Archetypes of Eve Ships - Part 1

The ongoing teiricide and rebalancing of ships this past year has shaken up frigate combat like never before. Not since the Dramiel was boosted to near god-like status in the post-speed nerf era has the battlefield shifted this much. And these changes, albeit smaller by themselves, add up to a larger overall change than any other before. Hell, possibly bigger than all other changes combined since Red Moon Rising.

But I'm not here to talk about that today. Tiericide has only just begun and has another year or more to run its course through all the ship classes. Let's instead talk about the Archetypes of Eve combat ships. I'm going to talk about the big most common ship archetypes, the ones that, like the ruling class of a pantheon of gods, rule the roost in the hearts and minds of Eve pilots.

1. Frigate Brawler

Every combat pilot has flown one of these. Usually sooner as they are new pilots getting the skills to try and fight the rats or hostile pilots, sometimes reformed carebears trying their hand at PvP in Red Versus Blue or faction warfare, but eventually everyone flies the ship that is tackle plus damage. Charge, point, orbit, and hope your damage and/or friends finish them off. The Brawler: no subtlety required, no faint hearts allowed.

For years this archetype has been epitomized (defined?) by the autocannon Rifter. Since the reblancing the Merlin and Incursus have invaded the territory once solely the domain of the Rifter, but it still is competitive and perhaps the most iconic ship of Eve as a result of its previous dominance of this class.

2. Gallente Blaster Ship

Sure there are lots of racial specific archetypes we can talk about (and I'll cover another one next) but one of the most crisp in terms of definition and expected function/behaviour is the blaster equipped ships of the Gallente lineup.

These ships have one mode of operation in combat and its very similar to the Frigate Brawler: approach with MWD on, activate blasters, wait until target it dead or you are. These are the hammers to the tackler's anvil. Short ranged but highest damage, if the target is within optimal range and tracking speed, it will suffer severe consequences. The rest of the functions of these ships are secondary to speed and damage; they may have tackle mods, some repair capability, and drones, but their goal is simply damage application.

There are a lot of ships that evoke this archetype but the one that I find gives life to it so perfectly is the Thorax and its children: the Deimos and Vigilant (and to a less degree, the Phobos). Too large for tackle duty like the Incursus, too small for a respectable tank like the Megathron, and more common than the big brother Brutix, the Thorax lives in the sweet spot of fast and heavy hitting to make it the perfect Gallente Blaster Boat.




3. Caldari Missile Boat

Just as the Gallente are famous for their line of hybrid based ships, the Caldari are known the cluster over for their expertise in missile based weaponry with only the Khanid ships able to compete. In PvE all over the cluster from High Sec to Null Sec to wormhole space you will find many if not most pilots using a Caldari missile boat to destroy the rats. The reason for this ubiquitousness is due to the fact that while you can destroy NPCs with many different weapon systems, missile weapon systems offer the dual advantages of not having to worry about tracking and optimal range like turret based weaponry does and being able to choose the damage type by switching ammo without having to worry about less DPS in the process. Plus missiles have decent ranges and do not use capacitor. The best competitor, drones, which also do not use cap and can choose damage type, have other downsides such as requiring a lot of drone space for multiple flights of drones and can be targeted and destroyed if you are not vigilant.

A few years ago I would have picked the Raven (and its descendants, the Navy Raven and Golem) as the torchbearer for this archetype, but the rise of the Drake in PvP fleets in null sec and the spread of the Tengu as the ratting ship of choice have disputed that title. So I'm going to go with the popular and multi-faceted Drake battlecruiser as the current leader of the Caldari Missile Boats.

Next week: Three More Archetypes.

ASUS Transformer - A Year Later

Last summer I purchased an ASUS Transformer tablet (TF101 to be exact) and posted some initial thoughts about it. Here it is over a year later and I thought I would follow up to let you know how it went.

TF101 with Keyboard Attachment

Summary: best electronic purchase I have ever made.

Usage 

My tablet usage evolved into three categories over the year.

First, I used it primarily to check email for both personal and work accounts as well as reading blogs in my blog reader. As an appliance for emailing, it is brilliant even though it lacks a 3G internet connection. At home and work I have access to wifi so I'm set. When I travel, I get free wifi so I can still stay connected. I pretty much use the tablet like this daily.

Secondly, I use it for gaming in times when I am away from the computer. On the couch I take it off the keyboard and watch TV while playing something like Minecraft Pocket Edition (excellent value purchase BTW), or something heavier like Battles of Wesnoth (another excellent purchase). For easier gaming, there are tons of quick and free games like Angry Birds and the like.

