Here is a counter-proposal:

"The marauder class battleship is an evolution of tried and tested hulls, designed for extended sorties behind enemy lines. Marauders focus on dealing damage and evading capture by the enemies of the empire. As such, marauders have built in technology that gives them:

5% bonus to base speed per level
18% per level reduction in effectiveness of inbound webifiers
Microwarp drives immune from the effects of warp scramblers.

(note, they still may not enter warp if disrupted or scrambled)

Emissions from these bulky and unstable high-tech propulsion units has a debilitating effect on sensor arrays and thus the sensor strengths of these ships is known to be weak, leaving them susceptible to battlefield interference. (sensor strength unchanged)"

Web bonuses replaced with 5%/level cap recharge bonus.

Now the marauder can carry on PVEing nicely, has a chance to slip through gate camps/get back to gate, can apply a little battlefield dps until neutralised with ECM and can slip away - justifying the price tag.

It can also get between mission gates more quickly, so isk/hr goes up a little. The extra cap allows use of MWD for better positioning with short range weapons.

Now what do I buy? A vindicator/machariel that does PVE very quickly but which if caught, must fight and die? Or a marauder which is not overly suited to PVP, but can generally slip away if things are not going well?

no mate. Micro WARP drive, so you can burn back to gate. Not micro JUMP drive
:-)

So while there are still concerns for PvP, I don't think you realize how efficient those things are for PvE. We feel like Dr. Frankenstein looking at a slab with a half-decaying corpses coming back to life. We've created monsters. Mission / PvE efficiency is not all about pure damage. It's also about mobility, projection and time you spend shooting. MJD + MWD helps with the first, Bastion plus new Kronos / Paladin bonuses give the second and EW immunity grants you the last.

As such we are definitely not going to give any kind of damage bonus in Bastion mode - if we ever did, it would be by severely penalizing turret tracking / missile explosion velocity when in Bastion mode, which would severally limit their use in PvE.
[/list]

Hope this wall of text helps a bit (PvE side, as I said, we aren't talking about PvP in this post).


Also, here is a preview of the transformation mode on the Kronos.

But they can become EWAR immune.....and immobile at the same time

[
This is missions, targets don't run away.

No one ever said this was intended for POS shooting, some player came up with that idea and everyone ran with it despite there being better things for the job (like an actual fleet setup) and a single ship shooting a POS taking ~14 hours to kill it.

You can still lock down a target, you just need 2 webs rather than 1.

I dont tend to use drones in pvp anyway
I dont use webs on any of my mega
Its not that far from other battleships
I have flown mega with less ehp these can get
Every cap ship, hic, most snipers, many fleets, me when whacking things with blasters in antimatter range.

I dont need them so why would I bother? Most times I take a flight of med armour repair or smalls.
I track things just fine.
And?
Only if you are a poor pilot. Theres a reason theres a fleet named after me.
There are things called freinds, you should try them they come in handy.

Then do so, marauders were never PvP ships from the start, it was possible to PvP in them by some interesting fits, but there core was always a PvE ship.

While they were never intended or designed as such this marauder rebalance is supposed to address that...and by simply waving people's concerns away by stating they were never meant to PVP adds nothing to resolving the issue now which is PVP balance.

"Look at the new mobility of Marauders now! Skirmishing in PvP!"

Please sir, please help me find my sides- I think they're just leaving Earth orbit now.

Putting these new Marauders into a 'skirmish fleet' is exactly like expecting a quad-plated abaddon to be able to keep up with a bunch of nano-stabbers. It's not happening.

In order for the Marauder to be useful in PvP it has to deploy Bastion Mode. Which makes it stationary. Which makes it far more of a 'point defense'/area denial style fighter, than a skirmisher. As a result, "Marauders" end up with the MOST MISLEADING NAME IN THE ENTIRE GAME. They're not even trying to make it better at PvP, and I don't think the devs have TRIED the new Marauders in PvP in their internal server. The only thing to my knowledge they've even really tested is the Kronos. In L4s.

These ships are completely paradoxical.

"Let's give them MJD bonuses, so they can blip 100km away when a threat appears!"
"Let's give them the Bastion Module, so they can become completely immobile for an entire minute and get extreme tank!"

At extreme range, tank is pointless. When this tank is necessary, RANGE is pointless. There's no synergy! The new Marauders are barely about 'harassment' or 'skirmishing'. They're about tactically redeploying themselves around a battlefield and trying (but failing) to be 'mini dreadnoughts'. And people have pointed out- look at how much they had to increase mass and decrease mobility. And how they didn't change base sensor strength at all despite that LITERALLY BEING THE ONLY REASON THEY ARE NOT THROWN AROUND MORE IN PVP RIGHT NOW. This is a clumsy change. There's no "Yes, this makes sense" factor regarding the stat alterations, in my opinion. They're extremely forced. The only improvements are in the PvE arena, and they're improving in areas that Marauders are already damn near perfect in- it's a moot point, basically.

