The basic Raven has an align time of 16.5 seconds, Navy Raven 16.2, and Scorpion Navy Issue 18s.

All three are popular missioning Battleships, none of them aligns out at max skills any faster than 10.9 seconds at maxed skills. If that extra second is what saves your ship then you should have fit a Nano.

These are Battleships. They are not going to align quickly.

This is rather ambiguous. Which cruiser for a start?

This is a completely erroneous assumption for at least half the people who make up the average null-sec Battleship blob. Most of them probably won't have BS 5, though they may have at least some of their support skills at 5 it's not hugely likely that they'll have them all at 5.

Most Alliances could probably get an elite wing of the things but it's questionable how useful that would actually be compared to having those same elite pilots in capital ships or faction battleships which have similar or lower skill requirements and cost.



People said T3s were going to be too expensive, but they're not terribly skill intensive since they only require medium guns and all the skills to get into one are rank 1. Also T3 fleets were never very large, they were more of an elite wing of the fleet flown by high skill pilots to great effect... at least until people figured out how to counter them.

These ships are very highly unlikely to see wide use in large-scale fleet fights due to their relatively low EHP, reliance on local tank while in Bastion, and relatively low damage output for the cost. The E-War immunity may give them a niche use but it's going to be just that, a niche and there's nothing wrong with that.

I feel this only reinforces my point about them not being that skill intensive.

Also somewhat curious by what you mean when you say "multiple fleets" because I've seen a smattering of those T3 battle reports and the most I ever saw in one fight was maybe 100. Fully willing to stand corrected here, I'm just curious.

Also is this null-sec or W-space? (assuming Null, just figured I'd ask)

Color me somewhat skeptical. Got a battle-report or two to throw my way?

I also feel it's worth noting that T3s were at worst half the cost of Marauders and are currently running about 1/3rd to 1/4th the cost.

They're also being saved till last on the balancing chopping block which would indicate CCP find them to be a particularly thorny issue which is backed up by comments from CCP and the CSM.

Improve sensor strength. Or dmg projection. Increase base resistence or give them a HeatDMG Bonus. There are alot of viable options here. Choose one or all of them if you wish. What ever you need to buff them significantly but at the same time prevent them from being overpowered.

You`re right with saying its nice to have some new mechanics to play with. But in my opinion it would be much tougher to introduce an new ship class for this experimental gameplay rather than messing around with this kind of established marauder gameplay.

Well. Ok lets clarify that. U dont get more sensor strength. Ur base sensor strength is exactly the same as befor. U got EWAR immunity in siege mode. That seems to have a simmilar effect but just works under completely other circumstances. Second, u gain range right. But if i say dmg projection im not talking about range, which u already had alot. Im talking about tracking and missile dmg application to fast and smaller targets. Again thats not what u can expect from the siege mode. Third, the ressistence gain again u only get in siege mode.

At a first glace this sounds not terribly bad. But u have to do a hughe tradeoff in moveability to get these bonuses. A tradeoff which i gues u cant afford in common pvp situations. But thats allready been said.

Except that these ships don't really have the DPS to "blap" a target. They can tank very well but they're not really "blap" ships.



Also the MJD takes at least 9 seconds to spool up meaning you're spending at least that long there without your mega-tank. You know, unless you get scrammed.

.

Interesting

you dont get it do you? the problem is we marauder pilots DO NOT! need more tank... from our point of view we are already running sites without jumping out and at the peak efficiency of what the weapons fitted will allow.

put it this way, what good for a golem makes having more tank, if my fit is already using 3 target painters? adding a 4 or 5th one wont help a bit in the end

I need to do more damage, otherwise the isk efficiency its the very same as before, meaning it will top at 25 or so mill per click.


being able to run harder sites does not help for nothing at all for the simple reason, that I will just still be killing for 25 mill per click.

PVP wise, marauders DPS is not high enough for the risks of going into bastion, a golem or kronos got the highest DPS (which btw its the very same DPS a normal hyperion or raven,cnr or CNS gets) so you could just as well overtank any of those ships for 1/10 of the price, and achieve the same result.

the damage projection bonus wont help, because in the game you never get to that situation.

and last, what I m going to do with a MJD if my next accel gate is 50kms away? 25? 75? I need a MWD not a MJD.

WARNING - Math Ahead - 8353 DPS TANK

Looks like the proposed changes will make Marauders pretty heavy tankers. In this situation:

• Kronos with
• EOS Boosting Armor with Mindlink
• Standard Exile booster
• Anci + C-Type LAR, Imperial Navy EANM, Dmg Controll II, C-Type Explo Hard
• 2xAug Pump rigs
• All LVL5

A Kronos can tank 8353 non-OH DPS and 10 357 DPS OH.

Proof:

T3s aren't SP intensive. These are. To fly a tengu you just need Caldari Cruiser V, Offensive Subsystem V and your missile type of choice to V. That's it. Training a specific missile type doesn't require backtraining all the smaller missile types.

Good ******* luck finding 200 pilots that all have the same Racial Battleship V, T2 guns to go with that racial type, AWU V, EGU V, Marauders V, etc.

The only rage I'm seeing is from people who don't think these Marauders will have what it takes for PvP. They're going to be awkward and gimmicky, and probably not all that hard to kill (Just throw together a bunch of Tornadoes for maybe half the price), for a 1 billion ISK price tag.

price tag means nothing....

Excellent, pirate ships should be same as t1, GO

dread sieges too same thing there and in small gangs even with no blob u will alway loose isk war unless u kil2 or something

anything that cant win will gtfo (maybe not on the first week)

they have the smallest niche i can think off

before they were short range subpar pve bs with build in subpar noctis which made them singlebox wise worthy

now they are the slowest mjd bs with not even the option to use salvage drones thanks to bay and a pvp role that i cant see @ all

fly through 0 and low sec and find 1 vs 1/2/3 s u will loose marauders due to awesome mobilty until u find a non blob

if ur the baltec i think of flying megathrons in shield fleets (which was awesome) and so on i-¦m sorry im not allowed to hunt u down wiht a tornado / naga / neutships/ harpy gang and see all ur cruisers gtfo letting u sit there in bastion mode with a timer next to the gate/station

I'm serious when i say that any PVEr complaining about what ccp is doing is simply and incredibly uncreative. This is why ccp tends to ignore imput, because time and time and time and time again the players have been wrong about the outcome of changes.

