New Hulls: rounding out navy faction hulls, pirate hulls

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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Presently, only the frigate hull class has unique navy faction ships (Slicer, Firetail, Comet, Hookbill). Why not add similar types of ships for cruiser and BS hull classes, to bring the navy faction hull lineup to parity with pirate factions? While we’re at it, in line with the present additions of pirate faction caps, start adding navy faction caps as well.

Since the cruiser space is pretty well covered, I’d suggest starting with BSs.

Second, I’d really like to see hull types for pirate factions rounded out to include BCs and desties. Both have limited options with hull types. Since t3ds are a good addition to the destroyer hull class, I’d suggest starting with BCs, which seem to have the most limited options overall.

New ship models for ALL THE THINGS.

thoughts?

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What roles should these new ships have?

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Always be very careful with new ships. Once you make a ship it cannot be un-made. Furthermore the eco-system of ships is a finely balanced thing. Its difficult, if not impossible, to introduce new ships without them stepping on the toes of existing ships (And thats if they don’t make some ships completely obsolete. Or create a new meta that dominates the game).

The first rule of designing new ships should be: Do not make new ships for new ships sake and do not make ships cause they would be ‘kewl’. And don’t make a cal/min pirate faction just because we don’t have one yet.

We already have faction battleships etc, they just don’t have unique models.

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Something I think we have room for would be a SOE covops destroyer. Replace the analyzer bonuses with combat related bonuses similar to what the bombers have, and give it a covert cyno maybe.

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I think that new ship models are really time consuming for CCP’s art department and if it’s a choice between completely new ships that also need to be balanced that there isn’t a huge amount of call for in the first place I’d rather CCP update the model on any of the following hulls instead:

  • Celestis

  • Scythe

  • Atron

  • Navitas

  • Tormentor

  • Cyclone

  • Thrasher

  • Vigil

  • Probe

  • Burst

  • Breacher

  • Inquisitor

  • Hyperion

I could go on but that’s most of the frigates from two different races plus a fair number of larger hulls.

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Didn’t the Probe (and Cheetah) just got an update?
I support the complete redesign of the Celestis and Navitas, an update on the Atron would probably be enough. Also, the pirate capitals! Please make them unique! Even if the Guristas are stealing the property of the Caldary navy - a lazy justification of the lazy design - I don’t think the lore could handle the “the Guristas are stealing the dreadnought and titan blueprints too, the biggest weapons we ever created, we clearly have no security whatsoever”.

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Probe has been done recently aye. I’d say you’re right cade about it being time consuming. CCP manage only a few a year. We’ve got a long list of existing still ships to do and all the structures that are to come.

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How about one more Gallente/Amarr pirate faction instead? We already have 2 Gallente/Minmatar and 2 Gallente/Caldari minor factions, then at least we can say that we definitely don’t need anything else related to Gallente, at least for a while.

I imagine it as a fast, armored missile boat. Amarr would give 10% EM and thermal missile damage bonus, Gallente would give 10% bonus to armor plate HP. Role bonuses would be explosion radius reduction and 50% armor plate mass reduction.
This faction while coming from the Amarr region would compete with and appear in both Serpentis and Blood Raider territory.
Let them use the Executioner, Augoror and Abaddon ships as a base. I think the Abaddon with cruise missile or torpedo launchers would look amazing.

I think these bonuses could make a set of quite unique and interesting ships.

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No idea, and I wasn’t really differentiating between ships that should get an update and ships that I think should get a redesign. Functionally speaking it’s going to be almost the same amount of work on CCP’s part since no part of the original model would stick around with an update anyway.

Generally speaking I hope most of the Minnie ships get the same sort of treatment as the Rupture hull line.

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My thinking, at least for the initial round, was to extend the roles of the navy faction frigates (ie, Hookbill, Slicer, Firetail, and Comet) into other hull classes. So, what would be the meta of, say, a Hookbill? Is there some cruiser-class ship that already does what it does? Is there another BS that does? What would an Imperial Navy carrier look like? What would it do that would set it apart from the stock Archon? How would a Federation Navy dreadnought be different both from the Moros and the Vehement?

Like I said, I don’t know the meta well enough to answer those questions, but I am a completionist (for what that’s worth), so I like to see classes rounded out.

This goes as well for introducing new pirate faction lines. Presently, seven pirate factions require Gallente ship skills, while the other three racial skills are only needed for five each. To bring the pirate factions to parity (that is, so that each of the four racial ship skills would be needed for seven different factions) you would need three more factions: Amarr-Caldari, Caldari-Minmatar, and Minmatar-Amarr. I’m not sure what roles those might fill, and it’s a separate question from the one I bring up here, but I think it’s one worth asking.

