You didn’t note that in addition to the capsule, conventional weapons are also installed, this is about 800 dps. And so on, installation of MJD, jam and bonuses. And the protection of the web and cloak
And the CovertCloak. And the BlackOps BridgeAbility. Why not give it an AssaultDamageControl, a Bomblauncher and a Doomsday as well?
Because that would be overpowered.
1 Like
Ok, that one was actually funny.
2 Likes
Even though I was half serious, I couldn’t resist that opportunity. 
This is not very different than the mechanics that are already in the game, because shield extenders and armor plates already ‘punish’ a player for fitting them:
- Shield extenders increase signature size, which means people deal more damage when you add one
- Plates slow you down, which means people deal more damage when you add one
These new breacher pods are just another fitting option that you can strategically fit against, and may change the way you choose to fit if breacher pods are prevalent.
That’s no different than that people fit different to counter other modules in the game.
Warp core stabilizers prevalent? Fit more scrams and points
ECM prevalent? Use sensor boosters with ECCM scripts
Neuts happen a lot? Add extra capacitor batteries for spare cap and neut resistance even if your ship is cap stable without
Lasers popular? Prefer EM and thermal resistances over kinetic and explosive
Breacher pods? Prefer active repairs over passive tank
It is going to be a new tool with it’s own strengths and weaknesses.
And it may help to adjust the way you fit your ship if you expect to face it.
You wouldn’t complain about Hail ammo being kin/expl ‘punishing you for investing in a em/ther fit against lasers’, you just found your ship fit for one thing in the wrong situation.
It’s a core part of EVE to predict what your ship will need and to fit it right. These new Breacher pods are no different than an enemy shooting into your resistance hole that you forgot to plug. You could have fit against it, but you chose to fit against something else.
This is not even remotely comparable, because the benefit in protection they bring are by far worth more than the pretty minimal disadvantage in enemy application on you.
Yeah? How Do I fit a fleet-combat Battleship that needs several hundredthousand eHP “against breacher pods”? Just removing all the plates to reduce my raw HP and pray? Removing a 1600mm plate (-100.000ehp, which will get me killed far more easy by enemy focus fire) to fit an active repper that will also drain down my own cap? Removing Neuts and RRs from my ships to run Smartbombs that I then need to activate with a reaction time of a squirrel on crack because these Pods can be fired at me from brawling range? And how do I know that a BreacherPod will come at me so I can fit against it? These things can cynojump, they can cloak, they can sneak up when the fight has already started and I am tackled, then decloak and “tag” me with a DamageOverTime effect.
Please please please, don’t play stupid. Active Reps plain suck in any scnenario with more then 5-6 opponents, they just break you easily and overpower your reps if they have at least some decent damage. Except you are sitting in a Marauder or really blue-pimped ship with an activerepbonus. You want to see more Marauders Online™, fine.
You know exactly what will happen:
- people will be EVEN MORE risk averse and not take fights or risk expensive bufferships when they even smell such a thing around
- they will bring EVEN MORE LOGI to make sure to have drastically overrepping power to keep their fleet alive
- those people who already just curbstomp-kill others will use them to BlackOpsBridge them onto their prey to break them even easier and faster
- large groups can easily add some of these to their comp, while small groups can’t because they have already problems getting a tough balance between DPS, Logi and Fleetboost. Plus a few support like tackle or bubblers. They barely have the manpower to add some EWAR to their fleet, now it’s again something more to consider. It shifts balance even MORE towards larger groups, which is the least thing EVE needs
- The Newbro who learns best in a simple passive-fit so he can concentrate on learning how to react in a fight, how to apply damage, how to keep range or going on the primary etc - without having to manage an active rep and cap a lot - will suffer the most. Great meta shift!
This is BAD for the game and its absolutely obvious. So far I haven’t seen a single potential scenario that would get better with this mechanic in the game, just completely diffuse assumptions like “will shift the meta” (ah… buzzword), “will be a solution for a problem” (I already asked: What “Problem”?), “the Pochven Ishtar Meta can be broken” (lol, if you want that, fix Drone Assist and the deal is done…), “The Algos Meta can be broken” (I don’t see what breacherpods can do there, but well, FIX DRONE ASSIST and it would be done).
Sorry, but you can view this from any angle and it’s straight bad. And I have still seen NO arguments in favor, except “oh well so exictied its fancy new gimme gimme gimme!”.
3 Likes
In a fleet battle you indeed don’t want active reps, but a buffer tank.
In a fleet battle the effectiveness of these breacher pods will also suffer greatly, because you cannot stack these effects. And you likely have logi to counter it.
These new ships will probably shine in small scale fights, solo roaming and as a means to add extra pressure in fleet battles, but in such fleet battles their effect isn’t scalable (due to no stacking) so while these ships will be high prio targets when they decloak they will likely not dominate fleet battles.
You still don’t get it, right? If I am buffer and will constantly bleed hP, the enemy can just tag another ship of my fleet every few seconds and after a minute of the fight 6-7 of our high buffer ships bleed irresistable and the logis need to KEEP repping them for 75 seconds, blocking them from actually repping those who are the enemy primary.