It is almost like they never want these ships to leave high sec.

With unlimited ressources, that's hardly a tough call.

The largest and richest alliance in the game named their current fleet doctrine after you, so stop bullshitting please.

It's perfectly believeable you don't need any ship reimbursements and wouldn't qualify, but you'd still get them.

you apparently havent read anything. People arent screaming for an i win ship, people are screaming for a BALANCED ship, that falls into line with ships of comparable isk cost and SP requirement. You be trollin'.

So would you call pirate faction Unbalanced because it is straight up Better than t1? Because part of balance is the isk cost..... and so is the sp requirement. Even if people were screaming for marauders to be THE BEST battleships in ALL TERMS, it would not be unreasonable (due to its massive dual-cost). Poeple are asking for a ship that is not Worse in all scenarios VS pirate faction.

:facepalm:
Have a look at this:
http://cdn1.eveonline.com/www/newssystem/media/8742/1/Shiptech_1920.jpg

and using Marauders for PVP is ridiculously stupid.

Yes, it is.
Because tough guys dont need to prove anything. Arguments are for suckers.

In all cases where the gate is less than 70km away, you're better off with a microwarp drive than a single MJD.

The MJD is unnecessary for PVE, and pretty difficult to use well in PVP.

A MWD cap-use bonus would actually be more useful than a MJD cooldown bonus.

Marauder for pvp lol

The tank on all marauders is bad ....we don't need a new mode ..just increase the tank ...I fly a golem and I know you have to find the line between tank and dps .

But should I have to find the line ..Its a t2 bs for god sake make the awesome ....not a transformer .

So the marauder can now be deemed worthless to pvp?

minus drone bay
minus webs
minus sensor strength
minus HP
minus ability to move with its bonus(What fool fights a fight sitting at zero speed?)

In the future I picture a brand new category being brought to the market labeled PVE SHIPS. Marauders will be the first type in there and their name will have no relation to their actual purpose.

Not smart
Can't track
Its' worse
Poor fit
If you can't move, how do plan on keeping a sniper in point range? A sniper isn't going to snipe from 20k and stay there to get shot? I am talking pvp here, not a PVE expert trying to PVP.

so you would have support with you? like.... i dont know.... logistics? Sounds useful for a ship that blocks rr. I mean, im not a huge pvper, so i may be wrong, but i would probably want logi if i were bringing support

These ships have never been focused on mobility, if you want a "Skirmish Doctrine" then I suggest A-HAC gangs.

Your reasoning behind all of this falls into large gangs that a kronos would have no reason being in. How many bonused active tanked ships do you make fleet comps for?

Stay on subject, I don't care how you use your "friends" as a crutch.

Bottom line; all the advantages a marauder once had in pvp are now gone or were never fixed. Once this patch goes live every pilot in eve will understand that a pvper in a marauder is either bait or doesn't plan to fight. The whole reason people are up in arms about these ships is because none of their problems were fixed. They also cost more than the typical shield megathron......

After this patch I would much rather fly a megathron for pvp!

+More Sensor Strength
+Web bonus back(something that will lock down targets, open for ideas)
+Larger drone bay and bandwidth
+Less tank more dps(last priority)

If CCP wants these to be mini dreads they it would make sense to increase their DPS output. Who cares how "applied" it is. The towers aren't moving.....

I understand people are screaming for more dps but realistically the marauders were fine before this update. All they needed was a sensor strength upgrade!

I'm more than happy to help create ideas for PVP balance. Increasing their tank as much as they did though was a bit much....

This is not a false statement. The problem though, is how the bastion module forces the Marauder into staying in one location for a set period of time. If things go south, they're suddenly at a massive disadvantage and can't do much about it until the module finishes cycling. This IMO is what clashes the most with the whole 'skirmish' idea to me.

The more I have thought about this the more I think CCP needs to do an HAC and come up with a version 2 proposal as this one still doesn't make sense.

So I want to sit still for 60 seconds in a 2billion+ ship??? Maybe the hi-sec carebears but I see no real use for 0.0 PvE or PvP.


Now a T2 resist BS with high close range damage (not projection) and some maneuverability. That might actually be useful. Maybe these should be turned into Dread killers and given a Nuet and sig radius bonus with some other draw back.

Kronos Pilot here... Nope! Not even needed on a valid Kronos.

It's not needed. Not with the range and damage of rails... And we have the PG / CPU to fit our full sized rails without gimping the fit...

Dual Tracking Computers...

So much fir the hive mind.

That aside it's nice to know it's not just the highsec dwellers that think the new direction is unfocused.

Well the only think that seems generally accepted ( that is not same as unanimously) is that web bonus do not match MJD bonuses....


I can can understand the Khronos with the web bonus.. get CLose to enemy WEb them And THEN enter in bastion :P


But for others is too.. non useful.

Guys, you can pretty much run HS L4s with a rusted wire coat hanger. The second iteration gives those hulls much more versatility, allows them the inclusion to fleet doctrines and revitalizes a ship type that was nothing more than a glorified red cross shooter of boredom.

And on top of that, they will still be better in PvE than now. What more would someone ask?

What if the web velocity bonus was instead a web range bonus, the purpose of which was to stop the enemy from getting to you before you mjd away? Would that make better sense?

Marauders need more EHP. This base HP reduction makes no sense. That should be reverted and Bastion mode should get a resistance increase or it'll be far too easy to dps through someone between repcycles while they're completely stationary.
Also, doubling the rep amount on active ships with stupidly low HP results in frequent over-repping, such as the vagabond now suffers from when using deadspace+crystals+shieldlinks.

BASTION MODE: Auto-Overheat, Cooling (read on...)

The first thing that needs to be addressed is slots. We have 19-20 (typically 20) slots on Faction ships, but only 19 on Marauders. And the additional high slot is more or less useless. What I propose:

Paladin: 7H/5M/8L ... Golem: 7H/7M/6L ... Kronos: 7H/5M/8L ... Vargur: 7H/6M/7L

Next up, roll bonuses. With Rubicon the tractor beam bonus is now effectively useless, so instead replace it with a 100% range of stasis webifiers. This turns stasis webs into more of a mid-range option for Marauders.

Last but not least, Bastion. If the drones are getting nerfed then the loss of DPS needs to be offset with some different Marauder bonuses. And let's be honest: who's going to train to Marauder-V with the current bonuses?

