Moar Ship Rebalancing

CCP rolled out yet another set of changes for ship classes. I'm beginning to feel like an old timer, thinking about back in the day when Merlins had missiles and the Navitas was a mining ship. Anyway, I can't really complain about many of the incoming changes to frigates. A lot of the lesser used (see: anything that is not a Rifter, Incursus, Merlin or Punisher) frigates are getting buffs or total re-designations. I'm not sure that all of the theory crafting that CCP is undergoing will make all of these ships useful, but I don't see much being detrimental. I'm almost going to miss my split weapon system (hybrid/missile) Tristan though. Just picked up a new batch from Jita today.

Mining ships are also getting tweaked a bit. It may sound ignorant of me, but in all honesty, I don't care very much. The buffs to the lesser used ships won't outpace the mining bonus for the Hulk, meaning we won't see a great change from the status quo. The one positive coming out of the mining rebalance is the introduction of an ORE mining frigate. Instead of having 4 very sub-par mining frigates, have one ORE specialized one. It makes perfect sense to me.

The last point CCP brought up in the Dev Blog was more Destroyer rebalancing. The Crucible expansion left the Thrasher and Catalyst well ahead of their counterparts, and there are apparently some changes inbound to balance the four. Hopefully that means a buff for the Coercer and Cormorant as opposed to nerfing the previous two. Also, CCP alluded to creating 4 new missile-based destroyers. Start training those rockets and light missiles.

Overall, I have to say CCP is on point with all of these changes once again, and believe me, its nice to say that. Happy anniversary of Incarna, by the way ;)  CCP is gunning for all ships to have a role somewhere. Right now, there are tons of ships we, as players, don't even dream of flying. It'd be great to see more variety on the field as opposed to Drake, Maelstrom, Abbadon, Tengu, & Hurricane. As long as CCP gets the balance right, its going to be a fun couple years to be an internet spaceship pilot.

Hulkageddon V: Mining Rokhs Abound

To all of the people who have bundles of fun mining (or just want to capitalize on the absurdly high mineral prices right now), I present to you the mining Rokh. It has an absurdly high shield tank with bonuses to resists. The highs are filled with miners and the lows accommodate mining, fitting and cargohold. To throw out some EFT numbers, the Rokh gets 891 units/minute and a Hulk with Strip Miners and two upgrades gets 1436 units/minute. The big upside to the Rokh is its monster shield tank at 152k EHP. All of these numbers are before any leadership bonuses, so an Orca with mining/siege links could even further better these numbers. And of course, fit drones to taste. Your call between Damage or mining drones. Enjoy!

[Rokh, Mining Rokh]
Mining Laser Upgrade II
Mining Laser Upgrade II
Co-Processor II
Co-Processor II
Expanded Cargohold II

Invulnerability Field II
Invulnerability Field II
Photon Scattering Field II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II

Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II

Large Core Defence Field Extender I
Large Core Defence Field Extender I
Large Core Defence Field Extender I

Some Inferno Changes Rumored

Blake over at k162space linked a pastebin entry with a few interesting changes yesterday. Here's the link to the pastebin, which Blake said he found at Reddit.

To break it down, it looks like we have two big time (potential) changes. One is for industry and one is for combat. In combat, we've got the introduction of Micro Jump Drives (MJDs?). From what I'm reading, it seems that MJDs are a navigation system that is explicitly noted as a Battleship class module. It has a spin-up time, ie not instantaneous, but when it activates, it shoots the ship 100km in the direction it was pointing. When the ship lands it still has its same velocity. Also, there is a signature radius bloom akin to MWDs while the MJD is spinning up. Lastly, it says that ships are affected by warp scramblers and warp disruption fields. So does that mean an MJD is shut down by these? Not so sure, but it does certainly make sense.

My initial reaction to MJDs is meh. I somewhat understand the mechanics, but its not quite there yet for me. Battleships are big and slow. These new drives give them they ability to dictate range to some extent. The problem is that whole "big and slow" thing gets them caught before they get to use the new GTFO ability. Another possible thought is that the MJD could also be partially to combat Tier 3 Battlecruisers to some extent. I still see it as problematic though. By the time the BS lands on grid again after a micro jump, would it realistically be able to lock a nano BC and scram it in a reasonable amount of time? I'm still thinking no on that one.

Overall, I understand that Battleships could certainly use a buff. The 3rd Tier BCs definitely put Battleships farther away from the front lines in many cases. The Battlecruisers are faster and more agile than Battleships and they generally pump out similar damage. The MJD might be a step in the right direction, but I think to be a truly effective BS buff, the spin up time has to be relatively short, and optimally, you could choose a distance (say between 100km and 1000km) to Micro Jump to. There are certainly more potential stipulations or add-ons, but that's what jumped out at me to start.

The second major change thrown into the pastebin is that NPC drones are getting bounties put on their heads. Hopefully CCP has the good sense to take away drone alloys if this is the case. Otherwise its just a huge buff for the DRF. Regardless, this puts drones on par or better than other rats, creating uniformity to NullSec space. If the alloys are removed though, this is a huge buff for the mining profession, and you can bet on it having a huge impact on all market operations too. I'm going to send CCP Diagoras a tweet to see if he can tell us what percentage of minerals come from drone alloys. I hope he can field the question and its not too specific. If we do get an answer, it should be indicative of just how important mining is about to become.

The drone ratting change could be pretty crazy. It actually relates to something I've been thinking about in terms of botting recently too. I know people lament the amount of bots in Eve right now and many say that CCP wasn't hard enough on them with the new banning initiative. My concern is that the bots really do help prop up the economy. If the minerals they produce come back to HighSec and get turned into the ships that everyone is buying, the decreased supply of minerals is going to drive up ship prices.

 

 

Supply Shift Inward Increases Price Levels

I think such a change would probably just be for a short while, but it could be significant. Prices would probably spike for a month or two after alloys get nerfed, but then mining will become profitable enough for people to start actually doing it again. I still think that mining needs a legitimate buff in terms of the activity itself rather than a nerf on drone alloys, but its certainly a start for the mining profession. 

As a disclaimer, none of this information is official yet. Not even close. On the other hand though, I saw a similar pastebin regarding Crucible changes before they came out, and most of them were true. That one introduced Tier 3 BCs among other things, and the only legitimate changes we saw were that the Naga became a Hybrid boat and the Talos lost its web bonus and drones. Sidenote: that would have been an incredibly sexy Talos to fly. Anyway, just thought I'd be thorough and not get everyone's hopes up too much. It all looks plausible though. Waiting on the dev blog then.