Lastly, I occasionally use it for work purposes like taking notes. This is a rare occurrence as I'm not usually required to take notes in many meetings, but when I do it works like a charm; small so its easy to move and setup but full keyboard for typing. Also very handy having the 5mp camera for taking pictures of whiteboards to email around. Evernote, an app that autosyncs the notes you make between every machine you have the app installed on, including PC and phones, is a life saver here.

Things I could do but never (or rarely) had the need to:
- Watch movies : once while the Twins were in a class a couple weeks I used it to watch X-Men first class while waiting for them. Worked great, I just never need to wait somewhere where a movie would work for me. Its worth noting that the tablet has a mini-HDMI port if you want to feed the screen output to a monitor or TV.

- Blog : I tried blogging on it a couple times but I didn't feel the groove. I like to look things up and browse for images and such when blogging, and a tablet is not the best for that kind of blogging. And I never felt the need for small blog posts from the tablet.
- Twitter : the Twitter apps work great, I'm just too busy reading blogs and playing Minecraft to bother with the twitter feeds.
- Kindle : there is a free Amazon Kindle app and it can work in conjunction with my regular Kindle. However, I do prefer the actual Kindle's e-ink screen for reading.

Quality

This tablet and the keyboard accessory are built with excellent quality. After a year of use and abuse (including some time in the hands of my four year olds) they still have no scratches on the gorilla glass surface, and only a couple spots where the casing is slightly loose (which admittedly showed up on the first week). I've dropped it at least twice, and remove and place the tablet in the keyboard dock daily, and yet the connection between the two still is as solid as it first was, to the point where I can hold the keyboard and turn the whole thing upside down with no fear the tablet will fall out.

Battery life I never have worry about and the keyboard itself feels like new.

OS and Apps

There have been some hiccups along the way with the Android OS. The Honeycomb version was pretty solid but some of the early apps were flakey, especially web browsers. I used Dolphin browser for a long time and recently switched to Chrome after I upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich version of the OS.

The initial period of ICS OS was painful with mysterious system shutdowns and some performance problems, but a subsequent update addressed all of those and for the past summer the tablet has been more solid than ever, with no crashes or issues. Chrome as the browser has been perfect as well.

For other apps, its kind of hit or miss about the quality but overall the selection for good tablet apps has increased over the year, and I've gotten some gems that I love and other games my wife (Jewel Star) and kids love (Minecraft, Angry Birds Space, Air Attack HD, etc).  Fortunately a lot of devs put out free versions to try games before you have to lay out money for the full version, and games you do pay for often get a lot of free updates. Minecraft Pocket Edition, for example, has grown from a little creative sandbox to include a full survival mode as well and tons of crafting options to be practically a second game for free.

For productivity, Evernote is perfect for taking notes and sharing them across all devices, and there are various MS Office like apps to use but I never have need of them.

Summary

The ASUS Transformer has been one of the best electronic purchases I have ever made and I have gotten my money's worth out of it. When I purchase a tablet in the future, I will definitely be looking for an ASUS Transformer product.

Flying By The Seat of my Pants

Due to the wife being out of town for a couple days and the kids being gone to the grandparents on the weekend, I got some extra Eve time last week and I used it as best I could.

I started the week looking for trouble in a Vagabond called Frilless. I had trouble finding anyone to fight, chasing off a Dramiel and a Daredevil in separate occasions in Heydieles, but then scanned a hostile Condor and Daredevil fighting a friendly Firetail and Thrasher. With my crashing the party the enemies turned to run but I got a quick point on the Condor and ripped him up pretty quick.

I then heard of a gang doing the gate camp thing in Akidagi and I headed that direction, but while I was sorting out comms in an empty system I learned two things: I do not have Incursion rats on my overview settings and Incursion rats hit HARD. One Vagabond down. *sad face*

I broke out a Falcon for the gate camp, got there successfully, and got some loyalty points for targeting a hostile that jumped in (but I failed to get on the killmail).

* * * * *
I got sloppy the next fight. I was docking back in base in Heydieles and saw a Hurricane, Thrasher, and Stiletto hanging around outside. I wanted a fight badly so I undocked in a refitted Sleipnir with X-Large Ancillary Shield Booster and locked the Thrasher and 'Cane up. Now, a smart move at this point since they are not aggressing me would have been to check local to see if they had friends, or get a different ship and see if I could lure them and spread them out across the system.