Keep the T2 resists, the ship stats, EM immunity and the 100% shield booster and armor repair for Bastion-only mode. But instead of dropping to a dead stop, on activation it automatically overloads all slots and absorbs all heat for the duration. The animations already have the ships opening up, so what a perfect way to explain the temporary cooling effect.

With respect to the Marauder skills, each level enables +30 seconds of Bastion mode (150 seconds max), with a fixed 5-minute cool down to prevent abuse. The overload and 100% shield booster/armor repair bonus might be a tad much, so this may need to default back to the previous +37.5%.

Really?.... I guess the level 4 crowd really do shout the loudest.

Ok, seen as the Golem keeps a damage application bonus to it's short range weapon system (i.e. painter bonus for torpedoes), give the Kronos back it's web bonus (for blasters) keep the falloff and optimal bonuses for the Vargur and Paladin.

That way you have two 'long range optimised' Marauders, and two 'close-in optimised' for brawling.

I think the biggest problem you had with Iteration II was the blanket approach rather than keeping things distinct.

If you're sitting still it's even more reason to have a web strength bonus, given you cannot move to reduce transversal of orbiting targets...

People do all the time. And besides, the point is you would get into web range before dropping into bastion (hello MJD bonus...)

Would you like to re-read what you wrote there and think on it?

Hint: 90% web...

Edit: And I was referring to reverting the falloff bonus back to the web.

I believe what he is referring to make the guns/launchers take twice as long to fire but with twice the volley damage; same dps, but you get crazy alpha. Don't know how much I like it, but I must admit I would be interested to see it.

I firmly believe that CCP is trying to get this type of ship in PVP - .

New Kronos is probably the most pointless ship in the Gallente lineup

Web bonus would make it viable.

That's all there really is to it tbh.

The 'new' Kronos is too slow for that - the old Kronos was fine. As to being a 'heavy sniper', a falloff bonus is a wasted bonus with Railguns, as the fast reloads allow you to always have the correct ammo loaded and not be shooting deep into falloff. Now with blasters, a better bonus, but not at the expense of webs, while also becoming fat and slow.

If anything, this just further illustrates the identity crisis of the 'new' Kronos, hence my earlier comment about reverting this back to TQ attributes, which everyone already uses, get the bastion/MJD bonuses sorted then move on from there.

It's a Duvolle boat at the end of the day - blasters are Duvolle's 'thing'

Heh, really?



Yeah, so all this and the ability to MJD every minute is QUITE the nerf to the base hull.

It's amazing how many people have no idea what to do with the possibilities being able to rapidly MJD open up, especially for PVE, for both long and short range weapons systems on these particular hulls. That's not even taking into consideration the extra range from Bastion mode.

This thread is literally chock full of juicy quotes to bring up to embarrass people with this time next year.

What exactly would make it a long range ship, and where would you use a long range battleship?

Right, nothing, bastion is a close range module, it has tons of utility highs, MJDs worked before people realized they need to fit scrams, and ABCs are 10 cheaper and do the sniping job better.

It's a slow close range ship and as such it needs a bonused web to be worth undocking.

Yeah it indeed does have the tracking bonus, and the falloff bonus with bonused web would make blasters work extremely well even when immobile in bastion mode.

Bastion mode is only useful in close range, you go all in. Going bastion in a LR ship means that inties have ample time to burn to you, or you get probed down and scrammed, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about ships that get under your LR guns without bonused webs.

Anyway, "sniping battleships in small gang" is really hilarious.

It's nothing to do with level 4's - stop repeating this strawman.

The TQ Kronos web bonus is what gives it (despite the crappy sensor strength) it's niche PvP application. I fail to see why questioning it's removal constitutes 'making it a Vindicator copy' when the Vindicator is actually a 'Kronos copy' in that regard.

Edit - no Bastion doesn't, but the base hull bonuses and slot configuration clearly favour a blaster boat.

Amazes me how balancing the marauders nad finding a role for them woudl be to make them stay parket in hangars because there will be no place in eve where they are the best choice for the job.

More like they don't want their expensive ships nerfed in order to accommodate a module and playstyle that that may be detrimental for their activities for various reason.

i'm sorry to say this, CCP Ytterbium, but it seems to me that you have no idea of what to do with this ship class, of what rolle they should fit in; how about you think about that for a bit and you postpone this "rebalance" until you have a clear idea about that?


also, if this will be done at the same time with the pirate bs rebalance, i think we will be able to see the entire picture even better

what i'm trying to say, is that atm , with current changes, the marauders look like the old weapon system on the Naglfar, you know, "the split weapon system", great on paper but terrible in practice;

He said "NONE of these ships have split weapon bonuses" which was in reference to your comment on the Naglfar.
I suppose he's saying that using the Naglfar is a bad comparison.

Very well said. I use a Vargur most of the times and it's fab. I am still wondering why do we need this bastion thingy and we need nerfs.


@ CCP I suggest that you guys start controlling your ISK inflation. This is a very serious matter. I am getting to the point where I will have to stop playing EVE because you price me out. In addition why do I have to buy Plex at rip off prices in the UK for stuff that get nerfed continuously?

so marauders seem to have really low cpu. i had to put two cpu rigs just to fit the mods i wanted...

and also in bastion mod you are dread blappy meat.

WTF? I'm on Sisi now... Golem has a new model, but Paladin looks exactly the same...

Stop thinking about PvE limitations

Why would I not think about the pve limitations in a ship designed for pve????

People need to stop to think with their "maybe i use this ship in pvp one day" hats on.


The majority uses this ship class in PvE, and the needs of the many outweighs the needs of the few

Now many entities use a Blaster Kronos with Buffer and the 90% web in PVP in a small Gang often in a wh to apply the damage with the impressive huge blaster cannons. They use the Kronos over the Vindicator, because of the utility slots it brings f++r Sb or heavy neuts.
With the new Marauder balance the 90% web is gone, if this **** will happen. You can't use your new gimmick "bastion" or you can't get remote rep. So now the Vindi brings a 90% and more firepower, so why still use the Kronos over the Vindi?

It is very useful on a rail/sentry ship(because it allows it to hit up close) and for various other pve and pvp stuff. The problem is simply that you got no clue about Marauders(or gallente hulls and hybrids for that matter).

