Alright, here it is.. and from the quietness of the other blogs, they must still be reading up on it: http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=72890
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TL;DR Version
Frigate Love
Okay, lots of goodness to talk about here. The better cohesion with frigates being geared to a specific role.. as well as more generalizing with the rookie ships looks to me like a pretty good deal. Each race appears to be getting a singular role focus, and some ships will be getting a radical rework as well. Ships like the Bantam and Burst will now become weapons platforms, and E-War ships like the Vigil are being described as “Disruption Frigates” (even more Target Painting bonus).
Industrials.. Industrials..
Of course, the BIG, HUUGE NEWS is the a.) New ORE Frigate.. AND b.) the new roles and classifications for the Tech 1 and Tech 2 ORE Barges and Exhumers. I like it. It may make hulkageddon a bit harder.. but, I think this is a good change. Especially since CCP seems to be working towards making all of the ORE ships useful, not just everybody running for Hulks.
Any bets on if they are going the name the new mining frigate, the “Chribba”?
One of the most interesting things mentioned is that now all Tech 1 mining barges will need just Mining Barge I to fly. To me, this screams that all three of the mining barges are going to be equal and balanced between themselves, and now the Covetor may not be superior to the Procurer once this change goes through.
Destroyers
So, um.. how would you all like new Destroyers.. as in new, Tier 1 destroyers. Well, its going to happen. As well as a balancing between the Cormorant and the Coercer so that they are more in line with ships like the Thrasher. Plus, it also looks like Destroyers are going to have a role in DUST 514.. as bombarders too.
In Conclusion
Well, in conclusion.. I may just take up mining…
Here it is again, from CCP Ytterbium:
It has been a while since our last Dev Blog about ship balancing: we´ve hosted Fanfest 2012 and released Inferno in the time that’s passed. We deployed the first batch of overhauled frigates with Inferno, collected a lot of player feedback and thus gained experience in the process.
Now that we’ve had a good glimpse of how the new balancing system works in practice, we want to speed things up and deliver the following for winter.
Heavy payload delivery
As part of the effort that started with Inferno, we want to keep working on frigates as a whole; we are fairly satisfied with the iteration work we did on the Tormentor, Punisher, Merlin, Incursus, Rifter and time has come for the other hulls to receive the same amount of love. Here is a brief summary of our current vision:
- Executioner, Condor, Atron, Slasher: role dedicated to fast interception with weapon systems that support it – in order, energy turrets, missiles, hybrid turrets, projectile turrets.
- Navitas, Bantam, Burst: long range offensive platforms. The Navitas is being overhauled as a drone boat, a role currently lacking among tech 1 small hulls. The Bantam will replace the Merlin as the long range dedicated Caldari sniper. Finally, the Burst still is bit blurry at the moment – considered roles are mobile artillery platform, drone boat or a mix of both.
- Inquisitor, Breacher, Kestrel, Tristan: missile based ships – tank, speed, damage will depend on the missile system they use. Two choices on that front, short range with rockets, or long range with light missiles. Race fighting philosophy will most likely dictate engagement range.
- Magnate, Heron, Imicus, Probe: strengthening current roles as support frigates. Which mainly means scanning and possibly mini-profession operations, like hacking and codebreaking as well.
- Crucifier, Griffin, Maulus, Vigil: truly refocus their roles as disruption frigates. The Cruficier is being changed to a mini-arbitrator (swapping useless turret capacitor use bonus for drone damage). The Griffin has a fine role already, but like the others, will receive a boost. The Maulus improvement consists of having a look at sensor dampening, which was nerfed too heavily in the past, and possibly making it rely more on drones than turrets. The Vigil could be the most combat oriented of the disruption frigates by improving its target painting bonus and creating synergy by coupling it with missiles.
- Impairor, Ibis, Velator and Reaper: let’s not forget rookie ships, as they also are lacking at the moment. We want them to be very versatile ships, able to give new players a good taste of what their race ship philosophy is all about, without reaching the efficiency of other tech 1 frigates in any given role.
Barge in on me
Changing the mining frigates to have combat roles made us realize that we need something to replace them. Which lead us to realize how outdated mining barges are. That’s something we want to tackle over the course of the summer as well.
Our goal is simple: each and every single mining barge (and their tech 2 variant) should have an appealing role, and not just be a stepping stone on the way to something better. Players should’nt only aim for the Hulk without considering anything else when doing some hard rock and roll mining. That means playing with the following variables:
- Mining output: first and most visible balancing factor, plan is to increase all barge mining output to be within an acceptable margin of the Hulk, not miles behind as it is currently.
- Autonomy: mining barges should have proper cargo holds so they not always have to rely on jet cans (without turning them into industrials however). That means giving them large, specialized ore bays where all the ore will automatically go into when mining.
- Resilience: another point is to give some of them proper EHP not to be one-shot by anything that even remotely sneezes on them.
