When you say "useful" and "versatile" and stuff, what exactly do you mean in this case? What performance should we expect out of the new noob ships? Tutorials only? lvl 1 missions? lvl 2's? PVP vs T1 frigs?

These frigates should be capable of running level 1 missions and career agents, but we don't want them to be good enough that players keep using them as primary ships more than a few days into the game. Hence the role bonuses instead of per-level bonuses.

A lot of EVE is based on a concept that newer players and older players could conflict with each other, and the newer player might actually have a decent chance at winning.

The lack of scalability on the rookie ship... are there any plans to allow for experienced pilots to have realistic use of T1 frigates and this rookie ship, or are they all ultimately training wheels for faction or T2?

I can't help but notice that the velator has a role bonus to drones... but the IMPARIOR is the only one with a drone bay. Typo or oversight?

Giving newer pilots a great set of affordable tech one ships that can allow a more skilled newer player to beat older players has always been one of the ship design goals in eve. Rookie frigs are designed as intro ships rather than hardcore pvp ships, but we have a lot of improvements to tech one frigates coming up as part of our removal of ship tiers. CCP Ytterbium posted about some other tech one frigate changes arriving in Inferno 1.2 in this thread: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=122912&find=unread

There's going to be even more changes announced here in the coming months, keep an eye out in the features and ideas forum and on singularity.

Can I further interate on what Nikk said and ask if we would ever possibly see 'military' versions of these 'cvillian' ships that do scale with level? Something that isnt given away for free but has to be built like any other tech 1 frigate.

As a side note... Goonswarm's newest fleet doctrine! The n00b ship fleet!

cool you've made the velator the perfect cyno ship

Can I further interate on what nick said and ask if we would ever possibly see 'military' versions of these 'cvillian' ships that do scale with level? Something that isnt given away for free but has to be built like any other tech 1 frigate. Also default frigate armament and the lack of civillian class modules in the market place may make for exploring additional fits hard for beginners when on thier first day.

i wonder about the missing neut bonus on the amarr noobship

More critical if you can somehow get noobs to realize ship bonuses exist. Maybe a box in fitting window showing net bonuses and the effects.

The next issue is somehow directing noobs to ship info and ship description tab in hopes that eventually they will start looking it up first themselves. Maybe make the fitting window bonus display an obviously clickable link that takes you to ship description tab in ship item info?

And what no weird single rig slot?

I think it's becuase of the less enegry to use turrets bonus. Imo it should replaced with a weak neut bonus, to help introduce players into ammar

The Velator at Cynosural Field Theory III (140 m3 of LO), the Ibis and Reaper at Cynosural Field Theory IV (120m3 of LO), and finally, the poor Amarrian noobship the Impairor at Cynosural Field theory V.

Of course any of them can be used at lower levels with a cargo expander or two. Compared to the cost of the generator, those are essentially free.

Just think, cyno locations can be seeded with some generators and LO, and cyno toons just need to dock up in their pod, strip ship, add cargo and generator, and they're ready to go. No more hunting about for a suitable replacement ship.

i wonder about the missing neut bonus on the amarr noobship

These frigates should be capable of running level 1 missions and career agents

As a counter to all the "rookies will be confused by the role bonuses," I'd have to point out that a rookie probably won't really know what any of the bonuses do anyway, if they even realize there are bonuses at all. Rookies tend to be overwhelmed, and unless the career tutorials (not just the crash course tutorial) are being significantly changed, the noobships will only be used for 3 tutorial missions and then thrown away when they get their first free T1 ship with the career agents. Which brings up another point: why bother updating the noobships anyway, when they are only every flown for the first 30 minutes of anyone's EVE career?

:( Rookies get free ships these days. Makes me sad. I don't think new players are as attached to the noob ships as us vets are, because "back in the good ol' days" all we got was a reaper, 5,000 ISK, and a slap on the ass. And we liked it!

Basically, what I'm saying here is that I agree with mkint, and that while giving noobs better instruction on how to play is a good idea, giving them free stuff might not be.

Edit: Also, Aura used to be cool and make jokes about "thumb" rules. Now she doesn't have much personality at all.