But my move was to try and kill the Thrasher without checking for more hostiles and as the Thrasher warped off, I compounded my foolishness by engaging the Hurricane. And that's when the shit hit the fan as the Thrasher came back with a second Hurricane, a Legion, and a Stabber Fleet Issue. Doh! I deaggressed and tried to dock but I ran out of charges in my ASB and went down. *bigger sad face*

* * * * *

I learned my lesson a bit the next time. I heard of a hostile fleet in nearby and took out a Thorax to investigate. Sure enough, there they were on the Abune gate in Heydieles, about 10-12 ships of various types. I let a few aggress me on this side of the gate and jumped through. I aligned to the sun and when I saw local go up I warped hoping to get something small to follow. Sure enough a Jaguar warped in on my and I tried to catch him but he was fit for speed and got out of my warp scrambler's range before my target lock resolved.

Realizing I was not going to win this one I deployed the ECM drones and aligned for a celestial. However a Curse and Talos landed and just as the Jag's point was broken the Talos pointed me and it was all over.

* * * * *

I almost forgot, I was in Heydieles and saw an Incursus in a minor plex. I grabbed my Dramiel and went after him and it was a Shadow Cartel pilot (not Kadavr Black Guard fortunately) looking for a fight. My Dramiel allows me to fight at range when needed so I was pinging away on him with my drones when a second Cartel Incursus warped in, forcing me to retreat. No kill, no loss.

Fortunately for my killboard stats, he went and got killed by sentry guns within 15 minutes.

* * * * *

Having a bad week so far, I undocked Saturday morning in a Catalyst I've had sitting around for ages and went hunting in plexes for enemy frigs. I chased some Merlins around for a while in Akidagi, but in Notoras I found nothing but two hostiles and two plexes. Warping towards one with a Manticore stealth bomber, I activated the gate and flung into the plex to see him still there. MWD on I burned towards him and I don't know if he tried to warp out but was too slow or if he thought his tech 2 frig could take my tech 1 destroyer, but we engaged and had a rare good fight. I was target painted and cap was burning quickly, but he did not have a MWD to escape me and I was able to advance in and get into optimal for antimatter ammo. He exploded as I was about 10% cap and dipping into structure.

* * * * *

Emboldened by my success the previous morning, I undocked in the same Catalyst Sunday morning and went on the same route. In Kedema I saw a couple war targets, lots of neutrals, and a minor plex off in the distance. I warped to it but it was a long warp and I got distracted by a blog post. I landed at the plex acceleration gate and saw two Cormorants, one neutral and one an outlaw. In my tired daze I was pretty slow at activating the gate because I thought I would check out to see if the two pilots were in the same corporation. Not my best moment.

Well, they both start locking and pointing me. Ah shit, I say to myself. I try the gate but the points do not allow that escape route, so I hit the MWD which mercifully still roars to life and burn away. I'm faster than both of them so I quickly pull range as I hit the bottom of my armour. Maybe I can do something with this, I think confidently.

Then a third Cormorant arrives and starts burning at me. Too late I realize he's fast, faster than me even, and before I can align and warp I'm pointed again and quickly dispatched through the rest of my points. I never even locked and fired. Really not my best moment.

* * * * *

Four losses, one of them really preventable (WTB, new Sleipnir), and two kills (but three killmails :P ). Not a bad week for a bad PvPer trying to get out more.

Home

Blog Banter 39: Home
"Some say a man's home is his castle. For others it is wherever they lay their hat. The concept is just as nebulous in the New Eden sandbox. In EVE Online, what does the concept of "home" mean to you?"

* * * * * 

Home.

Home is Pelille in Placid region where I went in my second week of playing Eve to join my friends from my Warhammer club. I remember flying my little Merlin with every possession I had through low sec for the first time, and later joining my friends in a belt to marvel over one of them and their new first battleship, a Megathron that dwarfed my frigate. I was in awe.

Home.

Home is 9GYL in Syndicate region where we ratted our wallets fat and I learned the fine art of hunting Serpentis battleship rats in a Caracal cruiser, perfecting the art of the circling approach.

Home.

Home is Teonusude and Gulfonodi in Molden Heath where we based out of while roaming the wilds of low sec, and where I ran up my status with the Republic Fleet and was running level four missions in a rail-Rokh, and where I lost my first Rokh in an Attack of the Drones mission where I killed all of the initial drones to trigger all four waves at once, including warp scrambling drones, and my tech 1 Vespas could not save me.

