Surgical Strike

CCP is coming in thick and fast with major game changing updates! Next up on the 15th April is Surgical Strike, which makes some huge changes to combat across the game.

The first, and most wide ranging, change is to lower the effectiveness of ALL resistance modules by 20%. So for an adaptive invulnerability field II, currently it gives 30% shield resistances, after the change it will give 24%. This is a massive hit to EHP of pretty much every ship in the game (freighters don't use resist modules, but everything else can). This is ostensibly to reduce the survivability of caps and supercaps, but will have a drastic effect on every ship in the game. I'm in favour of of more ships dying, more turnover is better for the economy and my wallet. I just hope this doesn't lead to people being too risk averse since losses will likely be a bit more expensive than previously.

There are changes to super carriers, removing their light fighters and adding another set of heavies whilst reducing the ability of heavies to track smaller ships. Big fan of these changes, more DPS against caps and less against subcaps means they have a proper place as cap killers and are less of a ship of all trades. I've never owned a super and have always fancied having a Nyx to rat in as well as PvP, but I guess I'll just have to use one for PvP when the time comes.

Next is subcap rebalancing. Battleships receive a buff to HP and scan res, which is great, and some T2/3 cruisers get nerfed. I'm not in a great position to comment on the rebalancing, so I'll leave that to people who are better at that sort of thing.

Buff to T2 short range ammo increasing their damage by 15%. This combined with the resistance changes has the potential to be massive. Not for fleet fights, but for ganking. I don't have overly strong opinions on this but I will have to re-asses my Crane fit.

My Crane for highsec hauling is currently fit with the following:

[Crane, Lornor's Crane]
Damage Control II
Inertial Stabilizers II

EM Ward Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Large Shield Extender II

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II

Medium Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II
Medium Low Friction Nozzle Joints I

I've been using this for a long time and it has never been ganked. It currently provides 41,679 EHP. Typical Blockade runner roulette attempts in high-sec consist of 3 Tornados. A Tornado alpha stike hitting perfectly does 14,000 damage roughly. Therefore 3 tornados hitting perfectly do 42,000 damage. The odds of all 3 hitting perfectly is slim so this fit I have can tank most normal gank attempts, and I have on several occasion with one particularly scary attempt getting me to 30% hull.

After the update though a tornado is likely to be able to do 16,100 damage. Meaning I'll have to tank 48,300, with the bonuses from resists reduced. I could (and likely will) spend a billion or so pimping the modules to faction/deadspace variants to get there, and possible invest in some implants as well. I suspect at least initially the gankers will be emboldened to try more often as most people are lazy and will not update fits, and when I'm typically carrying 30-40Bn I don't want to lose it!

From an overall economy perspective I support these changes. More destruction is good for the game and if more abyssal runners are losing ships then there should be more demand for the kind of wares I sell. I only hope that the resultant slight scarcity doesn't push people into being more risk averse on a large scale which would tank demand and then we'd really be in trouble. Really, the health of the economy, and the game, will rely very heavily on how they handle resource distribution. Null blocks need something to fight over. If CCP can redistribute resources in such a way that provokes conflict and triggers wars then great! If Goons can still quite happily stay in Delve and rat and mine to their hearts content then I worry for demand, and if the economy fails, the game probably fails as well. I am glad that CCP are addressing this though, and I'm optimistic about the final stage, resource distribution.