Devblog: Spring Balance Update Incoming!

[Pandoralica]

Or just remove the NSA completly

[Pandoralica]

Battleships were also used more often cause they werent so god damn slow

[Arrendis]

Clearly, you have no experience whatsoever with actual capital warfare!

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(just kidding!)

Seriously, stripping HAWs from titans isn’t a terrible idea. A lot of people might object to that, but it’s a pretty reasonable move at this point. Or utterly gimp their ability to hit anything smaller than a battlecruiser, yeah.

Part of the problem I think we’re seeing is that we’re missing a hull size. Look at the normal progress:

• Frigate (S)
• • Destroyer (S)
• Cruiser (M)
• • Battlecruiser (M)
• Battleship (L)
• • ???
• Dread/Carrier (XL)
• • Titan/Supercarrier (XL)

Each hull size has the ‘entry’ level, and the half-step up. Originally, you didn’t have to train Destroyers to get to Cruisers, or Battlecruisers to get to Battleships. We see how Large guns don’t track Small hulls all that well, and especially not Frigates. Dreads shooting at Cruisers should be just as minimally-effective. Titans shooting at Cruisers should be even worse—especially since they don’t siege to improve their tracking.

That missing half-step gives us a hard, high step in place of a more constant curve that should be there… but isn’t.

@Pandoralica

Did you guys consider making it the amount of repp modules instead of repp amount to give diminishing returns?

I think they specifically avoided that so it wouldn’t hit subcap reps as hard. I’m just not convinced they have their math right.

[Jennifer_Chiroptera]

We need some sort of ISK sink at high levels.

[Nevyn_Auscent]

Evidence for this ‘Need’?
Because the MER doesn’t back it much.
The big issue is income/wealth inequality which slows down economies a lot, but not inflation.

[Jennifer_Chiroptera]

Individuals with 100s of trillions don’t need sinks to remove ISK from the game?

[Pandoralica]

Super and Titan date of expiry?

[Pandoralica]

Im not sure you need any extra hull size to counter battleships. BS hulls are underused in real battles right now since they are too slow and not versatile enough i think. Some hulls do okay ofc.

[Arrendis]

At this point, I’m not sure a new hull size would find a niche (and frankly, part of the problem among subcaps is too many competitors for the niches in this particular ecology[1]). I’m just saying that by skipping that step, CCP’s created a situation where the expected curve has to cover too much of a gap.

That gap creates a disconnect in both expectations and perceptions. If the half-step was there, we could see if this progression is where it should be, or how much it’s out of line. Without it, any attempt at getting the balance right is going to run afoul of that gap: a good chunk of the playerbase will always think it’s wrong, because there’s room for divergent expectations in performance.

I don’t know, though, that I’d view a ‘super-battleship’ (for lack of a better term) as a counter to battleships, though. If I were going to put them in, I’d probably go with something akin to a pocket capital: a Large hull with a single fighter tube for extreme-range projection, or able to mount XL guns for a relatively low-cost anti-capital platform.

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Look at the ‘more powerful DPS’ niche in medium hulls. HACs vs Battlecruisers vs Navy Cruisers, for example. It’s difficult, really, to see how these things are supposed to stay balanced against one another if they’re all basically occupying the same role (and they are). For each race, there’s 3 battlecruisers, 2 Navy Cruisers, and 2 HACs. That’s 28 hulls—not including Pirate cruisers—all competing in the meta, and yet CCP seems surprised, 15+ years into the game, that thousands of people crunch through the numbers and find the 4-6 hulls that give them the best options in most situations.

[Othello_Warspite]

@Arrendis

Look at the ‘more powerful DPS’ niche in medium hulls. HACs vs Battlecruisers vs Navy Cruisers, for example. It’s difficult, really, to see how these things are supposed to stay balanced against one another if they’re all basically occupying the same role (and they are). For each race, there’s 3 battlecruisers, 2 Navy Cruisers, and 2 HACs. That’s 28 hulls—not including Pirate cruisers—all competing in the meta, and yet CCP seems surprised, 15+ years into the game, that thousands of people crunch through the numbers and find the 4-6 hulls that give them the best options in most situations.

Seems to me like that’s a case of insufficient differentiation, then, and could be resolved somewhat like this:

Navy cruisers could be given better application, but less damage, but limited hardpoints.
HACs could get the best bonus to damage, at the expense of application, and with limited hardpoints.
Combat Battlecruisers get average damage and application, and more hardpoints than cruisers, but mainly get tank-oriented bonuses.
Attack BCs are, at least as far as I know, high damage glass cannons, and the only question is whether that is too niche.

