Difference between revisions of "Rigs need attention (CSM)"

Latest revision as of 16:34, 22 December 2010

Stats

Raised by: Hardin
Submission Date: Mid or Late 2008
Issue ID: 0102-02-0054

Summary

This issue is a proposal to rebalance and introduce some new rigs as well as make some underutilized rigs more useful (and thus more likely to be used). It’s in 5 parts as listed below:

1. Balance rigs with similar function so that specialised is better than generalised.

So what is a good rig? And what is a bad rig?
A bad rig surely is anything that stacks up too much of a “main” statistic such that its infinitely more useful than most other rigs. A good rig is one that specialises your ship into a niche, making it win versus the same ship with no rigs, or even the same ship with “bad rigs”, in that same situation.

Example: Capacitor

Bad Rigs:
CCC (raw cap recharge)
SMC (cap amount)

Good Rigs:
Remote Repair Augmentor (- remote armor rep cap use)
Dynamic Fuel Valve (- MWD/ab cap use)
Warp Core Optimiser (- warping cap need)
Signal Disruption Amplifier (- ECM/burst cap need)
Egress Port Maximiser (- neutraliser and energy transfer cap need)
Energy/Hybrid Discharge Elutriation (-hybrid/laser cap need)
Core Defence Capacitor safeguard (- shield booster cap need)

Why would I fit the vast majority of the second list, when I could fit a CCC and have the best cap for ALL purposes? That's not specialisation, folks. Incidentally, I do use one of those rigs, the amazing Remote Repair augmentor. This is because it gives enough of a bonus on a 2-3xRR bs that it by far eclipses the use of a CCC in comparison. That is cool, specialised and useful.
Of course, I'm not saying we should delete CCC/SMC – after all, some ships need cap for lots of things, and there would be unholy whining if they were removed. But they should be among the worst choices for cap, because they're the most generalised, the opposite of the “aim” of rigs. Instead, boost the bonus on all the underused rigs above (possibly with the exception of RR aug and egress port maximiser, as they do get used). The less “useful” a statistic, and thus underused the rig, the more it should get. There's no reason why all rigs should be 15-20%. For example, the Warp Core optimiser – you can never have so little cap you can't warp, just not very far. Why not have the WCO remove, i.e. -100% bonus, the warp cap need. Thus its not massively useful in all PVP, but on a specialised ship (e.g. A passive drake that only needs cap to warp, or a bomber that has crap warp cap need), adds a unique ability.

2. Boost the underused rigs that do cool and unusual functions!

Several rigs do things that is almost nothing to do with the others, but is cool nonetheless. They also tend to be totally useless. I again bring up the Hyperspatial Velocity optimiser and the Targeting Systems Stabiliser. These would be awesome if only anyone who wasn't mad ever fit one on a combat setup, ever.
The HVO is useless because the vast majority of all but the longest warps is accelerating up and down from max warp speed, and that is not a rate, but a flat time, the same on all ships. Its boring, and makes increasing your top warp speed a little useless. I suggest that the HVO be either +80-150% warp speed, OR that it gives +40% to warp speed AND acceleration time. Maybe that'd be worth it on any ship you intend to travel in, or to promote guerilla warfare now that polys arent > all.
The TSS gives a weeny -1s recalibration on a BS with an improved cloak, a pathetic -0.5s on your recalibration in a Recon or covops, and of course, a massive zero seconds on black ops and bombers, (you know, the cloaking ships that are meant to actually decloak and combat stuff). If it was either -80-90% recalibration, OR it affected both recal AND the cloak's scan res penalty (say -40% to both) then it would be very useful, but only situationally, in a niche, and couldn't really be overpowered.
Number 2 is overall obvious: make the crap rigs cool. There's no reason to be 15-25% on all “just because”. That's not balance.

3. Drone rigs penalty has to change

While – base CPU sounds nice for RP (after all, drones are robots and you could bog down your computer with programs controlling them) its actually making them utterly unused, because the bonuses are all minor, balanced, nice, but overall just not worth breaking very nice fits, especially on CPU tight boats like the Ishtar or Ishkur. Even the mighty dominix, with excellent CPU, rarely fits anything other than maybe a Sentry Damage augmentor on those moderately rare sentry II fits.
Seeing as there is no +ALL drone damage rig (and quite rightly so, too generalist), there's no reason to have such a tough penalty. A suggestion for change is either – hull HP (would affect Gallente, but not drastically) or – agility.

