Zintage Enaka for CSM 19

Council Of Stellar Management CSM Campaigns
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I’m a Goonswarm Federation Director and FC

I’ll attempt to keep my Eve story short for all of our sakes but it’s a long one. I started properly playing Eve in 2015 joining when a grand strategy YouTuber I watched at the time attempted to put a corp together. After war going to war with the highsec mercs for several weeks using 200+ man frigate fleets to fight t3cs. The YouTuber eventually gave up on Eve finding himself overworked running such a large organization. What was left of this organization was reformed into Rabble Inc. and later Rabble Alliance. While in Rabble we decided to try living in just about every type of space possible. We fought Russians over moons in Molden Heath, living in a c4 wormhole, waging a Poco war in highsec with Eve uni and even taking sov in delve also later querious during the casino war. Eventually, I left rabble and joined GSF at an invite from a friend and learned to FC large-scale fleets. I have been falling upwards from there.

It’s safe to say my biggest area of expertise for space is nullsec but, I have been off and on flying in pochven since people were still using the cruise praxis that said I am no stranger to lowsec and highsec fight mechanics. Some bullet points would be

  • Capital and Subcapital FCing as well as running a blops umbrella ( If you died to a large marshal drop in delve the past 2+ years sorry that’s likely my fault)
  • Fleet doctrines and fittings ( I recently took over the GSF fitting team that designs our doctrines)
  • Large scale Multiboxing ( I regularly run 10+ accounts)

I’m running for CSM19 in hopes to some diversity and skill back to the fleet doctrines we fly while I also hope to lower the barrier of entry for new nullsec groups.

Some of the major goals I have even if they don’t all come through are

2 Types of Jump bridge

Currently, all we have are the Ansiblex these are honestly overpowered in their current form. While the new ice costs somewhat limit them I don’t think it’s enough. My goal would be to continue to have fatigueless Ansiblex but greatly increase their running costs allowing vulnerable and limited superhighways. This would be matched with a cheaper jump bridge that has jump fatigue allowing basic travel inside regions using the fatigue reduction on haulers and shuttles.

Armor Vs Shield Balance

Outside of lowsec armor ships see very little use in fleet combat there are a few reasons for this but a big one is that for the most part shield is just better.

Shield ships have reps that land at the beginning of their cycle and have higher damage due to having extra lowslots are generally faster as well as the majority of all range bonuses being in the Caldari line of ships.

Armor ships in contrast are supposed to be able to make up for these by having higher ehp and utility mids. Sadly they don’t since armor reps land at the end of their cycles the 20-40% ehp advantage armor ships can have in some cases is completely negated by just getting hit twice before the reps land. Those utility mids the armor ships have are rather limited when you consider you need to spend them to increase your range to match the shield ships that are faster than you.

I could talk on this for hours I have it’s part of the reason the current GSF CSM members told me to run or maybe they just wanted me to be quiet.

Dread Balance
This likely isn’t what you think it’s going to be and it actually by extension is some titan balance.

First, is range balancing for T2 ammos for those that aren’t old as dirt capital guns were originally only T1 and there was no T2 ammo for them. This has led to some let’s call them “interesting” facts like that tremor on a Naglfar can shoot further than the 300km lock range cap of non-carriers without any tracking enhancers or tracking computers.

The second part of this is dread tracking many dreads can track subcaps like battleships without assistance using their anti-capital guns. While this is bad on its own the Phoenix Navy Issue allows this to be taken to extreme levels. Likely added as a bonus meant to encourage HAW use the target paint bonus on the PNI with its 5 lowslots is allowing for a high HP bonused paint platform that can still receive reps. This allows all the gun-based dreadnoughts to quickly kill battleships and most battlecruiser fleets.

T1 VS T2 VS Faction Balance
Back when I started playing Eve there was a lot of diversity you saw Caracal fleets, Svipul fleets, Canes, Maelstroms, Cerbs, etc. Today you would be lucky to see a T3D fleet, T1 cruisers are completely outclassed by their faction counterparts and the battleship hp buffs have negated much of the ability for hacs and battlecruisers to punch up. There has been major power creep over the years leading to heavier and heavier doctrines and using the flavor of the month.

