Balancing around cost/price is utterly stupid. See titans for a good example.

I have to respectfully disagree that it's "utterly stupid".

I agree that it's sub-optimal, and for people in a large, well-organised fleet cost is less important (since you expect to win) than people who are roaming.

It seems to me that what the OP is trying to suggest is that CCP builds in some automatic balancing features to the game, which would give rise to more player choice.

As an extreme example, please consider a scenario in which 2 people want to go on a roam (i know, I know) and they need to choose a ship.

Let's imagine that ishtars are so popular that they cost 1Bn isk at this point, and that sacrileges and (say) hurricanes cost ~80m.

Is there tangible utility in risking 2Bn for a fun roam? Does it give you 10x the probability of survival and 10x the kills?

I would suggest (having flown all these ships in combat), probably not. The sac and cane are probably a more sensible choice for most people under these circumstances.

That's a fair (if tangential) question about implementation details, not about the general principle of building in some incentive to diversify vehicle selection and fitting choices (which has a real-world parallel).

I think your points have merit.

See my preferred solution above - allow player corp innovation paths and a truly competitive industry in ship research and production. Then it's self-levelling (and awesome!)

Except any corp starting alter is a a huge disadvantage just because he started later. There is already enough advantage to being a long established group. We don't need to give a bigger edge to it.

I think this is a reasonable idea - it makes an attempt to model the real world.

Balancing around cost/price is utterly stupid. See titans for a good example.

Then I can re-process my ships I already own since you change the mat cost of the ship itself and inflate it as big as needed for people to reduce the usage? Remember there is no way to know a ship was produced before the price was scaled since repackaging it reset it's item id in the database.

If ship are not being used, their parameters are bad and need to be changed. If a ship is ******, no amount of extra prices on the most powerful one will make others use the bad one. They will all flip down the the next big thing until the "top" one comes back to non stupid market prices.

CCP tried balance by bp needs. It was called tiericide. And it did not work imo. Long ago It wasn't the bp costs of lolrox vs. drake that made 14 inch ***** suck.

You also run the risk of market havoc. Make 100's of ships ships pre change you know are fotm....sell them after. Same ship, higher price...isk for nothing really.

Ishtar 30 mil more....is still a drop/assist sentry and fly way ride. It will die less than an in your face brawler. 30 mil more (or more) justified by the fact it dies less as result of this.

all this would do is confuse new players trying to get into industry since their BPs keep changing
-1

Industry boils down to pure spreadsheets and process optimisation with little opportunity for a more entrepreneurial approach. This opens up enormous opportunities for speculative industrialists who try to predict, or even manipulate, ship production costs into the future.

you do know if CCP nerfs one thing, the only thing that'll happen is another will become the new meta, thus we'll be back to square one again.

This is exactly what the idea is supposed to help. This would encourage shifting metas, or at least creative use of a dominant ship's peers to counter it rather than relying on CCP alone.

I've been involved in real life mining/markets/logistics for years. My understanding might not be as complete as guys like Ejyog but to me this would promote a healthier market climate, healthier gameplay and give more reasons to concentrate your empires power near its edges not its centres.

that would be great if ccp didn't just change industry with the goal to be more new player friendly

I just don't think that increasing the cost of ships just because they happen to be OP is any kind of good game mechanic.

The the problem with this reasoning is the assumption that a moderate increase in price would prevent people from flying the most effective ship for a situation.

What you have here is a ham handed hack that attempts unsuccessfully to force people to use inefficient choices through making the more efficent ones more expensive.

What actually happens is that one side pays 30% more for the efficient fleet setup, the other side brings an inefficient fleet setup, and the first side wrecks the second, taking far fewer overall losses.

..., making the Ishtar cost 400mil because it's OP is only going to hurt the solo and small gang people who fly it (where it isn't so OP, when used in small scale).

CCP just needs to balance things more actively. How about instead of adding stupid crap like T3s every few patches, they do balance updates ever 2 weeks? Anyone?

What actually happens is that one side pays 30% more for the efficient fleet setup, the other side brings an inefficient fleet setup, and the first side wrecks the second, taking far fewer overall losses.

First, I am not for any game that creates skills or tools that are all identical excerpt for the graphic and sound used. you might as well give everyone exactly the same ships all the time.

Second, ships have different uses in PVP so are very situational in the frequency of their useage. If game play should change in the future the useage may change.. Given the changing nature of player habits, it doesn't seem like a good idea to have a flexible balance system.

Third, I don't believe in balance. It's distruptive to game play, to lore, and to any historic measure of strength.