4. Add new rigs that follow the rules we've already established:

Niche, Specialised, Don't Stack Up with Existing Stuff to Huge Modifiers, and are Cool and Unusual in Function
An example of a good rig here is the Projectile Ambit Extension – it was the first time we could modify falloff on a ship's guns. Lets do more of that!

Here is a list of in-game statistics that could, without causing huge balance issues, be made into rigs. None of them have an associated module or non-ship skill bonus.

Drone Capacity (no longer a dps increase now we have Bandwidth)
Turret/Launcher Ammunition Capacity
Cloak Velocity Modifier
Turret Signature Resolution
Mining Laser Range
Mining Laser Cap Use
Bomb Launcher Cycle Time
Bomb HP
Tractor Beam Range/speed
Max Locked Targets
EW module Falloff

Oh, and for the love of god add a rig that Increases Damp/TD optimal. Why not specialise your curse to TD snipers?
Here is a list of similar statistics, which would also be great fun to rig. However these would need careful balance attention, as they modify more interesting and powerful stats. Some of them already have skills and modules associated, but are either under-used or cannot be stacked to extremes.
Sensor Strength
Energy Vampire/neutraliser range
Energy vampire “transfer level” - increase the point at which your nos starts to steal cap, e.g. My cap + 20%.
Ship Signature Radius
Cap Injector Capacity
Jump Drive Fuel Use
Jump Drive Range.
Smartbomb Cap Use
Smartbomb Range
Thermodynamics (ship-wide heatsink)
Scan probe strength
Scan probe accuracy
Scan probe launcher CPU need
Gang mod cap need

I especially like the idea that capital pilots could be tempted to go for something OTHER than CCC. Oh, and here is a list of things that are either downright mental or would require some sort of code change to mess with, but would be damn cool rigs all the same:
Drone Scoop Range
Warp core strength
Seige/triage fuel need
Seige/triage time reduction


5. Dont' forget the little stuff! Penalties, skills, calibration and salvage.

Firstly, be careful of penalties being too uniform. Armor HP on speedy ships that were often shield-extender wasn't a tough penalty, Laser Grid use definitely is. Maybe one should be “bigger” than the other?
< Secondly, why does Jury Rigging do nothing. While the most obvious choice is + calibration, that does have the risk of opening up some powerful setups that weren't obvious. It should do something though.
Penultimately; Calibration: several rigs were clearly given calibration clearly designed to balance their use. Obviously people are scared of high-damage setups being overpowered (rigs came out not a million years after the age of the 8-heatsink gankageddon), so that could explain why the actually moderately-useless turret damage rigs are 200 Calibration. This could be worth looking at – after all, nobody WOULD use 3 damage rigs very often because they stack and do less than half the job that heatsink/gyrostab/magstab.
Similarly, there's example of this going to extremes – where the T1 rigs are BETTER than the T2 because you can fit two t1, and only one t2. Gravity Capacitor upgrades, for example. Just make the T2 double the t1 bonus, or lower the calibration on both.
And lastly, keep an eye on salvage prices, please, CCP, if you did these changes. They can fluctuate a lot, and one component being vastly expensive beyond the others is a sure sign something isn't right. Let’s not have another alloyed trit bar/polycarbon situation.

Potential Solutions

CCP undertakes a review of the viability of a lot of underused game assets and either add/remove those they find add more to the game experience of modifying ships. It also allows a semi-review of salvage drop rates and ship calibration statistics.

Or as stated in the thread:

• Make specialised rigs better than generalised, e.g. MWD cap use > CCC.
• Big boosts for cool, underused rigs that do unusual stuff
• Drone rigs need a better penalty, -CPU makes them unused.
• New rigs, cool functions, NOT multiply-stacking general stats.
• Minor balancing to penalties, calibration and Jury Rigging should do something.

Relevant Forum Threads

• http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=839605

Votes

???

Resolution

• CSM-CCP_Meeting_1-2#0102-02-0054_Rigs_need_some_attention