It all around looks good, but the Moa looks a little odd with even mid and low slots. It'd be hard to fit a proper brawling shield tank and tackle at the same time, and there are almost too many lows, even after putting on a nano and a couple of mag stabs.

I gladly trade the highslot, that was difficult to fit anyway, against the midslot and another 25 cpu

I need to crunch the Moa's grid but it doesn't look on face value to have gotten that much of a buff. I currently need the genolution implant set to squeeze a fit onto it. The grid improvement is a bit underwhelming. I like the Moa's bonus change though. I also like that the Rupture has one nuet rather then two.

I'm fairly happy with all of these changes, but the rupture is a bit OP (coming from someone who loves them). Extra 50 m/s base and 4 mids? Holy crap this thing is going to be awesome.

yes, ridiculously

This, pretty much. I'm playing around with them in evehq and I can't come up with anything I can do with a stabber that the rupture doesn't do better.

all i have to say is that i love how you are sort of making the combat cruisers be mini versions of the tier 3 battleships, mini abaddon, mini maelstrom, mini rokh, mini dominix? when will we get a fix for poor hyperion and the Rokh could use a DPS bonus instead of the optimal one really.

I think it should be the preferred option for all of them except the moa, but if it isn't, something is broken. If all that happens is that now people can fly 3 new superior variations on the LSE AC rupture, then these changes aren't very good.

CCP Stated that it would be hard to fit the highest sized guns on Cruisers. All you need is a 1% PG implant that is cheap. I do agree though that the Utility High should be a Mid slot.

-1 utility high, +1 mid is a boost.

This is a projectile thing, I think. ACs are the easiest weapons in the game to fit. Arties are the second hardest. If you give a ship the fitting to use arties, AC configs will have infinite powergrid (see cane and maelstrom). If they closed the gap a bit, things would be less dumb.

i would fly this moa

Moa:
Cruiser skill bonuses:
5% bonus to Medium Hybrid Turret damage
5% bonus to shield resistances
Slot layout: 5 H, 5 M, 4 L, 5 turrets, 2 launchers
Fittings: 820 PWG (+40), 385 CPU (+25)
Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 2100(+225) / 1200(-129) / 1500(-24)
Capacitor (amount / recharge rate / average cap per second): 1425(+50) / 475s(-16.25s) / 3 (+0.2)
Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 195(+31) / 0.54 / 11720000 / 5.9s
Drones (bandwidth / bay): 25 / 25 (+10)
Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 55km / 260(+7) / 7
Sensor strength: 17 Gravimetric (+1)
Signature radius: 135
Cargo capacity: 450 (+200)

Rupture could use a slight tone down on speed a bit. It's currently faster than every other racial attack cruiser (aside from the Stabber).

I feel like the right answer is to turn the Omen into a giant Slicer - make it fast with an optimal+damage bonus. Then give the Maller the brawler role with a 25m^3 drone bay.

-Liang

Why Vexor loses shield HP, when it's a shield tanker?

It doesn't have the PG to fit armor tank with guns, and both drone damage amps and magstabs go to lowslots.

Oh nice Rupture, we needed another OP minnie ship that is faster than anything else, while being able to fit everything with fitting to spare. Why OP speed but no drawbacks to it? Why drones?

What is your thinking behind making it so fast?

Let the Rupture simply like it is now.
Anything else is overkill. Rupture is already the most overpowered Tech1 not faction cruiser.
With these changes the new Omen, Maller and Moa are dead before they are born. Rupture is simply completely superior to them.
Skip one high on the moa and give it another mid. Maller needs drones. Minimum 20mb bandwith. Let the Rupture like it is now (I mean NOW and not the crazy buffed stuff you presented us).
Even then I am not sure if the actual Rupture would-¦t be superior to NEW Moa and Maller.

I agree it seemed quickly slapped together, the moa is also weird in regards to slot layout. An on a cruiser I do feel that the vex or can be much more drone focused than it currently is.

dat moa!

so can we expect a hybrid damage bonus for the ferox and Rokh too?

loving the rest, especially the improvements to the vexor.

This is definetely something which should be adjusted at the same time as other cruisers. Otherwise we will be waiting for update a long time I fear.

At the very least faction hulls should get some changes to speed, shield, etc. that vanilla versions get. However, that still does not address the imbalance of slots. For example Nosprey has 12 slots compared to 14 of attack cruisers and Nosprey is supposed to be the fastest caldari boat out there. Right now Nosprey can be surprisiginly effective but come winter, it's going to be laughed at by pretty much anything.

Nosprey would probably need increase to drone bay and +1 high/mid with one more launcher to make it worthwhile. And PG/CPU to go with it of course.

Drone Speeds

Valk II 3150m/s

Infiltrator II 2850m/s

Vespa II 2400m/s

Hammerhead II 2100m/s

Most of the cruisers on overheat, especially the attack cruisers are going to be able to outrun Hammerheads and probably Vespas as the medium sized drone weapon system do these speeds need adjusting in line with the new cruisers?

Well, that, and a hell of a lot of drones are redundant and useless (EM and KIN drones, damp drones, most heavy drones, the list goes on...). Drones in general need a look at, and to his credit, CCP Ytterbium has posted about how drones will receive some love sometime soonGäó hopefully.
Hull bonuses would help, but I'm thinking along the lines of specific bonuses to specific sizes of drones instead of global buffs.

Better plan would be to nerf the hp, fitting, slots and mobility on tier 2 and 3 BCs.

My suggested changes:

Maller:
Needs a utility high slot, at the cost of a low. It should also gain a 15/15 drone bay.
Slot layout: 6 H (+1), 3 M, 5 L (-1), 5 turrets.
Drones (bandwidth / bay): 15 / 15.