Well just saying they wouldnt be naval editions just like Ibis is a civilian version while the egbert (a crane like waterfowl in the US) is the militarized one with matching tech 1 performance to boot. Then there could be a caldari navy Egbert you get the idea.

Then we can give all the civillian ships thier own paint schemes to detract from current miltiary standard ones such as the old gallente orange and white for the velator whiel military edition gets the standard tech 1 colors.

It would be pretty cool if the noobships can do all the tutorial missions just as well as the current T1 lineup (with noob skills), and then just not give them the freebies any more (including cutting back the isk... I understand by the end of the tutorials or into the epic arc, you should have enough isk to buy a cruiser, which sucks a big one.) As far as updating the tutorials go, do any of the responsible devs ever hang out in rookie help chat? Because it's always the same 3 questions and 2 complaints. And they are a direct result of problems with the tutorials. But I guess my beef with the tutorials is off-topic for this thread. :(

It would be pretty cool if the noobships can do all the tutorial missions just as well as the current T1 lineup (with noob skills), and then just not give them the freebies any more (including cutting back the isk... I understand by the end of the tutorials or into the epic arc, you should have enough isk to buy a cruiser, which sucks a big one.) As far as updating the tutorials go, do any of the responsible devs ever hang out in rookie help chat? Because it's always the same 3 questions and 2 complaints. And they are a direct result of problems with the tutorials. But I guess my beef with the tutorials is off-topic for this thread. :(

Count me as another voice for T2 and faction (e.g. pirate faction) rookie ships!

Also, in general I'm in favor of buffing the existing rookie ships. I don't know about the specific numbers, but Up With This Sort Of Thing.

That would be interesting to eliminate the freebies. I remember being a bit shocked that you got a Destroyer out of the tutorial.

Otherwise the noobships should probably be able to do all but the final two military missions. Those last two should still probably require the Combat Frigate and Destroyer that they give you. (Actually you can do the Destroyer mission in the combat frig if you know what you are doing, but don't think it should be compatible with the noobships.)

Well either way.

For some reason the idea of Navy Noobships really amuses me.

International safety orange noobships that go beep when moving and have STUDENT PILOT emblazoned on them also amuses (you didn't say that but what you said inspired that thought).

Nova Fox, I unironically thank you. You are the inspiration of much entertainment today.

IBIS:

Role bonuses:
20% bonus to Small Hybrid Turret optimal range
10% bonus to missile kinetic damage
30% bonus to ECM Target Jammer strength
10% bonus to shield resistances

I like that they are all useful(ish) now, but I worry about the strange role bonus. New players might look at them and not realize their bonuses won't work the same as other ships do...

EXECUTIONER:

Frigate skill bonuses: -10% to small energy turret capacitor need and +5% small energy turret damage per level
Role bonus: 80% reduction in Propulsion Jamming systems activation cost

cool you've made the velator the perfect cyno ship

IMPAIROR:
Cargo capacity: 115 (-5)

about noob frigs...

I live in 0.0 in a remote station and I have other ships in my hangar, so if I dock up CCP will never give me a noob ship, I have to travel to a nearby station were I have no ships to get one.

Can CCP put a "give one noob ship" button in each station?

to avoid abuse and accumulation, just give one if there is none in your inventory.

about noob frigs...

I live in 0.0 in a remote station and I have other ships in my hangar, so if I dock up CCP will never give me a noob ship, I have to travel to a nearby station were I have no ships to get one.

Can CCP put a "give one noob ship" button in each station?

to avoid abuse and accumulation, just give one if there is none in your inventory.

Also can you give us other racial noob ships if we have trained other frig racials, making our choice what frig we want to get?

Thanks

That's already possible at your own station... you simply have to make a contract with all your ships to yourself... and not accept the contract, your hangar is now empty, simply undock and redock, free rookieship is now in your hangar

A few tweaks:

IMPAIROR:
+4 PWG, -5 CPU, +5 Cargohold

IBIS:
+2 PWG, +10 CPU, -5 Cargohold

VELATOR:
+3 PWG, -5 Cargohold

REAPER:
+1 PWG, +5 CPU

We're also dropping one launcher from the Imp and Vel. There are potential future plans to expand missile options for Gallente and Amarr but those who brought up the lack of direction given to new players by even hardpoints make an excellent point.

