Wednesday, September 12, 2012

New (Old) Ships in New Eden

There's a new Dev Blog out today detailing some of the ship re-balancing taking place for EVE's winter 2012 expansion. I'm glad to see some work is finally being done on this subject.

What's the story with the Kestrel? In the past I often used the Kestrel as a quick, short-range rocket vessel (or a cyno ship). CCP plans to apply a 5% missile damage bonus and 10% missile velocity bonus per level. Why are rockets excluded? I have no idea; I also have no idea what other ships actually use rockets today. If that damage bonus applied to rockets the Kestrel could be a pretty good choice in PVP.

There's supposed to be a new destroyer for each race. I've not known many people to fly destroyers in PVP so these will likely remain in the realm of new-player PVE use. Still, it's nice to have new ships now and then.

The Tristan becoming a drone boat is pretty cool. It's a much-needed addition to the drone-heavy player's upgrade path. I approve. Unfortunately I tend to get overwhelmed by micromanagement when I attempt to use drones in PVP.

The support frigates (Navitas, Bantam, Inquisitor, and Burst) are very interesting. Currently it seems to take forever to train a new pilot up to logistics ships; this looks to be an excellent addition to the upgrade path for these players. I predict they'll be (ab)used mostly PVE such as frigate-level complexes and the like by LANers or dual-boxers, but it can be fun to play said role with friends to make some ISK now and then. That said, it's intriguing that CCP also has plans to improve the t1 logistics cruisers enough to make them worthwhile. It looks like support ships are about to become more available (and important) than ever.

That's all for now. There's a lot to say on this topic, but I think I've hit the points that piqued my interest.

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