When I’ve treated your comments like generalization you’ve said things that seemed to indicate that you were being fairly specific:
As for the variety of ships I assumed you were referring to the average, as stated above by you, or the approximate delta between same-race ships.
Those are pretty specific, in addition to being wrong. You gave a range for the class as a whole that’s 300m/s wide.
Which already doesn’t fit well into the aforementioned crowded small-ship meta.
What I was trying to say, and apparently failed at, is that a “generalist” tends to end up stepping on the toes of specialists due to synergies between things it’s “generally” good at instead of being specialized in.
But in the current meta most of what you’re going to be fighting is MWD fits, and if they can kite you you’re screwed. That’s why most fits, even brawling fits, run a MWD because if you can’t catch your target you can’t kill them and there’s a decent chance they can kill you.
The problem AFs have isn’t killing things once they get scram on them, it’s getting into range to do so in the first place.
I had kind of assumed you would be aware of this since it’s been one of the prevailing things in the Cruiser and under meta for the last several years, at least since the introduction of the Mordu’s Legion ships if not before.
I see nothing in the subsequent quotes that shows me noting specific figures. And the first quote mentions the numbers cited before are an “average”, not specific spec for any of the AFs. And as I already mentioned, none of the numbers can be taken as specific even just for the reason that we are talking about eight ships with different stats.
How on earth can “around 1500-1800m/s to 2500-3000m/s” be specific? That encompasses 300 to 500 m/s difference from one end of the spectrum to the other.
That depends on usage. A solo player will prefer a generalist ship most often than not, while a fleet commander will more often prefer a faster ceptor with longer tackle range and lower signature radius to an AF that is worse in these specs, which are first and foremost in an FC’s mind when choosing tackle for the fleet. Etc, etc.
And that is a pretty big “if”, taking into account the fact that combat starts in wildly differing situations and ranges, not only with two ships being 50km apart and the one with MWD kiting the one with AB.
One of the problems AFs have is evaporating at close range to anything that puts out decent DPS because they cannot tank based on HP entirely, something an AB bonus would help with, in addition to improving tackle performance by allowing AFs not to fall out of scram range once they get scrammed themselves.
I think you’re taking “specific” as a little more accurate than I’m using the term here. You’re being specific in that you are using specific values and treating those values as generally accurate. Your level of specificity has remained roughly the same up until I’ve started poking holes in your values at which point you’ve declared that you weren’t being that specific.
Your numbers are still off, wildly.
Because that is a specific range?
Seriously it feels like you’re trying to weasel your way around having said what you have, in fact, said.
It has nothing to do with usage, and you’re overly focusing on the specific Heavy Tackle role.
The only place this statement is remotely accurate is when referring to very specialized roles like a Inty running fast initial tackle. Generally speaking a ship that’s pretty good at several things will often find itself out performing a ship that’s very good at a single thing due to synergies between the several ‘pretty good’ aspects.
This isn’t speculation, this is the issue the T3Ds and T3Cs have both had, and both still have to some extent.
It’s possible this could be overcome but it’s a pretty big obstacle to anything like turning the AFs into a T3.
It’s really not. Assuming that the combat is going to start in anything like a situation where kiting isn’t possible is the bigger assumption here, especially given the speeds Frigates move and the time it takes to land on grid and be able to lock something.
AFs are one of the tankiest classes of Frigate. Whatever you’re evaporating against in one of these if an AB is enough to help with that it’s probably OP.
Also, again, you need to land tackle in the first place. You seem to be focusing overly much on the Heavy Tackle fleet role, which is quite niche and as I said before there are other better options.
The conclusion was that it would be overpowered or not good enough. Whatever that might mean. It was also 8 years ago, and a lot has changed since, especially speeds. Also, destroyers still had the ROF penalty.
If you start saying your definition of specific is different from mine - while also calling a 500m/s range a “specific” number - do not brand that as me starting to change my statements and attitudes.