Its really nice to see that you blatantly ignore all arguments to come up with another already debunked myth. That they can’t stack is totally irrelevant as you can hit multiple targets in a short succession and they all keep bleeding. So, the solution is in fact “simple”: BRING MORE LOGI, MORE, MORE MORE LOGI. This is what you would like to see? An 1:1 amount of Logis and DPS in the fleets? I don’t.
4 Likes
No, I get what you mean.
What I’m saying is, bring it on.
Let players break the meta and come up with new strategies to use these new ships and to fight against these new ships.
And if after some months it turns out the strategies to deal with these ships aren’t viable enough and they dominate the meta, adjust their numbers so they fit more fairly in that new meta. Not the current meta, the new meta in which these ships are also part.
What’s the worst that could happen?
That players quit the game over incredibly stupid development decisions because they begin to believe that the devs have no idea about their own game and a basic balance. Adding more fancy imbalanced stuff before fixing existing content that is broken for ages. And I really mean that. This tool is perfect for larger gangs to break smaller gangs with ease, nullifing their few logis and Commandships and then completely obliterating them. And it will make nothing better.
There have been few ideas in the past that made me shake my head so much in complete disbelief. And the feedback they got in that stream was well-earned. Ignoring resists and applying a percentage-damage are straight no-gos.
5 Likes
If you don’t care about the game, don’t talk.
It’s not the first time you favor your own pleasure against the game balance.
You are making the game objectively worse.
I care about the game, which is why I talk about it.
I don’t see how speaking against all the doomsayers is ‘favoring my own pleasure against game balance’ and lastly I hopefully don’t have to explain how a change that some people like and other people don’t is not ‘objectively worse’.
I am one of the least doomsayers this board has ever seen. The number of people who actually “like” this mechanic is what? 3? There hasn’t even given one potential example (explained!) how this mechanic could achieve something good? Not one but diffuse assumptions that btw. could all have been achieved much easier with much less game breaking nonsense.
It’s the same thing like with that entire Zarzakh idea: thousands over thousands of wasted dev hours for some niche-idea that 99% of the players are either hate, abuse or ignore. It hasn’t make the game a single bit better and some months later they had to finally implement exactly the nerfs and changes basically everyone with a brain told them on day one. And with this one it is exactly the same, it will be crazy OP, frustrate a lot of people, might even drive some out of the game out of this frustration, bring close to zero benefit to the game and will finally after some month be nerfed, hopefull into insignificance.
And the only thing remains are again thousands of dev hours wasted for another unneeded mechanic that adds more complexity to an already overcomplex game that cannot grow because the huge amount of things to know and learn and the equally huge amount of exceptions you need to know, that scares off the majority of all players looking for a good SciFi game.
This idea is the equivalent of hitting your own knee with an axe.
5 Likes
Why do you hope an interesting new weapon gets nerfed into insignificance?
I hope it eventually will be balanced and fun.
And I think the best way to accomplish that is to release it in a state that it’s strong, possibly overpowered, rather than starting with an insignificant and ignored weapon. Iteration may not be CCP’s strongest point, but you cannot iterate if people don’t use it because it’s too weak.
Because it’s core idea (ignoring resists and base damage on the targets raw HP) is poison to the game I love.
As I already said, there is nothing to say against a DOT mechanic, but not like this.
Make the smaller ship a Deathless-Bomber that can use this special thing as a bomb launcher. Flight time exactly as the other bombs, means 30km range and 12sec travel. That allows counterplay by reacting to this threat: booshing, activating a firewall or using defender missiles. The benefit of this bomb is that it does A LOT more damage than a normal bomb but only to one target over x seconds of time and you have not limit of bombs to launch because they can’t destroy each other. THAT would allow for a lot of strategical use, but require coordination AND allow good counterplay.
The damage could be based on signature (again like bombs = easy to understand, easy to learn, easy to recognize) but respecting resists, so if a target is hit it could overheat for example to counter the damaging effect.
THIS would be a good implementation because it fits into the Bomber mechanic that already exist. It opens up new strategical choices. It allows good counterplay and it rewards people for skilling and investing into their fittings.
And as said, make the stronger ship a BlackOps so you have some endgame-toy for the vets, that can use such a Breacher Pod Launcher as role bonus but is a bit weaker in general (DPS/tank) than the other BlackOps to balance it out. Voil’a, that is good game design.
If you cared about the game, you would not accept an idea that breaks it.
Choose one.
But you CANT !
Read FFS instead of favoring your own pleasure against game balance.
This literally breaks the balance of the game ! So either it’s watered down to a state where it’s niche and unusable in most cases, either it’s completely breaking the game.
1 Like
Damage-over-time effects are too easily countered as they’re much more predictable than other weapon systems.
The only way damage-over-time is going to be impactful is if it deals significantly more damage than regular attacks in the same time.
On the other hand, damage-over-time effects quickly become oppressive when players are allowed to stack them, so limiting them to ‘one per ship’ is a good way to both have DOT attacks in the game and have those DOT attacks deal meaningful damage.
The next step is to determine how much damage is meaningful.
Should this DOT weapon just deal 2k dps flat?