I remember you for all your nonsense you posted in hybrid and gallente threads over the years. I know who you are.

Fitted with blasters any hull is miles more useful with a web strength bonus than one without it in solo/small gang pvp, because the web bonus actually allows to hit the target properly, give you range control at point blank and it also fixes the major flaw of rails up close(tracking, what actually made them a halve way useful pve weapon).

As a blaster ship it trades in utility, a better tank, better cargo for cap charges and better resists against a extra med and the much higher dps of the Vindi, what just needs a few adjustments to get to a point where it would actually be a good alternative(it is already with rails in my personal opinion, mostly because of the much better fitting and cap).

The Kronos currently is a fairly mobile rail projection platform that combines good speed with huge range and good utility. With the changes it loses to much sentry dps to be worth it, the active tank stuff is pointless as soon as 2-3 logis are on the field, the range bonus of bastion is pointless because you are extreme easy to tackle if you have to sit still for 1-2 minutes and the lower speed just makes it impractical choice both as rail ship and blaster platform in pvp.

Overall it is just a lot worse then the current Kronos, since the oversized active tank is only useful in a few niches, while the speed, dps and web nerf handy cap it for any other application in pvp and pve all the time.

how the hell a 90% web is not usefull on a bs sized ship? can you give an example of such a ship?
this ships won't see much pvp with they new bastion mod, except for station games for example and there a 90% web will be very useful...



lol...how the hell can he be a long range ship if you are not able to dictate range??? that long range ship will become very fast a close range gank
just because you cannot see what use 90% web have on such a ship does not mean they are worthless

Don't waste your time fighting this guy.
He has not had to grind income in a long long time, and he get's his jollies ganking high sec freighters and PvE ships. This is the ultimate gank, encouraging CCP to nerf an entire line of PvE ships, hammering PvE income.

Rest assured, if this guy is rooting for a change, it is horrible for PvE players, which he is most certainly not.

Perhaps you should fly another ship then?

Marauders have been PVE focused since they were introduced.

I suppose you're waiting on the Pirate/faction rebalance, ""as these are not the ships you're looking for""

That is exactly why I think the hole bastion thing is pointless to begin with. Btw groups of the current marauders are used to 2 volley frigs in pve gangs and far better at it than any frig or medium platform.

In my opinion CCP should leave the current marauders as they are(or finally fix them as I posted so many times in this thread ) and introduce the new idea as a 2. marauder BS, with the same hull and a slightly different paint(I don't like the copper on the new Kronos).

You can also make them cheaper this way(a 500-600M price tag would make them more reasonable for WH solo pve and pvp), because I don't really think the new marauder idea is anywhere useful enough given the current price tag. both for pvp and pve.

haha, i see, nice troll

Thing is that apart from the "niche" part these ships bring nothing to the pvp table another battleship can't do as good.
On paper maybe, in a very tiny amount of examples probably, for pvp (in general) nope.

you like to fell special, eh?

Let's see, warp speed changes: 99% satisfied with it, same goes with other Rubicon features, changes but on marauders? 99% players are disappointed/dont wan't it/says it's bad.

So how does that say about these changes? How many times players agreed on something in such a huge percentage numbers?


TheFace Asano <== no they don't need bigger drones bandwigh and vargur is tbh the worst of all now, and it gains almost nothing of range in bastion, go test it, even there's a EFT files with Rubicon changes

Ok, i get a mission. I have to undock and warp to my destination, that is maybe from 1 to 5 Jumps away (in the region i fly).
With the Inertia nerf and the warpspeed nerf, it's total cool to jump around. You lost dps trough less bandwith for drones. Then in the mission i have a few gates (i have to warp!), after finishing it, yes! I have to warp back...

I think, you don't use this ships really - or even have the skills to use it? Have you tested it? Even when the Bastion thing gets a little extra dps, the mission runner will be slower. If you can't test themselfs don't post here, thanks.

Bastion is useless just that. The CURRENT marauders can run missiosn better than the upcommign ones.

And both are useless at PVP.

When the ship is fit for nothing but dps yea it kinda is, also you are rounding up a good bit.

projectiles can select damage type but their damage is barely above cruise missiles, which are pure damage types and can pick any damage type. the high tracking isn't really all that useful in pve missions. tachyons out damage and out range scorch.

and of course they aren't the same ship, but as proposed the Vargur and Kronos are not all that competitive. I'd rather fly a golem or machariel than a vargur, and well, probably anything over a Kronos.

indeed it is, but a lot of that is falloff.

To spread the usefullnes of Marauders in PVP maybe its worthwile to grant the Bastion Module a repair amount bonus not only to loal reps but rather also to RR reps?

That could be lead us to some interessting "triage" warfare with marauder wolfpacks.

so make bastion apply -50% to remote reps, you still get em but they would be significantly less powerful for you then local reps. Really the no remote assistance is a killer for both pvp and pve fleets.

Quoting myself not to leave you in the dark.

and PG....

My Golem has almost maxed CPU and PG with two empty high slots that I can't even fit a salvager in....

Having played about a little earlier on, I found that the Bastion module dropping your speed to 0 is basically a suicide-switch vs anyone that has even basic funding (read: can deploy a dreadnaught or two) as they're just getting blapped over and over on SISI when we're flying them into the testing area.

The tanking seemed pretty good, a dual-XLASB Golem tanked a hell of a lot... but still, it died in a hurry vs even a single dread. I suspect a single rail moros or nag could take out an entire fleet of bastion fit ships, with them having no hope of retaliating.

Appreciate the feedback but this doesnt seem likely. 249km with bastion on means that the bonus from bastion is only 3%. Someone can achieve 239km max currently on TQ and if add the 5% range hardwiring, can reach as max as 249km. Some of your misiile range skils are not maxed out, there is no other explanation.

Make a second T2 BS (using the old "tier 3" hulls) for PvP and let Marauders be a purely PvE ship

Then I'd like to see when the changes to Cov Ops happen so I can lead a fleet of them in glorious combat. Oh wait...

I'm still not a huge fan of the MJD bonus...

