I've been hearing disturbing rumors. Apparently the revamp of the T1 frigates is not going well. This saddens me as I was particularly looking forward to the "making relevant" of the T1 frigates, destroyers and cruisers. I was looking forward to these changes in Inferno. Bummer.
Honestly there's a few things we could REALY use in a T1 frigate revamp (not to mention a cruiser revamp). The first element is roles. All T1 frigates are supposed to be fairly generic. And usable right away... BUT... I'm of the opinion that they need to give a hint of direction by their bonuses and their usage. This means, for each faction, there needs to be:
1 T1 Interceptor Frigate
1 Mining/Cargo Frigate
1 Astrometrics/Drone Frigate
1 Missile/Skirmish Frigate (long range)
1 Main combat Frigate (short range)
1 EWAR Frigate
A few notes:
1) separate the cargo from the astrometrics frigates and put it in the mining frigates. Newbies should not have to deal with the issues of jet-can mining - they should graduate into that when they hit barges and exhumers. All mining cruisers and frigates need a serious boost in cargo space. These should be considered to be "entrance haulers" almost. This has the advantage of removing a large part of the temptation to can flip in newbie systems (which is currently a ban-able offense). The point is to change the ratio of mining to travel time at the frigate/cruiser level so it doesn't make sense to use a hauler - leave that complication for the miners who graduate into barges. You'll get a lot less rage quits that way.
2) Make the astrometrics carriers into true drone carriers and get rid of most of their cargo space.
3) optimize the bonuses of the main combat frigate for short range and the main skirmish frigate for long range. Side Note: UNLESS YOU ARE WILLING TO SERIOUSLY BOOST WEAPONS BONUSES - NO FUCKING SPLIT WEAPONS SYSTEMS.
4) Newbie interceptors. Bonus to MWD sig bloom, Bonus to scram range. MORE SLOTS. All of these need at least two-3 mids and 2-3 lows. Propulsion/Tackle/Prop mods. You don't need to bring em up to the T2 level but make em usable and make it so that it's not a refit of the e-war frigate that's considered the serious T1 interceptor variant (Vigil I'm looking at you)
5) EWAR balance between the factions is a perennial problem. You seriously need to revamp the EWAR side of things before you can balance the ships involved.
What's missing is the logistics at the frigate level - due to the lack of destroyers and what not I'd seriously consider that class for the missing logistics branch on the frigate sized tree. Logistics is a whole other problem but I won't go into in this post since it deals with frigates.
Mind you all the above is strictly my own opinion and is what I'd like to see. Don't expect to see any of that though. Oh well.
Game Night
3 hours ago
7 comments:
Even though I'm currently an outsider, I support Let's views 100%, especially in the T1 interceptor department. But I also love your idea for the astrometrics frigates; The 300m³ cargo bays have been irrelevant ever since the big scanning mechanics change in Apocrypha. That's three years ago. So yeah, a cargo bay that's more sensible and more drones would be perfect.
CCP vikings, are you listening?
I'd be curious to learn more about these rumors.
I'd have to say that there are too many choices of frigates.
to be honest, I flew 2 frigates before I moved on to cruisers.
All that I wanted to do as a newly minted pilot, could be done better in a cruiser (mining, missioning) Exploring wasn't an option at the time, so I can see having a ship like the Minnie probe for exploration.
Frigates for me:
1) ewar boat
2) basic utility (mining/exporation)
3) 1v1 combat
4) tackle
And that's it. HOWEVER, I would like to have more than one hull in each category avail. Some of the pirate frigates (not faction) but bog standard (in terms of identical stats to the normal ships) but different hulls. some of the frigates you see in missions (rats) are very interesting, and I'd like to fly them. If there is another hull that is in everyway identical to a rifter, but has a different hull, that would be seriously cool
I agree with Letrange on how the frigate setups should be. Essentially, they should be a taste of what options you have for flying ships, be that a mining ship, exploration.
While I applaud CCP for trying to make T1s relevant, shoehorning roles into ships that weren't meant to be used in the manner just won't work.
@Knug you're missing one of the aspects of frigates most people miss early on until they do some faction warfare or lowsec work. Frigates are survivable in low sec. They generally can get to warp before most tackle can scram them - especially if they are fit for it. For the fun of it, fit some Inertia stabilizers and low friction nozzle joints on a probe. And then just wander around low sec. The fits that will catch you are few and far between. So having some overlap in capability (role wise) with cruisers in something more maneuverable is very valuable.
You might want to pop over to the forums. The current plan for Inferno has the Merlin, Punisher, Tormentor, and Incursus buffed and the Rifter tweaked.
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=99842
This is the current view of the changes:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1231935#post1231935
And here's the long plan for the other 19 frigates:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1182520#post1182520
The frigates aren't being shoe-horned into engagement ranges or specific roles beyond combat, attack, or support.
In addition, the mining frigates and cruisers are going away in favour of new line of very low skill ORE mining ships.
There are few rumours about the frigate plan.
The problem is that boosting frigates too much might make their respective T2 counterparts too expensive (in term of skills/isk).
This is a sensitive topic as one "tweak" here might destroy a balance someplace else.
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