Next Summit Brainstorm - Ship Balance

Council Of Stellar Management Assembly Hall
63

Even if Gila’s drones can be made super tanky when compared to unbonused ones, their HP aren’t infinite. At some point, the capsuleer will have to call them back in the bay, which cause multiples things :

  • Reduction of the DPS, since drone will have to go back and forth to avoid being killed.
  • Less AFK/Braindead gameplay, which mean the ships are still usable for those who like the exotic combination of drones and missiles, but the majority of the spodbrains will certainly go away.
  • Will finally take down the supremacy of Gila and Rattlesnake in PVE activities, renewing a meta that have been here for way too long.

However, I do agree that 500% bonus to all layers of resistance on something like a medium drone is way too much. I’d say : keep the bonus to the damage, since it’s the main spirit of the Guristas line, but reduce a lot, or ditch completly the Role bonus to hitpoints.
If I remember well, when ‘The Rabbit’ stole the blueprints of the Merlin, Moa and Scorpion, it was to accommodate them to the Guristas style : fast attack crafts that are able to withstand punishement. Nothing was ever said about their drones’ sturdiness !

64

A very quick method of bringing Drone ships in line in general is to make you drone fall inactive or return to drone bay (like modern drones) if they go outside of your drone control range.

However, I will stress that if the Gila receives a harsh nerf there will be a massive decrease in the number of people doing Abyss content, and a resulting (even higher) increase in material costs. Not saying a nerf shouldn’t happen, but a tweak to abyss content may want to coincide.

65

Which they almost never do ? Since to get them I a target, you need this one to be within your control range…
For your nerf to be effective, people would have to get in range, set drones, and then go out of their range, generally with a prop mode if the thing isn’t battleship just to get their drones go back. I sadly don’t see how this would be helpful :confused:

66

Sorry correct, I forgot a key element to that: Have Sensor Dampening effect drone control range.

1 Like
67

Like this:

68

I am not even talking about ISK…

To me personally ISK does not even have to enter the equation…
1.) cause you are grinding LP to get one for yourself (no I am not going to discuss about mass farming/trading, thats irrelevant)
2.) The same thing can be said about “your” pirate ships…especially if drops were taken away and they could only come from LP stores.

Now, someone like me can easily grind up the LP in approx a week or less (7 days), cause im retired in RL.
Compare that with someone that does not have that amount of time…and getting 600k to 800k LP becomes a tremendous chore.

Comparatively to mods that you can grind for 5 run BPC’s…those are quite a bit easier…approx 3-8 lv4 missions if you get the right ones and bam, an hour to build them and using very few mins that you can gun mine for…courier Bots run for these things all the time (and imps) so the LP cost should go up in my opinion.

69

Pve - The problem with Gila drone’s is that its not only the hp that goes up but also the shield regen which is linked to shield max hp, the regen gets so high it can perma tank most rat’s.

Pvp - The Drone hp x 8 drones is what makes it silly to shoot a gila’s drones, as the drones have something like 5-8 X more hp than the gila itself.

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70

Just a quick note that I’m sure CCP is already aware of Gila issues. No sense in turning the thread into a Gila balance debate and take the light away from other ships that may need some love.

71

As the contributor who raised the Gila as a subject: I completely agree.

1 Like
72

Ship: Garmur
what: reduce its point range bonus to 5% and lower its speed
why: this ship is simply too hard to catch, especially in FW.

Ship: Vedmak
what: add 200PG and 50tf CPU
why: this ship is way too hard to fit without several anc or cpu rigs.

Ship: Damavik
what: add one low slot
why: This ship is simply underperforming with only 3 low slots. You cant really fit a tank or damage mods. With 3/3/4 layout the amount matches other T1 frigs.

Ship: Leshak
what: add 25mbit bandwith that it can launch a full flight ob heavy drones.
why: The initial dps is rather low and Trigs like drones

Ship: Proteus
what:

  • change defence subs to give equal amount of shield, armor and hull hp
  • change repair and covop system to give also bonus to shield boost amount(same as loki)
  • increase CPU, it is almost impossible to fit the dronesub prot without several cpu upgrades, it only gets like 350tf.
  • add 25mbit dronebandwith to dronesubsystem
    why: Gallente have just like minmatar ships that work well or even better with shield tank than with armor. For example the Sin, Lachesis, Tristan, Myrm or Ishtar. Gallente focus more on armor and minmatar more on shield(none of their ships is bonused for armor). Same on Gallente, no shieldbonused ships. In my opinion this would make sense

ship: Hecate
what: add 200 hp shield and change defense mode to also give 33% shield resistance and 50% shieldboostamount.
why: see above

2 Likes
73

You don’t really need to catch a garmur to kill it. Just need to project damage to it. The ship speed itself is fine, its more the fact that snake pods make them pretty stupidly fast. Non-snaked garmur’s are easy for most ships to deal with. Yes if you try to fight a garmur in a brawly frig, you’ll die. But such is life, EVE is a game of rock, paper, scissors. Maybe don’t try to beat rock with scissors?

It also helps that 90% of garmur pilots out there are completely oblivious on how to properly fit one.