There is a lot more things I would like to list here but I would like to keep this post somewhat readable

I have a lot of experience in eve playing for 9 years non stop and I’m happy to hear from people in any area of space especially those outside of nullsec. Just be ready for me to talk for hours if you wanna talk about your fleet doctrines.

My discord is zintageenaka for DMs

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The second part of this is dread tracking many dreads can track subcaps like battleships without assistance using their anti-capital guns. While this is bad on its own the Phoenix Navy Issue allows this to be taken to extreme levels. Likely added as a bonus meant to encourage HAW use the target paint bonus on the PNI with its 5 lowslots is allowing for a high HP bonused paint platform that can still receive reps. This allows all the gun-based dreadnoughts to quickly kill battleships and most battlecruiser fleets.

What needs to be changed with this? The counter of dropping your own short range dreads on their long range dreads is pretty obvious whilst the group dropping the dreads to fight subcaps is taking a substantial risk to do so

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There are multiple problems here sandrin first long range dreads like revelations and moros aren’t needed to pull this off. A simple standard fit zirnitra pulls this off some might even say better as the zirnitra has 2-3x the alpha strike depending on ammo. These zirnitras will track even at 30km ( this is certainly within a reasonable spread for a jumpin) against battleships with paints making it not practical to get under dread guns. Second this discourages fighting as the dreads track the battleships too well and aren’t worth trading against 30 dreads have more combat value than a 250 man battleship fleet. third this completely negates the point of high angle weapons for dreadnoughts. Why would I field haw dreads dealing 2-3k dps out to 90-100km when I can so easily make the cap guns do 3-5k out to 300km or in the case of the zirnitra 9-12k to 188km before spooling. Currently haws exist to run crab beacons.

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So why is dropping your own SR dreads on the hostile LR dreads (even if they’re Zirns) not a viable counter? If one side is willing to field dreads and the other isn’t that’s not a balance problem so much as a player problem.
But yes I agree HAWs are tragically underpowered, but I don’t think that means other forms of innovative gameplay should be nerfed to force them to be somewhat viable

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I would argue that it’s not innovative gameplay it’s an extremely old form of gameplay without much counterplay and no skill needed. If every fight that groups want to have has to devolve to who can f1 more dreads I don’t believe that is healthy. It would be one thing if I needed to field a battleship fleet with webbing support ships to make these dreads hit their targets but I don’t. Now the obvious answer here becomes well simply fly something smaller that the dread guns aren’t going to hit but, due to the battleship hp buffs and now the smartbomb buffs, there is an extremely limited pool of medium hull-sized ships that can trade with battleship fleets.

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If you remove the dreads don’t the fights just devolve to “Who can f1 more battleships”? Why is removing a level of nuance any better?

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For one I believe battleships need some of their HP buffs removed they were over-tuned and it needs to be more reasonable for medium hulls to kill them. Besides that, though the siege module on dreads gives them a 70% resistance to ewar and 100% resistance to jamming that battleships don’t have. Battleships are also better affected by void bombs and regular bombs that allow skill-based counterplay

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Man what happened to you guys, campaigning to nerf dreads ?? That is seriously pathetic.

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That’s certainly a way to look at it gobbins the other way to look at it is balancing a class that is over performing to the point of stepping out of its role. Good to see this made you post for the first time in 2 years though.
I should note that what I am talking about is their ability to kill subcaps with anti-capital guns as it turns out long range anti-capital guns have much more tracking than they need for killing capital ships.

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I think the issue for this is more goons using immobile shield doctrines and being unwilling to drop dreads on LR dreads without Snuff or someone else holding your hand.

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I didn’t know you came to EVE through Arumba, used to watch him all the time back then.

You mention that you are a large-scale multiboxer, what do you see as the pros and cons of the current multiboxing meta, especially where it relates to isk generation?

How do you feel about specific recent CCP balance changes, and what feedback would you have given if they had asked you about what, if anything, needed to change about those ships?

  1. Caracal (rlml nerf)

  2. Exequror Navy Issue (rework)

  3. Marauders (mass/warp speed)

  4. Triglavian Ships (entropic changes)

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A vote for Zintage is a vote to kill the game.

Dreads do not need a nerf. We need more capital usages to facilitate more fights and follow the escelation chain that is established in this game to coax supers/titans out of their nests.