My Jaguar with one overdrive injector and no speed implants does 502m/s. A tech I afterburner I use brings that up to 1448m/s heated. And that is important in the points I have been making, because obviously one would use heat for getting into scram range.
The 75% afterburner bonus I talked about (which, by the way, even in my original post was noted as “about 75%” - again, not specific) would bring the base speed with that one overdrive injector to 878m/s, which, with the same TI AB heated, is 1975m/s. That is about 500m/s slower than the proposed speed range figure I gave, which, when you consider this is with one of the cheapest fits possible and no implants, is not ‘wildly’ off.
But even more important is the fact that I have been talking about the desired end result, which can be met with with a different percentage bonus.
Specific speed range, and not specific speed. Obvious difference, or at least should be. If you had a different definition of ‘specific’ in mind when starting this debate with me, then that is just misunderstanding and I have no issues with that, but I absoutely do have issues with you trying to shift responsibility for that onto me.
Which involves a huge number of cases in fleet combat - I have seen this first hand when flying ceptor tackle for 0.0 alliances from about 2010-2014, and one should not even need personal experience when you have all the fleet compositions featuring ceptors to look at.
Another case of subjective speculation here. Gate timer decloaking and station undocking are only two of the examples where one would be able to close distance to scram range with an AB-fit AF with no isssues whatsoever.
Another subjective statement. “enough to help” is a definition dependent on figures of AB bonus proposal - and other changes made to balance it out - implemented during such balancing, which means some end result might be not enough to help, other end result will be OP, and somewhere in the middle could be an appropriate, balanced figure.
Thank you for the link. It is interesting that the CCP reply says it is player feedback (not necessarily testing results) that said 15% per level AB speed bonus would be OP or UP:
low sec/faction warfare pvp’ers feel it will be either overpowered or not good enough and some one vs one encounters on sisi showed some interesting results which varied between the ships.
Oh wow, that certainly wasn’t what I was thinking of since that predates tiericide by quite a bit. I’m pretty sure that something similar was discussed in the thread that gave them the 50% per level MWD bonus but that thread is being a pain to find.
I didn’t call it “a specific” anything, I said you were using specific values and when talking about a range of ships putting out a range of numbers is pretty specific. These threads generally run one of two ways, either discussion over hard number (ranges of or otherwise) or general concepts with no hard values attached. You seem to be taking issue with both as it suits you.
Except that Jaguar is one of the two fastest AFs, meaning that’s the upper part of your range, not the lower. As I said, you’d be hard pressed to get an AF up to 1800m/s if you blew it up.
Also at no point did you specify with or without heat here, and considering quite a bit of this discussion has been focused around tank, which is a place you would absolutely not be heating your AB, that’s a poor assumption to be leaving unstated.
Except that, again, you’re using one of the fastest AFs for your example and they only get slower from there, generally substantially slower. Also 500m/s in Frigate terms is a pretty huge margin of error. Just going from your proposed value of 2500 you’re looking at an over 20% margin of error there.
Which I have also been talking about. See: If it’s enough to be effective at closing distance it’s OP for tanking.
But not a huge number of cases for the general use of any hull, these days including the Interceptor.
The meta shifts, it evolves, and people find new and interesting ways to do old things.
Not really, that assumes that whoever you’re jumping on is close to you when they drop gate cloak or undock, or when you do so. If you’re station camping then they can just dock up again in a bad engagement, making that a poor example.
With gates you’re talking about a radius of close to 30km for even the smallest gates when jumping through, making it far from guaranteed that they’ll decloak close to you. If you sit on the gate they’re still several KM outside of heated scram range for an AF, and since they have a MWD they’re going to accelerate faster to a higher velocity than you are.
Besides that a fit that only works for gate and station camping isn’t a ton of fun, all things considered, and that hardly amounts to much of a buff. If you just wait for the enemy to fall into your dream engagement then any ship can do well, but if you’re looking to fight small ships on a gate or station and kill them quickly then a Caracal with RLMLs will do better than your hypothetical buffed AF here.
