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General Discussion => General Non-RP EVE Discussion => Topic started by: kalaratiri on 27 Mar 2013, 05:12

Title: Dev Post: Remote Sensor Booster and Tracking Enhancer Nerf
Post by: kalaratiri on 27 Mar 2013, 05:12
Fozzie brandishes the Nerf Bat©: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2797415#post2797415

I'll copy it out later, right now I'm on my phone.

Quote
Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Got some more Odyssey updates for you all, this time in the form of some module rebalancing! We're going to have a number of module balance changes released with EVE Online: Odyssey on June 4th, and our first batch to announce are the Remote Sensor Boosters and Tracking Enhancers.

Let's start with Remote Sensor Boosters. They give pretty extreme bonuses to scan res at the moment, similar to officer sensor boosters. This has contributed to the growth of instalock camps that are in our opinion are a bit too easy nowadays.
So we're gonna decrease the scan res bonuses so that they give a solid but more reasonable benefit over local boosters. We're leaving the lock range bonus of the T1 and T2 remote boosters the same since we don't see them as overpowered for that role, and actually buffing the lock range bonus from the meta remote boosters since they are currently all giving T1 meta 0 level bonuses for that stat right now.

Key stat for this change is that the best Remote Sensor Boosters will have their Scan Resolution bonus reduced from 40.5% to 33%.

Apologies for the terrible formatting (you can copypaste into a spreadsheet and it looks good)

typeName   Old ScanRes Bonus   New ScanRes Bonus   Old LockRange Bonus   New LockRange Bonus
Remote Sensor Booster I   33.8   28   33.8   33.8
Coadjunct Linked Sensor Array I   35.4   29   33.8   35
Linked Sensor Network   40.5   30   33.8   36
Connected Scanning CPU Uplink   37.1   31   33.8   37
F-23 Reciprocal Sensor Cluster Link   38.8   32   33.8   38
Remote Sensor Booster II   40.5   33   40.5   40.5
'Boss' Remote Sensor Booster I   40.5   33   33.8   39
'Entrepreneur' Remote Sensor Booster I   40.5   33   40.5   40.5


Now for TEs. It's a fairly well accepted fact that the great optimal and falloff bonuses on TEs are over the top, especially considering they can get them while also simultaneously giving decent tracking boosts. The strength of TEs has been one of the reasons for Minmatar dominance in recent years, as well as contributing to the relative strength of shield tanking over armor tanking by inflating the value of non-tank low slots. What we're looking at is simply decreasing the falloff and optimal bonuses of all TEs by 1/3, and leaving their tracking bonus intact.

Key stat for this change is a reduction in the Optimal/Falloff bonus on a T2 Tracking Enhancer from 15%/30% to 10%/20%.

Name   OldFalloff   NewFalloff   OldOptimal   NewOptimal
Azimuth Descalloping Tracking Enhancer   11   7.4   5.5   3.7
Basic Tracking Enhancer   10   6.6   5   3.3
Beam Parallax Tracking Program   12   8   6   4
Beta-Nought Tracking Mode   10.5   7   5.25   3.5
F-AQ Delay-Line Scan Tracking Subroutines   11.5   7.6   5.75   3.8
Tracking Enhancer I   20   13.4   10   6.7
Sigma-Nought Tracking Mode I   21   14   10.5   7
Auto-Gain Control Tracking Enhancer I   22   14.6   11   7.3
F-aQ Phase Code Tracking Subroutines   23   15.4   11.5   7.7
Fourier Transform Tracking Program   24   16   12   8
Tracking Enhancer II   30   20   15   10
Domination Tracking Enhancer   30   20   15   10
Republic Fleet Tracking Enhancer   30   20   15   10
Mizuro's Modified Tracking Enhancer   31.5   21   15.75   10.5
Hakim's Modified Tracking Enhancer   33   22   16.5   11
Gotan's Modified Tracking Enhancer   34.5   23   17.25   11.5
Tobias' Modified Tracking Enhancer   36   24   18   12

This change will be somewhat painful for many ships that rely on TEs for range in their current fits, but we are confident that the change is necessary to establish balance between the different weapon upgrade modules.

Let me know what you think!

