bring back nullification
dissallow fitting of cyno’s and istabs.
Imo a lot of things should not be able to fit cyno’s, there should be at the very least t1 and t2 (hard) cyno and several different types of inhib - the way the game is as it stands id even venture to say interdictors should also have some sort of bubble inhib ammo, heavier so you can only fit one;
The other day my crew got dropped three times in under an hour by 20 bombers, same guys; tbh they killed one of us so pretty fail group but the fact is that for all those that say ''there is no counter to combat ceptors [boohoo]" the truth is there are/were more counters to this than there are cyno drops.
sov null is now safer for the groups that live there; nerfing the combat ceptor nullification was supposed to make it more dangerous for everyone - it hasnt.
I support nullification on tackle cepters. They need to be able to move fast, burst through bubbles and catch things. Especially when some bear has bubblefucked their ingate and now have all the time in the world to warp out.
All things need counters, even bubbles. I love bubbles, flying a sabre is definitely in my list of likes. But balance dictates that they not be unbeatable.
The ships are called interceptors are there are two lines, the tackle interceptor, and the combat interceptor. The tackle interceptors have bonuses to support tackling a target: Bubble Immunity for moving traveling around space quickly, propulsion jamming cap bonuses for maintaining a long point, and sig reduction for an MWD. All things combined the tackle interceptor is the king of scouting ahead, getting in range, and long pointing a target. So where does that leave a combat interceptor?
I propose they should still be an interceptor with a tackle focus but as the name suggest specialized for combat. Instead of the long range, highly mobile line, they should have bonuses for scram tackling. To that end drop the mwd sig bloom bonus, give them web immunity in place of bubble immunity. Make them a ship that instead of being really good at holding things down with a long point, its good at holding things down with a scram.
I’m thinking of a small gang or even blob type engagement where you have interceptors that are able to AB into gangs without fear of being webbed and instantly dying, using sig and speed to get scrams on targets that would otherwise be very difficult to reach.
The bonus is inline with mobility immunity: bubbles vs webs. It’s also inline with the interceptor theme of being a tackler but now there’s a choice: long point + mwd vs scram + AB.
I think the biggest issue is the ability of a scram/ab fit to shoot back so probably just drop their guns all together. Highs could be reserved for a single nos or something. Say the PG/CPU previously used for guns has been re-purposed to protect it’s engines from webs.
I think an important question to ask is where a combat interceptor should stand in relation to Dramiel.
Dramiel has pretty much all the properties one would expect from a combat ceptor, reasonable tank/damage, great speed (sub-warp and warp) and agility, great control, low sig radius, versatile weapon system bonused for projection all for a quite fair price of 48m ISK @Jita atm, with potential for bling to improve performance.
Combat ceptors on the other hand, fail to tick some or most of those checkboxes. Both Crusader and Claw have only two mid slots, restricting them to fleet and kiting roles (can’t do the latter well, no comment on the former). Raptor looks like it’s getting there except it’d be armor tanked and the CPU/PG falls short for a viable shield fit. Taranis has some strong damage potential with passable tank, but when you pitch it against Dramiel, it falls short on most criteria except for price and facemelts.
The combat inty advantages are the MWD sig bloom reduction and tackle cap use reduction, which apparently are not strong enough to balance it out. For a hit-and-run role, inties would spend most of the time fighting scrambled, and drones/RLML are still a problem with MWD on. The tackle cap reduction is nice to have, but there’s not much to write home about it. The difference in cost also seems hard to address- people will either pay an extra 20m for better performance or combat inties will end up strong enough for the Dramiel to be too cost inefficient in comparison. Not to mention that pricing is not a reliable balancing factor at all.
Anyway, most of what I said above comes from my limited solo PVP experience and pyfa warrioring, so take it for what it’s worth.
Nothing wrong with it, unless you’re literally trying to cause their clients to ■■■■ the bed when they jump in.
A legitimate bubblefuck is perfectly valid. It was the big reason that anchor bubbles will now expire. It wasn’t against the TOS, but it certainly wasn’t good for the game as a whole.
Big nope, some of us like solo pvping in our combat inti’s and having no guns will make that rather difficult…
I wouldn’t even call the cap reduction a bonus because if you look at the cap difference between inti and T1 variant the T1 has almost double the cap regen.
Even if fleet inti’s lost there interdiction, you can still use the trick where a command destroyer jumps in first and MJD’s the bubbles 100km’s off while the next ship that jumps in has a nice clear spot to warp from.
Not sure if it still work’s thou had it once where a fleet member dropped a bubble as I was MJD’ing and the bubble came with into the enemies, it was pretty funny.
I’d argue you get worse dps/ sustain… But it has T2 resists and better warp speed.
With arrival of upgraded ass frigates and bubble immunity removal those frigs have become pretty useless for solo/ small gang, blob can still use them. But any ship will be viable in a blob, even ventures and rookie ships.
So yeah, Comet is way better rounded out, but there is still the extra speed on Taranis’ part, on grid and off grid. Makes it worth looking at with the current market imo, nothing more.
I think there’s a lot of great ideas in this thread. It’s gonna be hard to make combat ceptors viable again without stepping in the toes of AFs, tackle ceptors, or some faction frigates like the Dramiel. They need something that will make them unique but not the end all be all.
There is a few other things that could help them as well:
Invisible to D-Scan (maybe they can become the frig version of combat recons :D)
Mobile Cyno inhibitor (50 km’s around you), they have to kill you and all combat ceptors in your fleet before they can light a cyno (Might become to op, but I’m sure a modulised burst version of this could work)
Mini micro jump (your ship only) sounds super fun as well, something like 0.5 - 1 sec spool time lol.
I think maybe if they are fun to fly people wouldn’t mind them not being close to AF’s on pure combat stat’s.
Better at running away isn’t a very fun bonus, would rather have it be some what competitive, also it would get abused by fw running bot’s and then ccp would prob ban combat inti’s from fw complex’s, would be even less fun :/.
Alright, I’ve read all these ideas and some are not the worst. Among the best are making the combat ceptor immune to web, I’d add to this an acceleration and top speed bonus to ABs or allow mwd to continue to function even when scrammed. They don’t need to be nullified to do their job, but they do need to be able to burn in, tackle, live long enough for heavier tackle to lock, and burn away from just about anything. Right now every assault frigate is better at being a combat ceptor than the combat ceptors.
So whats the role of combat ceptors… Im guessing killing tackle (and tackle ceptors in particular).
They are combat ready enough for that right now. What i would ask is just a slight buff speed-wise (so they can catch those ceptors), and maybe a reduction in sig rad so they can be a bit better at fighting within enemy fleet range (buffing the mwd sig bonus would help too)
(Might become to op, but I’m sure a modulised burst version of this could work)