Home.

Home is Amarr in Domain region where I worked my industrial alts doing invention of Invulnerability Fields and Covert Ops Cloaking devices and making obscene amounts of money off the cloaks for months before the rest of the herd caught up and brought prices down.

Home. 

Home is Teshkat in Sukanan constellation in Task-Murkon region where m3 Corp based out of for a long time, protecting the low sec pocket from roaming hostiles and venturing into Providence to tangle with Ushra Khan.

Home.

Home is D-GTMI and 2-TEG in Providence where Paxton Federation stood their ground as CVA folder like a tent under the assault of AAA and friends.

Home.

Home is Heydieles in Essence region where I grab a ship and head out to find Caldari militia or pirates or anyone else to shoot at. 

Home. 

EVE is home.

Given Where Due

On Monday I took the new TheMitanni.Com website to task for posting an opinion piece on Off Grid Leadership Boosting Ships for not presenting the other side of the argument. Well today I see they followed up with a post about The Case Against Boosters where author Grath gives some suggestions about how Tech 3 and Tech 2 command ships should altered.

I will point out that he skips the real issue, whether boosting should be off grid or on grid only, with a statement:

Yes, there are issues with grids and the like, but thats probably not something that can be easily fixed since I expect it's mired in the oldest code parts of EVE. I suspect that, as far as the gang system is concerned, CCP simply don't know (and cannot easily discover) what is on-grid with something else, anyway.

I don't accept that and I'm disappointed Grath does not even address this point as its the main thrust of the previous article, and in my opinion its the biggest problem currently with boosting ships (although I agree with Grath that command ships have been shafted by the Tech 3 ships).

P.S. Both of these articles could have come from syndicated blogs. Maybe they have the advantage of having editing staff to proof read and provide feedback prior to publishing but I can see no difference from anything I've read from numerous blogs for years. I'm just saying.

Looking Into The Crystal Ball - Tiericide to Cruisers and Beyond

The ship overhaul that is going on right now (calling it a balancing is a vast understatement) is doing more to revitalized low sec PvP than anything I've seen in a while with the notable exception of the Ancillary Shield Boosters.

Whereas before you could count on one hand the number of combat frigates you could expect to face (mostly Rifters, a few Merlins and Incursi, a few faction frigs), the spread of types is much larger and now is starting to include things like Tormentors, Condors, Atrons, etc. The excitement for the changes to the Kestrel, Tristan, and Breacher is palpable. With dev posts highlighting how the remaining frigates are going to be specialized for logistics and exploration with improved capabilities, we can finally see how the line up of frigates for each race will fall out.

- Two main combat frigs with each one highlighting a different aspect of the factions combat philosophy :  Merlin(hybrids)/Kestrel(missiles), Punisher(lasers and tank)/Tormentor(lasers and cap usage), Incursus(hybrids)/Tristan(drones), Rifter(projectiles)/Breacher(missiles)

- Attack frigate with bonus to tackling : Condor, Atron, Executioner, Slasher

- Exploration frigate with bonuses to exploration mods like salvagers, code breakers, and analyzers : Heron, Probe, Magnate, Imicus

- Electronic attack frigates with bonuses to the racial ewar : Griffin (ECM), Crucifer (tracking disruptors), Maulus (sensor damps), Vigil (target painters)

- Logistics Frigate with bonus to racial repair mods : Bantam (shields), Navitas (armour), Inquisitor (armour), Burst (sheilds)

With these changes we get and idea for how the tiericide is being performed: more mod slots and fitting for previously low tiers ships, role bonuses to specialize them, and in some cases complete role reversals (such as the mining frigs becoming logi frigs). This gives us some ability to speculate what tiericide to the cruisers, battlecruisers and battleships will look like.

Cruisers

If any set of tech I ships was setup with specialization in mind over tiers, it was the cruisers. Each race has four cruisers and they are broken into two combat ships, one logistics ship, and one electronic warfare ship. I suspect the tiericide will simply look like giving the lower tier ships a bit more fitting in terms of slots and power grid and CPU to allow more variation, and the combat ships will be balanced to some of the less popular ones more desirable like they did/are doing with the combat frigates.

Battlecruisers

Overall the three battlecruisers of each race are pretty well balanced, with each one bringing something different to the table for each faction. The Cyclone is the active tanker compared to the Hurricane ganker; the Brutix is a blaster boat to the Myrmidon drones; Ferox hybrids to Drake missiles. For the Amarr, the Prophecy and Harbinger both are laser ships so there might be some bonus changes there along with some module and fitting changes that I expect all of the tier 1 battlecruisers to receive. The tier 3 battlecruiser being very new already have a very defined role and balance so I don't think we'll see any changes to them.