Its the highest dps subcap in the game, it doesn’t need more dps. The initial “low” dps is how they’re balanced. Also, their initial “low” dps is the same as most standard battleships before ramp up.

The Loki’s new subsystem follows the svipul’s trend, which is its bonused to both shield/armor. As historically, minmatar have always been able to do both. Maybe not shield tank as good as caldari, or armor tank as good as amarr, but they get a balanced mixture (in theory, obviously exceptions exist).

What gallente get over minmatar is a better hull tank. While a relatively non-existant point for the proteus, the hecate gets a hull resist bonus in place a shield bonus, while the svipul gets a shield/armor bonus, but not a hull bonus. That is gallente’s flavor, is hull tanks.

You can see this in their battleships and other normal ships, as they have more hull HP than both armor and shield.

The proteus subs would be worthless with a shield boost bonus as you have no mids. You’d need to fix the slot layout first before you go for shield bonuses.

That being said, i highly doubt the proteus would ever get a shield bonus. If anything, it’d get a hull bonus like the hecate, along with extra buffer as an alternative.

Ishtar shield tank isn’t that good anymore, it was nerfed. Maybe for PVE ratting, but you don’t even need a tank if you 100mn fit them, so putting a single shield booster+invuln on an ishtar is moot. The lach’s shield tank is really weak against EM, even the cap stable XL booster can be alpha’d through.

Yes they can shield tank, but they aren’t necessarily “good” at it. Just good as max gank fits.

2 Likes
74

Do you have numbers to back this one up? Does it take into account the abysmal range of Occult ammo?

Also keep in mind that precursor ships have no bonuses to their drones, so they are made of paper.

75

Have you never seen this thing killing carriers?

76

Leshak, when fully spun up, does 2323 DPS with Occult - one full cycle of the gun is 9500 damage. Throw in some drones, and you can get the DPS up to 2539. Even with Tetryon for longer range, you can get the DPS up to 1871, with a 7817 volley, and 2087 with drones.

Looking at a relatively blingy fit (I’m looking at CODE’s fit, since they tend to bling theirs out), you get 139k EHP, so I don’t see where this is a paper tiger. In fact, I think most people would argue that Leshaks are OP.

Throw in the dual damage types and I think the one thing you can’t really argue is that the Leshak has serious DPS. It’s only drawback is that it has to spool up, but as Stitch noted, that’s where the balance is.

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77

So 2323 DPS with a ~20km weapon if you have managed to keep a lock and range on a target for like 2 minutes.

What’s the dps and range on a Rattlesnake again?

Note: the paper tiger comment is about the drones.

78

Sorry - my fit in Pyfa was ■■■■■■ up, because it had some abyssal mods that I didn’t realize didn’t get taken. I updated the numbers - it’s over 2k.

And yes, you need to be able to stay on grid and locked, but you get a couple of these guys together and most of them have remote reps/cap transfers to keep each other alive and they will wreck your face.

I pulled up a pretty standard PvP Snake fit, and pyfa is saying that, with drones, this fit gets 1259 DPS with faction inferno cruises. Its EHP is higher than the Leshak (barely), but you throw in the delay from missile damage travel and the single damage type and I’d rather have the Leshak.

79

So higher EHP with shields, missiles that are guaranteed to hit (maybe less dmg), 120km+ range, Drones with 275% more health.

Any numbers that take the ramp up damage of a precursor as the damage they do is extremely skewed. In practical use outside of a bash you will almost never see this amount of damage. Outside of using a Gila for Abyssal, so i can afford precursors, I use precursor ships almost exclusively day to day. I can whole heartily tell you all of their dmg is meh.

80

You see them in bashes, you seem them in whaling fleets (especially with WH groups) - basically anywhere you’ve got the chance to get a capital kill, these guys are around nowadays. You will see Leshak gangs out in a way that you never see Snake gangs. They’re essentially a more mobile dread.

81

If they are meant to be a niche ship balanced solely to attack capitals and structures, then yes they are currently in line. However, as the only battleship option for precursors you may not want to go do that.

Maybe looking at an alternative battleship option is the better route then.

82

With mystic, at full ramp up, you’re doing 1505dps (before drones) out to ~53km. Before ramp up, its around 575dps. If you combine drones its now doing ~800dps. There are quite a few battleships that when fit for tank, sit right around 800-900dps. So, using your long range “weak” ammo, you’re doing more damage than other, tanky battleships. Before ramp up.

The rattlesnake also does about 1500dps with drones and missiles (torpedoes), and i can can tell you for certain, you’re not getting torpedo’s going 50km in a rattlesnake, nor are they going to apply to anything past scram/grapple range. Most cruise/RHML snakes will be around 1200-1300dps.

Also a rattlesnake can be defanged pretty easily to anyone persistent enough. Hell, you can throw EC drones on the 2 heavy’s a rattlesnake has and negate a good chunk of its dps if you’re so inclined.

The rattlesnake isn’t nearly as fast or agile as the leshak, also its has a much larger signature plus it doesn’t have the utility/bonus for RR or neuts. The leshak packs a ton of utility and damage into a small package. Not having 5 heavy drones is really a non-issue.

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