I was going to format it all to make it look really nice, but then I accidentally the entire post and I can't be bothered to do it again. Lazy Kala™
Title: Re: Dev Post: Remote Sensor Booster and Tracking Enhancer Nerf
Post by: ArtOfLight on 27 Mar 2013, 05:24
I'm honestly divided on this, really. Projectile weapons seem like they're going to get hit pretty hard with the Tracking Enchancer nerf, but maybe there's more to it than I'm seeing.
Title: Re: Dev Post: Remote Sensor Booster and Tracking Enhancer Nerf
Post by: kalaratiri on 27 Mar 2013, 05:43
It's not as bad as it looks. Projectiles will be hit hard, but so will everything else (except missiles) as well. So projectiles will still have the longest falloff, it will just be shorter than before, giving an advantage to armour fits who would previously have been kited into the ground.
Title: Re: Dev Post: Remote Sensor Booster and Tracking Enhancer Nerf
Post by: BloodBird on 27 Mar 2013, 06:23
Not to mention this will also nerf the tactics of using a remote sensor-boosted and tracking enhanced artillery boat to insta-lock and insta-pop anything coming and going.

I can taste the tears from 50km-off-gate-KM-farming-Tornado-piloting pirates by now. Perhaps it will be possible to move around in anything but the latest cookie-cutter nano fitting? Time will tell.

Title: Re: Dev Post: Remote Sensor Booster and Tracking Enhancer Nerf
Post by: Tiberious Thessalonia on 27 Mar 2013, 06:53
This is going to be such a boost to those of us who have already adapted against those tactics...  :twisted:
Title: Re: Dev Post: Remote Sensor Booster and Tracking Enhancer Nerf
Post by: Lyn Farel on 27 Mar 2013, 07:19
The Ages of Missiles incoming.
Title: Re: Dev Post: Remote Sensor Booster and Tracking Enhancer Nerf
Post by: Silas Vitalia on 27 Mar 2013, 10:05
As a pirate I'm unhappy with anything lowering our remote sebboing ;(

The turret stuff seems fine to me though.

Title: Re: Dev Post: Remote Sensor Booster and Tracking Enhancer Nerf
Post by: Saede Riordan on 27 Mar 2013, 10:05
Welp, time to train Caldari.
Title: Re: Dev Post: Remote Sensor Booster and Tracking Enhancer Nerf
Post by: Ghost Hunter on 27 Mar 2013, 10:09
Quote
Let's start with Remote Sensor Boosters. They give pretty extreme bonuses to scan res at the moment, similar to officer sensor boosters. This has contributed to the growth of instalock camps that are in our opinion are a bit too easy nowadays.

You have to be joking. When everything of value is flown through jump freighter, blockade runner, or cloaky Tech 3s, the only thing instacamps get is either unscouted lone wolves, people who lagged out trying to turn on their cloaking device, or pods caught from the previous two. Even pod catching is a feat when they can go into the warp tunnel before your lock command is recognized by the server.

Break the whole 'I can cloak before my enemy even has his targeting command in the server tick queue' and actually give us a means to catch cloakers through gates that isn't can spamming Russian Roulette.

RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE
Title: Re: Dev Post: Remote Sensor Booster and Tracking Enhancer Nerf
Post by: Silas Vitalia on 27 Mar 2013, 10:16
Quote
Let's start with Remote Sensor Boosters. They give pretty extreme bonuses to scan res at the moment, similar to officer sensor boosters. This has contributed to the growth of instalock camps that are in our opinion are a bit too easy nowadays.

You have to be joking. When everything of value is flown through jump freighter, blockade runner, or cloaky Tech 3s, the only thing instacamps get is either unscouted lone wolves, people who lagged out trying to turn on their cloaking device, or pods caught from the previous two. Even pod catching is a feat when they can go into the warp tunnel before your lock command is recognized by the server.

Break the whole 'I can cloak before my enemy even has his targeting command in the server tick queue' and actually give us a means to catch cloakers through gates that isn't can spamming Russian Roulette.

RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE

Here here!!

This cloaky 100% avoidance of all possible danger thing needs to end right now. 


