My Loot, Your Tears

So Jester has written about the new Tier-3 battlecruiser information that has been leaked. They look great…. but here’s the thing: Will anyone ever use a Tier-1 battlecruiser any more? Does anyone even use them at all? Should we have been balancing ships that exist before we add new ones?

Some one will eventually make the “Tier-1 battlecruisers cost less than Tier-2″ argument. If you can afford the 20-30m ISK for a Tier-1 BC, you can afford the 30-40m ISK for a Tier-2 BC. It’s really not much difference for what is a substantially better class of ship.

Let’s take a quick look at the Tier-1 battlecruisers.

Prophecy: The Amarr tier-1 BC has a big tank as you’d expect from an Amarr ship. On the other hand, it’s slow, it does poor damage, and only fits six guns. The Tier-2 Harbringer can do significantly more DPS due to bonus and 7 gun slots, has the same speed, more power grid, and better base armor and shield HPs.

The only time I’ve seen a Prophecy seriously used is as a bait ship. With Battlecruiser V, a bunch of plates, and some resist mods, it can sport a lot of EHP for a BC hull. Just don’t expect to do any useful damage with it.

Ferox: The Ferox has the same bonus to shield resists as the Drake, but it has one less mid slot – key for shield tanks – and less base shield EHP. With a bonus to hybrid optimal range, it manages to make blaster suck less, but that isn’t saying much. On top of this, it’s even slower than the Prophecy! Good luck getting in range for blasters. With only six gun slots verus the Drake’s seven missile slots, you won’t be doing much damage either.

I don’t know of anyone seriously using the Ferox, but if you’ve got a reason, post it up. I have heard of some odd fits with autocannons, but these are the stuff of comedy.

Brutix: The Brutix is perhaps the best of the Tier-1 battlecruisers. With seven gun slots, a damage bonus, and an armor repair bonus, the Brutix is able to do a lot of DPS and a lot of tanking. The weakness of the Brutix is the weakness of Gallente ships in general: Hybrids aren’t that good. If they get fixed as rumors say, the Brutix may get a lot more popular. The other weakness is that you need a lot of speed to get into range for blasters; a microwarpdrive plus blasters plus armor repair is a lot of capacitor.

The most common role lately for the Brutix is that of a suicide gank ship. Is anyone using them in PvP, and if so, how?

Cyclone: The Cyclone has all the weaknesses of Minmatar ships and not much to help it out. Eight high slots will let you fit five guns and three launchers, but only the guns are damaged bonused, and for ROF instead of pure damage. The lack of powergrid compared to the Hurricane increases the difficulty in working around the issues. The shield boosting bonus looks good on paper, but the Cyclone’s shield resists work against this – the EM hole in particular.

I don’t see much reason for using a Cyclone when a speed-fit Hurricane will run circles around the other guy and do a ton more damage at the same time.

–

Comments? What would you do about the Tier-1 battlecruisers? Do they have a role besides “slightly cheaper”?

I’m really liking the turn-around we’ve seen in the last month with CCP. Hilmar has fallen on his sword to make nice with the EVE community following the Incarna PR disaster, and then we’re promised a whole bunch of nice stuff for the winter expansion.

Then player owned custom offices, and then new tier-3 battlecruisers, and then implants on killmails, and then engine trails and new backgrounds.

I am in no way faulting CCP for thinking big and awesome. I am slightly concerned about if they can actually deliver all of this by the winter expansion. Assuming “winter” is pushed out to mean “February”, that’s only 4 months. It’s a big list of stuff to make in just a few months. Particularly since they just axed 20% of their workforce; this always causes some people to start looking for other jobs, and lowers morale.

The worst disaster they could have would be another Incarna-release which didn’t meet player expectation at all. I think we all would have been OK with “this stuff for winter, all these other things between winter and next summer”.

Comments?

Lots of excellent discussion going back and forth on the CCP layoffs. PyroTech at Wandering the Void wrote about players complaining that the community team was hit hard:

Where’s the next logical step to downsize? You cut out developers, art, and designers from EVE….you go back on your promise of improving EVE. That’s where the community team comes up. In a lot of companies that have these PR Community team’s, they are the most disposable. Their job can be taught relatively easy and therefore easy to replace. So the Reykjavik positions mentioned were likely the community team members.

The logic here is sound. Particularly if the ‘community’ dropped by ~4500 people, that team suddenly looks a whole lot less important. BUT, I disagree with the outcome.

What CCP should have done is shit-can the entire World of Darkness project. Look, CCP, I’m an EVE player. As far as I am concerned your job is to make EVE as good as it can be and NOT ONE DAMN THING ELSE. I have no interest in a vampire MMO; and I’m guessing a lot of EVE players will agree.

Some people will make an argument that CCP has already invested “too much time and money” to drop the project. This reminds me of the “too big to fail” argument made for some financial institutions.

CCP’s income stream is from EVE players. Until they actually get the WoD game out the door, they’re banking on the future. Any loss they would take from dropping World of Darkness has *already been paid*. They can’t make the current situation any worse; indeed they can improve their fiscal position by dropping the employees assigned to WoD, and assign some back over to EVE.

Improve EVE, attract more players, get rich. You can do it, CCP.