Battleships do not need a change. We are in an age of Battlecruiser spam due to the navy BC changes that came with FW rework, namely the Ferox Navy Issue and Cyclone Fleet issue. The CyFI can hit 450 dps to 110 KM while maintaing a 110kehp tank. The Ferox Navy is an absolute beast with nearly 130kehp and 300dps to 110k with a staggering 37.5% increase to tracking on a weapons platform that performs amazing without it at that range. Both of these ships are used by large alliances to field 100-200. A reduction in Battleship EHP would be the end of Battleship usage by any Null group, as they would immidiately lose their ability to tank large amounts of damage, while hitting back, resulting in Battlecruiser Online, instead of the variable comps we currently see (Tempest Fleet Issues, Nightmares, Barghests, Machariels, Megathron Navies, Ravens, Raven Navy Issues).

Your issue with dread tracking is ill informed and manipulative. Any ship that is vindi webbed can be killed by a dread at range. 30km is not the standard, 70 is.
There already are counters to this, neuting enemy vindis, jamming vindis, dropping your own dreads to kill the dreads. The tracking isnt the issue, the issue is the inability of the victim FC of this tactic to adapt and fire his neurons.

Your change to Ansiblex is also a wet paper towel. Increase costs? Are you living in a different game. Inhibiting things due to “cost” has never worked in eve online. Look at the plethora of Keepstars, look at the vast stockpiles of titans and supers the ansiblex owning alliances have. This would literally only hurt the smaller alliances that are trying to start, as the cost per ansiblex would actually be impactfull. An across the board fatigue/ZZ gate lock mechanic would both immidiately be impactful, but also fair, as it would affect the little guys and the large alliances the same.

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I never thought i’d ever see an Imperium CSM candidate with worse ideas than Xenuria, yet here you are proving me wrong.

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Lmfao this is gonna be an epic thread

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fdpan approved candidate

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The second part of this is dread tracking many dreads can track subcaps like battleships without assistance using their anti-capital guns. While this is bad on its own the Phoenix Navy Issue allows this to be taken to extreme levels. Likely added as a bonus meant to encourage HAW use the target paint bonus on the PNI with its 5 lowslots is allowing for a high HP bonused paint platform that can still receive reps. This allows all the gun-based dreadnoughts to quickly kill battleships and most battlecruiser fleets.

Instead of nerfing tracking dreads, simply just make SR dreads cheaper and drop sr dreads on them. Its not a complicated scenario to solve, we all drop dreads and we all have fun.

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Multiboxing is a hard issue to find balance with. Currently, I don’t see how the Eve economy would survive without the multiboxers. Ishtars and Marauders are some of the largest users of moon goo and a large amount of the minerals used to build ships come from reprocessing rat loot collected by Ishtar and edencom ratters.

I assume you want to hear about Pochven though so my take is that there is too much faucet but how CCP last attempted to nerf it was too heavy-handed. Rather than killing the region overnight like they did by changing respawn times CCP would be better off lowering and raising site payouts over time keeping the competition but adjusting the faucet. Currently, Ishtar fleets almost pay for themselves after completing a single site and the large marauder multiboxers make a bit more than one of their ships every site they finish. Several people are currently upset with the mass buffer tanked marauder “line battles”. While I enjoy these and think they are one of the few things keeping the bottom from falling out of the moongoo market I understand they aren’t for everyone. Vargurs have the trifecta of artillery bonuses having tracking range and damage on their hull but even though it deserves a nerf that wouldn’t fix boosh marauders they would just change to the next hull. This is a mostly spitball idea so I would love to hear from more pochven residents on it but, my line of thinking is a slight change to the site itself. There are the two pylons that increase your damage marauder fleets often ignore these unless they are being pushed by another fleet. My thinking would be to add a let’s say force field to the central tower that requires both pylons to have someone sitting in them activating it. The initial problems I see with this are people just using their support interdictors or command destroyers this takes them outside of the first room making it easier to push into someone’s site. Another option would be limiting this activation to ships battlecruiser or larger this would force groups to put some mobility back into their doctrines or enter fights down ships out of position.

