I totally agree that the nullification changes were good. They were an incredibly welcome change that finally made shuttles worth using for shuttling, haulers worth using for hauling and exploration frigates worth using for exploration.
Before the nullification changes I used a nullified interceptor for all those roles. A nullified hauling Ares, a nullified exploration Ares and a nullified travel Ares. This wasn’t balanced at all.
The only remaining issue I have with the nullification changes is that T3Cs should not have gained access to nullifiers at all times without using their nullifier subsystem to use it. That subsystem with it’s penalties has become totally useless, I fly nullified T3Cs all the time without ever using it and it’s drawbacks because nullifying a T3C is not a sacrifice at all if you have a spare high for an (offline) nullifier.
I won’t let it pass.
I believe any ship in this game should be vulnerable. Including shuttles.
If soon the ansiblex update hits that adds jump fatigue we will see null sec fleets reposition to their staged ships in fringe systems using fleets of shuttles.
These fleets of shuttles should have a counter and be vulnerable to well-positioned smartbomb attacks, in my opinion, and not invulnerable until they reach their destination.
It is incredibly easy to avoid smartbombs if you play well, so I see no good reason to change these mechanics.
Hm. Yeah you are probably right, T3s should only be able to use Nullifiers with the Subsystem active.
The boni however aren’t really useless if used for rolling WHs while a combat crew is trying to camp it. You simply need the -80% reactivation delay to use the nullifiert to get out of the camping bubble to a bounce bookmark or nearby celestial and then back to the hole at zero to jump… and then again at the probably bubbled other side. :).
They still would be, it just would be harder to kill them easily. You could still place a Smartbomb BS at the end of it’s warp path, but you couldn’t “kill on sight” any more, just firing the smartbomb once the shuttle lands. Which will - lags or desync issues aside - kill it with almost 100% certainty. Don’t believe anyone trying to tell you that that is “hard”. It isn’t. The time window where the shuttle is inside your SB range but still can’t jump is pretty convenient if you pay attention.
A delayed damage affect would require you to learn how long a shuttle does warp from its starting point (probably another gate) to your location and fire the Smartbomb(s) timed ahead. Or to use multiple Smartbombs in rapid succession to cover multiple ticks, which prevents you from running it permanently (cap issue) or requires you to have a team (capfeed). It would in no way prevent you from killing them at all, on top of all the careless ones using autopilot or just forget to warp/jump in time (those you can just lock, tackle and kill, happens more often than you think). And “a fleet of shuttles” as you predict it, would still be easily killable by a small team of opponents (Scout to report when they warp + 1-2 Smartbombers). Just not by a single cloaky Proteus any more (which isn’t balanced anyway). I absolutely don’t see the “invulnerabily” argument, they wouldn’t be invulnerable, it would just require some skill to catch them, not just a 1-click at the right moment.
Okay, so if I understand correctly you don’t wish to make shuttles immune to smartbombs, just delay smartbombs to make it harder to one-shot a shuttle?
How would that help the OP with his issue that his shuttles are vulnerable to smartbombs?
They still would be vulnerable. And their shuttles would still be killed.
I don’t think that delaying smartbombs is a good thing to do. Smartbomb probing Proteus fleets to hit agile frigate fleets are an amazing thing if pulled off, which is incredibly hard already but will become impossible to do when there is a delay after you land on them.
I’m not convinced delayed smartbombs are a good idea. On top of that I suspect this likely won’t be enough of a nerf to make the OP happy anyway, as they still need to do the tedious job of watching where they warp to not die to smartbombs.
That’s the first use-case I hear of the nullifier subsystem after the nullification changes! Good to hear there’s at least some niche for it.
I don’t care if my preferred solution does a 100% fit the OPs expectations. I care for a balanced game that offer good results to skillful people without making simple things tedious just to not get 1-tapped by some camper that sends you back to Jita with a click of a button. Adding some delay puts more burden of skill to earn the kill on the camper and will allow you to slip through sloppy or bad campers with a high chance of success.
From the point of a game designer I think it’s incredibly bad game design that among the first things new players learn here is that you should have docking/undocking bookmarks at every relevant station (trading hub, token retrieval etc…) and then another bunch of multiple dozen or hundred bookmarks at different lowsec gates to avoid running into a smartbomber. Really, just think about that completely unnessessary load and wasted time to make/keep probably hundredthousands (if not millions) of bookmarks stored in the game separated over thousands of folders for thousands of accounts just because you want to travel in a shuttle from A to B. It’s pretty hilarious to believe this requirement just to go around without being 1-tapped by some smartbomb camper is good game design. It simply isn’t.
