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Thread Statistics | Show CCP posts - 7 post(s) |
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CCP Chronotis
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Posted - 2009.03.24 17:37:00 -
[1]
We have been looking again at ECM ships focusing on their roles and whether these ships can be improved overall to better define their roles a little more. With that in mind, we want to share some of our thoughts and gather constructive feedback and suggestions of your own.
In the days ahead, we will put some changes on sisi to see how they pan out and continue to change or tweak as feedback and playtesting continues.
ECM Range
Generally the ECM optimal range is a little too long with massive optimal ranges possible which would place the ECM specialised ships so far out of the fight to be almost completely safe but suffer no effective hit quality decrease. To bring them closer to the fight we are looking at swapping the base optimal and falloff ranges so at the longer ranges jammers would be operating more in falloff and hence have a lower chance of 'hitting' with their jammers at the extreme ranges.
Signal Distortion Amplifiers
The SDAs are something of a conundrum. They are really only worth fitting on the ECM specialised ships and are the only EWAR enhancing module we have besides the rigs. Currently they increase your ECM strength and we were looking at swapping this to an ECM range bonus and altering either the base strength of the jammers or the ECM strength bonus of the ships so they become less required in every setup and the low slots could be used for tanking for example.
Ship Changes
We have been looking at all the ECM ships (Griffin, Kitsune, Blackbird, Falcon, Rook and Scorpion). We wanted to ensure each ship had a more focused role which was not just bigger, longer range and better than the others so only one wins outright. The two main themes we were looking at was short range brawler and long range sniper. The brawler would focus on ECM strength at shorter range and the sniper would be longer range but weaker with niches in these areas for each of the ships.
Falcon & Rook
The falcon has been changed to be similar to the pilgrim in its role as a ECM brawler at shorter ranges. It has a bigger ECM strength bonus whilst losing its ECM optimal range bonus. In addition its agility and base velocity and have been increased to allow it to be more manoeuvrable at shorter ranges.
Summary Falcon changes
- ECM Strength Bonus increased from 20 to 25% per level - ECM Optimal Range Bonus removed (52km optimal / 81km falloff w/ 2*SDA IIs) - Increase in general manoeuvrability (might give agility bonus to it to replace the ECM optimal range bonus)
The rook operates at longer ranges, able to attack at distance and whilst having a weaker ECM strength but longer ECM range than the falcon can lay some real damage on its target gaining a heavy/heavy assault and standard missile velocity bonus in addition to a small drone bay for additional utility.
Summary Rook Changes
- ECM strength bonus decreased to 15% per level - ECM Optimal Range bonus decreased to 15% per level (92km optimal / 81km falloff) - 5% Heavy/Heavy Assault missile velocity per recon ship level added (105km range with heavy missiles at max skills) - 25m3 drone bay / 25 mbit bandwidth added
The Scorpion
We are looking at putting the scorpion into the short range brawler role. To that end we are looking at removing its ECM Optimal range bonus, increasing the ECM strength bonus a little and adding a cruise/siege launcher rate of fire bonus so it can get close and personal.
Summary Scorpion Changes
- removed the ECM optimal range bonus - increased the ECM strength bonus to 20% per level - added a 5% RoF bonus to cruise & siege missile launchers per level.
Summary
Please provide constructive feedback on the ideas and changes. These changes are not yet on sisi and we will announce when they are. As always, everything is subject to change!
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CCP Chronotis
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Posted - 2009.03.24 17:37:00 -
[2]
reserved
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CCP Chronotis
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Posted - 2009.03.24 17:38:00 -
[3]
reserved
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CCP Chronotis
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Posted - 2009.03.25 15:58:00 -
[4]
Thanks for the constructive feedback so far!
In the first pass on sisi, we will look at the falcon and rook with their suggested roles switched as many of you suggested so the rook will be the "brawler" (short range ECM strength bonii) and falcon will be the weaker but longer range "sniper" varient.
