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Shiroh Yatamii
Alexylva Paradox
0
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Posted - 2012.08.18 12:43:00 -
[1] - Quote
Hello Spacefriends. There is a serious effort on the part of CCP underway when it comes to rebalanacing. One of the areas they're looking at is bringing all the forms of electronic warfare, or EW, into balance in terms of usefulness. After hearing this my mind immediately turned to the under-utilized and highly situational Target Painter, which as of now serves a small niche role in missile boat fleets. After reading some of the fluff text on skills such as Surgical Strike and the like, I realized that a good additional role the Target Painter could serve is in the area of promoting damage bleedthrough.
As it stands now, damage bleedthrough is a rather straightforward thing. If your shields drop below 25% (assuming no training in Tactical Shield Manipulation), some of the damage will "bleed through" into your armor. And this is also true of armor, where damage will start leaking into your structure hitpoints directly. Now this all works as intended, except for one thing: no one ever really worries about it. It is not perceived as any sort of major threat in PvP, and this is where target painters can come in. No one fears damage bleedthrough, and no one really fears TPs. So have target painters increase damage bleedthrough effectiveness! By this I do not mean in some sort of minor way either. If you are being target painted, in my mind small weaknesses in your defences should be "painted", and this should lead to exotic scenarios where you can literally start losing a majority of your armor at 10% shields, even with Tactical Shield Manipulation V. The tactical utility of TPs would be greatly enhanced, as it would effectively bypass some of a target ship's tank.
There are a few issues I can see with implementation, however. Imagine the rage of a cap/supercap pilot when they still had 10% shields (quite a few thousand eHP for a Chimera) but end up dying anyway. Imagine an Avatar that took a sudden alpha hit that brought it down into bleedthrough and later received reps; while able to technically tank the DPS the Avatar could still very well end up dead due to bleedthrough. I am not sure if this is a good thing or not, though it might help eliminate what this poster considers to be an overabundance of capital ships. It would also seem to jive well with the direction CCP seems to want to take PvP in: faster, gank-like scenarios with asymmetric warfare (look at the tier 3 BCs and improvement of the attack frigs first).
Thoughts? |
Shiroh Yatamii
Alexylva Paradox
1
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Posted - 2012.08.18 23:37:00 -
[2] - Quote
Bump. Any thoughts on this rebalance of electronic warfare? |
Shiroh Yatamii
Alexylva Paradox
4
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Posted - 2012.08.19 11:02:00 -
[3] - Quote
Sigras wrote:well . . . avatars cant be target painted, but I see what you mean . . .
Its a really interesting idea that makes absolutely no sense from an RP perspective but gameplay > RP anyway
Im not really sure what to think other than this might be an interesting counter to logistics, however it would be more of a nerf to armor tanks than shield because of the way armor reps cycle and the fact that they have less buffer to bleed through to . . .
To be fair, it makes some sense in RP terms (I am a light roleplayer after all :p). Just read the description of Surgical Strike!
I hadn't thought of how EW doesn't impact supercaps...not sure how I feel about that, but at the very least regular carriers and dreads would still be impacted. As for armor tanks, I already agree that they are underpowered as compared to shields, particularly after the release of ASBs. I do not believe that invalidates my idea, but rather is an indicator that armor tanking in general needs some form of buff. It might mean introducing a new armor-related skill akin to Tactical Shield Manipulation in order to reinforce your armor against bleedthrough.
As for the others saying how TPs are fine as they are, might I point out how the Blackbird is used MUCH more than the Bellicose? The Griffin more than the Vigil? ECM is useful in ALL situations, is not stacking penalized, and is a force multiplier. With TPs, you can only get so much effect out of them due to stacking penalties. Target painting bonused ships are not turning the tides of battles like ECM Falcons are. |
Shiroh Yatamii
Alexylva Paradox
5
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Posted - 2012.08.19 22:59:00 -
[4] - Quote
Bump. Anyone else interested in making Target Painters halfway worthwhile in more combat scenarios? |
Shiroh Yatamii
Alexylva Paradox
5
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Posted - 2012.08.20 02:12:00 -
[5] - Quote
Are you aware of this little beast of mathematics which makes any mechanical counter to ECM pretty much useless? As the number of things performing ECM attempts rises, be it module or drones, the more likely the chance of getting jammed is. A few points of extra sensor strength matters very little. There is a reason you don't see ECCM on killmails or the racial sensor strength implants in many people. It doesn't work, because of math. It doesn't help that ECM is not stacking penalized.
And an increase in signature radius can be countered with implants, or even X-Instinct boosters. As for my proposed addition, simply fitting an ASB should counter the slight effects of damage bleedthrough.
If you think TPs are overpowered and ECM is fine as it is, I invite you to look at killboards and talk to PvPers. People have Falcon alts to ECM things because it's overpowered and works. No one on this good green earth has a Rapier alt to target paint. Wonder why that is?
But this thread is not about ECM. It is about bringing target painters into the realm of usefulness as compared to ECM. |
Shiroh Yatamii
Alexylva Paradox
10
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Posted - 2012.08.21 12:43:00 -
[6] - Quote
Bump. Does anyone have any other ideas on how to bring TPs in line with other forms of electronic warfare? |
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