The issue I am bringing up here is rounding out pirate faction lines to include BC and destroyer hulls. I’d like to see, for example, what a Guristas BC might look like. Caldari pilots don’t have a good drone platform in the BC class, so it would be an interesting addition. Likewise, there doesn’t seem to be anything in the BC classes that would match what SOE ships provide (tanky, drones, agile, with exploration bonuses). The Vigilant and Vindicator don’t seem to be much favored (??), but I wonder how a Serpentis BC would work.

What I also think is important here would be two things, since CCP has said that they do intend to add more ships to the game:

  1. if it’s a new faction, make sure it fills out a racial requirement that’s presently underserved (which basically just means don’t add another faction that needs Gallente skills at this point).
  2. if it’s an addition to a preexisting faction, add a hull class that isn’t presently represented (ie, add BCs and desties before adding more frigs/BSs/cruisers).

I want to see BCs have as many interesting and varied choices as frig pilots have, and I think there’s a lot of room there to grow.

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A cruiser sized hookbill is a navy osprey. A cruiser sized slicer is a navy omen. A cruiser sized firetail is a fleet stabber. A cruiser sized comet is a navy exeq.

Then you have a navy raven, navpoc, fleet tempest, navythron. They do the similar jobs on a different scale.

Yeah i get you want things rounded out. But rounding things out for the sake of it is going to leave several ships doing the same job where one will be better than the others all the time and/or ships pigeon holed into roles that suck or are pointless.

More ships is fine. But you’re doing it backwards. Figure out what they do first. This is the most important part of a ship (this is the bit that makes or breaks the game). Then figure out faction/backstory/fill holes as appropriate.

The problem with faction caps is that they may quickly become the new meta. If they are cheaper than pirate caps but more powerful than normal caps it may become the norm for larger, richer alliances to use these caps to stomp lesser groups even more than they do now. And once they have made faction caps, they cannot be un-made.

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Only reason to add new ships is because there is an open role current ships can’t be made to fill

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The thing is that different classes are able to do different things. Frigates and cruisers have mostly balanced defensive and offensive abilities, while can take various roles. Battleships are mostly balanced too, but usually without specific roles (at least in T1). Destroyers are focusing on almost cruiser level damage dealing with usually weak tank, while the T2 versions have completely different roles. Battlecruisers similarly have near battleship level damage output while being command ships, or actual battleship level damage in case of ABCs.

Following these basics we can mostly see what faction navy or pirate destroyers or battlecruisers could do.
For example, I could make a faction destroyer that can equip 5 medium sized weapons, while being just as tanky as the normal destroyers (kind of like the little sister of the ABCs, which also could/should be navy variants).
A pirate battlecruiser probably would have better fleet boosting abilities than the T1 versions, while being decent damage dealers.
A SOE BC for example could have better armor boosting bonuses, or just really good resistance script bonus. Cloak, probably covert cyno, at least 4 heavy drones, probing bonus but no analyzer bonus.

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I was thinking of another thing about BCs. ABCs also have a profile (“paper-thin up-puncher”) that seems analogous to what stealth bombers do. There’s also no BC equivalent to a recon ship, with cloaking and ewar platforms.

So what if the two were combined? A t2 variant of the ABC hull, which can cloak (maybe not CovOps, that would probably be OP, yes? But maybe a speed bonus while cloaked), has a tight fitting but gets fitting bonuses for BS-sized weapons systems as well as for ewar stuff (so that you can give it a lot of mids without giving it a monster tank). Give it the ability to use CovOps bridges and cynos, and maybe moderate boosting (again, not too much, because OP). Maybe give it specific boosts to ewar burst scripts.

I suspect it would be tough to fly, because you’d have to manage several things at once, but could be an interesting addition to mid-size fleets.

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Cov-ops.
E-war.
Massive Tank.
Stupid low sig.
Dps so high its hard to justify.

Yeah thats a t3c.

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I did lean pretty heavily on the “paper-thin” part. ABCs have larger sigs and suckier tanks than t3c hulls, don’t they? And it would be loading BS-sized weapons, so that dps would be mitigated for smaller targets.

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you want the fuckers to be bridgeable… if you don’t see how that’s broken there is no helping you

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They do. So why use that ship instead of a t3?

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BCs and destroyers are the only subcaps that don’t have a hull capable of using a BLOPs bridge. I think Command Destroyers do enough interesting stuff with MJFGs, or 'dictors with bubbles, that they can fill a sufficiently disruptive role with those options. BCs, however, don’t seem to have any platform capable of the sort of … uh, “spooky” stuff that BLOPS, CovOps, bombers, and CovOps T3Cs can do. That’s the gap I’m interested in filling.

To answer @Daichi_Yamato, I’m imagining this being somewhere between a BLOPS ship and a T3C in terms of size, agility, speed, and sig, while having a much lighter tank to balance the bigger guns and ewar capability.

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that’s not a gap. what would they bring that is not broken and is not already covered in a blops gang.

BB damage glass tank? bombers have that.
links? T3C have that.

not to mention unlike bombers turrets apply differently making these far more powerful than bombers in a blops set up