Petition - A change to the Victorieux Luxury Yacht - in honor of Katia Sae

Council Of Stellar Management Assembly Hall
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Forum post found here: Petition - A change to the Victorieux Luxury Yacht - in honor of Katia Sae

(I’m posting this here as well for utility, additional thoughts I’ve had since my forum post are in brackets and stars.)

I am petitioning to make one simple change to the Victorieux Luxury Yacht. Adding one high slot for the purpose of fitting a Core Probe Launcher.

Additionally, if possible, I would love to rename the ship to something like the ‘Katia Sae Luxury Yacht’ or have a Katie Sae themed skin produced for the ship. (I’m certainly not opposed to a unique version of the ship produced to make abuse prohibitively expensive. Think alliance tournament ships. This does undo the ability for new pilots to use them to sight see historic/famous sites around eve though.)

In my opinion the Victorieux Luxury Yacht is basically designed for sight seeing in Eve with its ability to covops cloak and ignore bubbles. The only downside is needing to choose between fitting a probe launcher or the safety of a covops cloak.

Quality of life improvement:
Players who are interesting in following in the footsteps of Katia Sae face significant challenges, the same they did when they made the goal. Most importantly, having a ship that can scan down WHs while also being able to avoid bubbles and warp while cloaked. A ship that has all of these capabilities doesn’t currently exist to my knowledge. (It’s been brought to my attention that T3s could fill this role, but at a much higher skill requirement unavailable to alpha accounts.) (My bad, alphas can’t cloak. That doesn’t change the utility of this change for lower skilled omega players.)

Balance considerations:
The luxury liner only has 164.1cpu with maxed fitting skills, this naturally precludes fitting an expanded probe launcher. Meaning that this ship couldn’t be repurposed for some sort of hunting role. Even a faction expanded probe launcher requires 210 CPU. Rigging the ship to increase CPU, tech I or Tech II, I can get a max of 188cpu out of the ship. Easily preventing the use of an expanded probe launcher. If there are additional worries, a modest penalty to probe launcher cpu fitting would guarantee this.

Considering that the ship has only one midslot (basically reserved for a prop mod) and is unbonused towards scanning, I see this modification as a useable way for players with maxed scanning skills (actually, those definitely aren’t needed if you’re patient) to traverse WH space but not as a way for players to mass scan down signatures for other purposes.

Coupled with the 300mil-ish isk cost, pitiful cargo space, and complete lack of realistic defenses. I doubt that players/alliances will be flocking to the luxury yacht after these changes.

(It was also brought to my attention that players use this ship for low m3/high isk ratio cargo runs. Players could still do that after this change, making the addition of a probe scanner a null issue.)

Additional considerations:
Cloaky intel is a major consideration in the continuous wars that occur in eve. However, in my opinion there is nothing this modified version of the luxury yacht that you can’t do with significantly cheaper/more capable ships. For instance, a stealth bomber is an order of magnitude cheaper with scanning midslots available if you want to sit in someone’s system for intel purposes. (Or, like I mentioned above, they could do that in a T3 and be able to fight back if they’re caught.)

It’s possible that some players will use this modified luxury yacht for nefarious purposes. However, the characteristics and costs of the ship are natural barriers to these sort of activities, while providing a real benefit to players who want to experiences the furthest reaches of the eve universe.

Any/thoughts or considerations that I might have overlooked are extremely appreciated.

(**Additional thoughts:
I will say, this isn’t intended to make sight seeing completely safe. If a corp wants to set up a smartbomb camp on a gate, there’s not a lot you could do about that. The luxury liner has some tank, but probably not enough to matter in that situation.

Nor would it make the goal of exploring every system in eve easy. It took Katia Sae 9 years for a reason, no one would be able to do that again without the help of the eve community. Which is as it should be.

But, this change gives a unique option for new players interested in exploring the historic sites and interesting locations of eve.**)

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Alpha accounts cannot cloak, period. Cloaking is Omega-only. T3s thus can fill this for everyone capable of cloaking, but at a high skill requirement - which seems fair given the recon potential and smuggling ability this would confer. In-universe logic perspective: a pilot would need to be very experienced to pull off that kind of stealthy access to all areas of space.

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I didn’t realize cloaking was omega only. That means my alpha account point is void, but not the lower skill requirement.

Granted, the luxury yacht is made for a cloak anyway. So players can already recon/smuggle in this ship if they choose. It’s already bubble immune as well, which is the huge game changer. And the training requirements to be able to competently scan aren’t zero. Just less than a T3.

I don’t see the addition of a probe scanner as something that would fundamentally change the game in terms of a cloaky/safe recon ship, especially since the hull isn’t bonused for anything or survivable if things go wrong. Why fly a less effective ship, which is also probably equally if not more expensive, to fulfil a roll already covered by other ships.

There’s no way in my mind that a second highslot means that players would suddenly start scouting in luxury yachts. The cost/rarity of the hull and a total lack of other utility is a barrier to that.

What this change does do, is allow lower skilled players the ability to do something like go check out the eve gate without a high skill/time requirement. Exploring eve and checking out interesting sites was a big reason why I started playing eve, and I imagine that’s true for current players just starting out.

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Sooo, this theoretical new player doesn’t have the skills to fly a T3 ship, but has the money to buy a cost-prohibitive specialized nullified hull to go exploring the universe in? That seems unlikely.

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Or, a lower skilled player who has no reason to skill into T3s has other options to go sight-seeing.

People already do this. This change doesn’t fundamentally change anything about the hull.

This change is, in my opinion, a fairly minor quality of life change.

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Making a ship designed to do one thing now do two things isn’t really a QoL change - it’s a balance change.

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I misspoke before, more realistically it allows a newer/lower skilled player to go check out places like thera. They can already look at the eve gate in a luxury yacht just fine.

This doesn’t make the ship do two things, the ship could already do both of these things. Just not at the same time.

It can replace its covops cloak with a probe scanner at any time. What this changes is the ability to more conveniently go on longer journeys. With minimal impact to the role it already holds.

I would never for instance, petition to increase its cargo hold to be able to hold a mobile depot. Because that would absolutely make this ship a completely broken smuggling ship.

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I thought Alpha can’t use cov ops cloak…

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You’re right, they can’t. I misunderstood that point.

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Hey dude, don’t make duplicate threads. One is enough. If you think it should be posted somewhere else, you can move it. You can also at people that you want to see it. But please don’t spam the forums, nor split discussions up across multiple threads.

@ISD_Dorrim_Barstorlode
HALP, someone is creating redundant threads.
Please help, OP needlessly created a superfluous thread.
It’s redundant, and someone should do something about it because it’s surperflous and not needed because it’s unecessary.

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So, there’s a guy in another thread complaining about people using VLY’s to roll holes. So, there is a very real possibility that adding another highslot to them would have some affect on balance within the wormhole community.

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