will push out more expensive options.
CCP is not factoring also the reality that they have introduced rogue drones and the Hydra Implant set, which further skew the Ishtar into very deadly drone functionality. Even if you lets say…don’t fill the highs with weapons. You can push the Ishtar to insane ranges via drone modules.
It needs a more drastic pruning, not only for HAC meta, but also to nerf “botting” with this ship.
We could kill two birds with one stone in this pressure move. If CCP doesn’t do so, they are trying to keep the botters in their pockets. Never mind seriously trying to fix the HAC meta.
Horrible change to the Munnin, I don’t even fly the ship in doctrine or at all really but It just makes no sense for a ship to go from a turret boat as t1 and then morph into a missile boat for its t2 variant. Think about progression for players. Someone who likes the Rupture and how it flys is going to look towards the Munnin as a goal for the future but be disappointed when its a completely different ship.
You then try to buff the Vagabond to replace the role of a Munnin? How about instead take the Vagabond and spice it up by making it the missile boat which would complement better with its highspeed gorilla warfare layout. This would bring more interest to a ship that is underused as it is. Then keep the Munnin as the primary turret platform and just nerf it slightly to come inline with other turret HACs…
I swear the one extreme to the other when it comes to trying to shift up meta is just bad for the game. Think of all the people who trained skills just to fly the Munnin as a turret boat. CCPLEASE put your head on straight…
You could have just removed the assault damage control and fixed most of the issues with HACs…
T2 ships gaining an advantage like lets say a T2 Cov Op, in order to gain use of a module [covert cloak] you lose cargohold and drone bays. So if an Ishtar is a HAC version of the Vexor in order to gain the Assault Damage control your drone bay and drone bandwidth should shrink right?
This might be the perfect way to counter act its overuse in botting, force it to be more frontline drone brawler. With potential to fit longer range weapons to kite.
The Sentry Bonuses could be then swapped to one of the Gallente Battleship Hulls. Which would make much more sense having the benefit to increase its overall lethality and use of sentry drones in combat.
Then people will have the same complaints you have about the Muninn but instead it’s the Stabber/Vagabond. If you really want a T2 Rupture, the Broadsword is still a projectile boat. You see other races do the same thing with changing up weapon systems with hulls, like the Maller/Sacrilege, Moa/Onyx, etc.
This isn’t all that uncommon though. T2 variants don’t always match up with their T1 weapon layout. A few examples off the top of my head:
Coercer is lasers, but heretic is missiles
Cormorant is hybrid, but flycatcher is missiles
Maller is Lasers but the Sacrilege is Missiles
Punisher is lasers, Vengeance is missiles
Bellicose is Missiles, Huginn is Projectile (though the rapier exists, its just a worse bellicose)
There are plenty of high speed missile boats, we don’t need another. You still have the Broadsword which has the same alpha as the Muninn, but its slow, has no optimal only fall-off bonuses. But is tankier w/o ADCU.
While I don’t disagree with removal of ADCU, CCP is never going to do that. Also, cruisers have no business shooting out 100km+ without any sacrifice or boosting. If you want to snipe 100km+ by default, use a battleship which is better balanced overall with lower tracking/speed/agility.
Yeah that was what I noticed immediately with the ship hull change.
I was like I am okay with a Stabber type hull [Vagabond] becoming a Missile Ship. Because Stabbers have always had the option open on their hull class. Rupture class ships are the opposite because they are fairly stable in being turret damage type ships. So its weird to have a completely different ship operating in this area.
Personally yeah the assault damage control needs to go. it gives too much benefit for very little downside. Especially when you fit this to ship hulls that by default get higher resist and EHP profiles. Now if HACs got a reactive armor module bonus. So I activate reactive armor and it has a much faster cycle speed than normal huls now I can resist incoming fire, but that module has to be active and it eats capacitor. And it means an opponent can trick the resists and then create a hole in your tank.