Battleships

Ah, here we get to the class that could potentially experience the most overhaul. For one thing, there is a huge step in capabilities (modules, fitting stats, damage potential, tanking potential, and price) between tier 1 and tier 2 and then again to tier 3 battleships. Also, there is a lot of role overlap. Take for example the Amarr where all three battleships are laser combat ships. To be fair, for battleships the issues are primarily tank versus damage versus range but with true sniping battleship fleets a rarity these days, and many ships able to take on the sniping role with a few tracking computers/enhancers, we may want to explore vastly different roles and designs for the ships.

Yeah, I'm going out on a limb here and putting on my game designer hat, but I can do what I want: that's what blogs are for.

The first question is if we want to introduce true roles to the battleship line. The Scorpion is a huge outlier in the 12 ships in that it has bonuses to the racial electronic warfare modules. I think this should be expanded into the other three factions.

The next question is if we want to have two combat ships, one exemplifying the two combat philosophies of each race, or if we want to have one better suited to short ranged combat and one better for long range combat, or even if we want to get radical and have one combat ship and one logistics/exploration combat ship. Personally I think a combination of the first two suggestions is highly likely to mirror the other smaller ship classes, but I'm hoping CCP is thinking about adding a fourth battleship to fill the large logistics hole between cruiser and carrier.

With the Scorpion as the starting point, I figure the other three electronic warfare battleships will be the:
- Dominix : losing hybrid capabilities but retaining drone bonuses and getting remote sensor damper bonuses and another mid slot or two, maybe losing a low or high slot in exchange
- Armageddon : losing all laser bonuses and getting a drone bonus, bigger drone bay, and a tracking disruptor bonus or two
- Typhoon : losing the missile bonus and getting a target painter bonus or two.

I also expect all three ships to get improvements to move the out of the tier 1 ghetto: more fitting, extra slots.

For the two combat ships, the Rokh and the Raven provide nice models to work off of: one combat ship for each weapon philosophy. Also the first combat ship would represent tank and gank, while the second would represent gank and range.

For the Tank and Gankers the Rokh, Maelstrom, Hyperion and Abaddon all work really well in various situation and need very little changes. I would probably consider changing the bonus on the Rokh from range to damage so that it at least can match the Naga battlecruiser, but it is livable with the optimal range bonus.

For the Gank and Range role, a few changes are required to make them workable and distinct from the other combat ships. I would change the:
- Tempest to a missile ship (and I know a thousand Minmatar pilots just grabbed their weapons to come find me) and both it and the Raven would get damage/rate of fire bonuses to missiles and a velocity bonus.
- Apocalypse more capacitor and change its cap use bonus for lasers into a damage bonus.
- Megathron I would consider exchanging its tracking bonus for an optimal range bonus but since this type of bonus is non-existent for other Gallente ships I would consider leaving it alone but I would drop the drone bandwidth to 100 or 75 mbit/sec.

I just re-read that paragraph, and it strikes me as pretty silly to suggest totally revamping the Tempest while only toying with the Mega. So let's propose that the Mega gets totally revamped as a drone boat with capabilities like the current Dominix and take the new ewar Dominix and downgrade its drone abilities. Yeah, that is much more inline with my overall tiericide ideas even if it will make a lot of Gallente pilots unhappy.

* * * * *

So those are my combined predictions and suggestions, predictions for the cruisers and battlecruisers, and ship design suggestions for the battleships.

Massive Ego Finally Coalesces into Website

While I was on vacation a new news site was launched as a direct competitor to Evenews24.com: The Mittani Dot Com. Despite my little dig about the name of the site in the title of this post, apparently it was not The Mittani's (the Spaceship Politician) idea:

IS THIS A MITTANI VANITY SITE?
First off, the name. Nobody who knows much about Eve Online thinks that The Mittani himself is a shy or retiring individual who has to be coaxed into offering his opinion, nor one who is reluctant to step out of the shadows. As such, I imagine that there is a natural presumption that the site name was his decision, and that it is an example of the industrial-scale hubris that led to Goonswarm’s capital system being renamed “Mittaningrad”. In fact, I chose the name despite his concerns. Mittani himself wanted the site to be called something very worthy and descriptive like “Internet Spaceship News” or the like: dull enough that I genuinely can’t remember.

