Unpopular opinion: there's a lack of actual doctrine for empire ships or ship diversity in general

[Serylda_Skor]

i mean. with the tiericide the diversity on selection for certain stuff opened yeah but outside of the addition of certain needed stuff like actualy progression for logistics or things like T3 destroyers and a second line of destroyer or a line of EWAR navy frigs we still have a very limited selection option.

i focus mostly with T1 on this. CCP gave each empire two weapon doctrines but the secondary one doesnt really have much going on and i think it kinda breaks the point, why have a second doctrine if most of the roles are taken by the main one? i mean just looking at frigs:

Caldari -> condor and kestrel takle the tackler and kitey thing, merlin is the only gunboat with actual combat bonuses for it but most of its variations are missile boats.

Gallente -> slightly disorganized due to almost every hull having at least one drone, and even with a drone centric specialty, it only has the tristan in that cathegory

Amarr -> drones are supposedly the secondary doctrine for the empire, but oh look, outside of the Prophecy all the hulls are EWAR focused (thus having lesser stats compared to the combat ships in their class) and there’s not even a droneboat at the frigate lvl (no, 2 drones in a tormentor dont count when the hull is bonused for lasers).

Minmatar -> has a weird organization where practically all the ships have turret and missile hardpoints but the hulls only favor one weapon system making the whole split weapon thing weird. breacher is a pretty popular hull tho and most of the secondary doctrine roster is actually popular (except for the Bellicose because the poor thing is EWAR boat despite being the only actualy missile platform at cruiser lvl).

in the end, tiericide put things in the right direction but there’s still stuff to do and i hope that after expanding and adjusting both the capital roster and T2 hulls they will tackle this.

having a set of 7 frigates could do the job (2 main doctrine, 2 second doctrine, 1 EWAR, 1 explo, 1 logi). and this format could be used to streamline into the bigger vessels like 4 destroyers (2 main doctrine, 2 second doctrine), 6 cruisers (2 main doctrine, 2 second doctrine, 1 EWAR, 1 logi), 4 battlecruisers (2 main doctrine, 2 second doctrine) and 6 battleships (2 main doctrine, 2 second doctrine, 1 EWAR and 1 logic).

its a lot of ships but it would ensure a proper progression for all the roles. capitals are mostly fine allthought there could be an actual set of EWAR capitals to keep carriers and supers on their own thing.

exploration is weird because it needs fast moving vessels so dont really know if there would be a need for larger exploration vessels so it doesnt get too much affected.

[Quelza]

Why do all roles need a small -> large progression?

[Piugattuk]

Guns, lasers, missiles, pretty much the line up, speed or tank, apple pie or pumpkin pie, gumbo or crawfish, the menu is as it is, less imaginative ways of doing things when people go ape over small changes.

[Memphis_Baas]

Problem is that they could make the logical spread of doctrines that you want, but then they have to balance the 4 empire ship lines against each other, and the weapons are not equal, so then they have to get into balancing the weapons first, which is quite a bit of ::effort::. And then the types of ewar aren’t “equal” either, so there’s more ::effort::.

It’s also a worry that this logical spread of doctrines and the equality of weapons will result in “bland”, with nobody being able to come up with “gem” fittings that shine for surprising reasons. Order is boring; a bit of chaos makes things interesting.

[Gadget_Helmsdottir]

Small changes can have big consequences - even unintended ones.

Sometimes people are just resistant to change, but sometimes there’s good reason to be.

–Gadget looks for the small print

[JC_Mieyli]

i would say for new player progression
same reason they made a logi frig and mining frig
it allows new players to train into specific roles early and specialise in them

[Quelza]

I understand that, but OP implied that role progression should have continuity across all class sizes in the sub-cap lines. I’m not sure why it can’t just end at the cruiser class for some roles.

I’m just imagining the horror of fighting a fleet supported by tanky logistics battleships.

[Avaelica_Kuershin]

By focusing on T1 it looks like cherry-picking to me. The T2 frigates and cruisers are what one should be looking to fly for ewar and logi.

[Mina_Sebiestar]

Nestor for battleships

For tanked horror T3 cruiser logistics

CCP where is MINE shield logistic battleship?

[mkint]

@Memphis_Baas

balance

That’s the absolute best reason to have as few ship types as possible. CCP is really bad at rolling out balance updates. If the ship roster doubles like OP suggests, we could pretty much say goodbye to balance passes. At that rate, it would become easier to just let ships become obsolete and keep introducing new ones.