That might be the best solution for HACs. Is to remove assault damage control from the game period. Assault Frigates and HACs will gain a reactive armor module activation/cycle speed bonus instead. One that affects its cycle speed would probably be the best.
Yeah the complaint will change to the Vagabond. So we know its not the hulls. Its the weapon type.
Projectile weapons do hit a bit further and harder in falloff, although other weapons system like rail guns can shoot even farther their damage is lower.
Its not the hull, its the weapon system that needs looking at.
Stating that no one could possibly love the Rupture is a lackluster argument to justify completely overhauling its big brother and only highlights how horrible Minmatar T1 cruisers are.
There is a much larger similarity between the playstyles of the vagabond and already established highspeed missile boats. It just makes way more sense to add the secondary weapon system of Minmatar to the Vagabond than to the Munnin. Heck you you could make the Vaga a bit like the Typhoon and allow for a choice between missile and AC set ups if you goal is just to get the secondary weapon system into this ship class. I get that the Munnin is overpowered… so investigate and FIX the issue don’t remake the ship out of laziness.
While there are already many highspeed missile boats out there, Minmatar… the race that is supposed to be about speed… does not really have a ship in this category. I am now really enjoying the thought of burning along side a volly or 2 of missiles as I close range on someone In a missile Vagabond to build up the volly as I drive by… to bad it will never happen.
Its just obvious that they are just trying to completely invalidate current meta instead of actually trying to balance the options. TBH most of these changes seem very poorly thought-out and just attempts at putting a band aid on a laceration.
Assuming the Muninn stays as a gun boat, how would you suggest changing it to avoid it being the number one pick for a smaller ship with a big alpha that is hard to counter? Wouldn’t it just be another Vagabond, maybe slower if they don’t speed it up? At that point it’s easier to just change the Muninn to be missiles and leave the Vagabond alone than to make a Vaga clone and change the original Vaga.
As mentioned, we already have enough “fast missiles boats”, we don’t need more. A more brawling focused, but slower missile boat is something we don’t have and the bonuses make sense. Boundless creation is typically an armor focused minmatar manufacturer who has also built the hound (a missile ship). They also build the sleip (which is one of the rare shield ships they produce). So splitting the shield/armor resist goes along with that, as well as
Thukker (the vagabond manufacturer) doesn’t have any missile ships (and the jaguar isn’t thukker, its Core Complexion, CCP just hasn’t updated the paint job), so changing it to missiles makes even less sense.
The vagabond works fine and hasn’t been suffocating the meta for 5 years. The Muninn as a 720 platform with no weaknesses and ease of use will never be properly balanced unless CCP completely neuters it down to the level of the rupture. Then you’d also probably be here mentioning how its useless now as well.
The main changes to make the Muninn “balanced” were to essentially turn it into the vagabond (drop optimal for falloff, remove the tracking bonus, remove a mid slot). So do you want two vagabonds, or 1 vagabond that has some trade-offs with artillery (the same way a “rebalanced” Muninn would be), or do you want 2 vagabonds to further muddy the minmatar line-up and not get the missing secondary weapon HAC represented?
We don’t need a fast missile HAC/Cruiser in every race, that just homogenizes ship balance where all races effectively become the same just with different ship models.
Yes, they are invalidating the current meta, because Muninn meta is trash and has been trash for at least 3 of the past 5 years. Changing the Muninn into a missile ship is balance. Whether you like it or not.
Hydra implanted Ishtar fleets are about as far fetched as Torpedo Muninns at becoming a mainstream doctrine. What Koolaid all-you-can drink buffet do you partake in?
This IS why it should get chosen. The problem is not that a ship has a niche it can preform better than others. The issue is when it does not have to sacrifice enough in other areas to do so. You could nerf EHP for starters brining it below the EHP of the other 3 races to justify its ability at sniping. You could adjust the current bonuses to bring the volley and range a bit more inline with the others but it should outshine in its role otherwise we are just creating 4 races with different ship and weapon skins.
