Assault Frigates and the Proposed New Module

I've mentioned recently how assault frigates and cruisers have been squeezed out of the meta.

At EVE Vegas CCP devs announced that they are going to do a balance pass on Assault Frigates and Assault Cruisers, and as part of that pass they will introduce a new module that can only fit on these classes of ships, an Assault Damage Control. This new low slot module is like a normal damage control module with less resist bonuses, but can be activated to give 20 seconds of super resists with a long cooldown (how long is unknown at this time).

The concept is to try and make the frigates a viable option for heavy tackle in fleets (i.e. tackle that can get in close and scram/web to allow rest of fleet to pile on, as opposed to interceptors that usually only point from a distance and do not slow the target down) and to make assault cruisers more viable as a mid range fleet ship more capable of resisting initial enemy fire and to catch logistics repping in time.

Read more details from this article by Jin'tann.

Ashterothi has a quick audio editorial (~5 min) on the topic and he thinks that this concept is not a great idea because it's just another variation on the burst tank as popularized by Auxiliary Shield Boosters and Auxiliary Armour Repairers. In fact, since this module will fit will on the ships and operate at the same time as the repair modules it will exacerbate the issue with a super burst tank.

I can't speak to how this module will impact larger scale combat in fleets except to say that it might improve the lot of HACs versus T3 Strategic Cruisers or it might not work out if enemy fleets are smart enough to force an activation of the module on a target and then switch off it for 20 seconds only to come back while its cooldown is active.

But in low sec, these modules are going to be a pain in my ass if the enemy has them.

Tech 3 Destroyers are already a deadly opponent with the combination of speed, tank, and damage, but at least these machines are hampered by being excluded from Small faction warfare plexes. Assault Frigates with super tanks are going to be able to crash a small plex, activate the ADCU, and push the position more so than any contemporary frigates or destroyers that can fit in the small plex. I predict the current small plex champions, Cormorants and Algoses, will get replaced quickly by assault frigates.

On the other hand, small gang fighting in roams will be very interesting in low sec with these ships as they will act as durable scout / bait / tackle for long enough for the rest of the fleet to arrive. Hell, it may even help to make the Ishkur a viable alternative to the double-rep Incursus I'm so fond of.

Regardless, I'm pleased CCP is looking into these ship classes and look forward to trying them out once they receive some attention.

P.S. I've been radio silent the past few weeks due to a project at work eating all my free time. Its finally letting up.

Assault Frigates - Squeezed Out of the Meta

The main problem with Assault Frigates is nothing to do with the ship class itself directly, but more a problem with the overall meta and realities of EVE Online.

* * * * *

How many things can you do in a ship? Off the back of my hand, you can:
- do damage
- tank damage
- heal damage
- do electronic warfare
- tackle
- scout
- hack
- transport stuff
- mine
- probe

Lots of stuff right? Most of those roles have a cheaper tech I version and a more specialized tech II version. But the first two, causing and absorbing damage, tend to be extra overloaded, even if we break the "causing damage" into two for short range and long range damage, and another 3 for small/medium/large ship sizes.

Take for example the Gallente line of ships:

Small short ranged damage: Incursus, Comet, Catalyst, Enyo
Small long ranged damage: Tristan, Algos, Ishkur, Hecate

Medium short ranged damage: Thorax, Deimos, Phobos, Brutix, Proteus
Medium long ranged damage: Vexor, Vexor Navy Issue, Ishtar, Myrmidon

Large short ranged damage: Megathron, Hyperion, Megathron Navy Issue, Kronos
Large long ranged damage: Dominix

I've taken some liberties classifying the ships as obviously the role of ships is largely determined by how they are fit and many of the ships can fit in both roles. And I'm ignoring specialized ships that cause damage as well as performing another role like Command Bursts or Interdiction.

Overall there is a decent balance between cost of a ship, its damage potential, its tanking potential, and its flexibility. For example, the decision of taking a Tristan frigate or an Algos destroyer is based on whether you want a cheaper ship with more speed or a more expensive ship with more damage and tank.

