If I Were Coding Eve I'd Fix.....

Ships I would fix... if given the opportunity.

The Belicose and the Vigil are the two minmatar tech 1 ewar ships, specifically target painting, and I think they both need some tweaking.

The Vigil is actually a pretty cool ship, with a 5%/level speed bonus that makes it very popular for things like stealing loot before someone else can get to it. But the target painter bonus is essentially only useful as part of a fleet, since the weapons that a vigil has are frigate sized they won't benefit from the increased signature radius on the target. The other Tech 1 ewar frigates have bonuses for ECM, Sensor Damps or Tracking Disruptors - in theory these all have some use to a 'solo' player and even some limited use in PVE. So, I'd switch the Painter bonus on the vigil to a webber bonus - this fits in with the super fast nature of the vigil, giving it a bonus that has actual utility for the ship itself.


The Belicose has a bonus to guns, but I've always felt that it would be better with a missile bonus, specifically a bonus to explosion velocity of 10-15% per level, and give it an extra missile hardpoint. This would make it highly effective against frigates, especially when you factor in its 40m^3 drone bay. As it stands right now, if you're a mission runner working your way up through the ships you don't really have an obvious choice of t1 Minmatar cruiser to run those level 2 mission.

The Caracal, Vexor and Arbitrator are all exceptionally good at clearing the large numbers of frigates frequently found in Level 2 missions, but right now the minmatar ships just can't bring their firepower to bear on small, fast targets. If you want to run those level 2 missions quickly then the Thrasher does a great job a taking down small targets but has no tank. The stabber is nice and fast, but even with the smallest medium guns you need tracking mods to give them a decent chance of hitting those pirate frigates, plus is can only field one drone. The Rupture does a pretty good job, but it's still slower at cleaning out these easy missions compared to the other racial anti frigate cruisers.

And one other pet peeve came back to me over the weekend when I encountered a special ship in a mission:


Yes that is an Ibis, the Caldari rookie ship with a camo paint job. WTB Navy Issue Ibis, I would sincetely hope that the fix the issue that the basic Ibis has and give it hardpoints for missile launchers. It still annoys me no end that the Caldari ship that can't use the Caldari's weapon of choice.

If....

While I still haven't decided whether to throw my hat in for CSM 6 I have spent some time ruminating on what my hypothetical campaign message might be. There will no doubt be some candidates who will campaign based on promises to deliver feature X and defeat exploit Y so that players who like to do Z will be happy once more.

And when they get elected they'll find out that actually working in this esteemed political position has essentially no ability to do anything concrete, at best sugestions can be made, comments can be offered and maybe you'll get some super secret information that can't be shared or acted upon without violating the NDA. So people casting their vote for candidates who promise to get CCP to do anything should prepare for disappointment.

I know I'm not the only person who's run for CSM that has made a living as a software engineer, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's had hands on experience with Stackless Python. Whenever I encounter a bug in the game it's annoying enough, but having a full understanding of just how easy it might be to fix something can be truly frustrating. For example the hilarious 'divide by negative number' problems that were exposed by Rooks & Kings assault on Aperture Harmonics wormhole HQ. It was easy to imagine how to hunt down and fix the problems, but instead CCP devs just removed the wormhole effects that were triggering their bugs. I did hope that this was to give the devs time to fix the underlying code, but since the WH effects have yet to return to the game this may not be the case.

It's easy to see how the whole CSM process might ultimately drive people who would be valuable assets out of the process and into bittervethood.

Regardless, while I continue to consider running, I shall spend a few blogs commenting on what I personally would do if I really could have a direct influence on the development of the game. No crazy flights of fancy like those found in the features and ideas forum, but actual concrete suggestions with math and maybe even pseudocode....