Updates on Retribution 1.1 rebalancing

Since my last post…

On Ancillary Armor Repairers:

A few updates:

We’re switching the AAR to use nanite repair paste instead of cap boosters. What we’re looking at now is for them to hold 8 reps worth of paste, with the smalls eating 1 per cycle, the mediums eating 5 and the larges eating 10.

I’m also investigating our options for reducing the base powergrid need for medium and large armor reps a bit.

We’re aiming to have all of this on Sisi before the weekend. Please note that just because things are on Sisi doesn’t mean they can no longer change. It just means we want to give people a chance to try it out in the game client.

A small change, but a welcome one. Armor tanking ships already have cargo issues with cap boosters, so this will alleviate the problem a lot.

On the battlecruiser rebalancing:

Ok time to get feedback on the next iteration.

Once of the things we have refocused on since this thread started is that with warfare link changes potentially on the not too distant horizon we needed to build these ships for the warfare links we want rather than the warfare links we have. The ability to use warfare links is a key part of what gives these ships their identity, even if that has been watered down in recent years.
As such we’re working to ensure that each of these ships can fit a warfare link without sacrificing a bonused highslot. We eventually want links to be something you use on field and part of that will be ensuring that you can use links while also also enjoying the normal on-grid gameplay.

To get these highslots back we’ve moved the new slot on the Ferox from low to high, and given the Brutix and Drake the “double damage bonus fewer weapons” treatment.

We’ve also taken feedback from this thread and Sisi testing to make some adjustments to some other ships.

Most notably:

• The Harb was simply too hard to fit, and I had been too aggressive in reducing its fittings to go along with the slot change. So we’ve returned some fittings and brought it back to its old align time (while keeping the mass a bit higher).
• The Myrm was suffering too much from not being able to hold two full flights of drones, so we’ve doubled the dronebay buff to ensure that you can always have a full set of spares.
• The rep bonuses on both Gallente combat battlecruisers remain in this version. I do feel that they can be well served by the bonus and still remain unique to each other’s playstyle. I am however not set in stone on the issue and won’t rule out changing it either before or after 1.1 if it appears the current bonuses are not able to keep them both fun and unique enough.

I’m about to update the OP to the new values, our changes in this version relative to the originally posted version are:

Prophecy:
Hull: -250

Harbinger:
Powergrid: +100
CPU: +25
Agility: -0.014
Align time: -0.2s

Ferox:
Highslots: +1
Lowslots: -1
Powergrid: +150
Hull: -250
Agility: +0.01
Mass: -260,000

Drake:
Change Kinetic Missile damage bonus from 5 to 10% per level
Launchers: -1
Powergrid: -40
CPU: -15
Hull: -250

Brutix:
Change Medium Hybrid damage bonus from 5 to 10% per level
Turrets: -1
Powergrid: -75
Hull: -250
Mass: +250,000
Align time: +0.01s

Myrmidon:
Dronebay: +25

Cyclone:
Powergrid: -100
Shields: +250
Armor: -250
Hull: +250
Capacitor: +600
Cap Recharge time: +158s
Sensor strength: +1

Hurricane:
Lock Range: +5km

The grid nerf to the Cyclone hurts, but was necessary to stop the XLASB+dual medium neut config, which was too easy to fit and maintain. The rest of the changes are looking pretty good.