So here's the problem with Assault Frigates. They are supposed to help straddle the divide between Tech I frigates and Tech I cruisers by providing more damage and tank than frigates while still being faster and more mobile than cruisers, but the advantages of being smaller and more mobile are outweighed by the fact that cruisers are 50% to 66% cheaper than assault frigates while having better damage and tank (most of the time). In other words, they are not worth the ISK for the upgrade over Tech I frigates compared to cruisers. Meanwhile Tech I destroyers offer damage and tank upgrades over frigates for a modest price increase, and Tactical Destroyers offer a huge boost in damage and tank and capabilities that is worth the large price tag vis a vis cruisers.

Do Heavy Assault Cruisers suffer from the same issue? After all, they are positioned to be the stepping stone from Tech I cruisers to Tech I battleships, and are in competition with Tech I battlecruisers and Strategic Cruisers. To a large part, yes, HACs suffer from the same squeeze but get a little relief from the price of battleships only being ~25-35% cheaper than the Tech II cruisers, as well as having enough module slots to make up for some of the shortcomings.

Also, while both assault classes have a bonus to reduce micro warp drive signature bloom by 50%, giving them some unique advantages over their competitors, the advantage for frigate classed ships is not very noticeable while the cruiser class in certain situations and fits can boast a decent gain.

The end result is that Assault Frigates are at the bottom end of the usage profile for ships in EVE. How do we address that?

CCP has three options:

1 - Leave them Alone

There is nothing that says that Assault Frigates have to be worth it in the game at all. CCP could leave them alone and concentrate on balancing the existing ship classes that do see frequent or moderate use. The downside is that it would leave a decent concept languishing and CCP still needs to update them for art assets and code changes regardless, unless they choose to simply remove them.

2 - Lower the Build Cost

If Assault Frigates were closer to the cost of Tech I cruisers they would be able to compete with them more. It would be a trade off in damage and survivability of the cruisers for more speed and agility and smaller signature of the assault frigates without adding in the huge extra cost.

3 - Increase their Stats

Another option instead of lowering the cost is to make the cost more worth it by simply making them deal more damage and/or have even more tank. This approach is the least appealing because if you increase the abilities of the assault frigates to make them worth the 25 million ISK, you run the risk of obsoleting Tech I cruisers completely if they can't compete at all with the upgraded ships, and even making them obviously preferable over destroyers and Tactical Destroyers.

4 - Give me a Unique Ability

I mean beyond the current unique ability that reduces MWD sig bloom by 50%, which as I discussed has less value for a small sig ship compared to a larger cruiser. The trick here is finding an ability or set of abilities that makes the ship class have a unique role or niche without butting into the role of an existing class. For example, longer range on warp disruptors/scramblers or some immunity to stasis webifiers and they start to look better than interceptors. Another idea bandied about was having their MWDs immune to being shut off by warp scramblers but that runs the risk of making them near impossible to catch without a specialized counter webbing ship.

Whatever CCP decides to do (if anything) they will have to be careful in the packed meta that assault frigates live in not to push something else out in the shuffle.

Assault Ships - Thoughts and Ideas

Yesterday we looked at the small combat ship meta and agreed that Assault ships currently are squeezed out of their role as a small hard hitting frigate by the presence of the overpowered Tech III Tactical Destroyers.

For example, compare this Enyo kitted out for damage with this Hecate also kitted out for damage:

[Enyo, enyo]
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Damage Control II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Tracking Enhancer II

5MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
[empty med slot]

Light Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
[empty high slot]

Small Hybrid Collision Accelerator I
Small Hybrid Burst Aerator I

Hornet II x1

And:

[Hecate, Hecate]
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Damage Control II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

5MN Microwarpdrive II
Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution Script
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I

Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S
Core Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I

Small Hybrid Burst Aerator I
Small Algid Hybrid Administrations Unit I
Small Ancillary Current Router II

In propulsion mode, the Hecate is going 2.50 km/sec compared to 2.63 km/sec for the Enyo, but does 664 DPS to 354 DPS and has 6.5 EHP compared to 6.8 EHP. Defense mode slows it down to around 1.5 km/sec but boosts the EHP to over 9K. The estimated price is about 76 million compared to 31 million for the Enyo.

I realize there are soft factors like signature, agility, etc, and the role bonus of assault ships getting half the signature bloom with the Micro Warp Drive definitely is something to consider in favour of the beleaguered class. But the extra slots, more fitting options, unique ability to switch modes on the fly, and better hard stats for damage (especially damage) and defense all for a price total only twice that of an assault ship certainly gives the advantage to the larger vessel. And if price is really a concern, there is the perfectly capable Tech I destroyers or even Tech I combat frigates that perform adequately in many situations for a fraction of the price.