[Tiddle_Jr]

Re-Balance

[Fluffy_Moe]

@Serylda_Skor

i mean. with the tiericide the diversity on selection for certain stuff opened yeah but outside of the addition of certain needed stuff like actualy progression for logistics or things like T3 destroyers and a second line of destroyer or a line of EWAR navy frigs we still have a very limited selection option.

i focus mostly with T1 on this. CCP gave each empire two weapon doctrines but the secondary one doesnt really have much going on and i think it kinda breaks the point, why have a second doctrine if most of the roles are taken by the main one? i mean just looking at frigs:

Caldari -> condor and kestrel takle the tackler and kitey thing, merlin is the only gunboat with actual combat bonuses for it but most of its variations are missile boats.

Gallente -> slightly disorganized due to almost every hull having at least one drone, and even with a drone centric specialty, it only has the tristan in that cathegory

Amarr -> drones are supposedly the secondary doctrine for the empire, but oh look, outside of the Prophecy all the hulls are EWAR focused (thus having lesser stats compared to the combat ships in their class) and there’s not even a droneboat at the frigate lvl (no, 2 drones in a tormentor dont count when the hull is bonused for lasers).

Minmatar -> has a weird organization where practically all the ships have turret and missile hardpoints but the hulls only favor one weapon system making the whole split weapon thing weird. breacher is a pretty popular hull tho and most of the secondary doctrine roster is actually popular (except for the Bellicose because the poor thing is EWAR boat despite being the only actualy missile platform at cruiser lvl).

in the end, tiericide put things in the right direction but there’s still stuff to do and i hope that after expanding and adjusting both the capital roster and T2 hulls they will tackle this.

having a set of 7 frigates could do the job (2 main doctrine, 2 second doctrine, 1 EWAR, 1 explo, 1 logi). and this format could be used to streamline into the bigger vessels like 4 destroyers (2 main doctrine, 2 second doctrine), 6 cruisers (2 main doctrine, 2 second doctrine, 1 EWAR, 1 logi), 4 battlecruisers (2 main doctrine, 2 second doctrine) and 6 battleships (2 main doctrine, 2 second doctrine, 1 EWAR and 1 logic).

its a lot of ships but it would ensure a proper progression for all the roles. capitals are mostly fine allthought there could be an actual set of EWAR capitals to keep carriers and supers on their own thing.

exploration is weird because it needs fast moving vessels so dont really know if there would be a need for larger exploration vessels so it doesnt get too much affected.

I very much agree with that. I don’t understand why Gallente doesnt have an EWAR battleship that focusses on dampeners for example or a tristan alternative. Likewise I would like to see better Amarr options and the Minmatar split which you mention is largely whats keeping me from Minmatar ships, the other focused options are just overall better since they cover a much wider variety of situations.

[Tiddle_Jr]

Maybe because Scorpion is a really CCP’s bad joke? And you have smaller designated hulls to fill such roles?

And its out of my mind why we need ewar bs since bs by its nature is a dps platform…

[Piugattuk]

Small print leads to great risk - Ferengi rules of acquisition.

[Quelza]

I think the idea there is that, ECM being the only e-war type available to Caldari ships, and ECM being powerful enough to make any ECM ship the primary at the outset, the Caldari would develop a hyperdurable ECM platform.

The Widow builds on this by actually adding some DPS bonuses alongside the e-war.

But…who knows really. Yet another example of the bizarre concept of “racial flavor” that CCP falls back on when criticized about this and the kinetic damage bonuses on many Caldari ships.

[mkint]

@Quelza

“racial flavor”

Maybe it’s a blind spot originating from icelanders enjoying rotten shark meat, but there is such a thing as bad flavors.

[Quelza]

The cultural divide is definitely there. Apparently CCP couldn’t really comprehend the value of a dedicated balance team in their PvP sandbox until the CSM started really riding them about it for the last two years. They seem very much to only be balancing based on usage statistics…

[Mr_Lopez]

I guess but mining has been boring for years and they dont touch it… O ships! With ships it still may take years like with the infamous Drake for a change to happen. I remember repping drake fleets in a logi
yay…

[Shallanna_Yassavi]

They try to think of everything when they re-do balance. They inevitably don’t and we end up with a new “fly one of these one/two things or you’re doing it wrong”. We end up giving them advice, but usually that’s got conscious or subconscious bias against certain players or ships, so just reading what players put out has to be done very carefully.