Moving on to your specific patch questions I feel the caracal was mostly a victim of wanting to blanket hurt rapid lights. I don’t think anyone was screaming from the rooftop that the caracal was the meta-breaking ship but it certainly was powerful. Overall I would still think the rapid light nerf was the right call though I likely would have suggested the rate of fire bonus on the caracal be changed to a damage bonus so you wouldn’t clip as quickly.

For the ENI you would need to be a bit more specific on which change are we talking about when it was first changed to get its plate mass bonus or are you asking about when it had 5% damage per level nerfed? Either way I believe most of the hype around the ENI has died down my biggest problem with it is its base agility. The ENI has 6 lowslots and the best align time of all the cruisers you could easily increase the 15% plate bonus to 20% negating additional mass for plates while decreasing the base stats on the hull and changing nothing about the plated combat ENI while nerfing the Windrunner and shield ENIs slightly.

The Marauder mass and warp speed changes did little to affect me so it’s hard to speak on them. The mass changes largely affected wormholers so they should speak on that. As for the warp speed changes the biggest thing was a slight increase in travel time in pochven I wouldn’t say it did anything to change the meta and it had a minimal effect on making marauder fleets easier to catch and hold down.

Finally, the entropic changes several hulls got hit by friendly fire in an attempt to nerf the Kikimora. Almost no one was accusing the other ships in the tree of being overpowered. The Leshak being the other heavily hit ship in this change can still brawl but going from 682 starting dps down to 569 starting dps is painful on a ship that effectively wants to fight at blaster range. Given the chance I would have pushed for more focused changes to ships rather than the entropic weapon system as a whole.

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To start with your battlecruiser comment I completely agree the FNI and CFI are complete over performers The FNI is fast for a battlecruiser puts out 700 dps close range with rails and has hitscan tracking it deserves to be nerfed. The CFI is extremely strong but especially now with the smartbomb changes a battleship fleet can negate a CFI fleet rather easily. My concern with battleship HP is for the other medium hulls, not the outliers. As an example, the Eagle takes more skillpoints and costs more than the FNI but only deals 471 dps with antimatter and drones. Against one of today’s modern battleship fleets you need about 140-160 eagles at antimatter range to be effectively killing this number goes down to 80-100 for Ferox navy issues. I’m fine with high-cost battleships being able to tank large fleets and perform I just think the bar is a little too high for ships that aren’t the FNI. Battleships should be strong and advantaged but the fight shouldn’t be over as soon as you lose your first 20 dps.

On the topic of dread tracking yes, I agree any ship can be hit by dread guns when vindi webbed and that’s fine you are using a counterable support ship. What I was talking about is you don’t need vindi webs to pull this off you don’t even need webs against nullsec doctrines. 30km was an example of how spread you could be just from jumping in you certainly can be further spread the point here was there isn’t a safe space under the guns. Unlike lowsec where ABs are the norm on battleships, MWDs are the standard in nullsec due to AOE doomsdays bombs and bubbles. The lack of speed with MWDs off means just paints will allow dread guns to hit their target while the sig bloom from the MWD negates the increase of speed. If the paints in question were coming from a sub-capital ship there are plenty of ways around that but the current meta is to use a sensor-boosted armor PNI that can receive triage reps.

Having heard from multiple people on the Ansiblex changes I have to disagree there are multiple forms of cost. Increase the workforce power and ice costs or even ozone per mass and you’ll see limited numbers of them as they take away from what else could be. My thinking is that the current Ansiblex should be of strategic importance, something you’ll wanna defend unlike now where many nullsec groups will let people get bored shooting it because they have 3 backups in that direction. If you are willing to put in the effort you can harass an outlying jump bridge enough to reinforce it and take it out of action I would also suggest increasing the window of time a Ansiblex is reinforced to be more punishing. This second jump bridge type would have fatigue it would make up the backups for when an Ansiblex has been harassed and be your standard form of travel.

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Ahbazon really did irreparable damage to goon brains.

What proposed changes would you make to the mining anomalies if you were elected to the CSM?

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Ahbazon has very little to do with this as it was for the most part a straight up dread fight and not about tracking dreads. As for proposed mining anom changes, I think it is largely early to make more changes till everyone is forced over to the new system but I would like to see the background respawn timer that the new small mining anoms and ratting anoms are using put onto the large belts as well. In general I’m for less but bigger rocks and would rather slowly ramp up the anoms than make drastic changes that will crash the price of minerals again.