“The Mittani” has become a brand: one of the most recognisable and googled phrases or labels in Eve, it simply has recognition value that we would have struggled to create with anything else. I wanted us to profit from the better part of a decade of work and history that many new websites would give their right arm to possess. Although I admit that the would-be customers of, say, a travel site start-up might be a bit confused by the name. And the consequences of seeking to piggyback on that history for a sensitivity-training and human resources dotcom would be downright disastrous.

I remember reading, several years ago now, one of our enemies sagely informing his alliance that there was no “The Mittani”: that it was a shadowy group who used the fictional character of “The Mittani” as a nom de plume through which to speak to Goons and Eve. I think that we have all seen that gelled hair often enough now to know that he was wrong at the time, but in the end he wasn’t that far off

Also in that "About" post is this nice little paragraph about balance:

There are other news sites for Eve, too, but the level of quality tends to be awful. With a few exceptions, articles tend to be scrawled in a patois only vaguely related to any written language known to man, while desperation for content means that badly-disguised sock-puppet pieces explaining the links between Test Alliance and the Knights Templar appear with alarming regularity. Syndicated blogs tend to be of mixed quality at best, and bias is not just tolerated but celebrated.

I am all for the digs about other news sites and I agree that syndicating blogs can be a mixed bag as the writers of blog posts work for themselves and allow the syndication feed to use their content as filler as they see fit. Full disclosure: I am syndicated at Eve News 24 and I have no idea what posts Riverini or Bagehi will select from my feed. (UPDATE: bagehi is no longer an editor at EN24, but he was responsible in the past for syndicated article selection.) But the implication that TheMittaniDotCom's staff writers will be wonderfully all perfect writers and free from bias seems far fetched.

Take for example this post by writer Andski titled "The Off-Grid Boosting Argument". In it he explains the basic mechanics of off grid boosting and states that the "ability of a ship to give such powerful bonuses without being at risk is controversial" and then goes into his reasons why he thinks the mechanics should not be changed. This post is fine as it is but its obvious the author is a null sec pilot with little insight into low sec and/or small gang mechanics, as this line demonstrates:

For smaller engagements, the boosting ships would simply be on grid at a “safe” distance, keeping an eye out for probes and staying aligned - effectively preserving the status quo, even if a few poorly-flown T3s are blown up once in a blue moon.

Anyone who has been in smaller engagements would know that combat in low sec is a very fluid thing that flows from grid to grid as pilots warp to gates, jump through gates, fight in complexes, etc. A lot of choke points to grab and kill or drive off a boosting ship. And even if  boosting Tech IIIs only get killed "once in a blue moon" during combat that is far better than the current state of 'never'. But I'm not here to debate the author on this topic right now; what I want to point out is that this is a excellent jumping off point for the editors of the site to get another writer to compose a counter-point article to argue why off grid boosting should be changed. Otherwise they are just as biased and "mixed quality" as they rail against.

Finally, I've heard it stated that TheMittaniDotCom has 20 or more staff writers. During my time on the Eve Tribune it became obvious that writers have a quiver of article ideas that they are chomping at the bit to write. Some have a few, some have more, but either way once that quiver is empty the enthusiasm for writing articles week after week drops and the attrition rate of writers that stop writer is horrendously high. For the Tribune, a recruitment drive that brought in 5 new writers would see four of them done after 4 weeks. And the fifth writer that sticks for longer eventually gets taken out by boredom, real life, or quitting Eve.

This is one reason why Eve News 24 went with blog syndication. Since blog writers are typically writing for fun and have a common thread and purpose to keep writing, burnout rates are lower. Plus you can pick and choose which posts to pick up from a large pool instead of having a small pool that puts more pressure on staff writers. The trade off is the biases and quality control as stated earlier.

All in all, I'm happy to see another news site and I truly wish TheMittaniDotCom well on its venture. I also hope this shakes up Eve News 24 to improve and try to broaden its content and perhaps need fewer of Ripard Teg's posts as content. (Yes, I am jealous, why do you ask?)

Whither the Punisher?

Reading around the blogosphere you will see pilots from many walks of low sec life singing the praises of the ship rebalancing done to Tech I frigates. Merlins with Medium Shield Extenders or the new Ancillary Shield Boosters and their three damage bonused hybrid weapons; Incursi with blasters and duel armour reps; and Rifters are still good albeit no longer the king of Tech I frigate warfare.

