[Devblog] CSM Meeting Minutes - Summer 2012

[Smuggo]

Scrubfleets aren't generally using them we find, so we definitely get an edge by bringing one or two links chars. They also act as a handy scout which is nice.

And you can find them now, you just need a specialised char. Just because most people can't be arsed to run a virtue-implanted prober doesn't mean that the off-grid T3 is invincible.

I don't think having a max-skilled virtue prober is something people should be expected to do, and it shouldn't be a pre-requisite for catching hostile link ships.

sure, it's possible to kill them without a virtue prober but terrible linkalt failure aside, it comes down to CCP balancing a mechanic with a combination of SP & isk, which is gash.

Most of Eve is balanced on SP + isk (T3 links need a lot of SP and isk too). I agree it's shit but when blobs have so much power already, and we continue get trolled by CCP doing fucking nothing about much worse shit like ECM, I really don't see why people get so annoyed by links. There's a simple balance solution already to make CS more useful which is just switch the bonuses. Any more and you're just once again reinforcing the fact that's it's better to have more ships and fly around in a big group.

[ry ry]

a link t3 should be a badass on-grid epitomy of the links it's rocking, rather than the result of following standard minmax doctrine to the letter whilst hiding tantilisingly out of reach of the fleet you're engaging.

[Eshnala]

imho t3 links are there to give you an edge over a fleet wich is way stronger then yours on numbers, but in general less specialized. Highly specialized fleets will have boosters anyways and if you realy want to get rid of an enemy boosting ship you can just probe it...

Small (10ish) scale pvp is already hard as it is right now, the only chance you have is using every option to make your fleet more effective with the numbers you've got and links are a huge part of that.
Sure you can just bring a normal CS aswell, but then you would drop your fleet dps even more (plus the "omg they have links factor").


Solo pvp is a completely different thing tbh, in that area there are things that hurt way more then links (ecm anyone?)

edit: also smuggo pretty much has it spot on there

[Smuggo]

imho t3 links are there to give you an edge over a fleet wich is way stronger then yours on numbers, but in general less specialized. Highly specialized fleets will have boosters anyways and if you realy want to get rid of an enemy boosting ship you can just probe it...

Small (10ish) scale pvp is already hard as it is right now, the only chance you have is using every option to make your fleet more effective with the numbers you've got and links are a huge part of that.
Sure you can just bring a normal CS aswell, but then you would drop your fleet dps even more (plus the "omg they have links factor").


Solo pvp is a completely different thing tbh, in that area there are things that hurt way more then links (ecm anyone?)

Even harder when you're running 3-5 versus a blob or 20+.

ry, your suggestion isn't really possible because of the way T3 warfare subs work. You need to shove command procs in your mids to actually run any worthwhile amount of links and then you haven't got the fitting required to really do anything useful or do any kind of DPS. If I'm in a gang of 3 or 4 actual people, then putting one in a T3 with no tank and no damage who basically has to just kite around away from tackle the whole fight is shit.

If they swap the bonus then you can make a meaningful choice, to either use a passive alt in a T3 for less bonus or you have a properly piloted CS doing some okay damage (or maybe ewar utility?) and carrying a tank for a bigger bonus.

[The Djego]

Not really much beside "maybe", "not set in stone" or other forms of "we are looking into it".

UAxDEATH agreed wholeheartedly and added that he hasn’t used Cruise Missiles since the missile formula was changed in 2006.

It was changed in 2008.

If the aim of the sentry change is to kill a triage carrier within 4-5 minutes(that takes 10k+ DPS if you want to do this in any reasonable time frame) any chance of taking down a single target in 60-120s that actually shoots back is pretty much zero, if you are not massively over tanked(in a situation where you actually need gank). You can already make frigs survive a couple of vollys for tackling use or even kill some small stuff under sentrys, however for this you need a huge tank that A reduces most of your utility(shield) or B reduces your speed(armor). Having this ability on a ship that can be cheap, fully loaded with utility and without dropping to much speed is a bad idea in my opinion, since you can't really force it to commit in allmost any hull that is fitted to endure the sentry dps.

Would much more prefer T1 Sacrilege like maller and HAM prophecy over damage + resist and drones, simply because on working T1 laser cruiser is enough(compared to zero today) and one super niche drone BC is actually more than enough.