There should also be a smartbomb like 'decloak' module.
Title: Re: Dev Post: Remote Sensor Booster and Tracking Enhancer Nerf
Post by: Cmdr Baxter on 27 Mar 2013, 10:21
I know a few hybrid pilots who're going to be upset about the TEs. #incomingtears #grabanumbrella
Title: Re: Dev Post: Remote Sensor Booster and Tracking Enhancer Nerf
Post by: Desiderya on 27 Mar 2013, 11:01
It's the combination of alpha ships and instalock that makes it such a bad gameplay element.
Cloaky transports and JF's are quite another problem, imho.
Title: Re: Dev Post: Remote Sensor Booster and Tracking Enhancer Nerf
Post by: Lyn Farel on 27 Mar 2013, 11:20
JFs = no more escorts and conveying in dangerous parts of space, and no more consequences of living in a nullsec dead end border zone.
Title: Re: Dev Post: Remote Sensor Booster and Tracking Enhancer Nerf
Post by: Esna Pitoojee on 27 Mar 2013, 18:59
Generally approving of this. Wondering if this will finish cementing the Hurricane into the Armor BC role - Gyros and TEs are about the only things it was worth putting in most shield-nano 'cane lows.
Title: Re: Dev Post: Remote Sensor Booster and Tracking Enhancer Nerf
Post by: Norrin Ellis on 27 Mar 2013, 21:40
I have a pretty neat Vindi that I originally made for doing Incursions.  I modified it a bit to run missions with friends (one providing shield logi support).  Its max range is about 30km with 3 TEs.  Now I'll likely use those low slots for armor tanking and put 3 TCs in the mids to keep the range somewhat useful.

...or I'll leave it in the station to spin.  Such is life.

EDIT:  I'm honestly not sure about the projectile situation because I live in my highsec bubble and don't tend to notice these things.  I can't imagine ever really having much opportunity, however, to close within spitting range (which is about what you get with blasters + antimatter) without my tank being stripped away first.  So, to get a decent engagement range, let's say I change ammo type on my blasters.  Then I can get better dps with much better range just using rails + antimatter, so why use the blasters at all?  It confuses me that there's a weapon system that pretty much needs the TEs, as is, in order to have any reasonable engagement range, yet those weapons aren't getting a buff to compensate for this nerf--a nerf being handed down because it makes yet another weapon OP.
Title: Re: Dev Post: Remote Sensor Booster and Tracking Enhancer Nerf
Post by: Vincent Pryce on 28 Mar 2013, 04:12
While in Curse we used interceptor/dram or other fast thing to decloak and bump those things. Takes practice to do it but you can. Remote Sebos was the thing we fucked over cloaky transports in FORTRESS KINAKKA when we were really bored. Worked. Won't anymore as well I guess. With frigates for pirates unusable still on gates in lowsec, lowsec is gonna be pretty much a safe zone for any cloakers - unless you are in FW, those instalock-thrashers do nasty things to stealthbombers.

TE nerf, I can understand that. Actually been anticipating that. After all my AC Machariel will hurt you from 70km away, and I can kite you in a Cynabal at 40km.

Jumpfreighter issue...

It cots 8bil to get one, and I can tell life in nul and low would be hell of a lot more annoying if you didn't have one of those. Speaking from the perspective of a small nul/low entity. Jumpfreighters are expensive quality of life improvements that just retract from the amount of carrier jumps you have to do - or Rorqual jumps. I own one, moving one isn't exactly a picnic of fun times, it also stupidly easy to catch those unless you are careful with them as they have zero defenses. I could get the same effect with my three carriers but this is much more convenient even if more risky.

A lot of the factional warfare hotspots in lowsec that do have supplies in them for people, how do you think the supplies get there to begin with?
Title: Re: Dev Post: Remote Sensor Booster and Tracking Enhancer Nerf
Post by: BloodBird on 28 Mar 2013, 08:39
It's the combination of alpha ships and instalock that makes it such a bad gameplay element.
Cloaky transports and JF's are quite another problem, imho.

This.

Cloaking and it's ease requires more specialized fixes I feel, this is a whole other issue.

That lone wolf you mentioned Silver? That lone wolf is, today, a moron for trying something as simple as un-scouted, solo PVP. It's hard enough finding and/or enjoying anything that MIGHT be solo these days, we don't need to add insta-death on random gates to that issue.

That tactic is a throw-back to the age of brainless gate-sniping piracy when we had warp-to-10, not WT0.