As a result we thus get:
- New ORE frig: we want this ship to replace current mining frigates as low barrier of entry vessel, but also fulfill high-end gameplay expectations by providing a very mobile platform for mining in hostile space. Lowest mining output, decent ore bay, little to no resilience.
- Procurer/Skiff: primarily made for self-defense. Better mining rate than the ORE frig, good ore bay, but capable of having battleship-like EHP.
- Retriever/Mackinaw: made for self-reliance. Has the largest ore bay, similear to the size of a jet can, second best mining output but less EHP than the procurer mining barge.
- Covetor/hulk: ore bay is identical to its current cargo hold, little to average EHP, but best mining output. Basically made for group operations when players have industrials and protection to back them up.
Concept schematics of the new ORE mining frigate – Click picture for full size version
Before we forget, part of what players now call “tiericide” is to look at skill requirements. We are not pleased with how they work specifically with this ship class, since the Hulk is currently only a few hours away from the Covetor in terms of skill training. That is why, after the change, all tech 1 mining barges will now only require the Mining Barge Skill at level 1.
We will most likely add the new ORE frigate skill at 4 as a Mining Barge nested prerequisite though, but remember our motto: if you could fly it before, you can fly it now.
Due to how nested skill requirements work, players who already have the mining barge skill trained WON’T need to train the ORE frigate skill to keep flying their Covetor for example.
Destroyer of Worlds
Destroyers are the next ship class on our to-do list. We acknowledge that they were already tinkered with in Crucible, but they still need some love as a whole. We want to make sure they are balanced against each other before moving on, as the Thrasher and Catalyst seem to stand out over the Coercer and Cormorant as things stand.
We also have another plan with destroyers: just like battlecruisers are used for gang warfare support, we are thinking to provide destroyers with an additional role. Since DUST514 is approaching and we want to forge both games into the same universe, they will receive some advantage for planetary bombardment, which should make them even more popular that they currently are.
But wait, there is more. More ships that is, as we think the destroyer class currently is a little small with only four hulls. That is why we want to introduce new tech 1 destroyers to fill roles that are not yet covered – as such, Amarr / Gallente would receive additional drone boats, while Caldari / Minmatar would be more missile based.
They rebelled, they evolved. They have a plan.
So, when all of this is going out you ask? These changes will be out by the time the winter expansion hit, which will leave us in a very good shape to start overhauling tech 1 cruisers and battlecruisers next year, possibly earlier if things go well.
As an additional note and a follow-up from our previous balancing Dev Blog, we believe it is good for you to know we will not be changing the Destroyer / Battlecruiser skills for the winter expansion – such changes are to come only after these two ship classes have been properly rebalanced.
That’s it for now people, as usual, we will post feedback threads in Features & Ideas Discussion sub-forum to gather your input when the time comes, so don’t hesitate to drop by and post (constructive) feedback.
More Comments from CCP Yitterbaum
#507 Posted: 2012.06.15 17:03 | Report Like 1 Hey folks, thanks for the feedback, here are some answers for you.
•WHY WORKING ON FRIGATES FIRST WHEN SO MANY OTHER SHIPS CLASSES ARE BROKEN?(battlecruisers in particular): that’s mainly because we are not just fixing ships, but overhauling EVE balancing as a whole by removing tiers. This is an extremely tricky move, which is why we want to start to get experience with frigates first before we move to the more problematic hulls.
Also, frigates suffer the most from current tiers issues, and as the first vessels provided to new players, not reflecting a good image of the game if they are being told to skip them entirely to train for battlecruisers. Finally, it’s virtually impossible to hit everyone wishes at once with one set of changes, as we have hundreds of ship to go through and there is unfortunately no guarantee we can directly fix the ship you are interested in. We know it’s hard to ask such a thing after years of neglect, but please be patient, we will get to them eventually
•HAVE YOU CONSIDERED MOVING SOME FRIGATE HULLS INTO DESTROYERS? Yes, we have in the past, but that idea was dropped it would create inconsistencies between the different model sizes. Besides, we preferred introducing new toys for you to play with, because all that new glittering usually is much more excit… ooooh, shiny!
•ARE THERE GOING TO BE INDUSTRY / INVENTION ADJUSTMENTS PLANNED TO ALL THESE OVERHAULED SHIPS? Yes, that is part of the “tiericide” project, but we want to wait until we finish all ships from a specific size before this is considered to avoid frequent disruptions to the economy.
•WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH THE HULK AFTER THE CHANGE? Exact modifications are still vague, but the plan is to quite reduce its cargo hold and add an ore bay of the same size than the removed cargo hold. That means cargo expanders and rigs won’t affect the ore bay at all, requiring players to unload ore more frequently. This is by design, as we want the Hulk to be moved into a fleet purpose that has to rely on others to make proper use of its best mining output. That also means we will not be introducing items that affect the ore bay size.
