Thursday, August 01, 2013

Command Ships, Warfare Links, And Local Reppers, OH MY

Three sudden Dev Posts on the forums this morning:
For Odyssey 1.1. we're going to be taking a swing at aspects of our warfare link features, as well as rebalancing command ships. We believe that the package of changes we've put together will be a significant step forward for the game, but it's definitely not the end of iteration on these features.
For years one of the most hotly discussed issues surrounding warfare links is their ability to apply bonuses to fleet members anywhere in the same solar system. We will not be changing this aspect of the feature in Odyssey 1.1. There are some serious technical hurdles to adjusting this aspect of the features, which are being worked on as we speak but for which we are not currently ready to announce an ETA.
What we will be changing for 1.1 is:
The strength of the bonuses provided by Warfare links
The way that skills, ship bonuses and implants affect the strength of warfare bonuses
The specific types of bonuses provided by the Information Warfare mindlink and Information Wafare: Sensor Integrity warfare link
The method by which mindlink implants can be obtained
The fitting requirements of warfare link modules, and their use within starbase forcefields
Many aspects of Command Ship balance, including what bonuses they receive to warfare link strength
The base rep amount of all armor repairers and most shield boosters
And the links:

Warfare Links, Mindlinks, Gang Bonuses
Command Ships
Local Armour and Shield Repair Module Changes

Here are some highlight thoughts.

- The promised change to give command ships an edge at boosting over Strategic Cruisers is still here, coming in at 15% to 10%.

- Command ships seem to have fewer weapons but bigger bonuses, we'll need to run some numbers to see how DPS projections lie

- The boost to local repairers, both armour and shield, are good for people like me that fly without links. Nice.

- No more sitting in a POS with links on. Much needed, I still think links should only work on grid though.

- "We are planning to extend the bonuses from the defensive gang links to local capital repair modules." Some love for Minmatar capitals?

- Navy Mindlinks!!!! Jebus!

- Vulture gets damage bonus where it had none before, still only 5 turrets. Net effect, will it even outdamage an Eagle? Will have amazing range still though, so combined with Medium gun changes it could be interesting in some cases.

- Eos: true drone ship now.

- Um, did the Sleipnir just get scarier? It got its 25% RoF replaced with 50% Damage bonus, and second 5% per level damage bonus upped to 10%. Lost two turrets in exchange but I think it might be more than compensated for it, and now gets better boosting ability (OH wait, that boosting business was not for ASBs)

- 15% more boosting for my Incursus! Time to consider going single repairer with more DPS.

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:41 am

    I'm surprised one of the Amarr command ships didn't get the drone makeover to carry forward from the Prophecy.

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  2. Anonymous6:45 pm

    EOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. As far as damage goes, the Sleip and Astarte both lose a slight amount of dps, while the Abso stays the same.

    Sleipnir goes from 11.6666 effective turrets to 11.25
    Astarte goes from 10.9 effective turrets to 10
    Abso stays at 10 effective turrets

    The nerf to dps is provided with the 2 utility high slots these all will have giving the sleipner an effective buff and probably maintains it's lead as the solo/small gang CS.

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