Moa:
Needs another mid, at the cost of its utility high and missile slots.
Slot layout: 5 H (-1), 5 M (+1), 4 L, 5 turrets, 0 launchers (-2).

Vexor:
Trade a low for a utility high slot and swap its bonuses for Hybrid tracking, and Drone tracking & hitpoints.
Cruiser skill bonuses:
7.5% bonus to Hybrid Turret tracking speed per level.
10% bonus to Drone tracking and hitpoints per level.
Slot layout: 5 H (+1), 4 M, 4 L (-1), 4 turrets.

Rupture:
Trade a low slot and a launcher to regain its 6th high slot and another turret.
Reduce drone bay to 15/15. Reduce speed to 225 m/s.
Slot layout: 6 H (+1), 4 M, 4 L (-1), 5 turrets (+1), 1 launcher (-1).
Mobility (max velocity): 225.
Drones (bandwidth / bay): 15 / 15

Yes, these suggested changes are pretty much cruiser versions of the Punisher, Merlin, Tristan, and Rifter. I donGÇÖt think they render their frigate counterparts obsolete however.

---

All the above changes donGÇÖt account for individual weapon systems being broken or OP. They also donGÇÖt account for certain ships being faster than some Attack Cruisers. Those are separate issues.

---

The above changes also open the option for CCP to introduce another line of combat cruisers (new ships!) to fill the roles of:

Amarr: range and damage.

Caldari: range and missiles.

Gallente: tank and damage.

Minmatar: tank and missiles.

Yes? No? Why?

Hey everyone. I'm still alive, but have been in Austin for GDC for the last week. I spent a lot of time there mulling over the feedback you all have been giving us and I'm working on getting some numbers together at the moment for a 2nd iteration of these changes.

I expect to get it to the CSM later today and then on to you once they have had a chance to provide some feedback and catch any stupid mistakes on my part

This thread has some pretty uniform complaints, I trust Fozzie has read the same complaints a hundred times and is going to do something about it, he seems to be on top of things. We just need to be patient, Winter is still quite abit away.

and as a sidenote, I totally agree with Aglais on the HAM Caracal, that thing is pretty crazy, as well as the HAM Bellicose. HAMs in general are going to be awesome if things remain the way they are, they're probably going to have a 17-19km range by default (Caracals will probably get close to 25km) which can be pushed close to long point range with rigs and hopefully TC/TEs in future which will also boost its damage application which is already pretty good with GMP changes, fitting changes means it fits quite easily on the Caracal and Bellicose, and makes it even easier for the Drake. In fact if TE/TC changes hit the same time, HAM cruisers would probably massacre frigs with 93.75 explosion radius default as both the Caracal and Bellicose have decent utility slots to push that down to frigate sig and the Belli has a TP bonus.

Buffs on Moa vs. Vexor:
Grid: +20 vs. +125
CPU: +15 vs. +30
D-fens: +225 Shields vs. + 515 Armor
Capacitor: +50 vs. +200
Velocity: +31 vs. +46
Sensor: +1 vs. +2
Sig: -0 vs. -5
Cargo: +200 yay! \o/

One of these things are not like the other. Powercreep is so powercreep.

I have ideas, but no specific release plans attached to them yet.

With its MWD active, a shield Rupture is now slower and no more agile than a shield vexor. That seems pretty wrong given that the vexor is crushingly superior in terms of dps:tank.

So the Combat Cruiser changes won't actually be on Duality today because I missed adding them to that build. My bad, they'll be up in our next public test and all the other balance changes will be there as planned.

I really wonder if the better optimal range of lasers is worth the crappy tracking and huge cap issues. I believe I read somewhere that CCP is supposed to revisit weapon balance in regards to lasers?

It's going to be interesting to see if the massive ehp*dps characteristics that make the Merlin semi-OP will translate directly to the Moa since it now has a fifth midslot.

but with advantage of EHP + buffed remote reps (resists bonuses to Moa) it will. so there.

The Maller basically need either a fourth mid or a utility high.


It just doesn't have the cap to sustain the guns without either so its useless, And if you put on a booster now instead of a web it can't actually hit anything and were back to it being useless.


I know the idea was basically a mini abaddon but the idea sadly is faulty, it isn't a battleship and it doesn't have the slots to be able to pull it off..

2 minutes of cap with just guns/tackle running is pathetic, and worse, useless.

Am I the only one who noticed the 500k mass addition to the cruisers (1 mil to the vexor) to make them slower? The ruppy will be rendered unviable for nano work after this, especially against the new attack cruiser stats...

Well, hate them or love them. but I am pretty sure these are the stats we are going to get Dec 4th. There hasn't been a blue tagged post in the attack or combat cruiser threads for some time. And with their focus now turned towards BC's and BB's they seem satisfied with the changes they have made to these cruisers.

I wonder some what how these ship changes will affect the ecosystem of Eve, of what we see flying around and how it will be used. Which ships will rise in popularity and which ones will now collect dust in hangers and on market shelves. I guess time will tell.

What they really ought to do is rebalance all T1 Ammo.

There are so many useless types and short range weapons only make use of -50% ammo. They should look into Ammo that increases /decreases falloff as well as opt and they look into effective Dmg in regards to range to make all ammo types useful.

Right now there are like 10 different ammo's per gun and only like 2-3 that are useful. They all should with any weapon.

I think you're wrong on both counts.

Scorch is a good and generally useful ammo type, but it's not overpowered, and amarr are not reliant on it. It's a tool in their box, and it makes them much more rounded ships, but it doesn't make them overpowered. Yes, they load up scorch a lot. That's because it maintains good range and good dps. It's a good all purpose ammo. Now, perhaps it should have a little less range, or a little less dps. But its not particularly unbalancing anything.

The rupture's advantage is that it can use projectiles, which are grossly overpowered.