How about rookie frigate bpos that are like the shuttles? uses trit only.

Okay after looking at the ships again i realise that the cap on these are very low, and with low skills this could make level missions pretty hard when your damage isnt high enough to remove ships quick, from what I could calculate a Impairor would properly only be able to run its armor repper 5-6 times before being capped out which is about 30-36 sec combat, if this is enough fine. if not consider bumping up cap.

Okay after looking at the ships again i realise that the cap on these are very low, and with low skills this could make level missions pretty hard when your damage isnt high enough to remove ships quick, from what I could calculate a Impairor would properly only be able to run its armor repper 5-6 times before being capped out which is about 30-36 sec combat, if this is enough fine. if not consider bumping up cap.

IBIS:

Role bonuses:
20% bonus to Small Hybrid Turret optimal range
10% bonus to missile kinetic damage
30% bonus to ECM Target Jammer strength
10% bonus to shield resistances

No.

Seriously, 30% ECM strength?

GRIFFIN : 15% bonus to ECM Target Jammer strength and 10% bonus to ECM Target Jammers' capacitor need per level.

So L5 frigate gives you 150% jam strength? So an IBIS can almost perma jam a rifter with a racial jammer and outperforms a GRIFFIN??

Look, ECM is already an issue, we don't need swarms of ECM IBIS' out there. These frigates should be viable as nooby training and most nooby training is going to happen against NPC ships not as ECM platforms use in PVP.

I think the whole EWAR element of these should be totally turned away. A noob doesn't need EWAR to learn to play the game with 2 mid slots.

Low cap but very fast cap regen.

No.

Seriously, 30% ECM strength?

GRIFFIN : 15% bonus to ECM Target Jammer strength and 10% bonus to ECM Target Jammers' capacitor need per level.

So L5 frigate gives you 150% jam strength? So an IBIS can almost perma jam a rifter with a racial jammer and outperforms a GRIFFIN??

Look, ECM is already an issue, we don't need swarms of ECM IBIS' out there. These frigates should be viable as nooby training and most nooby training is going to happen against NPC ships not as ECM platforms use in PVP.

I think the whole EWAR element of these should be totally turned away. A noob doesn't need EWAR to learn to play the game with 2 mid slots.

oh, serious suggestion!

ok, one goal you could have for these noob ships could be a way for newer players to check out every faction type ship in the game when just starting out. Give 1 of each of them to new players. just for fun.

THEN, make civilian versions of each weapon type. Kinda like dust is >.> <.< which i hear at fanfest *no break NDA*

Right now there is no civ autoconnon, or civ atries. I think giving people some more civ options would be great change at some point. Help players pick which race path to move down. IT's confusing honestly to start and there is no ammo. So do that to, make the cheap almost free gear use civ ammo.

Right now players moving up to real turrets sometimes gets confused by ammo. can't blame them.

CCP Fozzie here is an important question for you are the ewar bonus's merely for show or do you want them to be useful in pvp?

mm... well with 2 slots it will be hard for anyone to use the ewar at all along with their chronic lack of ehp and rather large sig for a tiny ship

If anything I would like to phase out as many civilian modules as possible and just get new players the skillbooks to use tech one right away.

The tutorial actually gives you a normal tech one turret nowadays and teaches you about ammo. The only source of civilian guns is when you unpackage a rookie ship. If anything I would like to phase out as many civilian modules as possible and just get new players the skillbooks to use tech one right away.



Primary purpose is for show, but I'm really interested to see if people find fun ways to use them in pvp. I think some of the community confusion I'm seeing (mostly on other forums) stems from people incorrectly thinking those bonuses are per level.

These frigates should be capable of running level 1 missions and career agents, but we don't want them to be good enough that players keep using them as primary ships more than a few days into the game. Hence the role bonuses instead of per-level bonuses.

http://ghunt.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=12752587

You DO realize that we already abuse the noobships? Now you are just encouraging us to embarrass people :)

What do you mean, 'newest'?