But whither the Punisher? It also was revamped in the initial frigate reblancing but has been scarce on the scene since then, perhaps even more so than before the changes it seems. Why has the mighty Amarrian frigate seemed to fallen so far out of favour.

I brought up Pyfa and played around with various fittings for the ship and compared it to its counterparts. Here are my opinions.

1) Its best suited to armour buffer tanking. But armour tanked buffer ships are slooooow.

Frigs need to be fast, but nearly any fit that takes advantage of the Punisher's 5% armour resistance bonus per level makes the ship significantly slower than its counterparts. Even with just a 200mm plate and no armour rigs it was slower than all other three frigates, only coming close to the Rifter with 200mm plate and a Trimark rig, and still was 150 m/s slower at top speed. This especially is painful in conjunction with...

2) Only two mid slots.

Considering a propulsion module is basically mandatory in PvP, that leaves you with one slot in the mids. If you go with a point, you can't web the enemy so your slow-assed armour tanked ship can't keep up with them and they get away. If you go with a web, they simply warp off. As a solo ship, the Punisher has issues.

3) Dual Light Pulse Laser IIs use 3 times as much capacitor as Light Ion Blaster IIs

Couple that with the fact that you have no spare mid slots for a cap injector and you are looking at a ship that has some issues with energy management. With my skills, running the MWD, point, and weapons drains the capacitor in 1.5 minutes. Now, this might be enough to get you through a fight, but it leaves no room for error. A buffer Merlin is cap stable with web, point, MWD, and guns going while an Incursus faces some issues with dual reps, he can pulse the reps as needed and has the room for a cap booster to keep the juice flowing.

4) Damage is lower

I tested setups with the mid tier small short ranged weapons for all four ships: Light Ion Blaster IIs for the Merlin and Incursus, 150mm Autocannon IIs for the Rifter, and Dual Light Pulse Laser IIs for the Punisher. All frigate skills at V, one damage mod and one damage rig on each of the ships. The Incursus with his single drone added in was tops, followed by the Merlin. That was expected since Blasters are really short ranged. The Punisher and Rifter were estimated about equal, but if you add in a rocket launcher on the Rifter that the Punisher can't fit, the Punisher moves to the lowest damage output of all four frigs.

Now, if you go with more standard setups on the Merlin and Incursus and no rocket launcher on the Punisher, it doesn't look so bad although the Punisher is still lower. It does have the best optimal range but the difference for such small ships is really negligible and the Punisher with pulse lasers is still fighting within scram and web range.

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So here's the short story: the Punisher is slower, less flexible because of the poor mid slot layout, has generally less damage, has capacitor issues, and best optimal range and best buffer tank does not help it.

For the Punisher to have a hope to be competitive, something like an armour version of the Ancillary Shield Booster needs to be created.

Vacation!!

I'm starting vacation this week and off next week. I have one post planned for today, and then nothing until the 20th.

Faction Warfare: Broken or Thriving - Part 2

Stole Image from TEN website.

Yesterday I listed the things that the TEN Evening News roundtable podcast came up with as problems in the current Faction Warfare. Also voiced in the podcast (but less categorically) were the positives that make Faction Warfare positively thriving right now, so I'm going to try an list them here.

1) System ownership means something so it makes fighting over systems meaningful - Station lockouts and system upgrades are not huge bonuses to a faction, but they are significant, especially station lockout. Yeah, neutrals can dock so its not a complete lockout, but when you are in a hostile system and you can't dock to get safe from an enemy fleet, you really notice the difference in danger.

2) Being paid to PvP - FW is the only mechanic that pays you directly (in LPs) to destroy enemy ships. For example, being part of a fleet that killed a Gila faction cruiser I received over 6000 LPs. To be fair, payouts are not always that lucrative (it scales with the average market price of the ship) but its a nice bonus and its easy to see how a dedicated PvPer constantly looking for fights could make a living at it when combined with loot drops.

3) FW puts pilots in space, low sec space - Whether its PvE pilots doing plexes or missions or PvP pilots solo or in gangs, they are in low sec space moving around and providing targets for the enemy to try and engage.

4) Alliances in FW allows more organization and security, thus more fleets in space, thus more fights - While I understand the initial rational for not allowing alliances in FW when Empyrean Age was released (i.e. the alliances would dominate and make individuals or small corps untenable in the sov like atmosphere), the result was factions that were often fractured and disorganized and full of mistrust. The alliances allow for larger organizational structures and high level communications to be coordinated, and the smaller entities can form up around those pillars.