At least, as sort of a compromise, EVE should relocate all stargates close to some celestial so you don’t encounter 54AU distant stargates in free space with nowhere to warp to during your travel. Because then you simply either have a bookmark or you need to waste several minutes of warping to range, checking, rewarping - or in case of there being a smartbomber driving sideways for minutes or trying to make an off-angle bookmark via safe-logging and relogging and hoping the 1m km respawn spot is at an odd angle. I’t just frustrating and nothing more, even IF you are a pretty good player.
To be honest, I’m too lazy to make all those bookmarks.
Moons, planets and asteroid belts usually are more than sufficient to navigate any part of space when you suspect any type of gate camp, bubbles, smartbombs or else.
In the rare case a gate is outside directional scanner range I still pick a celestial away from the expected warp-in direction if I see people in local and need to warp to a gate.
No bookmarks necessary, just some game knowledge and spatial insight!
On the contrary, those star gates that are further than the directional scanner range from any nearby celestial are the perfect (and against capable players: the only) place to do a viable gate camp on routes.
I see no reason to remove that capability.
If I frequent that route more often this is the only kind of place I’d drop a bookmark in dscan range while in warp for the next time I go that route.
Too much effort for such a non-relevant issue. :).
I live deep in WH space, he somewhere in Null I suppose. And we cannot meet since we would get smartbombed in our shuttles if we try to travel to each other.
warp to any off-line celestial to get off the in-gate . then , initiate warp, cancel warp . cap your shuttle out until you can’t warp the full distance , and land in directional range …
God I love this forum. If I want to check if there is a smartbomber I can simply warp to 100km, check it and if there is none I warp back to the star and then to the gate and jump. And if there is a suspicious ship at the gate, I can move away sideways until I am more than 150km away and off-angle to the smartbombers position.
There is no need to make it overcomplex by capping yourself out to get into Dscan range and wasting even more time.
The point is, that all that is horribly time-consuming just to travel past a gate that is “camped” by a single guy 1-tapping other players with the click of a button. It’s simply bad design, bombing shuttles shouldn’t be that easy and avoiding such an easy “camp” shouldn’t waste so much time.
i’m also looking for bubbles .. you just got sucked into one and blown up
*also you only have to do it once per-system then you’ve got the bm . not saying change isn’t bad, just this is how to do it safely atm .. (and faster than going @100 to scout the gate then slow-boating out to 150 or bouncing off the sun every time you pass thru the system .) i too , love this forum .
edit tnx for pointing out shuttles are bubble-immune i had forgotten ;p
What would you think about Shuttles having a built-in “Civilian Afterburner” or something like that? Mining ships have built-in MiningScanners as well -_-. It would not benefit any afk traveling and wouldn’t make them harder to kill if warped carelessly but would allow to warp to suspicious gates at range and then maneuver manually around a smartbomber (or to make a bounce bookmark if you have none) if you paid attention enough to local/dscan to not to warp to zero.
I feel like a (civilian) afterburner for shuttles is too much a buff for non-shuttle purposes of shuttles like scouting to be worth it for such a niche problem as smartbombs, which already can easily be solved with other strategies.
That possible smartbombing battleship at a gate out of dscan range?
It’s likely faster to warp to another celestial in system to warp to the gate from an unexpected angle than it is to warp to 100 and burn sideways to have this same other angle with a civilian afterburner, and this doesn’t require buffing shuttles to have much higher on-grid speed.
How is it ‘horribly time-consuming’ to outplay another player in PvP so that you may live?
The vast majority of gates you can simply warp without issues, it’s only when there is another player present with smartbombs that you need to spend 30 more seconds to outplay them.
For such a simple solution to a PvP encounter I think that’s fair.
There are lots of systems where this isn’t possible because such “off angle” celestials simply don’t exist and/or the angle isn’t steep enough to avoid the smartbomb range. Else I wouldn’t have the PoV I have. If it wasn’t for personal experience I wouldn’t argue for it.
I don’t really understand that argument. A Shuttle with an Civilian AB would probably make somewhat around a 1200m/s, maybe 1500m/s. And it’s fully lockable while doing so. If there is anything on grid that wants to kill that shuttle, they can do so in seconds. Even a standard MWD Battlecruiser would be faster. So I somewhat fail to see what “overpowered” scenario you imagine here. Either it warps off directly before being locked or its dead, AB or not.
So it would take a few seconds… so what? Once pointed it can’t get away and will die. It can’t break the tackle in any way since basically any ship on grid will be faster. If you really need “a lot of hits” to kill a shuttle, you definitely learn how to properly use your weapon system (hint: transmatching is a thing for turret boats and missiles will always apply at least a bit and a shuttle really has not much HP). We are not talking about “shuttle flies around the grid for minutes and can’t be killed”.