Again, that’s not what subjective means. We’re talking about numbers and math here, ‘enough to help’ can be defined on a graph given initial numbers and a range of potential tweak values.
If you actually look at the math, and how much AFs can tank vs other frigates, you’ll find that they’re actually quite tanky between the T2 resists, good HP pools, and fairly generous fitting space. If something is making you ‘evaporate’ then either they’ve hard-countered you, ala a RLML Cruiser, or you’ve fit the ship poorly.
Waving your hands around and saying that there’s maybe a balanced value, especially when this has been looked at before and one could not be found, is a poor justification. As has been stated, repeatedly in this and other threads, if you have enough AB speed to challenge a MWD then the tank resulting from that is ridiculous. If you don’t have enough speed to challenge a MWD then you’re too slow and the utility of the AB becomes quite niche, which does nothing for the very general problems the AF class as a whole has. That’s why this is not a desirable solution.
Yup, because believe it or not the math here isn’t too complicated and the range of potential use cases that aren’t ridiculously niche is pretty small too. You can just look at the various meta fits and see pretty easily that an AB fitted AF, even with a speed bonus, will just flat out lose to kiting fits and MWD brawling fits will, in most cases, be able to just run away from you. So your list of potential targets becomes “gate camp fodder” for which there are better options, or anyone stupid enough to charge into you despite the obvious AB fit.
There is not a single example in this discussion that shows me taking any issue at general concepts, considering my general concept of the two ways to improve AFs is what i used to introduce my ideas.
I never said it was the lower part, I provided one example of even a conservative fitting not being more than about 500m/s slower than the increase range I proposed for AFs. And as I said, the percentage bonus I proposed is extremely flexibe (just like many balancing cases are and should be), not ‘make all AFs go 2500m/s with AB’.
As I mentioned at least twice now, that is what should be subject of supposed testing - not subjective speculation. We are discussing an idea here, and ideas require testing. One would be able to dismiss all and every idea proposed in this thread by saying ‘oh that would be OP’.
Closing distance is not only the case when ship 1 outruns ship 2. Ship 1 can close distance to ship 2 because the latter is slower to align in a direction needed to escape (either with MWD or warp), and if ship 1 gets in scram range, that is all it needs in the case of AB-fit AFs.
My example was about brawling combat, in which a whole range of ships (not just RLML cruisers) have no issue evaporating AFs due to the problem that the latter are forced to fit MWDs (which in brawling range is suicide) and AB fits are not viable.
That is false. CCP’s response quoted by me from the link provided shows no direct and unequivocal dismissal of such value by them (“we found interesting results that varied between ships” is abything but), especially if one considers that that test would have to be done under current balancing meta and environment.
How about the EWar example, which I specified about three times was just one example of a possibly problematic combination, or this:
So again, as I said, your numbers were off.
My point here is simply that if you’re going to provide numbers at all you should at least do a quick sanity check to make sure they’re correct numbers. That you seem to think AFs go 3-400m/s faster than they actually do does not really reflect well on your overall knowledge of the class.
Doubly so when you’re suggesting something that either wouldn’t help much or would be hilariously OP, depending on how it’s tune, with no middle ground that anyone has been able to find.
And as I have said, this is basic math. If you know how the tracking formula works and how the relative tank values of a MWD and AB work this is mind numbingly obvious. Allow me to spell this out:
A MWD gets around 5 times the speed bonus of an AB but tanks about the same on paper because it also gets a sig bloom penalty. In practice it tanks a bit worse because of the larger mass increase and the larger bleed off of speed in the turn that results.
If you give an AB anything close to the speed levels of a MWD then what you end up with is a 4-5 fold increase in tanking capability. In practice what this means is that you take negligible damage even from Light Missiles and pretty much everything else just misses in addition to being able to easily escape from scrams and webs on the vast majority of ships.