The skill bonuses and other changes to the caldari recons will then look like this:
Rook: Caldari Cruiser Skill Bonus: 5% Bonus to Light & Heavy Missile Velocity per level 10% reduction in ECM Target Jammer capacitor use per Level
Recon Ships Skill Bonus: 25% bonus to ECM Target Jammer strength per level 5% bonus to heavy and light missile kinetic damage per level
Attribute Changes: +25m3 drone bay +25mbit drone bandwidth
Falcon: Caldari Cruiser Skill Bonus: 20% Bonus to ECM Target Jammer Optimal Range per level 5% Bonus to Medium Hybrid Optimal Range per level
Recon Ships Skill Bonus: 20% bonus to ECM Target Jammer strength per level -96% to -100% reduction in Cloaking Device CPU use per level
Attribute Changes: +1 turret hardpoint / -1 launcher hardpoint
Scorpion
The scorpion remains unchanged from the original suggestion for now. Whilst this change would make them less usual at long range jamming, they can still jam out to ~140km using their falloff (setup for ECM range) so whilst their role in the long range scenario is reduced, their new short range scenario is much better.
The Widow
Forgot to mention it would be getting an increase in ECM strength bonus same as the scorpion. Will make a seperate post on black ops themselves.
I will update the original post with these changes in a minute. There is no ETA on when these changes will be on sisi for testing as we are currently testing for Apocrypha 1.02. Some time after that is deployed to TQ, then we will move sisi to a version where you can start to playtest these changes and we will continue to monitor feedback and make more tweaks as needed.
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CCP Chronotis
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Posted - 2009.03.25 16:36:00 -
[5]
Originally by: Htrag
Originally by: CCP Chronotis Thanks for the constructive feedback so far! Falcon: Caldari Cruiser Skill Bonus: 20% Bonus to ECM Target Jammer Optimal Range per level 5% Bonus to Medium Hybrid Optimal Range per level
Recon Ships Skill Bonus: 20% bonus to ECM Target Jammer strength per level -96% to -100% reduction in Cloaking Device CPU use per level
Attribute Changes: +1 turret hardpoint / -1 launcher hardpoint
Thanks for taking another shot at the 'rebalancing', the second version seems more logical.
I'm assuming the hybrid bonus is a typo?
actually it isn't, we wanted to try it with using 3 hybrids eg 3 250mm rails. The range with spike is about 90km on the setups we have been playing with which is not quite as far as the ECM optimal range (max range 195, optimal 124 or so depending on the setup and skills, (this was a maxed out ECM range setup)) but we think it will be more useful than the ECM cap use bonus.
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CCP Chronotis
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Posted - 2009.03.25 16:55:00 -
[6]
Originally by: Tarminic Why the 5% Optimal and Velocity bonuses? Aren't the standard bonuses 10%?
I ninja updated the original posts to correct this
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CCP Chronotis
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Posted - 2009.03.25 21:05:00 -
[7]
Keep the good feedback coming. It is good to see such a varied range of opinions as ECM and ECM specialised ships and how the proposed changes affect their roles in different scenarios and more importantly the balance between preventing and encouraging fights which is equally loved or hated.
Currently we have two sets of different Caldari recon changes which either significantly change their roles (as we originally proposed changing the falcon to close range to account for the power of its covert ops role and rook to longer range to increase its usefulness) or reduce their ranged ECM effectiveness overall in lieu of other bonuses to give them a better more balanced role than just "jam to the max". Thus shifting them to behave less like ultra niche ships and more like recons were better intended whilst still allowing for the lack of secondary EWAR system bonus to caldari recons.
An additional change to my previous posts we are looking at playtesting soon, we have split the ECM optimal bonuses on the Falcon and Blackbird to be optimal and falloff. With the Falcon currently gaining 12.5% ECM optimal and falloff range per level and the Blackbird 10% per level.
In addition we are looking at the difference between the "brawling" (must find a better term for this :p) ECM strengths and ranges and the longer range sniper ships. It is quite likely we will be making further changes in this area in addition to considering more if the power of the covert ops cloak ability is really adequately balanced between the falcon and rook where we just reduce their current ECM effectiveness as opposed to switching the falcon to short range.
Hope that leaves you with some more insight into where we are currently at with internal playtesting and balancing.
As always, I will sign off with reminding you that these changes are not set in stone and will continue to change
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