Fourth, balance is an illusion. You can never balance unequivelent things perfectly. This is just the way it is.. and trying to perfect balance is an exercise in maddeness. Better to let the players discover strengths and weaknesses and rely on them.

Fifth, your method seems like it could be abused (exploited). Large crews could fly something they wish to get nerf deliberately and repeatedly previsous to an engagement where they use ships those nerfed ships may best counter.

Sixth, I believe in a free market. Prices should never be regulated by any unnatural mechanic.

ooks at supers, looks back at OP, HAHAHAHAHAHA....

GǪno reason for costs to increase just because volume of use for a given hull increases.

I agree there is little lore justification for this. I think diversity is more important than lore. IGÇÖm sure a way could be found GÇô just look at the Entosis link.

WHAT

WHAT THE HELL

ARE YOU SERIOUS

ITS NOT A MATTER OF LORE: ITS ABOUT GAME BALANCE AND PRACTICALITY AND YOUR SUGGESTION IS AN INSULT TO EVERY PERSON WHO WORKS THEIR ASS OFF IN THIS GAME. You need to lay of the DRUGS and get back in touch with reality. Your suggestion is so game-breakingly unfair and ridiculous I am astounded that you even managed to conceptualise it in the first place and it yanks on heart strings that there are idiots on planet who might agree with you

what next? Some arbitrary tax on being taxed on taxable income???? because that's the slippery slope this kind of degenerative and backwards thinking is going to take us.

The problem with ishtars is that they're OVERPOWERED when using SENTRIES. This has everything to do with poor design choices for just ONE ship and nothing to do with penalising players for using one type of ship "too much".

What else? Oh yeah, what about the ships that are actually balanced and see common use because they're good at solo or good for fleets or logi or whatever the **** else that will get arbitrarily made more expensive because it sees common use.

WHAT

The existence of ship stockpiles makes this meaningless.

What about pre-existing BPC? Say, I have a nice stock of Ishtar, Zealot, Muninn, Deimos, Rook, Curse, Jaguar etc. BPCs: would they be adjusted every time the system detects overusage of a ship?

Maybe you should search for the term, "Ishtars online".

NO

don't you dare sass me on ishtars

I have done nothing but strive to see the game brought to balance and that meaningful choices be opened up to players based on ship performance not cost

I will not be dragged down to this lower level of anti-intellectual dialog through the insinuation that I am ignorant to the workings of the current meta and of the future meta - I'm already doing it. I've been doing it for years. I am currently in the CFC, one of the biggest abusers of rail-tengu and shield ishtar fleets if not the biggest in the whole game.

Your solution to the problem I do NOT agree with. At all. Period.

The solution to better balance is through modifying the resources in the game. Lowering them enough so that having gigantic fleets of supers is simply unsustainable and that titans stop being some laughable "end game goal" peddled to the newbies.

Your suggested approach of limiting resources would not help diversity at all. Diversity would not change, just the total number of ships. Or, more likely, the cost of those ships. This is a suggestion to help increase diversity within a class.

What if there was a balance factor applied to hull production cost and time if that ship was used in PvP significantly more than its peers (i.e. within a class)?

The Problem

CCP does not have a great history when it comes to balancing overpowered ships in a timely manner. Things have to get really out of hand before they are corrected and this leads to stale, boring metas dominated by specific hulls. You all know what I mean. It would be good to increase diversity of hull use, even if this is just within classes, meaning that single hull types would be less likely to become absurdly dominant.

Assumptions

1. Diversity in ships is good.
2. Lack of diversity in ship types is bad.
3. Cost is generally a dangerous balancing tool but can be useful to shift cost/benefit balance in certain scenarios.

Solutions

1. CCP gets better, or at least faster, at balancing. This will happen Soon.
2. Something else.

CCP has usage stats for each hull and, I think, this can be broken down by PvP and PvE use. This means the distribution of use within each ship class can be determined. For example, assume that the usage distribution in the Attack Frigates class in PvP is:

Atron = 29%
Condor = 50%
Executioner = 16%
Slasher = 5% (note that I donGÇÖt know/care what the actual figures are)

The poor Slasher is clearly rubbish relative to the other frigates whereas the Condor is overused for disgraceful kite-scrubbing. While such a usage pattern would be a clear indication to CCP that a balance pass was needed it will probably take them another three years to get around to it. Until then, enter the Balance Factor to keep the Condor menace in check.

The Balance Factor is a ME and/or TE multiplier based on the PvP usage stats within a class. If a ship is consistently used much more in PvP than an average distribution within the class would predict then the ME and/or TE stats will be nerfed automagically during production. Such usage stats could be calculated as a weekly average or whatever makes most sense.