If you drop the speed sufficiently that none of this is a game-breaking concern then the ship is too slow for the AB to be worth using in the vast majority of circumstances since you would have to drop it down to somewhere in the realm of a 2x multiplier for the tank to not be utterly ridiculous (ex: The Succubus) and that’s way too slow to compete at all with anything MWD fit. This can be easily seen by how even the slowest ships within speed-dependant classes often see less use and that’s generally a much smaller speed range with a MWD than 100% of an AF’s base speed.
This isn’t actually true or accurate. On a head-on pass the MWD fit ship can still escape because even if you shut off his MWD unless you slow down your own ship very quickly then he’ll slingshot right back out of web and scram range and he can just light up his MWD again and he’s gone.
More importantly though something that requires a fairly significant error on your opponent’s part to be effective is a joke of a fit. An AF right now can kill a MWD fit with no prop mod at all if the other guy does something stupid enough. That doesn’t make this effective or desirable.
This isn’t accurate. A MWD fitted AF will tank RLMLs quite well because it has a 50% sig radius reduction, which gives AFs one of the best speed tanks in the game, especially when combined with their innately good resists, high base HP, and the tank bonuses many of them have on the hulls.
Against a Cruiser a MWD fitted Frigate with a Point instead of a Scram can generally just maintain range and pick the Cruiser apart.
Also the basic problem with your assumption is that you’ll be able to force someone into brawling range at all in the first place. A MWD fit can and will just run away from you unless they think they can win, and if they think they can win they’re probably right given that it would take about a week after a change like this for word to get around that you shouldn’t brawl an AF.
They didn’t feel it was worth pursuing further though, which should be pretty telling. That you seem inclined to dismiss anything but an outright denial of viability by CCP when you seem to know so little about how combat among small ships work is more telling IMO. See above for why the value you insist exists doesn’t.
Oh and the current meta is far more speed dependant than it was back in 2009 or 2013. Partly thanks to the Garmur and Orthrus and their longer points, partly due to the changes Interceptors have seen, and partly just due to the power of being able to decide if you engage at all and then determine the terms of any engagement you do get into that the high speed of a MWD gives you.
But I did reply to that saying E-War bonuses that T3Ds receive would not necessarily have to be part of the T3F bonuses. There are quite a few other areas that bonuses could be applied to instead.
I am sorry but this is worse than nitpicking. I did not suggest AFs go 3-400m/s faster than they do. I said the proposal would require a bonus of about 75% to make my Jaguar go the proposed target speed of about 2500m/s, which, in case of one of the cheapest fits and no implants is around 500m/s off. That has nothing to do with lack of knowledge, it is only a maths miscalculation that one would need more than 75% bonus to achieve that speed. And as I said a number of times already (and was mentioned in my original comment), I never indicated the 75% percentage bonus as set in stone in any way.
This comes with a lot of selective arguing. Firstly this approach factors in no webs/neuts, secondly it ignores the fact that my proposed speeds are only approaching MWD speeds during heat, which a pilot in question would have to deactivate after a couple of cycles and after getting in scram range, and third being that the proposed speeds would never be attainable in close orbiting, decreasing the speed tanking potential even further.
That is a piloting question, not of ship balance. Beside the fact that this presupposes usage of ships of similar manoeuvrability by the enemy, which is only a small amount of potential targets for an AF pilot.
Which has nothing to do with the scram range combat example I was talking about, where MWDs are off. Which, again, is the reason I proposed to make ABs viable for AFs.
It is pretty logical to be expecting denial or acceptance of viability from a test of viability. If you perceive the wording of their reply differently, then that is another case when we have different perspectives of same language, and that would mean we would just have to disagree on that.
Not replying to subjective declarations with no substance like “you seem to know so little about how combat among small ships work”. Let others be the judges who knows what about small ship combat here. I have pointed out enough inconsistencies in your replies so far to be making declarations on your knowledge myself if I was interested in ad hominem attacks, which I never am.
