What would be the technical cost of introducing a role bonus to the HAC line that reduces the effective range of warp disruptors used against them?

Assuming you do not want to increase the base sensor strength of HACs any more than you already have and you do not want to reduce their signature radius any further, would it be possible to give them a role bonus that in some other way reduces the effectiveness of combat probes used against them?

Those two measures could go a long way to bringing some strength (and a unique role) back to HACs as skirmishers while still justifying their high cost versus the alternatives.

I think if you are trying to make these ships really worthwhile in straight combat while they have competition from BCs, ABCs, T3 cruisers, T1 cruisers, Navy cruisers, Pirate Cruisers, BSs and CSs then you are fighting a really hard battle just to jam yet another class of vessels into a massively overcrowded marketplace.

T2 is supposed to be about specialisation. Most, if not all, other T2 ships have a clear and undeniable field of specialisation. When a massive list of ship classes already serve in the field of simple "tank and gank" it seems bizzarre that you would not pull the only T2 class competing in that field and move it out of the crowd a little.

Give them an actual role. EHP/DPS is already oversubscribed. Given they have to remain in the crowded EHP/DPS bracket to some degree, you have to give them a role bonus that differentiates them properly and not just something that looks like it was stolen from a T3 subsystem.

Make them skirmishers and give them a significantly improved ability to disengage.

If you can't begin to explain then evidently you have no argument. Reducing the range of shortpoints on ships designed for kiting spaces them out from the standard cruisers we have now; why do we need to spend 10x the ship cost just to gild the hulls that serve perfectly already? As for the MJD issue, that was more for the gimmick than anything, but I can see useful applications which can be countered by, for example, a warp scrambler. That oh-so-rarely fitted module.

Then you should encourage CCP that HACs need a role other than OP t1 crusier.

Right now what is the cerb besides a stronger caracal? ETC.

Something to set them apart from every other ship in the game, aswell as being useful so people fly them.

I think you are giving up on the best option too readily.


Too many ships already fill that role, otherwise I would probably be arguing the same.

With the number of medium gun hulls being so vast, we at the very least need to have the T2 ones in specialist roles. You have plenty of room for beefier but *whatever* alternatives to the t1 cruisers in the vast selection of cruiser and battlecruiser variants available. Keeping HACs in that general combat role is bad both for HACs and for everything else that shares that bracket.

Still disappointed to see no Minmatar Missile HAC. They're the ONLY race to not have a HAC for each racial weapon system. Doesn't seem like there's much point in even bothering with medium missiles for Minmatar unless you want to fly a cyclone. I still don't really see what the point of the Muninn is either.