Anyway, this is going to be hilarious. But for the love of god get rid of the launcher hardpoints on the velator and impairor, giving amarr and gallente newbies launcher options is just going to confuse them into thinking they need to train missiles for their racial ships and you just end up with a lot of confused newbies wasting training time on missile skills. (For that matter the same can be said about the non-Caldari missile frigs, since 'damaging things with missiles' isn't a significantly different role to 'damaging things with guns' and it has the same side effect of encouraging poor training decisions amongst players who can't be expected to know any better.)

No.

Seriously, 30% ECM strength?

GRIFFIN : 15% bonus to ECM Target Jammer strength and 10% bonus to ECM Target Jammers' capacitor need per level.

So L5 frigate gives you 150% jam strength? So an IBIS can almost perma jam a rifter with a racial jammer and outperforms a GRIFFIN??

Look, ECM is already an issue, we don't need swarms of ECM IBIS' out there. These frigates should be viable as nooby training and most nooby training is going to happen against NPC ships not as ECM platforms use in PVP.

I think the whole EWAR element of these should be totally turned away. A noob doesn't need EWAR to learn to play the game with 2 mid slots.

Looking forward to being permajammed by a troll ibis!

Just out of curiosity, what would everyone who doesn't want the Ibis to receive an ECM role bonus suggest that it gets to introduce Caldari players into electronic warfare?

On a separate note. Was there any discussion about logistics bonuses? In some respects the rookie ships are already looking to be "get your feet wet in everything"/JoaT style ships so seeing an energy transfer bonus on the impairor, shield transfer bonus on the ibis, remote armor repair bonus on the velator, and tracking link bonus on the reaper might not be too out of place in the grand scheme of things. Nothing major, just say a 25% reduction in capacitor consumption of the first three modules and a 7.5% boost to the effectiveness of tracking links. The bonus arrangement would, to a degree, mimic the setup of the T1 "logistics" cruisers while not actually competing with them.

To be fully clear, all the bonuses on these ships do not scale with level, they are fixed. We'll look at changing the text in the ship info to make that more clear in a later release as it's obviously been a source of confusion.

A few more tweaks:

IMPAIROR:
-0.8 Inertia (agility buff)
-2km lock range
-2 signature radius

IBIS:
-0.65 Inertia (agility buff)
-2km lock range
-2 signature radius

VELATOR:
-1.13 Inertia (agility buff)
-1.5km lock range
-2 signature radius

REAPER:
-0.8 Inertia (agility buff)
-0.5km lock range
-2 signature radius

these buffs are far too small to be of any real effect you need to go further with these changes and also improve the ships in general including at least more mid slots

players over a week old.

We're not trying to have the real effect you're looking for here, sorry.

Goals are for them to be fun for very new players to fly, give new players a look at the combat philosophy of their chosen race, and be useful until they decide to upgrade to a tech one frigate.

I'm also looking forward to comedy fleets and gank nights using these new frigs but flying a rookie frigate should never be a strictly better option than a tech one frigate for players over a week old.[quote]

I understand just disappointed as i thought all ships were going to be useful no matter how old our char is.
These are essentially the tier1 of frigs like the attack frigs are on TQ atm at the very least half the size of their ridiculous sig radius.

I understand just disappointed as i thought all ships were going to be useful no matter how old our char is.
These are essentially the tier1 of frigs like the attack frigs are on TQ atm at the very least half the size of their ridiculous sig radius.

Yeah the rookie frigs have to be an exception to that rule since they are spawned out of nothingness instead of being part of the player economy. We don't want them supplanting anything manufactured by players. Rookie frigs are essentially a separate ship class from other frigates rather than a different tier.

We have a ton of cool stuff coming for the manufactured tech one frigates though.

in what way is ecm broken do you know what you are talking about how many ecm ships have you used?

We have a ton of cool stuff coming for the manufactured tech one frigates though.

All of them, including the pre-nerf 200km range ROFLFALCON. So kindly shut the **** up, kid.

Overall the numbers look good though, minus that ECM bonus.


DO WANT.

Hideously overpowered in small gangs and extremely poorly implemented from a game mechanics point of view.

My corp are already coming up with ways to abuse the new Ibis for no purpose other than flat out trolling. This bonus is a huge mistake.

The 30% ECM bonus vs 10% Damp bonus makes me a sad panda.