Yup, and that misses the point because it was a generic example. The problem with generalist ships in Eve is that if you’re pretty good at a lot of things synergies can make you better than a ship that’s actually supposed to be focused in that one thing. That’s why the T3Cs and to a lesser extent the T3Ds were both so oppressive in the meta for so long.
Now these ships can be balanced, but it’s a pretty thin line and that’s takes a lot of CCP’s time that would be better spent on other things.
It also gets even harder when you’re trying to insert something like that into an already crowded meta space, which the small ship meta absolutely is, that’s the main reason AFs aren’t used much as it is outside of PvE (the PvE fact coming courtesy of Fozzie at the last Fanfest balance panel).
What you’re likely to get if you try to make a T3F is something that either doesn’t really have a purpose, it’s not particularly better than anything else like the AFs already are, or it’s massively OP in some way and causes problems. T3-ification is an overly complicated and messy solution and therefore a bad one.
Yes, you did! You said they would go from speed range X-Y to P-Q. X-Y was 1500-1800, which is faster than any AF reasonably goes already without a very speed focused fit and overheating, and the vast majority go much slower than even 1500.
You keep using the word selective a lot here and you’re just abusing the poor thing. There’s nothing selective about what I’m saying here.
All ships have to deal with webs and neuts and the various ships that use them. Speed is balanced around their existence. If anything these make an AB more OP, because on the vast majority of ships web range is fairly close to scram range, so a webbed ship with a bonused AB can maneuver more easily to shut off his opponent’s MWD and escape with his superior speed.
Similarly neuts have a much lower impact on an AB since they use less cap overall and have no cap penalty, making this a further reason speed bonused ABs are stupidly powerful.
Given all of this the fact that the Succubus sees so little use should be an indication of how strong of a bonus a ship would have to get to AB speed for it to actually see use.
Your “proposed speeds” don’t change the basic math here. The tank bonus provided would be ridiculous. I didn’t even use anything you said in my statement, I gave a general range of speeds where ABs are sane for tanking, and a range where they’re usable as a MWD replacement, and at no point do the two overlap.
Also an AB fitted ship maintains more of his max speed in a tight orbit because of the substantially lower mass penalty.
First off, the main place AFs are going to be used is fighting other small ships, and the vast majority of total use cases in the game, by ship usage, is fighting something between Frigate and Cruiser size. Cruisers don’t matter much here because anyone fighting Frigates in a Cruiser is going to be outmaneuvered anyway so the only thing that matters to that engagement here is the tank potential, which as I’ve already gone over is ridiculous for a massively speed boosted AB.
This means that the majority of engagements where this has any relevance at all are fights vs Frigates and Destroyers, where the aforementioned head-on pass situation is going to show up in a large percentage of your engagements where the enemy doesn’t straight up flee.
Second, it’s absolutely a question of ship balance because different ships react differently in the above situation. Realistically an AB ship actually has an advantage because of the lower mass and faster turning.
Thirdly, and I should have stated this in the post you quoted, that was meant as an illustrative example, I just apparently thought that the point it was illustrating could be left unsaid. Basically you’re still relying on a specific scenario for your use-case to be relevant, namely that the opponent is aligning the wrong way to start with.
So again, if your ship requires your opponent to make an error to be usable then it’s not balanced.
It does, because it assumes that the Frigate has a reason to get into Scram (and therefore web) range in the first place. You’re inventing a case where a MWD fitted AF is already perfectly fine and has no reason to close distance to Scram range.
Expecting any kind of reply here from CCP is pretty ridiculous honestly, but my point was that you seem to be denying some pretty basic logic and math in your attempts to justify the potential existence of this bonus.
As far as knowledge and ad-hominem goes I’m personally trying my best to avoid it as well, but there’s simply no other way to bring up that you seem to be speaking not from personal or even second hand experience with these hulls but from a position of pure theory with no basis in reality.