I don’t claim that’s a great/perfect solution, but it would certainly give each ship a distinct flavor.

[Rukia_Taika]

with the changes to the rorqual, have ya considered decreasing the heavy water usage?

[Sepheir_Sepheron]

Y’all need to replace all “10% activation cost of energy weapons” with a real ship bonus and just buff controlled bursts to compensate.

[Nevyn_Auscent]

Blasters & Rails say hi as other turrets that would be impacted by that change.
That’s why it isn’t that simple.

[Sepheir_Sepheron]

K then introduce a laser specific skill. It can be very simple. Energy Weapon Efficiency 10%/lvl cap usage for lasers.

[Rivr_Luzade]

No trolling? Do you read your own posts? You troll all the time with your outlandish wish to get nullification removed from combat ships so that you can live in peace. You are one of the worse trolls in the CSM.

@Brisc_Rubal

reducing super cap proliferation (which folks have been demanding) and need to be taken as a whole with the other changes.

Another troll. These changes do not reduce proliferation, they cement it in place as no steps have been taken, hinted at or announced at actually culling these utterly useless, gameplay experience ruining and frustrating garbage dumps from EVE. And now CCP wants to introduce even more capitals with the Triglavian capitals, which will be even more broken as their BS and other ships have already demonstrated.

@Brisc_Rubal

Again, I agreed with you. The drones weren’t enough.

Here is another troll right there. Zealot and Eagle, or in this case the CNI, never needed drones. Saying that they were not enough of “needed drones in the first” place goes to show how little people understand these ships. And how little certain individuals understand about combat.

So, please continue shooting yourself into your knees. It is a very entertaining sight.

[Brisc_Rubal]

@Rivr_Luzade

No trolling? Do you read your own posts? You troll all the time with your outlandish wish to get nullification removed from combat ships so that you can live in peace. You are one of the worse trolls in the CSM.

/eyeroll

@Rivr_Luzade

Another troll. These changes do not reduce proliferation, they cement it in place as no steps have been taken, hinted at or announced at actually culling these utterly useless, gameplay experience ruining and frustrating garbage dumps from EVE. And now CCP wants to introduce even more capitals with the Triglavian capitals, which will be even more broken as their BS and other ships have already demonstrated.

Troll. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

@Rivr_Luzade

Here is another troll right there. Zealot and Eagle, or in this case the CNI, never needed drones. Saying that they were not enough of “needed drones in the first” place goes to show how little people understand these ships. And how little certain individuals understand about combat.

I agree, long range ships don’t need drones. I never said they did. I’m not sure why you and others seem to think I did. I don’t get it.

[Jennifer_Chiroptera]

I loved how Provi’s Nightmares smashed NC.'s capitals, so they had to drop supers to save them.

[BPRelvara_LSG]

And when will you transfer the system to STADIA, so that we finally have promised gigantic space battles ???
???

[Rivr_Luzade]

@Brisc_Rubal

I never said they did. I’m not sure why you and others seem to think I did. I don’t get it.

Well, the thing is I quoted you saying that you implicitly agreed with this change in the first place because you worded your statement as “I agree, drones were not enough”. I did never write that you suggested this “buff” to snipers ships; I said people don’t understand combat and suggested these changes and you implicitly agreed with the change as they were not enough, as per your statement, instead of the completely wrong thing for these ships.

If you do not want to be misunderstood, maybe you ought to work a bit on your capabilities how to word things unambiguously.

One way or another, you keep trolling people, which means that guys statement is more than true.

[Brisc_Rubal]

@Rivr_Luzade

Well, the thing is I quoted you saying that you implicitly agreed with this change in the first place because you worded your statement as “I agree, drones were not enough ”. I did never write that you suggested this “buff” to snipers ships; I said people don’t understand combat and suggested these changes and you implicitly agreed with the change as they were not enough, as per your statement, instead of the completely wrong thing for these ships.

If you do not want to be misunderstood, maybe you ought to work a bit on your capabilities how to word things unambiguously.

One way or another, you keep trolling people, which means that guys statement is more than true.

The guy was screaming me claiming that the CNI didn’t need drones as a buff. I was agreeing with him that a buff for drones was not enough to fix the problems with the CNI.

I’m not sure how much more clear I could have been.