While speed is a problem for cruisers since the nano age, they also lack a real role. At least if tier 2 BCs don't get tuned down(be it by a huge tracking nerf, speed nerf, utility nerf or just you know bring back BS into solo/small gang pvp). Cruiser would need to be a lot better at catching and killing smaller ships while they are not totally outclassed by BCs or make more use of the sig/speed/range tanking to migrate more damage like back in the days(obviously that doesn't work for all hulls, gallente blaster hulls in particular).

Gallente BCs were next. CCP Ytterbium’s main concern with the Brutix is the underlying problem of armor tanks versus shield tanks. To bridge the gap between the two, giving the Brutix a more pronounced armor rep bonus would solve the problem. The Talos, then, would be the fast Megathron-like ship and the Brutix would be more analogous to the Hyperion.

It is not like the myrmidon does the same stuff better and the brutix wouldn't really need a new concept and focus. The underlying problem is not armor vs shield with the brutix, it is that active armor tank, slow, low dps and low range is not attractive outside a very few situations compared to options like a cane or drake. Leave alone that other hulls do the same thing just better(Myrmidon for tank and gank at point blank, Cyclone with more range and higher speed).

CCP Ytterbium responded that he is weary of making it a blaster platform because he doesn’t want it to infringe on the role of the Brutix.

What a big surprise. :ccp:

[root]

I often use skirmish links on my Tengu (with skirmish mindlink) and i find the bonus sufficient, what the different? ~3km point range?
So in my opinion a link BC would give me enough boost, but the problem is that you need 4 of them to replace then good old link Tengu. And if anyone in that chain dies the fleet boss has to rearrange them during the fight

I think CCP is trying to get rid of the dualboxing alts, they don't like it if you can use a ship almost AFK. So all the tengu link alt pilots probably switch to Falcon alts (Which is even worse)

[Daneel Trevize]

W.r.t. links. How about only let T3 links bonus 1 Squad?
Large fleets would need to bring numbers of them that scale with fleet size. Small gang people feel no difference unless they're trying to run 2 sets of T3 links. It would make the Tengu still OP for the number it can cram on. How about only bonus 1 Wing? Doesn't fuck over armour users so much, but doesn't really impact <50man gangs which isn't small imho.
Notice no one ever mentions lolInfo links, and always tries to have skirmish ones even on off-racial & unbonsed hulls. Would there be as much complaining about links if skirmish were nerfed?

[Madner Kami]

My 2cents about it (thanks @ Zeppelin for the TL;DR-recap)

• Start a production for 100, have resources for 10, job starts and runs till resources run out, resumes when you drop in more resources
• Que carrier(example) manufactury using "job order" -> watch sub modules get rolled into the same manufactury job

I never got why they decided on the current system or didn't abandon it once they introduced the moon goo/drug/polymer-production system. A system similar to that, is so immensely more flexible and usefull and sensible. I can't wait to see it implemented.

• Remove Forcefield - add docking module/mooring module(miniforcefield-ish)

Eh... Yeah... No thanks. Larger ships would become idiotically vulnerable at POSes, both after and before docking. Sure, the POS grants some degree of protection, but unless they introduce fast-locking anti-frig weaponry or an alpha-protection field around the POS, I can foresee me not undocking or trying to dock that Orca with 1 to 3 days worth of production in it. I do not want the problems from NPC-stations (e.g. station blocking warp, predictable exit-vector, docking delay, station blocking cloaking attempts by size) translated into <0.4-, 0.0- or, even worse, no-local w-space-POSes. Docking and Undocking are a deathtrap under these circumstances.

• CCP Greyscale said that they wanted to allow them to be anchored just about anywhere.
• if there would be a one starbase per grid limit, and CCP said no.

