Devblog: Spring Balance Update Incoming!

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1679

Because balance. If n+1 is too good then the largest groups dominate not just by actually having more people.
Boosts don’t multiply. they do say… x = 1.1y.
Which means you get more benefit from your boosts the bigger the fleet. But each additional ship doesn’t magnify the effect further.
If you then go x = 1.1y^1.1 however… Then you end up with bigger fleets utterly destroying an equal number of ships who are split into several smaller fleets.
Especially in highsec with crime watch this causes serious issues.

n.b. Numbers are there to hopefully clarify. Not as a statement of what the scale should be.
edit. Yes capitals aren’t in high… yet… That may not stay true forever, and designing a system that then breaks if that changes isn’t good, nor is designing a system that requires entities to have super caps or caps to have a chance of competing.

1680

its call skill extractors… use them

1681

Well, I don’t think capitals are going to be much of an issue in highsec, first off.

Beyond that, though, if you don’t make things improve with each base-tier element added (in this case, non-boosting subcap), then as soon as you hit that point of ‘and that’s how many gets you 80% of the max bonus’, you’ve also hit the point of ‘fill the rest of the open slots with titans’.

Because at that point, there’s no benefit to bringing anything smaller.

1682

Mmm. It’s a fair point. But that’s why I was looking at the bonus to x & y attributes but penalty to z idea.
On average overall it would be a bonus, but it also gives your opponents a vulnerability to try and take advantage of if they have a smaller fleet. thereby enabling a form of counterplay hopefully, which would take skill to pull off.

Good points though.

1683

Heh. I just thought of another twist:

Fleet bonuses. Like ‘Role bonuses’. Solves the module problem, and gives different hulls different bonuses that they impart on the fleet. That’d help improve specialization, and could be subject to diminishing returns and ‘have to be on-grid and not cloaked’.

It could also be a major bonus to the Navy designs. They could carry significantly improved fleet bonuses—after all, the Navies would be designing ships to work in properly-structured fleets.

2 Likes
1684

Love that idea and have heard a few others suggest it as well. Even our active miners and former carrier ratters have switched to multiple rorqs simply because of the quick pay off and more importantly how easy it is for them to run multiple Roqs, even a half dozen, at the same time–pretty much impossible with carriers because of fighter management.

1685

Hello everybody,

I have to admit that I can not say much about the changes to FAX and carriers etc, because I have too little experience in this area.

But personally I do not like the changes concerning the Rorqual.

I do not have the luck to be in a big alliance with 100 players who could help you out. Also, I use the Rorqual once a month for a few hours. Much time and ISK have gone into the skills, the ship, the equipment. And now I stand more or less alone in the belt soon, tank reduced by almost 50%, yield significantly reduced from the drones, and you lose at least 2, if you want to use all. And if I understand correctly, all because in some regions of New Eden as soon as an asteroid can be seen, 20 Rorquals appear to rush on him.

If the problem is too high an intake of minerals, then you should only adjust the areas that generate it mainly.

Several times, the proposal has already been made here to limit the number of Rorquals who can be in the belt at the same time or who can have the core active. I find this difficult to implement.

What I can imagine: Reduce the bonus of the core to every other active core within X km.

This should motivate players in heavily populated areas to come with smaller vessels because the effectiveness of the Rorqual drops as soon as several are on the ground. The tank is also weaker when the effectiveness of the core decreases.

I certainly did not consider several things that this proposal would bring, but a change in that direction would be more equitable for everyone.

1 Like
1686

Except, of course, that now you’ve got people in the same group turning on one another. Let’s just go with smaller numbers than would ever be implemented, just to demonstrate the point:

Person A arrives with his Rorq, and goes into siege on a rock. He is getting 100% of the yield he expects.
Person B arrives with his Rorq, and goes into siege on a rock. They are now each getting 95% of the yield they expect.

Now, maybe they’re both ok with this. Maybe that’s just fine, because it only means it takes a little longer to get their hold filled. But what about the 10th person?

Person J arrives with his Rorq, and goes into siege on a rock. Everyone, from A through J, all 10 of them, are now getting 50% yield, doubling their time. They’re also at 50% tank.

Obviously, some people should switch out of Rorquals. Who? A&B got there first. They’ve already gotten more ore. Should they switch, so everyone gets roughly the same amount of ore? Or should G-J switch, since they got there later, and why should they penalize the people who’ve already been there?

Every single player in that belt will have perfectly valid reasons why they shouldn’t be the one to switch. And that’ll cause issues and drama and suddenly you’re fighting with your friends over which of you gets to Rorq-mine this anom while everyone else should just suck it up and mine in Hulks. But you know what? You don’t come here to put up with that kind of crap. You don’t pay money every month to argue with your friends. Christ on a crutch, who needs this goddamn game if it’s just gonna give you stress over crap like that?

Aaaaand now internal dissension leads into possible loss of players.

Systems that build internal tension into social groups are bad for any game that relies on social interactions as part of its retention model. Right or wrong, EVE does rely on them that way.

You use your Rorq once a month for a few hours. Do you use it without anyone else from your corp around? What if you’re the guy who gets told ‘Jesus Christ, don’t use your Rorq on this belt’. Now you’re not even using it for a few hours that month.

3 Likes
1687

The health of mining as a whole would be much better if barges were the staple ship rather than the Rorqual. Making the Rorqual a mining ship even half of its current form was a mistake in my opinion. Best we can do now is just walk it back gently while tweaking barges up a bit.

4 Likes
1688

Totally agree, the Rorq as i see it from all its features is a mining fleet support ship, not an actual heavy miner.