•DRONES USUALLY DON’T MIX WELL WITH LONG RANGE COMBAT DUE TO TRAVEL TIME; HOW DO YOU PLAN TO TACKLE THIS? Again, this is quite a bit early to tell, but an option is to have drone frigates provide a bonus to drone speed and tracking instead of just raw damage. Not only it avoids making them too much overpowering next to other frigates, but also provides an appealing purpose next to the larger drone hulls.
•WHY IS IT TAKING SO LONG TO MAKE SUCH CHANGES? WHY ARE YOU TAKING SO MUCH TIME REBALANCING THINGS WHEN YOU STATED PERFECT BALANCE WAS NOT POSSIBLE? That’s tied to the first point of this reply: we are totally revamping EVE balancing philosophy, and that unfortunately takes time. Even if perfect balance cannot be achieved, we still wish to take proper time in our balancing process to weight options, consider player feedback for iterations instead of just rushing to get everything done as fast as possible.
•ARE WE RECEIVING NEW MODELS FOR THE REVAMPED SHIP ROLES, LIKE THE BANTAM? Nope, not at the moment. It could be worse though, you could be flying a Moa .
•ARE WE RECEIVING A DEDICATED GAS MINING SHIP? A point that needs to be taken into consideration – if that is possible we will integrate it into the Skiff, otherwise you may have to wait for a dedicated hull to arrive.
•HOW ARE YOU GOING TO TACKLE CAPACITOR ISSUES WITH TECH 1 ATTACK FRIGATES? First, by increasing their capacitor quite a bit, then by possibly having a fixed role bonus, even if we are not too fond of that on tech 1 ships. A most likely option would be to have a capacitor reduction to warp scrambler and disruptors on them just like on Interceptors.
•ARE YOU CONSIDERING CHANGING SOME FRIGATES TO FILL A LOGISTIC ROLE? Not at the moment, as we do not believe frigate hulls would be quite tailored for such a role: they are too frail and lack range to do the job properly. See the answer below for a more details on logistic ship plans.
•SINCE MINING FRIGATES ARE GOING AWAY, IS THERE ANY PLAN TO DO THE SAME WITH THE POOR MINING CRUISERS? Definitely, we want to remove mining bonuses from the current tier 1 cruisers and properly emphasize their logistic role when we start overhauling the cruiser class.
•ARE YOU PLANNING ON REVAMPING TECH2 SHIPS THAT MAY BECOME OBSOLETE WITH SUCH CHANGES, LIKE THE ELECTRONIC ATTACK FRIGATES? Well it’s not like EAS are not obsolete already, but hell yes we do want to improve them. However we first want to finish all tech 1 hulls before we move into more complex matters to have a frame of reference we can base ourselves upon.
•ARE YOU PLANNING ON CHANGING FRIGATE SKILL LEVELS AS PER OF THE “TIERICIDE” INITIATIVE? Yes, forgot to mention that point in the blog. Plan is to move all tech 1 frigate skill requirement to 1, while level 4 is used to jump into destroyers.
•WILL EXHUMER SHIP SPECIALIZATIONS BE AFFECTED BY SUCH CHANGES? Most likely not, except maybe for the Skiff as mentioned above.
•ARE YOU CONSIDERING A ROLE OR ANY KIND OF BONUS TO MAKE FRIGATES BETTER AT LIGHTING UP CYNOSURAL FIELDS? We don’t necessarily want to make capital fleets easier to move than they already are, but if such an attribute is considered it will most likely be on the support frigates (Magnate, Heron, Imicus, Probe).
•WILL THE BANTAM BE A MISSILE SHIP AS PROMISED A LONG TIME AGO? The blog specified it would be changed to a sniper role to take over for the Merlin overhaul, which means using hybrids turrets. If you like missiles, the Condor and Kestrel will be your hulls of choice. We also would like to remind you that quite contrary to popular beliefs, Caldari main weapon systems are missiles, ECM and hybrid turrets. So you better start training those gunnery skills as we also plan to overhaul the Moa and Ferox to be actually used as gun boats in the future.
•COULD YOU PLEASE AVOID USING LIGHT MISSILES ON FRIGATES, AS SUCH WEAPON SYSTEM ISN’T THAT GREAT IN THE FIRST PLACE? We may look at them if we find they aren’t that great during the frigate balancing.
•WILL THE NEW ORE BAY ON MINING BARGES SHOW UP ON SCAN OR DROP ORE WHEN THE SHIP IS DESTROYED? That question is still being investigated and will be tackled when we get to the actual mining barge balancing.
•WILL THE EXHUMER SKILL ALSO BE AFFECTED BY THE “TIERICIDE” INITIATIVE? Yes, all Exhumers will now require this skill at level 1 instead of various levels.
Hope that clears some confusion.