You certainly don’t seem to understand the tracking formula or how a MWD tanks vs an AB or you’d know how utterly ridiculous an AB with anything close to the speed of an MWD is. If you were active in the small ship meta at all, or had even followed it for the last 2-3 years, you’d know how important raw speed is and why an AB with half the speed of a MWD just isn’t gonna cut it.
To spell it out briefly:
If you’re spending twice the time at long range you take way too much damage, even with AB sig, while closing distance to be effective as tackle. Heavy or otherwise. The MWD is just better here.
If you’re doing small gang or solo small ship combat then the MWD is needed to close in and pin down targets. Since basically everyone else is going to be using a MWD you need to be able to match that sort of speed. Relying on your opponent screwing up is a recipe for a lot of lost AFs or missed kills, and you’d be purely better off in the more expensive T3Ds.
If you buff an AB on these ships so that it’s fast enough to compete with a MWD then the resulting tank and general performance mean that you need to either cut the ship off at the knees in almost every other way to balance it, because you now have an incredibly tanky, scram-immune, more cap efficient, more maneuverable MWD-speed ship.
The Succubus gives us a pretty good idea of where CCP feels a bonus like this can rest without being inherently OP. That frigate has a 100% bonus to the AB’s velocity bonus, which means a T2 AB has a 270% velocity bonus, just over half of the 500% a T2 MWD offers, or under half the total velocity (roughly) on the final ship.
Oh and as for your ‘inconsistencies’ they’ve either been statement errors or things that I’ve then responded to. If you still feel there are any outstanding please point them out specifically and I’ll respond to them.
The thing about assault frigates is that a Harpy has about that same price tag as a Jackdaw in Amarr and for the same price I get a Jackdaw that just more powerful for the same price.
And you all the stupid Ferengi out there, I am not paying 50 million for a Harpy. Not now, not ever. But keep going with your fantasy price tags. Whatever helps you sleep at night.
You’re still gonna have a way easier time using an AB against a neut than a MWD, even if both leave you pretty much equally screwed.
Also stop trolling, this sounds way too serious for an elitatwo troll, someone might think you’re being serious here
While this isn’t inaccurate it’s kinda where the ships should be, they shouldn’t be performing head and shoulders above other things like the T3Ds were for almost two years.
Also depending on when you’re talking about the AFs did actually see quite a bit of PvP use, both earlier in Eve history before the T1 Frigate tiericide and right after their tiericide rework. Though in the case of the former it was less AFs as a whole and more like 3-4 of the things based on weapon and module buffs and nerfs.
This thread is essentially about assault frigates and dessies, and how they occupy much the same niche.
That made me wonder, what is the niche for tech 1 frigates?
Clearly, it is the novie plex in faction warfare. Ship limitations mean that you can use these ships and … wait for it… have fun.
Easily the best pvp my corp has had has been in novice plexs in FW, fighting in tech 1 frigs. We have poor skills, and the frig fights are really exciting. I totally recommend anyone who hasn’t flown frigs in novice plexes to give it a try. costs almost nothing.
So, why cant we see an expansion of this concept? Special places for special ship classes? Could it be possible to have faction warfare plexes spawn everywhere in low sec?
Further, could we see a mechanic that allows groups of a fixed upper size to enter plexes all at once, akin to alliance tournament points system?
I really like it. It leverages the one thing that AFs and HACs have always done better than almost any other Cruiser, tank. It also supports both PvP and PvE uses of the ships, which is pretty nice.
Tech 1 doesn’t really have a single niche, tech 1 generally has at least one ship in ever role that doesn’t require T2 levels of specialization.
Also it’s not that Destroyers and AFs occupy the same niche, T1 destroyers don’t and Command Dessies don’t really either, it’s specifically a problem with AFs and T3Ds where the T3D despite being more expensive is the better value for money for small ship solo and small-group fights.
Really the whole ‘niche’ concept as it applies to specific ships is kinda overly specific. Every class or ship doesn’t need its own niche, there just needs to be a reasonably compelling reason to use the hull.