Yeah um, looks nice on paper, but no thanks (especially if non-friendly POSes can be anchored on the same grid). Look guys, while 0.0 at least has the virtue of some superficial area control (predictable and protectable access via stargates, jump ranges, cynoblockers) and can respond in large numbers realistically and relatively easy, w-space will be fucked really hard (lowsec is apparently hardly interesting enough, to warrant an invasion). The best and probably only realistic way we can deny intruders planting their POS instantly and buying some advance-warning time, is by occupying every moon with a POS, because wormhole-jump mechanics and some (gladly) lesser known-quirks about it and OV-reaction speed, make it really hard to catch a covert-ops hauler, if the pilot knows his/her business at all.
And while the deeper classes might produce sufficient ISK to warrant a permanent presence of a sizeable force of pilots, the lower end classes need every minute of delay they can get. I think I can count the number of C1-4s which have more then a squad full of pilots in permanent presence on one hand, because the other folks in those corps/alliances need other money-sources to sustain them. And please, CCP, spare me the squatter and not-to-be-permanent blabla about w-space. This is not how your game works for us, especially since the only other way of denying invaders raising a POS is by miniblob-blocking wormholes (by ships or cans, to bump and decloak covert-ops) and having probes in space 24/7, which, you know, kinda demands a permanent presence...

• CCP is looking into defensive modules that would have firing arcs

As long as it works like the guns on ships, I am fine with that (pairing or trippling single guns to cover the entire ship). If not, please think about this again and repeat this procedure, till you decide to make it like @ ships. POS-defences don't really need another variant of "Blaster Battery"-syndrome.

• destructable highsec pocos
• CORPORATION MANAGEMENT - UI is bad, needs fixing

There's so much redundancy, absurdly bad placement and missing options in the corp menu, it's baffling to me till this day, how large corps ever came into existance.

NEW PLAYER EXPERIENCE - Typical reasons given for quitting:

• "It takes too long to figure out what the game is about"

I kinda doubt, that you can sell the point of EVE to anyone, who runs into this particular problem, at all.

• Soundwave says he's going to pay more attention to critique from SISI forums.

Hmya, these minutes are how old already? 2 Months? Look, Soundwave, dude, bro: Doing, not just saying.

[two step]

About time. I always thought mining could've been made into a better experience for those who didn't like the current system by having mining certain minerals require the coordination of multiple players.

I'd agree except that it's not time. It's not even close. The earliest we'll see this live is the expansion AFTER the upcoming winter expansion (if you can call it that). Pretty sure I saw a devblog or post recently that said they were pushing off the mining-for-moon-goo changes until after the POS revamp had been done. Well, guess what? Even that's not happening this time around. The upcoming winter expansion sounds like a whole lot of nothing.

Im not sure about the POS revamp not happening this winter expansion, these papers are 2 months old and during alliance tournament some dev said we get the POS revamp this winter (or atleast thats how i remember it).

POS stuff will be after the Winter expansion.

[Tsubutai]

W.r.t. links. How about only let T3 links bonus 1 Squad?
Large fleets would need to bring numbers of them that scale with fleet size. Small gang people feel no difference unless they're trying to run 2 sets of T3 links. It would make the Tengu still OP for the number it can cram on. How about only bonus 1 Wing? Doesn't fuck over armour users so much, but doesn't really impact <50man gangs which isn't small imho.
Notice no one ever mentions lolInfo links, and always tries to have skirmish ones even on off-racial & unbonsed hulls. Would there be as much complaining about links if skirmish were nerfed?

The ECCM link is quite nice to have, actually. Could certainly use a buff, but we use it fairly regularly. Also, tanking links are every bit as bad as skirmish. Hi, I am space jesus in a deep safe and I am magically doubling the effectiveness of all your logistics/active tanks and also increasing your ehp by ~30%! Wheeeee!

[Smuggo]

W.r.t. links. How about only let T3 links bonus 1 Squad?
Large fleets would need to bring numbers of them that scale with fleet size. Small gang people feel no difference unless they're trying to run 2 sets of T3 links. It would make the Tengu still OP for the number it can cram on. How about only bonus 1 Wing? Doesn't fuck over armour users so much, but doesn't really impact <50man gangs which isn't small imho.
Notice no one ever mentions lolInfo links, and always tries to have skirmish ones even on off-racial & unbonsed hulls. Would there be as much complaining about links if skirmish were nerfed?

Limiting them to squad role would work. Buff the legion's fitting or nerf the tengu's maybe?

And no one mentions info links because the forms of ewar that actually get used are so powerful with such long range you don't really need those links. We use sensor integrity because it's actually pretty decent. In fact, I would say if I'm running a link on a standard BC I would use Sensor Integrity over anything else as it's a real help against ecm and the info mindlink is so cheap losing it isn't really a big deal.