5) Ship balancing on frigates and assault ships has revitalized small ship warfare - Since the gate restrictions on most FW plexes force players to operate in ship classes not normally seen in null sec and wormhole space, we see a lot frigates, destroyers, and cruisers. The balances to make Assault Ships more powerful have allowed players like me to consider them for normal low sec PvP where they can go toe to toe with cruisers and sometimes battlecruisers and have a shot at winning. Furthermore, the re-balancing of plain Tech 1 frigates has allowed more diversity for new players (an old players to be sure) to get out there in something other than the Rifter. Merlins and Incursi are common sights in FW low sec now, along with the already popular faction ships like the Dramiel, Navy Comet, Navy Hookbill, and others. Not to mention the Destroyer improvements.

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The upshot is there are thriving communities of players participating in and living in faction warfare in low sec, and that there is a lot of relatively small scale PvP going on as result. I know from personal experience that a casual player has a better chance of finding fights in Faction Warfare on a consistent basis than in many other playstyles.

While there are some problems with some of the mechanics, CCP seems to be going the right direction.

Faction War: Broken or Thriving - Part 1

I listened to the great podcast episode from TEN Evening news on faction warfare: TEN EVEning News Roundtable #1: Faction Warfare.

It was great to hear an informed and thorough discussion from all factions about the problems facing the people participating in Faction War (aka FW) right now, and at the same time hear the enthusiasm and satisfaction for how well FW is doing since Inferno. Its an interesting contrast to hear people complain bitterly about the mechanics and how much fun FW is right now.

Allow me to outline the highlights of the problems facing FW right now as I heard them in the podcast (which I listened to over three days so excuse my lapses in memory).

1) There is no incentive for Defensive Plexing - Running plexes in enemy systems gives you Loyalty Points (LPs), contests the enemy system, and gives you standings increase. Running plexes in home systems uncontests the system. Unless you have assets in a station that you must have access to in the near future, its not worth the time and effort to defend plexes in home systems because it takes very little effort for hostiles to just run when you warp in and run some other plex. If you leave, they come back and finish the job.

There was several options thrown out during the roundtable to address this but the one that seems to have the most traction is that plexes automatically count back to zero when you're not on the button. At least if you chase out a hostile plexing in one of your own systems, you don't have to stay around and count down the timer yourself and it gives the hostiles some reason to want to stay and defend their effort.

2) FW Mission Running has no relation to zone control - They run their missions but it gives no benefit to the faction at all, making it divorced from other activities like Plexing or PvP.

3) FW Missions can be run in a PvE Stealth Bomber - Although the missions put pilots in low sec space for each faction, these mission runners are near uncatchable either in transit or in the mission itself, and if you chase them off they suffer no ill effects. The roundtable talked about some sort of "poison pill" so that it makes it worthwhile to chase off these stealth bombers, but I can't remember if any consensus was reached.

4) Balancing issues when one faction dominates - Pilots in a faction with only tier 1 warzone control pay 16 times as much pilots in a faction with tier 5 warzone control due to how the loyalty point store prices in loyalty points are calculated (i.e each tier gets 50% reduction over previous tier). The result is that the pilots in the dominating faction can make ISK a lot easier in faction warfare activities (which pays in LPs) than the dominated faction. Sure, prices will rise for items that are harder to afford and offset the discrepancy some, but since demand for faction items is a limited pool it does not offset the 16 times difference enough. If one side can only afford Punishers and the other side shows up in Fleet Issue Stabbers, it makes fighting back from the imbalance even harder.

There were several ideas thrown around to address this but nothing solid. This issue is further compounded by the next one...

5) Factions only have to "spike" the warzone control to 5 (or 4) and then cash out LPs all at once in order to make the big profits. Since your rate of making LPs is unchanging regardless of your control, a faction with tier 5 warzone control does not need to maintain it to make tier 5 payouts. It simply makes LPs and then spikes the warzone control with a flurry of activity and then cash out the LPs all at once at tier 5 prices. The result of this is that  it takes any immediacy of defending your warzone control away and acts like a damper on the other side who see any gains they have made in terms of warzone control wiped out.

The best suggestion for dealing with this issue was that LP payout for plexing/missions/PvP scales with warzone control and the loyalty point store prices remain constant instead of vice versa.

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So yeah, there are some issues with Faction War as it stands now. Tomorrow we'll talk about why I think (and the podcast roundtable largely agrees) that Faction War is thriving.