EVE Search - Ship Balancing: Dramiel! (and Logistics)

Arkady Sadik wrote:

There was a thread on the old forums - http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1525620 - about an upcoming ship balance, partly about logistics ships. I'd like to revive the discussion. (If you want to discuss the Dramiel, make a new thread.)

Quoting my own suggestion from that thread:

Arkady Sadik wrote:

Regarding the Oneiros, you want it to be similar, but not identical to the Guardian - each should have their own flavor.

The Oneiros should:
- Drop a mid in favor of a low slot so it can fit sensible resist mods
- Be able to fit an 800mm RT plate, 4 LRAR and perma-run them if it fits an AB (not with MWD)
- Be able to fit a 1600mm RT plate in the above if it puts in some kind of faction gear somewhere, or downgrades one RR to medium

The above makes it roughly equivalent to the Guardian in utility. It is more susceptible to cap warfare and can not support other fleet members with cap, but does not require a second Oneiros to work. Tank should be similar, with slightly worse EHP and similar resists. (Think about rebalancing Guardians so they require two large energy transfers to perma-run 4 LRAR even at logi 5, which reduces their extreme utility at providing 4 LRAR *and* cap bonus to fleet members; it should be able to run 3 LRAR + 1 LETA with only 1 LETA incoming and outgoing, not 4 LRAR + 1 LETA)

Next, give the Oneiros some unique flavor.

- Do not increase base armor
- Give it a lower signature, higher speed and higher agility than the Guardian (I would actually argue for increasing the sig of the Guardian, not decreasing the sig of the Oneiros)

This makes the Oneiros distinctly more desirable for AHAC fleets, while the Guardian remains more useful for huge fleet fights in combination with Abaddons.

We also recently had an idea for the Oneiros' and Scimitar's second bonus, replacing the mostly useless tracking link bonus: It would be quite awesome if that could be switched to a strength bonus (5% or 10% per level?) to Remote ECCM.

This would make it interesting to those logistics to stick to remote ECCM and make groups of them more difficult to jam than Guardians/Basilisks, making Guardian/Basilisks susceptible to ECM but rather strong against cap warfare, while Oneiros/Scimitars would be strong against ECM but susceptible to cap warfare. Again, providing each type a kind of unique flavor, as well as giving an incentive to mix those ships in fleets.