Simply put, Assault Ships are squeezed from both sides on the price spectrum.

Now we now Tech III Tactical Destroyers are being looked at by CCP via a focus group of expert players so its safe to say a change is incoming that will impact negatively on them. If T3 Dessies were banned from Small faction warfare complexes and their stats were nerfed a bit AND their price saw an increase of about 20%, I could see Assault ships perhaps making a niche between Tech I and Tech III destroyers as an alternative.

But do we really need yet another small combat ships? The meta is overloaded at this end between the basic frigates, faction frigates, destroyers and Tactical Destroyers. Here are some ideas for making Assault Frigates more viable in the current meta.

1) Boost Stats - make them do a little more damage, have a little more tank, and a bit more speed so that they are more comparable to Tech III destroyers. Simple, yet does not remove the log jam of options.

2) Increase Role Bonus from 50% smaller signature radius under MWD to 25% - this would significantly increase their survivability while making them unique in the meta. Downside, would it make a difference with all the scrams out there able to catch them at the ranges they can fight at? I'm looking at the new Navy Maulus and it should make a lot of MWD kiters nervous.

3) Revamp with pure range bonuses - essentially make them all act like snipers with longer range and targeting then even the Tactical Destroyers on sharpshooter mode. A unique niche but boring.

4) Leave them as they are except change the role bonus so that a scram does not turn off the MWD (but still prevents warp out). This would turn them into a unique ship type for hunting kiting ships but would not make them overpowered (possibly, I'm writing without a seat belt here!).

Any other ideas?

Tech III Destroyers and the Current Combat Ship Meta

On the latest High Drag podcast Random and Fintarue got into a discussion about Tech III Tactical Destroyers and how the meta of combat ships is a little broken right now. I'm going to dive into a small investigation of the current "small" combat ship meta and discuss how things can be changed.

Definitions

The ships we are going to be looking at are combat ships that are cruiser sized or smaller which are: Tech 1 combat frigates, navy frigates, pirate frigates, Tech II assault frigates, Tech 1 destroyers, Tech III Tactical destroyers, Tech 1 combat and attack cruisers, navy cruisers, faction cruisers, Tech II assault cruisers, and Tech III Strategic cruisers.

We are not looking at specialized ships at these hull sizes such as attack frigates, interceptors, interdictors, etc as they have roles away from purely offensive damage and defensive. Attack cruisers we will consider as they are less differentiated compared to combat cruisers and have some role overlap with the other vessels we are looking at.

There are four main factors to consider for combat ships: offensive, defensive, maneuverability, and cost. 

Offensive covers not only raw DPS, but factors such as alpha, range, lock speed, tracking, neutralizers, auxiliary ewar like jams and tracking disruptors, and tackle modules.

Defensive covers local tank, whether it be active or passive or speed, and takes into consideration the ship's signature.

Maneuverability also considers speed but also agility and warp speed.

Cost simply refers to the ISK price to replace the ship and its modules when destroyed.

Status

I roughly evaluated the ship classes on a scale from 1 to 10, one being the worst and 10 being the best (for Cost, worst is highest cost). I threw the values into a chart:

And then made a graph (you guys love graphs I hear):

Now its a little skewed because I classed all the cruiser sized ships as maneuverability 1 because I'm not super familiar with the differences between a Vexor, Vexor Navy Issue, and Vigilant, and Proteus for example, but the glaring sore point on the graph is that for the high maneuverable ships, Tech III destroyers stand head and shoulders above the others and the cost differential between them does not make up the difference. And as noted elsewhere in podcasts and blogs, Assault ships, which had a niche as a hard hitting but costly alternative to Tech I and Navy frigates, are completely squeezed out by a ship that hits harder, has more tank, had equal or better maneuverability, for a slightly higher price tag. And I can even see why the Tactical destroyers can be preferable to some cruiser alternatives... has anyone seen Ruptures since the Svipul came out?

Conclusion

Sad to say, Tech III destroyers need a balancing pass, but as Random and Fintarue said, Assault ship definitely need some love as well to distinguish them from destroyer alternatives. 

Tomorrow we'll talk about ideas for the struggling assault ships.