It's too niche in pve

It would be nice if they gave us an MJD and MWD bonus

You can fit both if you wanted to, but you'd lose a lot of fitting capability in doing so

Well, just the removal of cap penalty would be awesome

Oh, and the fact that they are so slow is what makes it a good option

I haven't been able to get onto Sisi yet, so, as regards my already excellently performing golem for nul-sec ratting on TQ, I am just wondering if anyone has figured out:

1. Why do these ship need to be changed?
2. Why do we need these ship to now be able to pvp (snigger!)?
3. In what situations can anyone envisage using the bastion module in cyno-happy-zone nul-sec?
4. In what situations can anyone envisage using a pvp fit maurder, bastion moudule fitted or not, in nul-sec?

Still w8ing for their new stats. Especially better range bonuses in bastion...


BTW. For those interested, single dread will tear apart bastion without problems, tested on golem with DCU, T2 Invus x2, x-large ASB + large ASB + boost amplifier, all overheated and Naglfar blap it within seconds...

Dependign on how many marauders you field its really worth to sacrifice a naglfar that wil have a lot of its cost covered by insurance.

A nagalfar can easily defeat 10 marauders in the field.. while costing 1/5th of that.

Ok. I will look forward to the changes to all industrial ships, mining barges, capital industrial ships and freighters for PvP.

Kronos needs atleast a 75/100 drone bay, its dps with rails, navy AM 4 navy magstabs + t2 RoF rig is 1009, thats 70 less than the paladin while actually having more cap issues.

And your "amazing" blaster fit just doesnt have the range for most pve solo situations to be worthwhile. so no. give it dronebay.


And do whatever bastion nerf you need to do to make them useful outside of Bastion.

You would actually fly a kronos in null? Ok... I'll be snipin in mah naga squadron while you sit 100km away being useless. ..

Dude you are the one EFTing. A continued tank without any improved dps is nearly irrelevant on most PVP scenarios.

haha you are wrong!
there is no such thing as enough firepower

How are you supposed to do pvp when you have no web bonus and are forced to use bastion for everything?

Everything will just burn out of your range and warp away,

The Kronos is a Gallente Boat. So would you please give it a125mbit dronebandwith? You're forced to use blasters anyway since rails are worse than blasters with null.

anyway you look kronos is crap. except that the ship looks beautiful. But yeah gallente need extra bandwidth for the crappy rail they have to use. give kronos like 200/125 like fleet typhoon.

Mega used to be 125/125, and it seems more like the hyperion these days. although on that note the navy mega has 125/175

These nerfs are NOT because of PVP.. they are there because of BASTIOn that is a compeltely PVE focused module (because in PVP those capabilities are useles).

THe only PVP buff was the MJD bonus.

No one is going to fly a billion ISK subcap hull in PvP when it has to be stationary for a minute to maximize bonuses.

Not touching the marauders DPS makes this rebalance useless. Marauders should be on par with the pirate ships DPS wise without any sort of siege mode. With the bastion mode DPS should logically increase.. At the very least give boats like the Vargur an extra low slot and maybe another one goes active when bastion mode is enabled. And nerfing the resists even outside of bastion mode is terrible.


ps can we have a fleet issue maelstrom?

The range that is irrelevant sicne you cannot move?

The Ewar immunity that is near irrelevant since you are less dangerous than a T1 battleship and therefore not gonna be the primary focus of the Ewar boats?

The super tnak that wil ljust make the rest of your fleet die before you,, because they have a full minute they do not need to worry of you runnign away?

Spoken by someone who has not paid for a hull in years.
The fact that a goon, especially you, are saying publicly that these changes are good, proves to me that they are really awful for the average player.

1- irrelevant to the situation, they are valid for any other ship.

2- No they will nto jamm you beceuse thier focus now is jamming logistics and other ewar and tertiarily battleships to reduce DPS. IF they can jam a normal Battleship they achieve same efficiency as jammign a marauder. So unless your fleet is 100% marauders.. its MEANINGLESS!

It really does not matter if I can over-tank NPC rats, when my DPS is so low I can't kill them as fast as any T1 BS.

Right..The fact that the drone bandwidth is cut by 2/3's is not a nerf in your world.

The fact that the dual web's are being nerfed 92% in effectiveness (yeah, speed of a dual webbed target is now 16 times faster) , that doesn't affect DPS either, huh?

And NO ONE will be taking out roaming gangs of these ships, because they are too damn slow. Unless of course, as I stated, you have a Titan or jump bridge network at your disposal.

I'm seeing them able to be used in almost every aspect of gameplay in fun ways. Without the need for a web bonus.

I've read somewhere that you will be doing T3 rebalance, is that true? If it is, god help us all..... Can't believe you are so low on imagination. I would like dev position or at least give community one thing to rebalance.

• we already have dreads, making smaller dreads is stupid
• bastion mode is all wrong atm
• marauders are meant to be great at pve, bastion should make them good at pvp too
• they are time consuming to train and expensive, give them something more creative

They cost a billion isk and everything they could be asked or expected to do, other ships will do better for less. To answer your question, that means everything.

I live in Wicked Creek. Come by for a visit, and we'll undock our "small" gang.

You may want to re-check their current align time.

I also get the strong feeling from this post that you haven't actually flown one on SiSi.

What about giving the MJD the ability to set the distance we want to jump in between of 10km to 100km to compensate the lower Speed of the marauders? Would be great in pve ;)

interesting how the high sec guy is saying the ship is useless in pvp due to cost...

well i have tested the ship and its only counter is dreads... and guess what you cant use dreads in high sec...

so really the marauder in bastion will be a beast for high sec pvp.

edit:

the only point i agree with dinsdale is the lower dps.

honestly i would like to see either an improved damage bonus on the ships... like the kronos getting a rate of fire over damage bonus.

or give a 10% damage bonus while in bastion mode.

welll tbh it did loose some dps due to loss of drones... thats a givin


moreover ships like hacs get much more dps then tech I crusiers... so i do not see that much logic is saying well it has same dps as a tech I bs.

honestly 10% damage bonus in bastion and that will make a world of difference.

that and make the range bonus not stack. or increase it if you want it to.

2) PvP: a gang of 20+ T3 and Commands will eat your tank instantly. Hell, they may even alpha you. Also a lone dread will just obliterate any number of marauders

Coz my T3 or command will get rr and marauder wont...? A dread wont be dropped on me? Man you clearly have no idea about wh warfare...

And yet the main attribute that was put on them intentionally upon release to explicitly make them PVE battleships - the low sensor strength - is kept.

No, instead of trolling you should read more carefully. The most people say:

• Decrease of applied damage
• over tanked cow
• reduction in high sec income per hour

there is no worthless, theyy will be used for certain situations like high chance of e war, but they will not be used for incursions. i make more isk/hour in 0.0. only the bigger incursions increase income compared to 0,0 and wh space, and there you can't take the marauder.

It is always funny to see that people drawing a imaginable line between pve and pvp while both stuff is based around the same mechanics in the end.

Pretty sure the Mach is next in line for the nerf bat...

Can't wait

- MJD usage is set as a bonus. Whenever I hear a guy talking about pvp, the bastion mode "may" have some usages in pvp, but they wouldn't do it with this price line since bastion mode literally means a suicide

How much is the Bastion module, btw?

I think I couldn't make that point very clear :P

I meant, "with the marauder's price tag, it would be suicide to get into bastion during pvp" , not the price of the bastion module ^.^

This.

Tested Kronos and Golem on lvl 5 missions and the energy towers sucked me dry no time flat. Bit pointless for the bastion at that point. This also leads to it being even more useless in PvP. Bastion up, get nueted, no more tank, die.

Neuts need to be reworked to be under EWar as opposed to it being categorized under engineering, but at the same time, wouldn't remote cap transfer work as well in theory? If not, then what's the damn point? I'll do some testing and post back.

All you have to do is get under their guns.
Hence the removal of web bonus....

Their weakness is weak tracking...
You can get a pirate bs under their guns and orbit to reduce tracking and tank the all day long..


Edit...
Not to mention they're immobile...
If you can't take them down, just leave... they're not going anywhere...

while happy to stand corrected, dose bastion fit into any?

The "transformation" is a joke.
At least for Vargur.

I greatly urge you guys to at least somkewhat revert back to the second iteration of changes. They'd make Marauders useful at something other than L4/L5 missions and getting killed seiged in a random spot it jumped to.

1K dps with conflag, that seems, well crap really, the extra range from bastion will increase its usefullness but that's still really really poor for a top flight hull with Max skills.

I was thinking of training up marauders since i got all BS's at V but if that's as good as it gets i don't think i'll bother wasting time maxing out a rank 10 skill.

Are you sure, my nightmare pushes 1k dps with tachs at max skills, seems very low for conflag.

And so it should considering the difference in price and training time.

no, actually it was a better stab at a compromise, for those who still use their web bonuses (granted it was stupid to slap the bonus on all 4 Marauders), and T2 resists were way superior for anything 'non' solo. You still had the range buffing effect of bastion too.

I get it that you don't make use of webs, that's great for you, but your shield tanking Megathron is a gimmick, nothing more, and really won't work at all with the warp acceleration changes coming in...

I agree with the additional slots.
The class is facing a huge nerf in effective damage, and additional slots will mitigate that, to a certain extent.

That being said, the web nerf now means a double-webbed target is now whizzing around 15 times faster than it was.
No amount of mid-slots will make up for that.

I like the ideal of having a sniping T2 BS but that should have been an added class, not destroying a perfectly working class to replace it with ****.

Easy enough to say when you are playing around with a grand total of 4,000 isk. Hope you enjoy the same level of "awesomeness" when its 2.5 billion on the line and blob fleets.

Remember the troll you are arguing with.
The guy is a goon FC, whose only small gang warfare is when he runs his high sec suicide Tornado fleets.

Also remember, he does not pay for ships.
goon line members get free ships, when fit to the doctrine, FC's get a whole lot more.

Yeah, but see...I could go out and buy a lamborghini and have loads of fun speeding...and of course totaling the vehicle is even more of an adrenaline rush; however, there is a big difference between stupidity and fun. Then again you strike me as the kinda of person that would go mining in an asteroid belt with a titan just for the hell of it cuz its fun. Doesn't make it any less stupid.

Right, it is another baltec running the goon megathron fleets.
That would explain your continued attempts at trolling.
You really are that disconnected from reality and your belief in others to read.

just use ignore button on him, he's a troll

Anyone who thinks this will make em viable for PVP is rather stupid. Why? 750+mil price tag in for that you get what? A ship that without a bastion mode will be less then it is now? ****** resists useless bonus's. Worst of all bastion mode does not add anything meaningful to the ship the resists and stuff are nice but falloff/optimal ? really?

If someone ever uses that kind of ship with bastion modes outside of highsec I'll be the first to throw dreads on it and watch em make nice explosions. 1 Minute is more then enough time to light a cyno and kill 2 of these per dread.. o7 A "pvp" ship exclusively for high-sec good fight fossi I expected more.

280 pages..

I think this proves quite definitively which player group is the loudest...

What about mid-size gangs? (ie: cruisers)

Question re: Bastion. Does it cycle continuously once you activate it?

100km every 70 seconds using MJD & Bastion. I say 70 because you have to wait for the MJD to activate also.
So.... you are going at.... 1429m/s.
A 100MN Machariel goes 1505m/s
A Machariel is able to dictate range BETTER than a Bastion using Marauder.
It also has superior damage (25% infact assuming BS 5).
And is able to actually adjust rather than being locked into situations. And can be remote repped.
And has 100 drone bandwidth making heavies/sentries practical as well as room for spare lights.

The Marauder.... Can be immune to Ewar, but gives up any chance of avoiding tackle by any means other than killing them. And can't use mobility to negate any kind of tackle transversal. It does have superior local reps, which give it a small niche role in tiny gang sizes, but it doesn't scale up at all and any kind of logi give just as much rep power.

The current Bastion mode is not workable. And the hull nerfs when not in Bastion mode mean the hull becomes useless. Even if they restore everything but the drone bay back to current TQ status, these ships STILL do not measure up. They do not have the meaningful DPS in or out of Bastion to be worth their price tag. Nor is their mobility any better than most other BS.

Show me a Marauder with 75.9km web before bonuses. In any situation where the Marauder can web the mach, the Mach can web & scram the Marauder.

Additionally all your arguments against active tank apply equally to the Marauders active tank. Though the ASB does of course not cap out. But that's a whole other story, and not one two of the marauders can make any use of anyway.

BTW, did they ever say when they were gonna start pirate BS rebalanced officially yet? (I assume not, but didn't know if I just missed it)

And then the Mach uses a Hyena also.
If you want to add other ships in, it works both ways as well.

The end result is that you are putting the Marauder into it's perfect jump/snipe scenario and the Mach is pretty much equalling it.
Yet this is supposed to be where the Marauders shine the best.
Now lets put the Marauder into the Machs other roles, and see how much it struggles. The answer is a huge amount.

This means the Marauder is not good enough to see significant use as it stands and they need to significantly strengthen the base hull outside of Bastion mode to get towards the Marauder being practical to use.

Scram you so you can't MJD... Thats what my Hyena will do. And web you so you are even slower than your already slow pace.
Yes, they are made for different jobs. But the Machariel is almost as good at the Marauders job as the Marauder is. While the Marauder sucks at the Machariels job. Meaning overall the Marauder is significantly a worse ship.

dude, you keep saying about using ew frigs and "dedicate frig killers" with your bastioned marauder... do you even think there is someone outhere that will go for your marauder instead of killing your support first?
you are bastioned, you can't go anywhere, ppl will just kill your support first... and then tell me again how will you point/web them so you can be able to kill them....

tell me again about you actually testing this ships on test server and don't speaking right our of your a**.
i don't even know why i'm wasting my time with you

i never sayid they should ravage s**t, all i'm saying is that bastion and this "rebalance" are actually nerfing this ship class for anything else except empire lvl 4s

if bringing your megathron to a frig gang is what you understand by " I get Battleships to do new and interesting things" then ...

nah, few peps showed they are very good at pvp. if you didn't saw those videos you never played eve : D

also they are the best ratting mashines becouse they salavage at the same time so best isk/hour with single ship : )

with vargur on angels you can make easy 70m/20min : >

hint: kronos is not the only "one" marauder out there

not really: a marauder in a guristas anom was one of the worst choices you could do; marauder main weakness is their poor sensor strength;
knowing that guristas racial ew is ecm, why will anyone bring a marauder close is beyond me

see marauder on dscan while your small gang is out, 1 dude reships into 8 rack capboosted neutageddon with scram, marauder is capless in 6 seconds, unless it a paladin then it takes 10 seconds from the second you land on him. You can even run a 1 vamp 7 rack neutageddon with scram and only add 3ish seconds to both totals. The second you see the transformation back to normal mode you scram, no mjding, your small gang mops up the rest of the frigs while you sit at 0 on the marauder cycling neuts as cap required. If he does MJD away, you just mjd right after him and reapply neuts and scram. He'll only get 30-90 cap back during your relock time.

and that's not even an amount neut vamp boosted hull, it's range. If you used a Bahl it's even faster. but why use a 1b hull when a 200m will do the same job just fine.

Yes it requires both sides to have a mix of ewar frigs, desi, and crusiers. But seriously the marauder is so weak to cap warfare as to be laughable.

The real killer for me is pretty much the price of it, and im sure existing marauder pilots wont mind the cost but those who havent trained into them will. Basically you have a battleship that is designed to tank and snipe...i cant even begin to wonder what CCP was smoking with that concept. You either tank or snipe you dont do both.

The Bastion Mod would be perfect for those who are CQ brawlers, but to be honest it is absolutely pointless in a sniping role. Again would be the MJD bonus. If you are sniping you need not warp in and MJD out 100km thats a bit redundant just flipping warp in at 100km

Overall you can take for instance a Naga, slap on some tracking computers with optimal range scripts and shoot. Granted in most cases that will be rails but as many have pointed out if a ship is burning toward you it has no transveral and goes instapop.
The question is why in the hell would I drop 2.5 billion isk spend 3 months to train into for instance a paladin when I can spend a little over 100 mil and train into a Naga in far less time and essentially do the same in terms of role and damage?

The only real benefit would be the MJD bonus because in a sniping role I definitely wouldnt want to tank it and have to be locked in place for 1 minute.

CCP can continue with their changes but imo they have seriously ****** up the role of marauders. I can't really see many players who havent trained into them actually training into them.

The Kronos is already used in PvP and has been since it came out, I don't understand why you continue to deny this.

To be fair I actually did get on SIS grab a pally and naga and fit them as i describe here and guess what the pally is slightly more dps...but the cost isnt worth 60-80 more dps.

Nonsense, the web bouns is fairly useful for a lot of stuff while the tank is completely useless for any proficient L4 pilot(because you don't need any kind of serious tank for L4) and the speed and and dps nerfs make them crap for nearly any other application.

Also rattlesnake is the cheapest pirate BS for a reason.

To bad we play on TQ instead of your magical pvp world

It is the least used hull in pvp and pve, because the huge tank is only useful for lazy people and a few minor niches and it is just to slow and clumsy in pvp.

I actually tested them on sissi and they are crap compared to what they are atm. The difference might be that I fly marauders since a couple of years and know how to utilize them properly.

Also FFA pvp has little to do with real pvp.

So a glass ship shouldnt matter as you will kill them before they get in range to hit you. PLUS you dont need the bastion mode to lock you down for 1 minute thus if you do feel as if you aren't going to survive you can warp unlike the marauder which ties your hands.

Ha it wont matter according to you you shouldnt take any damage.

Hope that helps, I will post the changes in the original thread .

Since you don't do a lot of pve and think a active tanking ship mjding around in incursion sites would not be hilarious bad(yes lets waste 4-5 slots on tank and be a lot slower than 11 dps + 1 logi setups and lose all the contests, brilliant idea), can you at least leave the old marauders intact by putting them back in as 2. class of marauders(I have no issue selling all my marauders and buying new hulls, it is still more acceptable then selling them all and consider marauder 5 as wasted SP), because quite frankly they are a lot better then the "new ones" for most pve and even pvp stuff.

Why? The broken ship got bastion and will never gets fixed(because nobody will really use it outside of AT and hand full of niches). I rather take my marauders back as they are, with CCP being unable to find devs that actually understand for what and how the hulls are used and are able to identify problems of each individual one and what to fix instead slapping useless gimmicks on them. It is the best possible outcome in my opinion.

To be quite frank I agree with Dinsdale here, you truly do not understand incursion mechanics, Im not sure if I am surprised or sad that a dev would make such a ludicrous statement. I would love to see how your internal testing can slow a tama down doing 3500 m/s without webs, more importantly I would love to see how your guns track that. You may as well throw them at the tamas for all the damn good they do. It certainly would cause more DPS than shooting them. Drones are your only source of DPS.

Furthermore your non-nonchalant attitude toward to needing logistics in incursions is even more of an insane statement. You do realize that said logistics provide tracking links which you cant receive because your in bloody bastion mode. I think you should re-evaluate your statement and start listening to player feedback instead of your own assumptions.

Finally I would argue with you that taking webs away to not cater to a specific group of individuals (inc runners) to turn the ship into specialized **** for only a small group of people is only shifting WHO you are indeed catering too and to be honest that bit I do find rather offensive. I would expect better knowledge of game mechanics from a dev and certainly a better sense of be quite respectable to your player base.

It doesn't, they are still much more expensive than standart BSs while not really getting a good pvp benefit. It still leaves them very situational at best.

The ships have been made worse for any kind of niche they where good in, have not a single one of her actual problems addressed and get completely build around one of the most useless niches in eve(stupid strong active tanking with mjd bonus for comedy reasons) while giving them drawbacks that make them overall pointless for anything else. It is not min/max it is common sense, from somebody that actually flown the hulls in question.

Are you getting paid by CCP by the line, or by the post?

They are something different and new so of course they will be fun most new things are but once time goes by that newness wears off and they will return to ****.

Also my experience says me that it is stupid to use a 1B isk hull where a lot cheaper one would do the same thing better in a fleet fight(by getting RR, being able to reposition more quicker, warp out, having lots of people that can fly them)

and in solo pvp(by not having a "I have a massive active tank that you can't beak written all over it").

If we weren't listening to player feedback, we wouldn't have modified the hulls to un-nerf them, or haven't spent the time to read through this thread or discussed Marauders for hours with the other Devs. We do respect your opinion, but Devs cannot please everyone in the community when rebalancing things in a live MMO. That's just the sad truth that we have to live with.

Now, we are not saying we are guaranteed 100% future-proof right regarding the previous statement. We said internal play testing showed us there were other ways for them in Incursions - we are willing to keep an open mind and openly admit we were wrong if those aren't used at all in Incursions when they go live. After all, we have been wrong before.

If the previous post was deemed offensive to the Incursion community, we do apologize and will tweak it in consequence. However, if they need to be further tweaked for Incursions, it will be after we can see some more hard live data on how they actually fare.

Kronos is 5ms faster than the Paladin, but Paladin has less mass? what the duck?

Kronos still cant use its original 3 sentries, I can use 2 sentries or 5 medium drones(does ANYONE use medium drones for PVE? REALLY? SERIOUSLY?!?!?!?!?!?!) Paladin is still superior.

Torp Golem is still garbage.

Vargur is still ass. Mach with 4 bouncers that moves at lightspeed when needed or an immobile crap-dps Vargur? HMM THOUGH ONE!

What exactly did you accomplish here? sort of kinda nothing.

I have always had lvl 4s as my ISK income in this game. From what Ive gathered youve also done some PVE.

But from the looks of it you really dont have a clue on how you should balance things. Give Kronos back its 3 sentries.

Fix Vargur somehow as you dont want to make Bastion Mode give it any falloff whatsoever so its stuck at 1163 dps with 75km falloff and 4km optimal, while stationary. this is just sad.

Golem and torps is the same issue.

If you want them to rely on their "LOL MAIN WEPPENS" Atleast make them do some sort of damage.

Still garbage outside of bastion. "wannabe" t2 resists. less EHP than faction/pirate BS (Which is kinda fine, if they had some resists to make up for overall less EHP, but its miniscule.)

TL;DR

If you arent running "insert x faction - Angels"

Paladin is great.

Kronos SUCKS

Golem sucks more

And Vargur sucks the most.

Good job. (irony)

Not exactly. As a mission runner I can tell you that I don't use webs on my Kronos, whether it's Railguns or Blasters fit. There are just better uses for that mid slot and I'll gladly trade this bonus for those coming with Rubicon.

And the length of the thread indicates only that so many people have strong, if contradictory, opinions of this ship class. Or rather, that some people are such opinionated. This way or another, it means that ANY balance update will **** someone.

I have one question.

In reguards to no t2 resists on the hull, and the belief that these ships suck outside of bastion...

Would it be possible to allow the base hull rep/boost bonus to also effect incoming logistics?

I.E. - Golem - 7.5% bonus to local shield boosts and incoming shield logistics per level


This wouldn't effect bastion mode, cause bastion still can't receive logistics.
This bonus would focus solely on fleets without using bastion..

I'm pretty sure this wouldn't be OP.. If it was, then it would be OP for them to have the local bonus per level anyway..

The problem with incursions is that they are designed so you have to fly a battleship and try to hit frigs doing 3km/s ....
its not real pvp in any sense of the word incursions are totally backwards .. they are broken and need fixing really don't blame Ytterbium for not catering to a broken system

Any reason why the vargur has the highest mass of all these ships? Its tech 2 yeah, its still minmatar tech 2. Slightly less rust. Why is it heavier then amarr and caldari bricks?

Do you seriously think that people will immobilize themselves for one minute cycles, in low sec (where the L5's are)? In a multi-billion ISK ship, that has minimal defences against super-fast interceptors?

PvE is ridiculously easy already, why are CCP making it easier?

Wow, you are a one-man propaganda team.
I would drop a Nyx into an anom too, if I was living in goon space, with intel channels telling me what is happening 20 jumps out, and I was far out of jump range of any hot drop.

But of course, in NPC null, that tactic of dropping a Nyx into an anom would be something that gets pilots kicked from corps.

True dat. However if my memory serves me right, it has been upgraded to threadnaught since day one.

has CCP spoken about cap warfare immunity?

This is a major weak point of Marauders.

Is it intended, or since they can't receive reps/cap, are y'all considering cap warfare immunity?

Rant.

Big words for somebody that doesn't know how and what the Kronos did better then the Vindi so far. Also it is you that wants to turn the Kronos into something super niche and not useful, all things considered I rather would prefer it stays as it is.

Yup - as for Vargur - its a crying shame. The Kronos and Vargur dps is laughable.

Plus, I created threads on the test feedback forum and mission forum about getting people together to test.
I have tested with less than optimal quantities, and that alone showed how bad these changes are.

You have been hoping for an useles ship that basically there is no reason to use over a T1 Battleship in PVP since they have less dps and that is worse in PVE than they used to be? Again because PVE is about making money and making money is about having BARELY enough tank and a LOT of dps?