Skirmish gets used all the time because the things it does are universally useful. Make you faster, harder to hit and you can interdict over longer distances. Who the fuck wouldn't want all those bonuses if they could get them? Maybe they could rejig the links so each racial gets a universally useful bonus and then some more specialised ones for their race?

[Daneel Trevize]

TL;DR: So, still ECM is shit, Tengu is OP, kiting is win. When will they actually change anything, instead of farting about with a new POS in :18months: ?

Tengu clearly needs a rounded set of nerfs. It's too good at PvE, PvP, Links, everything that's good (no one cares that it can't brawl/use hybrids effectively).
I'm still not convinced that webs are right to be paired with the fastest race, being as webs are always effective and at a much longer range than bonused scrams.
IDK what you'd make Minmatar-specific as a bonus, except shield boosting. Give Caldari sig-reduction? Might as well come up with some new ones (oh god CCP balancing that) and also sort the info ones at the same time. Probably also wants most ewar and especially ECM looking at too then though.

[Liptonez]

I'm all for switching T3 with command ship bonuses, but taking away off-grid boosting is plain dumb. I don't really see how these are more broken than bringing falcons or logistics. If the other gang brings 3x the amount of people of your gang, what in the fuck prevents them from bringing their own T3 links?

Gangs using T3 links don't beat the fuck out of you because they have 50% more point range, they beat you because they're better. They'd probably still do without links, the only thing skirmish links allow you is to gtfo faster and die less/prevent more from running.

Assuming that a 5 man nano gang will throw in a Claymore or Loki going 1600m/s is ridiculous. Now, if the link Loki didn't have to fit 2 command processors and CPU mods, you could even think about using it on field. But before that, no.

[Sponk]

minmatar -> warp disruptor range
gallente -> web range.

[Tsubutai]

Gangs using T3 links don't beat the fuck out of you because they have 50% more point range, they beat you because they're better. They'd probably still do without links, the only thing skirmish links allow you is to gtfo faster and die less/prevent more from running.

Sorry, but that's absurd. Being able to tackle people and apply damage from ranges where they can't touch you is a really massive advantage, and if you have skirmish links and the the other guys don't, it becomes vastly easier for you to ensure that happens and to make sure that if one of your guys gets low, they can just rewarp or pull more range.

[root]

It's allready hard to find fights when you are flashy, i don't think it will get easier when you field a T2 BC on grid (While the sentry do more damage).

[Loire]

Not to break into the t3 argument but:

The current CSM appears to be extremely detached from the common player.

Also when are we going to transition from 100% low hanging fruit to the real nasty "I don't want to touch that code OMGOMGOMGOMG it's like a non-euclidean nightmare in there" problems?

[root]

Also when are we going to transition from 100% low hanging fruit to the real nasty "I don't want to touch that code OMGOMGOMGOMG it's like a non-euclidean nightmare in there" problems?

AFAIK Corpmanagement and POS code is allready a 'i dont want to touch that' nightmare. And it looks like they are working on that.

[Daneel Trevize]

Yeah but no. There's plenty that's not petty shit, and not Winter 2013 at a minimum let's redo the whole concept from scratch, woo jumpdriving POS.

Mostly it's numbers they need to play with, not coding new mechanics. Just fix some fucking numbers in a table, but think before you change them.

Corp management and POS UI are a means to an end. That end is spaceships fighting. Or I'm wrong. But without PvP, where's the economy?

[Nartek]

Assuming that a 5 man nano gang will throw in a Claymore or Loki going 1600m/s is ridiculous. Now, if the link Loki didn't have to fit 2 command processors and CPU mods, you could even think about using it on field. But before that, no.

Then don't field it. If the other side fields a link ship on grid and you don't; you have an additional target to go after. IIRC, T3 link ships are a bit squishier than T2 CS's anyway, so the cost+vulnerability tradeoff for better buffs is not a bad thing. No one is saying you can't have an off-grid link ship, or even a "nearly impossible to probe" link ship. What they're saying is that when push comes to shove, if you want that resistance bonus, or web bonus, etc... you need to expose the ship providing it to danger.

There is so much to like about this change, and that's not even counting the tears.