I have just finished listening to the recording of the live dev blog as I was not able to attend due to work obligations. For those of you who do not know about this issue, let me give a quick explanation.

Speed tanking is fitting out your ship with overdrive and nano fiber modules as well as poly carbon rigs in such a way to attain speeds where you outrun missiles and the turret tracking speed of any ship.  As a result, you could fit out a HAC (Heavy Attack Cruiser) in such a way that no one could hit you, yet you could hit them and essentially be able to fly around in an almost “God Mode”.  Now, certain ships are meant to be fast, such as frigates and their tech 2 variations, inteceptors.

The argument is that certain ships should not be able to move very fast as there is no way to counter this using in game modules and tactics.  A battleship should not be able to move at close to 10 km/s and to be honest, I have to agree with that, it’s insane.  Now to be fair, speed and mass had been adjusted for battleships so that you can no longer make the infamous Nano-Domi or Nano-Phoon.

However, HAC’s are still viable as nano ships under the current game mechanics at this time.  You can still easily fit one out in such a way that you can maintain speeds to outrun missiles and drones.

Now most of the arguments for this speed balancing that CCP is proposing is that there is no way to counter a speed tanked ship.  You can kill a speed tanked ship if you are lucky enough to hit it with a Neut module and get a series of webs on it, but the chances of that happening are very low, hence the whine fest on the EVE forums about nano ships.

That bring us to present day.   Speed balancing changes were first deployed to the test server some months ago and removed shortly after it was deployed.  There has been a lot of discussion concerning the proposed changes in manner of ‘nerfing rage’ (http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=890745). Honestly, I am welcome the proposed changes as nano ships are just not what was intended in the vision of this game.  EVE is not real life, but most of the game mechanics do follow a logical progression from real world technologies and ideas as if they evolved over time.

Real life has balances for everything and CCP has worked hard to create a game that mirrors that reality in it’s fantasy creation.

Below are some of the hightlights from the latest live dev blog question and answer discussion:

• There are new changes to what was originally proposed and those changes will be part of the next expansion.  When they deploy the speed changes, it will not be in a staggered manner as many of the changes affect many other items, so, it will be deployed in one fell swoop.
• Interceptors will no longer be able to outrun missiles, however, they will take less damage as they will still be able to outrun a good part of the explosion from the missile.
• Ship speeds, agility, ship mass will all be changed at the same time.  Webs will be changed.  Stacking penalties for fitting more than one web is being considered.
• Medium drones are being considered for changes as the devs feel they are too efective against frigates.
• Missiles are being considered for a change to their damage formula.  They are looking to change the explision radius to take into account the signature radius.  The smaller your sig, the less damage you take.   A test version of this change is planned for the test server very soon.
• Agility will be having some changes, MWD will not decrease the agility as much as it currently does.
• Warp scramblers will scramble all warp drives AND micro warp drives.
• The fastest speed that you will be able to maintain will now be 8 km/s.  That being said, all ships will be slowed down across the board by adjust ment of base speeds and masses.  Battleships are being slowed down, cruisers are not really being hit, frigates will be faster.
• They are looking at making some changes to defender missiles, perhaps having them shoot down missiles that have been shot at a gang member.
• The speed implants will all now use the same slot, so you you can’t stack them for increased speed.  When the change hit, those implants will NOT be lost, they will simply be unplugged and placed in your ship’s cargo hold if you are in space or in your station hanger if you are docked when the changes are deployed.
• Black ops ships are looking to have some changes, such as fuel bays for jump drives to use rather than use the cargo hold.
• Will assault frigates get some love with these changes to speed?  Yes.  Frigates and assault frigates will be faster.  With webs being less effective, AF’s will be able to get in closer and more useful.

So, look for these changes to be applied to the test server in the near future.  I would recommend that everyone take the time to play with these changes before they hit Tranquility.

Tags: CCP, Dev Blog, Nano-nerf, Speed Balancing

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