See my posts here and here for possible alterations to Marauders that would actually make them competent in PvP, in situations that aren't so overwhelmingly niche so as to just not happen, period.

It depends if you are moving or not as what matters is transversal and that number is the same for you and the stationary target. Assuming someone orbiting then it is likely that they maintain a higher transversal on a stationary target than a moving one and thus the stationary target is harder to hit.
Also i read quite a lot of your posts and they are pretty much wrong in every way possible.

The only issue with these proposed changes is that if these ships are "high end" PVE boats, then they should have some place in Incursions. The Bastion module really limits their options here, since it disables remote reps, and Incursions are always run with Logi. Please don't take away what little VG site running there is by having a solo pilot clear them out.

They have a place in PVP. Bastion provides super tank, ewar immunity and 3x utility highs. They don't have a place in Incursions, however, since Bastion disables remote assistance.

Time for another update.

We discussed the Marauder situation further and came with the following changes:

• Shield, armor and hull 30% resistance boosts have been removed on the Bastion Module - instead, all Marauders will now get proper tech2 resists. This will allow Marauders to have better RR use outside Bastion and reduce overall tanking effectiveness inside the mode.


• We have removed all tanking bonuses on the Marauders hulls (Armor Repairer amount on the Paladin and Kronos, Shield Boost amount on the Golem and Vargur). Instead, we are giving them 7.5% bonus to the velocity factor of stasis webifiers per level. This will not only help reducing their tanking effectiveness, be more in theme with the ship role itself and help anyone using them with short range weapons. We are not giving them a full 10% per level back as this would be extremely powerful in conjunction with the other bonuses / Bastion. We are going to leave the full 10% web strength amount on the Serpentis ships for now and see how things evolve with time.


• Also, we are removing the mass penalty on the Bastion mode. Tests have shown you can't really turn when it's active anyway, and we don't want to have players abuse that to collapse wormholes.

I will change the OP to match the changes.

An idea that I might endorse:
All marauders receive a 90% web bonus when in "can't move" mode.

In pvp with that bonus you burn up to your target, web him, turn on fort knox tank, then blast away. You would then treat this ship on the field like you would any vindi or bhaal.

Now there isn't much use for the bastion module with this iteration. You still have a large increase to local tank, but you won't be able to fend off much before dying.

-1 for me, the original proposal looked better. I think most people would just use the pirate bs instead for PVE, the utility highs and tracking are not worth the risk of 1 billion + isk for just the local tank boost which is unecessary for most normal situations anyway, and you won't be able to fend off a gang for long without the immense gain of resists. They are now all too slow or don't have enough drone bay to PVE competitively with the Pirate BS either.

The web bonus is counter productive for the bastion mode as well as the mode gives you increased range. Whats the use of the range bonus if the ship has to be much closer to use its web? This proposal will keep the ships shelved for everything I think, and those who do use them will only use the bastion module to see the cool animation or AFTER having already been locked down by a gang to slow down getting killed.

The original was pretty close, just needed some tweaking and less ability to be ganked while solo.

isn't it great that CCP don't even ask us if we would like such drastic changes they just make them

The new Marauders are better because we can fit modules to compensate for the nerfs... With all those extra slots they didn't give us.

The Version 1 Bastion was great because it allowed you to use more lows for tracking/damage mods without hurting survivability (Armor) and more projection/application mods without hurting survivability (shield). Now we need to fit MORE tank in the lows (to compensate for 37.5% tank nerf) and more prop in the mid (just to make these ships flyable.) Both of these mods will come at the expense of Tracking, Projection and Damage mods. Slowing down mission running, just to get the ship up to it's current survivability.

Please don't post anymore. Prior to these changes today you got 100% from Bastion AND 37.5% FROM THE HULL.

137.5% is greater than 100%.

"Buff," isn't it Zeus?

So why would anyone want to use a Bastion Modules?
- No Resist Bonuses
- No Rep Armor Bonuses (Easier to kill)
- No more Remote Rep
- No Mass Penalty (Open to Bumpage that you cant avoid)

I feel the double-whammy nerf to bastion tank performance is bad. Removing the active tanking bonus in exchange for a resist bonus is fine, but coupling that with the removal of the Bastion resist bonus is a bit much. Between these two changes the latest change to the idea you announced is somewhere in the neighborhood of a 40% decrease in Bastioned tanking power, as well as an overall reduction in active tank even out of Bastion. The web bonus is quite nice but these changes together are not something I'm a fan of.

So the bastion still gives a range bonus, and all the marauders get a velocity bonus to webs (that are by nature short-range), that probably won't get used outside of the Kronos. The Golem already has a paint bonus, does it *really* need a web bonus too?

Base hulls were nerfed unnecessarily, but there's no way that anyone can honestly say that marauders will be worse after iteration 1 than they are now....


Marauders are currently the least used ships in pve, even amongst high SP players.


Sure, this change won't go directly towards pvp, but it helps... At least they'll have some pvp capability.
On live right now, the only pvp capability they actually have is A.T....