Lower EHP, Speed, Agility, Tracking Bonus. Counter to Muninn should be get under guns and brawl, outrange, or out tank.
The Muninn is still faster than the other missile HACs, its just not as fast as other Minmatar ships (such as the vaga). ScyFI, breacher, Cyclone (and now cyclone FI), Typhoon, Typhoon FI are all competent missile brawlers. They’re all “faster” (compared to other races) missile brawlers that work due to the bonuses and speed/sig components.
The lore is who says… and much more commonly know lore than some obscure factures about which corporation manufactures the ship. You put faster in quotes because this is a common theme with Minmatar the ships are “faster” on paper but usually end up getting flow in a manner that does not really take advantage of this inherent trait due to the issues with projectile turret systems.
You say we don’t need another fast missile ship but that’s exactly what the new Muninn is going to be. A missile HAC that is faster than the other missile HACs.
There are 2 issues at least that have been stated by CCP, that they are trying to fix with these proposed changes.
Introduce missile systems to the Minmatar HAC lineup.
Break up the current meta of Muninn supremacy.
If your going to add another highspeed missile boat… why not just do it to a ship that already flys this way.
There are better ways of weakening the Muninn without completely changing its role and playstyle.
Lower EHP, Speed, Agility, Tracking Bonus. Counter to Muninn should be get under guns and brawl, outrange, or out tank.
And to point out further. That Missile Muninn when it hits the field will be able to brawl with more deadly efficiency due to speed and weapon effects. The Muninn also has very evenly distributed resists which combined with an ADCU makes this ship extremely hard to negate.
And these Missile Muninn will be able to select its ranges from very close to extreme long range. Which is what CCP is supposedly trying to negate. There is a possibility to get under a Turret Muninns guns. With a Missile Muninn there is no hiding.
And this also makes for a really really nice bot ship too.
Missile Muninn will be very wonderful for botters. Load all those auto-targeters and just push fire. We don’t want that either. Because this kind of ship will be very useful for botting and AFK ratting.
This is another angle CCP isn’t thinking over. They are not taking the Ishtar off the pedestal of botting/afk ratting in all of this. Which already raises eyebrows, they know which ship they “can’t touch” Yet they are creating a ship which will be able to do the same thing but with missiles.
So I am not into the Muninn HAC changes because this opens another problem with botting and AFK ratting which has already become a plague on this game. Cerebus isn’t really used botting/AFK ratting because its a bit squisher. But even then I have some reservations with its changes, because it will highly strength those ratting with lets say Guristas?
If this were the case the Cerb would already be being used extensively in Guristas/Serpentis space where the incoming damage is most negated by the extremely strong Kin/Therm resist profile. Please stop posting, what are quite frankly, completely stupid arguments with no basis in practicality.
And yes this is a point, to be made. Because the new Cerb is going to have higher kinetic damage than before.
Now granted that most people would use something more cheap like a Gila to hunt Gurista/Serpentis. But Gurista is farmed more for the Gila/Worm/Rattlesnake hulls.
We have to take into consideration the potential for HACs being turned into botting/AFK ratting choices. Which we do not want to further expand. Taking the Ishtar off the field would also be a better choice for overall health of the game.
But looking at the current concepts in field, I do not like what I am seeing develop. CCP needs to equally take apart the Ishtar in this HAC reset. Or else they need to do a further in depth analysis of how ships perform in different fields other than combat.
Vagabond is used in the Abyss because of its unique advantages. There hasn’t been alot of testing of other ships in the Abyss outside of the meta there. Are you sure you want to change the ships which might further upset other areas in the game? Including Pochven/Wormhole/Abyss?
You guys need to think this through. Everytime nullsec gets their wishlist, the rest of the game gets hit hard or messed up. If you change the HACs it might come back to bite you in different ways.
They need to just look at what is affecting the projectile weapons, and just do some work with the projectile weapon code. That is the main reason the game is not exactly working out. Because I know you guys will not like Vagabonds with their rate of fire. And that is a bigger bonus than damage in some cases.