Thank you very much everyone for placing me on CSM 6 and now on CSM 7 where I am currently serving as the Chairman! If you would like to contact me directly, do not hesitate to just send me an eve mail in game. Keep your eyes here and watch for new posts.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

The Doomsday 'Nerf'

Official CCP artwork.
A quick word on the change that hit SiSi over the weekend. Supercaps have sat untouched for two years now.  There was supposed to be continued iteration, balance, tweakage, new modules, counters, etc… but after CCP's self-inflicted debacle of rolling them out hap-hazard in early 2010, no one at CCP could even be bothered to realize (scared to touch them) what was going on until the problem was so far out of control that we are where we are today.  However, change is coming and all that!


I can pronounce this. Can you?
The Doomsday weapon for titans has finally been iterated on to where it can only fire on capital-sized ships.

I will never regret getting rid of the AoE DD. Changing the DD to a single shot pop gun was a good alternative.  As the person that actually made this change, I'll state publicly that this should have been done sometime last year during or shortly after the Tyrannis patch.  After seeing how stupid it was getting (dozens of titans one-shooting entire logi wings) it should have been iterated on and changed but apparently there was no one at CCP that ~played EVE~ or cared to follow up on the work done during Dominion.

It's fine for people to look back over the last two years and say, "It should have been like this in the first place!" and froth at the mouth if it makes them feel better, but the real issue is that this sat unchanged for the better part of two years. This is the price of Flying in Space features not having a dedicated team or a designer dedicated exclusively to balance issues, both of which are being effectively solved now.

EVE is an ever evolving game. This applies to all aspects of the game, even giant e-peens. Folks that are pissed about this change need to just be happy they had a couple years of ~good fights~. I'm glad some work is finally being done on these ship classes

UPDATE - I've seen several comments on this change that follow this line of thought:

Now where's the solution to logistics wings having more combined repair capacity than opposing fleets have DPS? I'm not looking forward to Titan level alpha being the only way to clear capitals off of the field, which does not feel like an unlikely scenario.
I don't disagree with the sentiment here and this seems to be the main line of argument being taken by people that are opposed to the change. However, ~overpowered~ logis should be addressed at a different level of balancing. Titans shouldn't even be in the discussion. "Balancing" spaceships is a full time job, one reason CSM 6 has pushed heavily to keep a dedicated designer on it.

5 comments:

  1. Isn't the one dude 'dedicated' to balance, who has made changes to logi warp speed and some dram changes (still yet to hit TQ) just on this part time? Where is, and who are, the FULL TIME balance crew?

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  2. No, it's pretty much his 'job' right now. There's a lot of changes coming soon, including the ones you mentioned.

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  3. Hopefully this means we will see regular adjustments to ship balance. While changing the stats of a ship or module by a few percentage points may not make for great advertising, it pays huge dividends in the long run by making for a much more balanced and enjoyable game. Valve is still tinkering with weapons statistics in Team Fortress 2; CCP should do the same, rather than rolling out huge changes every few years.

    As a "full-time"* logistics pilot, I can't really agree with the assessment that logistics are overpowered, even in large fleets.

    In small gangs, logistics are a huge force multiplier, but only against similarly-sized gangs which do not field logistics themselves or have ewar capability. But a gang which brings a pair of Falcons and no logistics can massacre a similarly sized gang which brings no Falcons and no logistics; a gang which brings no tackle won't be able to kill much; in EVE the fleet with superior composition should have the upper hand. At worst, two fleets backed by equally potent logistics will end up withdrawing if they cannot break hostile remote repairs, although I have yet to encounter such a situation.

    Logistics are also not overpowered in medium and large fleets. If anything, their effectiveness is severely reduced if the opponent brings a fleet with good composition and does not simply assemble a kitchen-sink fleet and rely on raw dps. Last week I was flying a Basilisk in a 50-person shield battlecruiser fleet which engaged a similarly-sized hostile hellcat (Abaddon) fleet. We had more logistics than they (until the opposition dropped a triage carrier), but the hostiles used ECM drones to completely neutralize over half of our logistics, which allowed them to kill a rather big portion of our fleet. Hardly overpowered.

    In very large fleets, logistics usually do not for the first stage of the fight at all, because each fleet has sufficient alpha strike to take out even a battleship in just a few voleys, and because each fleet will bring sufficient ewar to neutralize or drastically reduce the effectiveness of opposing logistics and ewar.

    A dozen artillery battleships can usually functionally alpha-strike most logistics anyway, and a few dozen dps battlecruisers/battleships can burn through a logistics' buffer before remote repairs can be applied.

    *In the sense that I pretty much fly nothing but logistics in fleets, excepting the odd suicide roam or small home defense fleet.

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  4. Gya-llarr-hyorn

    The solution to logistics wings of course is to shoot the logistics wings. Logistics cruisers are paper thin and heavily reliant on capacitor and having targets to rep.

    So apply DPS, neut and ECM.

    Except some dunderhead at CCP decided that super capitals should be immune to electronic warfare. What a dunderhead.

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  5. The counter to sub cap support teams, is unsuprisingly sub cap support teams.

    ECM & Remote Sensor Damps :shock: Yes sensor damps (range scripts)! Have you seen what happens when a falcon/arazu pair starts screwing with your logi chain?

    Too many fleet FC's don't consider the support options, and just fly with BS/Logi/CAP

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