Originally by: Garreck

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Originally by: LitLBunnyFooFoo

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Now I wouldnÆt complain except, every aspect of every skill the frig pilot trains to the max, in order to gain his elite status, complements every level of ship grade of above him. That is not true of the Battleship pilot. In order to the battleship pilot to become elite in his chosen primary weapon class, he must learn all the classes below him. I ask why?

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While I cannot agree with most of your argument (battleships disadvantaged at the moment?!) I'm assuming that this here is the core of your thesis.

It's always made me scratch my head as well. It seems silly that specializing in battleship combat should necessitate a large amount of specialization in smaller equipment as well. Why should large blaster specialization require both small and medium blaster specialization trained up to 4? If you've trained large hybrids to 5, I think it could be pretty well assumed that you're ready to "specialize" in large hybrids...you should, at that point, be able to jump over to large railgun or large blaster specialization. I can see the logic in having to get the smaller hybrid skills out of the way...but having to train the smaller specialization skills as well seems rather redundant.

This works in reverse as well. What about the cruiser pilot who gets medium blaster specialization to 5? Fat lot of good that did him...the large blaster "specialist" already has medium blaster spec up to 4. An extra month of training for a whole 2% firepower edge over folks who may not even bother to use medium blasters. This realization tends to discourage true specialization, rather than encourage it.

What can be done, though? I wonder what the balance effect in Eve would be to completely change up the skill tree? That's no minor change we're talking about...

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