Every feature cries fleet support. Ore compression, massive ore hull, massive fleet hangar, multiple command bursts, etc, etc…

I still think it should have similar deployment rules as MTU’s, but a bigger distance. This would limit the number able to deploy within a certain distance, multiple Rorq deployed in a belt would mean those outside the belt would have to have high drone skills and modules to increase drone range.

As making it so command bursts won’t active if not deployed would counter those thinking of not deploying to still use command bursts, and some of the other features could be tied to the deployment.

But that’s just one persons thoughts.

2 Likes
1689

I wonder how the Precusor logi ships with their special remote armour repair modules would be effected by the RR balance?

My thoughts on the balance is the following:
1-2 RR on a targeted ship do full effect.
The 3-5 do 86.5% of full effect.
6-10 do 57.1% of full effect.
11-25 do 28.3% of full effect.
26-62 do 10.6% of full effect.
Etc…


The Number of modules would be what ever the group count is.

Basically the stacking penalty effect, with an increasing count on RR, the bell curve of numbers could be increase by reducing the number of RR’s required per step of the stacking, but i personally think the first two steps should stay as noted.

But this is just thoughts on it

1690

So they’d be more impacted than 20x as many T2 logi? (number revised to be more conservative).

Actually, hang on a goddamned second here.
@CCP_Falcon @CCP_Rise @CCP_Fozzie:

That’s your chart for cruiser-scale remote repairs. Which repper are you using on even a T1 Support Cruiser that delivers 80 hp when it lands? 2000 / 25 = 80. A Medium Remote Shield Booster I does 260. Medium Remote Armor Repairer Is give 196. The only thing in the ballpark is remote hull reps, and even that is 25% higher.

It’s a pretty chart and all, but your numbers look like they’ve been pulled out of thin air. What’s going on here? Can we please see the actual math that’s supposed to produce these results?

EDIT: They’re using the HP/s numbers for a T2 Large Remote Shield Booster. 85 hp/s gives a result of 23.5 reppers to hit 2,000, and 117.6 to hit 10,000 (rounded down to 1 decimal place). And that makes absolutely no sense. If you’re applying diminishing returns to the modules when they hit, you need to be using the total amounts repped on that tick, not averaged out over time.

Can we please see the actual math you’d need to generate the behavior you’re claiming to produce? Because these graphs do not represent that behavior. They represent behavior over time, which means you can’t even start to apply them until you’ve gotten a certain number of ticks in. Before that, it would just be guesswork, especially on the Fax-level, where the Lif and Ninazu have variable cycle times depending on Carrier skill levels.

1 Like
1691

I love your enthusiasm, but buffing and nerfing are essentially the same thing. My idea to nerf their stats, is similar to negative area effects to a ship. In this case, adding subcap support will improve your capitals stats to its baseline number. Rather than buffing baseline stats. It has a better feel to it… when you have proper support, your ship has its full baseline potential… then you can add mods to buff it more. Yes, it’s a turn from what we are used to, but I think it works better in this situation. Leaving mods to do the buffing, and having support ships help achieve your baseline.

1692

Right. Buffing and nerfing are modifications to the database entries. But they’re fundamentally different in that your framework means that the server has to do all that math more often than it doesn’t. You never want to code that way. It creates more server load, more lag time in making everything work. Especially since you want those modifications to be impacted by how much of the fleet is on-grid—your ship’s base effective stats are fixed when you undock.

It’s not a question of ‘is it different than what we’re used to’. It’s a bad way to approach programming. You have a discrete object. That object has attributes that determine what it can do. Making those attributes have to be modified when the object is invoked without other complications is extra work you’re making the server do, for no reason.

1693

Stop nerfing the rorqual. Why can’t the Indy guys have an end game ship that’s really good like a nyx or Titan?

Maybe you should balance the rorqual to require subs for best performance like you are balancing supers.

I don’t know what the mining version of a web would be but I’m sure something can be thought up.

1694

The problem with Rorqual it’s too simple to multibox, it farm an incredible amount of money and you can “afk farm” with it

maybe add a 5minute(or more) minigame “fissure the rock” “attract the rock” can’t imput broadcast this way, can’t afk farm, a random timer for the minigame to show with an delay of 30s-1m to launch the minigame (if you don’t you lose everything)

not something difficult just make it take time so you can’t do 2 minigame at the same time, this way you have a balanced capital mining barge, no more 15 rorqual alt (just make it mine more than a rorqual cause if this thing mine like 15covetor/hulk everyone gonna mine with 15 barge…)

(Like data/relic with a timer, who can multibox in a ghost site ?)

1 Like
1695

its meant to be a glorified orca… stop trying to make it a mining ship when its a booster.
you want to mine? use a barge

2 Likes
1696

Balancing good not good doesn’t matter in the long run since the players will find where to exploit to get the most efficiencies in the game. I would rather see CCP spend as much time on fixing TIDI during big battles… I know… have to change the code and it would cost a ton and we don’t have the wherever… try expand the game with new frontiers like a new kind of space or other story line expansions etc… these constant tweeks to balance the game do nothing more than frustrate players since like me I have optimized my training to maximize my performance given the current game play. So now change the rules and the training I have done no longer maximizes my toons and I have to spend new isk and time training something new to become maximized again based on the changes. As we have seen over the years, EVE has become more passive. Fewer and fewer big fights and greater concentration of overall power both economics and fire power. Why, because the changes to the game that CCP has done and the lack of upgrades to remove TIDI issues. This current set of rebalancing tweeks does not address any real issues with the overall game.

1697

You say that, but CCP quite purposefully made it the best mining ship in the game.

1698

It could also be argued that as the best mining/industrial ship in the game it should be available in all regions :wink: