1. Capital Void Bombs

A. For wormhole PvP, 4000 explosion radius is too much. Most capitals are 3000m long. As it stands you need about 10 hits to neut out an archon, which is more then 1 bombing run. And you cant target paint them. And you cant hit capitals while they are not triaged and moving. Seems you dont wish the bomb to be used in wormholes?

B. AoE 1 meter - most triaged capitals still drift a few meters per second for a minute, and can be bumped slightly all the time. Its not really nice to have to wait and wait for the capital to stop drifting. maybe AoE range of 500m is more appropriate, or make this thing not a bomb but some kind of super-torpedo that has no AoE but does not miss either. Actually super-neut torpedoes would be more interesting then capital void bombs :)

But anyways, I can allready see that as soon as these bombs come out, enemy fleet will bump their own archon a bit.

2. Decloaking

This is a massive nerf to all cloaked ships. I am not talking about bombers, I am talking about recons and T3s we use in wormholes. I would be fine with it if I could see cloaked fleet members nearby, but otherwise, no.

I would ask that you hold off on this nerf until you implement ability for fleet members to see each other cloaked first.

After some thoughts - this will heavily impact dreads.
While in siege they are just big sitting ducks.
Two of them will be hit the most :
- moros
- revelation

NO CAP:
- unable to jump out
- unable to fire.

Can we get some boost to those dreads, especially revelation?
Can we make all dreadnoughts similar?
No cap usage for capital guns?

Cloakies decloaking other cloakies: This means that only mutliboxers will be able to coordinate bombing correctly, you are buffing mutliboxers which are seen as a problem by many and nerfing fleets of mutliple people. Maybe this is intentional.

Capital void bombs: You are introducing a mechanic that has no viable counter, there is no way for a triaged Carrier or sieged Dread to do anything against this. Normal neuts can be dealt with by applying EWAR or damage to them but this has no counter. I don't think this is fun gameplay and such mechanics should be in the game.

ISBoxer was never required to pull off bombing runs prior to the change in 2012. It will not be required now. Learn to organize, learn to voice comms, learn to use the features of the game client, and learn to research and read. Everything you ever wanted to know about planning and executing a bombing run under these "new" circumstances is available to be absorbed, because it has all been done before.

So you either sacrifice two highslots on the Carrier (why are you even bringing one then?) or you have to position ships around it in all directions (you don't know where the bombs will come from). This would require a lot of ships and is not really feasible, especially in wspace.

Getting shot happens. That's part of EVE.

People in this thread are behaving as if ISBoxer is the only way these bombing runs happen, and that's a complete fabrication. Can it be more precise? Surely. Is it the only way? No.

With only two reps there is not much reason to bring a carrier, T2 Logi will be better in every way. You also won't refit quick enough when the bombs are already flying. And you only get one chance.
Finally, bringing two carriers is not even an option most of the time in wspace, especially for smaller entities and after it is made much harder to extract after the jump drive changes.

Then use ISBoxer. Or get over it.

Funny observations of the last weeks:

We say Ishtar op!

CCP comes:
Nerf missiles!

We say bombs too strong!

CCP comes:
Nerf cloaks!

Got me thinking, if we can determine the right pattern here we could ask for the right nerf or buff to occure. I am usually very observant and good at this but this pattern still eludes me..

Oh, and while we're at it, since the thread is about 50% on this topic anyway.

Ban ISBoxer. Or barring such decisive action, at least dredge up the fortitude to address it, make a statement regarding it's use. Knock off the tiptoeing around the issue, and address the elephant in the room once and for all.

Heck, if the truth of the matter is that you just can't tell whether someone is using it or not, just admit it. Many of us suspect such a thing anyway.

I was really looking forward to seeing more triage carriers used with 20-50 man gangs, but with ONE bomber being able to nuke 15k cap it's no longer a viable tactic.

[Q] Would you consider adding void bomb resists to cap batteries and maybe adding capital size cap batteries?

You read in my mind, good job.

Hardcore players need contents to show their eliteness and flatter their ego.

By the way, im getting laid multiple times by week.

Fozzie, you want to know why people are mad about this? Because no one was asking for these changes. We want ishtars/drones online to come to an end. We want sov changes and force projection changes. We want isboxer to go away. We want HAC and battleship buffs to make them more viable again. I know CCP is addressing some of this, but please tell us when was there a public outcry that bombers had to be nerfed like this?

Some of these people are talking about how easy it is to bomb, but its really not. To actually get 30 people to coordinate and set up for a bomb takes a like of time and effort...and it's not a sure thing, it's very easy for bombing runs to go wrong. A couple weeks ago that Abbadon fleet that got wiped out by DBRB's gang was all over reddit and en24. Why? Because it doesn't happen every day. It was pure luck of the draw and something amazing happened.

The extra 2 seconds is a long time for bombs while it is currently still possible even now for lots of fleets to warp before they detonate. The slower align time is a huge nerf because whether you have 2k or 4k ehp, it's not going to make a difference when getting shot at. The cloaking thing is self-explanatory and is a huge nerf to all cloaked ships. Bombers are not OP. These are bad changes.

I still think it is too complicated.

A bomb is supposed to be AoE, its its not AoE, might as well use a special torpedo with a long cooldown. Why introduce this needless complexity of having to aim a non-AoE weapon manually...?

sadly this would be abused by spies in fleet guiding decloaking 'ceptors through the pack


Yes, I am following this and collecting feedback

Yes, I have ties with Bombers Bar and Spectre fleet

Yes, I think it is a bit much though I doubt it will 'kill the lifestyle' because players are too damn stubborn to die that easily

I am askign for what are the top two changes you would like dialed back or modified? If you don't want to say it here, feel free to send me an evemail

m

Mike, the changes are good overall, but the best idea here was the one about making sig radius less of a factor for bombs so that there is not a disparity in their effect on shield ships vs. armor ships. Bombers drive armor doctrines. While a nerf to bombers in any form will help shield ships, specifically addressing the issue of bombers being so effective against shield ships is something that needs to be addressed.

Otherwise, I like the changes as they are from the decloaking to the reduced maneuverability along with the buffs to other areas.

Why would you roll back the changes that were made to cloaking? That is a step backwards in terms of game design is it not?

The players define the "meta" based on the changes that CCP make to the game. Not the other way around.

Now that I think about the capital neut bombs, I'm not sure they're the greatest idea ever. I mean, Triage and Sieged capitals are going to be essentially screwed as they can receive no remote assistance for the entirety of the cycle. You can possibly expect for the meta to shift towards buffer-tanked Naglfars and Phoenixes due to their capless weapons with dreads, while for carriers, Slowcats and the like remain quite healthy due to capchaining and become even more prevalent as the alternatives get nerfed even harder into the ground.

On paper it should be feasible to protect them somewhat with smartbomb but in practise it gives an easy mode way to screw over a single triage carrier - which is really not a good idea IMO.

When doing a fleet warp, please keep the positions of all the members in the fleet relative to each others identical than what it was at the beginning of the warp, rather than making all of them warp randomly within a 2km bubble at the warp out point.

This is exactly what I meant earlier. For a larger entity like SSC having dedicated smartbombers or multiple carriers might be feasible but for smaller entities it isn't. They will simply lose one more option to have a chance against larger numbers.

For us on the other hand it could mean that we a guaranteed to win all fights against smaller entites relying on capitals because we can just bring a couple bombers (ideally multiboxed by a single person) and guarantee neuting out their carrier without risking expensive Bhaalgorns and such.

This is a good idea.

Yes, you guys might not be able to warp down to a target at 30km and remained cloaked, and then pre-align your ships before decloaking and bombing.

The horror.

Or actually welcome to how every bombing run worked before the cloak changes.

A base Archon has 65k cap and a 2.9k sig radius . Just that alone requires 7 bombers to cap out. At base cap assuming that the sig radius/explosion radius ratio for neut application is what I think it is. Even if it was doing full cap drain that's still 5 bombers unless I'm missing something that's not an inconsequential number of pilots to devote to the task...

Right. Thanks. I don't have EFT in front of me to see what the total cap might be on a typical carrier pilot but the tone of the criticism was making it seem like a less than full wave of bombers was going to decimate a cap fielded by a smaller group. If you're dropping a carrier on a group that can *also* send a wave of 7 bombers at you, maybe you made a bad decision to being with because if those pilots where in other ships, you'd probably be screwed too.

Or actually, welcome to admitting to not having the scope to realize the cloaking change affects more than bombers.

Will the new anti-capital void bomb collide with other objects in space or will it just keep travelling the same direction it was fired until it detonates? I think it would be frustrating as hell to see your bomb bounce off your target and explode meters out of range. Also if collidable it would become a viable tactic for a subcapital to ram and deflect bombs off course.

The only other thing I'm left wondering is if you had a perfect aim and a marauder stuck in bastion mode, you could really ruin their day.

The decloaking mechanic was there before, and there was plenty of successful bombing going on.

This is probably one of the first times in recent memory where I just could not see why a change was made to the game. I'm sitting here in complete disappointment at just how bad the majority of these ideas are. I can't say I completely blame you because covops and bombing are an extremely niche play style that many players do not participate in and less even excel at it. While the majority of ships all balance around the idea of dps, mobility and tank, cov ops factors in the mental game more so than any other ship.

There are some staggering bad misconceptions expressed within the thread which I have read through most of but I want to underline and debunk a few because I believe CCP is putting these changes in out of a misunderstanding mostly backed by said misconceptions. Bombers as they are now are perhaps one of the most balanced ships in the game. The only thing I would have done is to add a touch more fitting and mobility to the Nemesis. Bombers are devastating but their paper thin tank allows them to be easily counterable which I will detail.

Furthermore bombers are not only almost completely balanced, but also act as a balancing factor in Eve. They are one of the few ships that curb the N+1 problem. Bring 10,000 ships against me? As long as they are within the radius of the bomb blast, they all die the same. Bombers/cov ops are one of the few ways the "little guy" can stand up to the big powers.

Now some of the bad reasons FOR the changes:

ISBoxing: Although CCP won't say this directly, it seems to be an almost universal opinion here that curbing ISboxing bombers is one of the main reasons for some of these changes. As explained, even by posterchild ISboxer bomber wheniminspace, as well as others, this penalizes individual bomber pilots much more than it does ISboxers. Want to deal with ISboxer? Ban it directly.

No more Shield Battleships: This was spoken by a few people some of which should clearly know better. The main reason for armor bs doctrine dominance is due to the popularity of Archon/Armor triage carriers. NOT because of bombers. Shield BS doctrines were popular long after the cloak changes were made in 2012. Certain groups preferred armor, others shield. PL took over Delve as part of the HBC using Rail Rohks.

No counters?: A few people say there are no counters to bombing runs. Anyone remember insta lock arty canes? I know TEST was running with a good twenty or so in every major fleet. These pilots would have an overview tab that would show bombers and only bombers. The moment something appeared on their overview it was locked and popped. Bombs don't do damage if your bomber dies before it detonates. You can also use frigates such as the combat ceptors or pirate frigs to catch bombers. Not every bombing run is a success. Bubbles already are a strong counter to them as well as a defensive bubble will pull in the bombers and either put them out of place or decloak them.


Bombers are suppose to be nimble evasive frigates designed to provide a counter to the N+1 problem. Making them slower, making them uncloak one another (which was said to be a glitch) and messing with their bomb damage is completely pointless and limits player interaction. Now bombers will only be on grid for the moment it takes them to drop their bomb rather than 150+ away on grid setting up for a run. I urge CCP to reconsider these changes, even scrap the majority of it all together.

The nerf to cloaking is SOLELY to counter the ISBoxing bomber squads. SOLELY this. And therefore, it's not getting reversed because of whining.

The anti-capital bomb with an AOE of 1m. Dude. Fozzie. Mate. How are you supposed to hit anything with this?

lets do a thought game. I am in a Hound with a Cap Void Bomb. I am burning in from 50km away aligned toward my target, who is in triage/siege, blah blah. My bomb has a range of 30,000 +/- 1m. my ship has a speed, for argument's sakes, of 300m/s. I must therefore launch my bomb EXACTLY 30,000m away ffrom my foe!

From 30km away if you launch it 1/300th of a second late or early, you miss.

OH BUT WAT IS DIS?

The server tick is 1 second! So does it launch on the server tick, or does the server (plus/minus 8-200m/s lag for Interwebs) calculate it on the actual milllisecond you press the key?

Given the reaction time of the human being is 1/30th of a second, and you have 200ms lag, you have precisely ZERO chance of landing a bomb within <1m of anything at 30km range. Hurr durr!

OK, so given a capital is a big ship, are we now saying that the bomb lands inside the foe? Or what?

TL;DR 1,000m AEO for bombs, minimum, to make them practical.

True, but eve is supposed to be how to say it, feeling of exploration right ? When you go out there, and a dude logs in aft DT, sits at SS cloaked just to fuckup the owners day from DT to DT just because its the third alt on the second account since he doesnt use the main toon on that account for that amount of time is not exactly the feeling of unexplored space should be.

Its not like its unexplored anymore, but being able to DT-DT cloak minimized not active screen isnt the type of gameplay we want. Better to log off in that case. hence the 1h timer.

I dont complain about the cloaky camper, by all means, cloak and camp and scout. but that toon and player should atleast be an active one, not a minimized 23h one.

[quote=PotatoOverdose]
Any chance of seeing more "interesting" bomb types along these lines? Something like this, for example:

Explosion Radius: 4000
Thermal Damage: 20,000
Flight Time: 15s
Velocity: 2000m/s
AoE Range: One Meter

So a single target munition that has to be aimed and actually hit it's target, but has a relatively high damage to compensate. I'm thinking something like an "armor piercing" round (or bomb) compared to all of the "high explosive" rounds we have now.

Potato thank you,

you just gave me an idea about bombs in general!

Collision charges!

They effect only one target like those neut-bombs but only on impact. So girls and boys make sure you aim those things right or there is no explosion to watch

at this rate of nerf incoming, we should finish 2015 (yes next year) with all ship like 1HP and only civilian modules?

as said before, 100 bombs will self annihilate

but wing after wing. . . we will darken the skies with our bombers---and you will DIE in the shade

That aside, may I ask if there are any more things I should add to my summary?

m

Nice graphic, the only issue I have with it is when do they cloak? If (btw has this little gem been confirmed?) they can be decloaked in warp if they are in the same warp bubble would they all have to space out ahead of time or would they cycle in?

m

This.

Caps need some defence from void bombs otherwise thes bombs are going to be hugely overpowered... caps are aleready rapidly becoming the weakest class of ships in the game; the can't jump far, can't jump a gate if a HIC is around, can't defend themselves against sub caps...

have you ever used defender missiles? do you actually know how they work?
missiles =! bombs


not saying im happy with those changes though

It will only affect W-space if its is deemed worth sacrificing a vital pilot for the bomber. That being said capacitor warfare in Wspace is extremely powerful and this bomb may be overpowered in that regard. CCP needs to look at this before the release

That being said CCP don't care about Wspace so who knows what they will do

Well I am looking at Dreads mainly. The meta has moved to shield dreads meaning their capacitor is life..... and these bombs take that away in one run.

Also it seems CCP want us to use the frig holes more..........

Edit: Just checked. That just over 2 bhaal's of neuting alpha in one bomb.... thats insanely powerful in fact thats overpowered....goodbye triage and siege in wspace

RIP bombing.

Anti capital bomb will be useless against anyone who brings more than one smartbomb in their fleet...

But hey at least solo hunters get a hp boost. If only they hadn't been nerfed by rats preferentially shooting them that might be usefull.

ok, you automatically lose a third of your capping to 2 smartbombs, 2/3rds to 4 smartbombs and any number of bombers will be countered by 6 smartbombs or 1 bomber in position to defensively bomb its own caps.

Hi CCP Fozzie.

After a couple of days of thinking about the changes i've come to the conclusion that they are abit overkill, even for a bomber hater like me. My main concerns are the sig + align nerfs, and the 12 second bomb time.

12 second bombs

I realise this was implemented because you want to get some team work between bubblers, tacklers and bombers. I usually fly a bubbler and there fleets are a nightmare to fly against, they have good tracking and usually run with recons and kite out away from fleets. The result is that any tackler that gets within 40km of them stands out like a sore thumb and is melted. I have in the past flown bubblers with combat probes to combat these kind of fleets, however bubbles are destroyed by 1 bomb leaving HICs are the only really. And HICs, with their bubble up, are prime targets and melted in fleet fights. As a result i strongly believe that bomb runs on cruiser sized line ships are now impossible with the ample time to warp off.

Sig radius and align time.

Bombers are really hard to catch, at the moment they spend prehaps 5 seconds on field and are gone. It takes a bit of luck or a bomber FC without a bubblers tab to destroy an entire wing. Your other 'Counter' alternatives are insta-lock alpha based alternatives and fast lock inties, for which bombers fit 1 WCS. However the 1/3 nerf to sig radius and extra second align combined are pretty ridiculous, now HACs and Tech 3 cruisers will be able to lock and shoot bombers, considering that perfect warpouts are no longer existant, which is kind of really dumb, considering the move away from battleships towards these cruiser sized hulls.

That's what i think was done wrong with the proposed changes. Nerfing bombers damage application and survivability so hard is a receipe for disaster, bomber wings will be largely ineffective in large fights and if they do go in for a bomb run then they can expect to lose half their wing.

---

Proposed changes to the changes

So like everyone in the world at the moment, ive got a few thoughts on how these could be improved.

1. Turn defender missiles into anti bomb missiles.

Changes the code, or just make a new 'anti bomb' missile that targets the closest bomb. To stop them hard countering bombers they should only be allowed to attempt to shoot that first closest missile. Ie. Everyone launches their anti-bomb missiles at once, they kill 1 bomb, however if launched over say 9 seconds they can get prehaps 3 bombs. I figure maybe 10k speed or so to limit the damage to bombs to at max 3 bombs per a 7 wave bomb run. This allows players to punish lazy bombers operating by bombing 1 squad at a time and incentivises people to co-ordinate bomber wings to deliver payloads at the same time to maximise damage (which also increases the chance of a bomber squad decloaking next to a sabre :p ). Also, defender missiles worth using and not wasted SP. Reddit seemed to show strong support the idea of defender missiles -> work against bombs.

2. Revert the bomb timers to 10 seconds.
.

I am not in favorable of targetable bombs, for me that's a total counter that requires very little effort, and it's not worth bombing if your effect on the battle is zero and you don't have a chance to get on some kills, and by extension bombers would be worthless, which isn't balanced or fun.


Ty for feedback, it's appreciated :)

Players being drunk or having poor typing skills though, really? So we're going to account for people who are suffering from a self inflicted impairment now? And poor typing, we're not talking about transcribing a dissertation on particle physics, we're talking about say a 6-12 character string. Even the worst "hunt and peck" typist can handle that.

It looks at EVE not everything else on your computer.

Lets compare bombers to destroyers:
Similar HP? Yes.
Similar sig radius? Yes.
Similar powergrid? Yes.
Similar velocity? Yes.
Similar align time? Yes.
Similar mass? Yes.
Similar damage output? Yes.
Similar warp speed? Finally yes.

Conclusion: Stealth Bombers are destroyers, not frigates.

LOL...the thread has been derailed to one single thought now and everyone echoing it, bombs is the main reason of we don't fly many viable doctrine ships/fits in nullsec..amusing..