Using the above example, an average distribution across the class of four ships would obviously be 25% each. By the simplest, linear approach the Atron at 29% is given a Balance Factor of 16% (29/25 = 1.16), while the Condor at 50% is given a Balance Factor of 2.00 (50/25 = 2). This means that their ME and/or TE are multiplied by the current Balance Factor at the time the production run is submitted. The Atron base materials could multiplied by 1.16 (16% more minerals to build) while the Condor would multiplied by 2 (double the minerals).

In the above example the maximum multiplier would be 4. This could be tweaked. The shape of the curve to the maximum multiplier could be logarithmic rather than linear such that minor distribution biases would be virtually unnoticeable but be punished increasingly heavily as bias increases.

Ships below the line (Executioner and Slasher above) do not get a ME discount because reprocessing could start to create minerals. Which is bad. Reprocessing for all hulls would be unaffected so even though the overused ships require more materials they do not return more materials when reprocessed.

Objections

Objection 1: Just nerf the Ishtar already and everything will be fine. Everything will be fine until the new dominant ship becomes clear and everyone trains into it. This will take a few months and then the Gila or Eos or Velator will be the new Ishtar.

Objection 2: Only goons and PL will be able to afford the Ishtar and I wonGÇÖt be able to fight them and they will take over the world and I will cry. LetGÇÖs assume the Ishtar accounts for 30% of the PvP use of the HAC class. This means the other seven have 10% each. They would cost the same to produce while the Ishtar would cost 384m instead of 160m. The cost/benefit analysis for the Ishtar is now considerably different. Remember the purpose is only to increase diversity.

Objection 3: This is not a substitute for good balancing. I agree. This is designed only to minimise the impact of imbalance and hopefully avoid repetitions of Hurricane, Drake, Tengu, Ishtar etc dominant metas. This would also allow the metas to shift more, as fleets avoid certain hulls due to cost but then move back as the price again becomes reasonable. There could be some interesting game play around strategic stockpiling.

Objection 4: This doesnGÇÖt help battleships because this would only be within a class. No, maybe it doesnGÇÖt. Get your own solution. Or maybe it does because the next best ship is up a class or two.

Objection 5: People would still just fly that ship because price is not a good deterrent. Generally true but you could sure have a lot more viable ships to choose from with significant production cost increases.

Objection 6: But, ma sandbox! This is about ship balance, the most un-sandboxy part of the game.

Any others?

Nice idea but i have to point out that there is a big problem in that idea:

E.g The big coalitions would be able to get ships much cheaper. They would introduce two differen doctrins e.g. Wolf / Hawk. So now the only take the wolfs to push them in the statistic and the Hawk goes straight down --> the price will fall and the producer will now produce much of the hawks if they have a big enough stock they will switch the doctrin. Without any change of the ships from CCP they would massive reduce they cost to build ships.

There should be a "minimum" cost for each ship.

but a nice idea +1

Nice idea but i have to point out that there is a big problem in that idea:

E.g The big coalitions would be able to get ships much cheaper. They would introduce two differen doctrins e.g. Wolf / Hawk. So now the only take the wolfs to push them in the statistic and the Hawk goes straight down --> the price will fall and the producer will now produce much of the hawks if they have a big enough stock they will switch the doctrin. Without any change of the ships from CCP they would massive reduce they cost to build ships.

There should be a "minimum" cost for each ship.

but a nice idea +1

Please remember that the proposal is to balance within a class. The fact that noobs flock to, let's say, exploration frigates, would not make any difference as long as the distribution within the exploration frigate class is not imbalanced.

The additional cost is in materials. There is no isk sink or faucet here.

Finally, I'd like to comment on the recurring theme of 'taking control away from the players' and 'markets should control'. When dealing with ship balance, or more properly imbalance, we are talking about something which already threatens the sandbox. In the real world the competition would do something to make their product better, or perhaps in an EVE-like world sabotage the dominant ship. Such approaches are not open to us - we are already artificially prevented from dealing with imbalance.

It does matter, if your mechanic causes an increase in the prices of one or more of these ships due to overuse then that most certainly affects players especially those who are new and have restricted ISK.

Right it will not have any affect on the market prices? what are you smoking.

The balance of a ship CANNOT be done by price, there are those in the game that can afford and will spend the money to buy the best. So in a very real sense the only affect your proposal will have is to further aggravate the balance issues by making it harder for some players to buy these ships due to costs.

Why canGÇÖt it be done by price? It is already to some extent GÇô people fly normal ships instead of faction, people use T2 instead of faction modules, despite these being better. Large fleets tend to be a balance between cost and performance.

But anyway, this proposal is not exactly about balancing by price. It is about encouraging ship diversity by price. There is a subtle but important difference.