Hey guys!
Since Las Vegas I’m still awaiting some words by CCP to when exactly they plan to implement the new Damage Controls. During their panel they said they are targeting the winter patch. However, the release of the next patch is coming 5th December, but still CCP has said nothing. Would appreciate some informations regarding the new items.
Its coming, soon™.
One could imagine this will come with the overhaul of assault frigates, otherwise it wont really make much of an impact.
It does sound very interesting though!!
Im so behind on news like this.
Im not liking the look of this though.
We just recently got passive DCUs, and now this?
I don’t like “oh-■■■■” buttons…
The idea does seem kindof stale, unimaginative, even kind of ham-fisted. Ashterothi’s comments on the proposed changes are good food for thought.
Do we know if you can fit this on anything? Or just assault frigs?
According to the Eve Vegas presentation, Assault Frigates and Heavy Assault Cruisers only.
Damn, HAC’s aswell? Really?
That seems abit crazy tbh. HAC’s arent that bad atm, not bad enough to warrant an item like this at least! Especially with the t3 rebalance we had.
Imagine a deimos or Ishtar with this mod lol.
Don’t know. At first glance it seems like a poor attempt to get Assault Frigates and Heavy Assault Cruisers into play again, since they lack decent roles in the pvp meta quite now apart from 2 or 3 ships that are frequently used. However, I have to admit that a few ships are getting quite interesting with the Assault Damage Control and I am awaiting them getting into the game since they first mentioned them in Las Vegas. Would be glad to see them in the December Patch already, but I guess they won’t make it.
This is my reaction too.
Agreed. HACs are not in that bad a shape and this seems like a situation where devs will spend the months after release nerfing the buff.
To me it seems like the balance guys are chasing the Meta, rather than trying to shape it in new and interesting ways. Should be the other way around.
Power creep.
This will make BCs look even worse than they already are.
Yup. Because it just becomes whack-a-mole right? “Ship X is underpowered, let’s buff it.” The inevitable result then being that the perceived imbalance is not resolved, just shifted elsewhere. So suddenly something else seems underpowered, and then we have to buff that, and so on and so on. A vicious cycle of balance madness.
Break the cycle! #CCPlease
Watch the vid
Thanks for posting the video. I watched the vegas presentation at the time, but it’s good to refresh my memory.
I agree with pretty much every bullet point listed as the “goal” of the rebalance. I agree with the rough outlines of what they say they want to achieve in theory. In particular, the ideas of reinforcing their ID as fleet-oriented ships and making sure they have a unique roll to play are fantastic. (I kinda take exception to the point about AF speed. If the speed gets buffed too much, then they start to push interceptors and pirate frigates out of their own niches).
The thing is I think the actual form the proposal takes in practice is underwhelming, unimaginative, and fraught with counter-productive possibilities. The proposed module probably achieves the first goal of reinforcing the fleet-friendly nature of the hulls. It totally ignores the speed issue, so why even bring it up on the preceding slide? It mostly fails at giving these ships any kind of unique role or gameplay.
It seems like somebody realized a straight buff was a bad idea, so they thought “well, how about we just make the buff temporary.” It belies a disappointing lack of creativity, in my view. If we’re doing a temprary boost thing (like drugs, but in module format, which is what this proposal boils down to) why not make it a temporary speed boost? I think that might be a little more interesting because it relies on the pilot’s human, non-SP skill to make it useful, as opposed to this, which just seems like a dumb kindof brute-force approach. A speed boost would at least open up options for more subtle exploitation by skilled pilots.
I just see some ham-handed implementation that is going to result in some interesting brick-tanks for high value low volume hauling in high security space. 80% all resist from one module across all health bars for twenty seconds is going to be absolutely stupid to deal with.
Especially since after a gank attempt they can just dock up at a local NPC station… hit the repair button and relaunch and have the sub-capital “PANIC!” button ready to roll again.
After a gank attempt, Concord will blow the attacker up, so no, you cannot dock up.
If you are talking regular pvp, then yes, thats true.
I truly hope there will be some restrictions to this module, like it being illegal to use in highsec, like ECM Burst modules, for example.
Or the module giving a 30m agression timer or something, to compensate for the massive advantage it gives you.
Actually, if people start hauling stuff in assault frigates, I would be amused, but not crushed.
TBH anyone who understands the advantage of hauling small amounts of high-value cargo in a small, hard to kill ship is already using a cov-ops or travelceptor and flying it properly and nobody’s ganking them anyway.
I’d frankly be surprised if the proposal, were it implemented exactly as described, would change the way things are moved in HS. And if I’m wrong about that, so much the better.
Let’s put ganking discussion to rest on this thread, ok? 
Just saying, this module has to have some drawbacks, like it being illegal in highsec and stuff like that.
This would make it basically impossible to gank a frigate in highsec, the way its done now.
Just turn the module on when going through choke points and you end up with a frigate that has 10k+ EHP.
I mean… you’re right but it’s irrelevant?
Fly a cov-ops or inty (both of which are less expensive than an AF, IIRC) and it’s damn hard to kill in HS anyway. For people who know what they’re doing, this changes nothing. For people who don’t know what they’re doing, this changes nothing.
Ergo, this changes nothing.