It would be unfair against smaller ships, one application and a frigate would die.
Maybe cap the damage to 75% of the total hitpoints of the ship?
Good idea, it means simply decloaking and applying the attack doesn’t kill people outright unless they’re also under fire from other attacks, and also doesn’t kill frigates.
So, damage capped by maximum health of enemy ships is a good idea.
But what about the minimum damage this non-stacking attack should deal to be meaningful?
Even something as strong as ‘2k dps’ is too easily repaired by a single repairer on a ship with high resistances, because DOT attacks are very predictable.
What if it ignores resistances?
There we go, we have a meaningful damage-over-time attack that doesn’t kill ships outright but is a severe nuisance if you manage to get hit.
I don’t know how CCP came up with the design of the Breacher pods, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it went something like this.
Luckily it means that CCP has plenty of numbers to adjust to balance the weapon if one aspect or another appears to be problematic:
- duration
- damage number (making it deal more or less damage against smaller ships)
- percentage of max health cap (making it deal more or less damage against buffer battleships and caps)
- range (making it easier or harder to attack an enemy ship)
- cycle time (making it easier or harder to apply to multiple ships)
Plenty of options, I’m sure CCP can come up with a combination of numbers that eventually is fun and balanced, while also providing a new way to deal with high-resistance enemies.
Please don’t get angry. I don’t see how the breacher pods will be my own pleasure, I’m pretty sure if they become overpowered that they will be used against me often as well and that I would suffer those consequences.
I just don’t expect they’ll be overpowered, and if they are, I expect that CCP can adjust them to not be overpowered anymore even though the weapon keeps dealing damage over time ignoring resistances.
1 Like
Yeah, for example if they ignored defense mechanism, evasion, and scaled with the amount of tank installed on the victim ?
Good thing CCP is not THAT stupid.
Maybe don’t ?
That’s literally what the signature is about !
No, it’s not.
No, it’s because THAT’S LITERALLY THE POINT OF RESISTS.
Yeah, I agree this can likely be why that idea looks stupid.
Nope they don’t, because the MECHANISM in itself is broken. The IDEA is broken.
Let’s consider the addition of triglavian weapons.
They don’t break anything : damage starts lower, then increases as time passes. Can be countered with damp/jam. Numbers were OP but the mechanics was not.
Now do the same for edencom .
They don’t break anything either (actually they break the targeting limit by hitting mid warp). Sure if you have 4 alts instead of 3 (and they don’t have drones) then you will take more damage overall but if the 3 alts have different roles, then you are gaining more than you lose (+1/3 effective whatever, +1/4 DPS taken) but after enough people in the fleet the damage taken does not increase anymore. And of course drones help reduce their damage a lot.
Now do the same for this :
- it breaks the idea of resistances as the damage dealt bypasses resistances
- it breaks the idea of HP since the damage TAKEN increases linearly with your HPs !
- it breaks the idea of evasion since it does not consider evasion at all.
- it breaks the idea of grid control as it still deals damage after you are dead, or after the target is in warp. Or after you are cloaked. Or jammed.
- it breaks the balance between cruisers and BC since it’s a BC with a covert cloak !
Yes, they can make it deal 0% of target HP so it’s not OP . #easyfix
1 Like
I didn’t realise that some people feel so strongly about new game mechanics that counter existing gameplay.
As a child I have played Magic the Gathering for years. It’s a fun game with rules, but the most fun about that game is that all those rules are merely a framework and that every rule has exceptions, because many cards break one rule or another.
“Play one land per turn” and you have cards that allow you to play multiple lands.
“Draw one card per turn” yet you have cards that allow you to draw more, or make opponents stop drawing.
Where am I going with this seemingly off topic post?
EVE.
EVE has for a long time had all sorts of rules and weapons that play with those rules. But there’s nothing to say that those rules aren’t meant to be broken.
Breaking those rules can be fun. Look at Magic the Gathering, half the fun is using cards that break or rewrite the rules in your favour. And keep in mind that even though rules get broken, these cards themselves aren’t necessarily broken - if the cards aren’t easily played because restrictive costs or other requirements they may not even be strong at all even if they break rules.
So here I am looking at some people who get angry and start typing IN ALL CAPS because CCP broke one of their own rules of “damage is resisted by resistance” by adding a new weapon that doesn’t get resisted by resistance.
I think it’s fun to see CCP break some rules, it reminds me of MTG. And just like in MTG a rule-breaking card isn’t necessarily a game-breaking card.
Let’s see how this new rule-breaking weapon works out.
1 Like
That is completely wrong and basically every other game has understand this. Bleeding or Poison for example is a standard effect in the Diablo Games and of course the damage over time effects deal LOWER damage in the same time than regular attacks. Same for PoE, the initial number might be higher, but still not nearly as high as a continous regular attack over the same duration. And in BOTH games you can resist poison and you can resist bleeding.
The point of DOT effects is to force healers (aka logis) to keep attention to targets even if the primary changes, because they will keep losing Hp for a while. Or in case of local tanking, keeping some rep/cap pressure on a target while continiung the regular attacks, basically weakening his active tank a bit.
What CCP does here lacks basic understanding of balance.
2 Likes