Now that the proposed changes have been posted I'm happy with them. Overall the changes are decent buffs (nothing huge or overpowered) to all blockade runners.
The main points are:
All blockade runners will have two high slots (the Prowler is the only one with 2 highs now) to fit a probe launcher or covert cyno along with the covert cloak. This will be nice for non Prowler pilots flying in low and null.
The Prowler gets a third low. Agility, Mass and Align Time have been nerfed slightly. I'm not sure how that'll all work out in the end but hopefully if we slap a nano into the extra low we'll wind up with slightly better align times, making the net result a buff.
Cargohold increases for all blockade runners (some more than others). The Crane will have the largest base cargohold (4300 m3) and the Prorater the smallest (2900 m3) but the Crane also has the fewest low slots (2) and the Prorater the most (4). They'll all be able carry at least 10k m3 when fit for max cargo capacity.
The useless tanking bonus (is there anyone who actually uses shield boosters on a BR?) has been replaced with +5% warp speed per level. This is quite nice, finally there's a reason to train Transport Ships beyond 3 (or 4 for Prowler's with a Covert Cyno or Probe Launcher). At Transport Ships level 5 they'll go 7.5au/s (1.5 au/s more than now) which is a pretty decent buff.
Tanks are a little better with full T2 resists. This will be a small, but welcome buff.
And possibly most importantly, they DID NOT mess with the unscannable cargo hold like some players have been lobbying for. That would make me (with 25 Prowler pilots) one very unhappy camper.
Yeah, generally across the board a slight buff. The only "downside" to this change is that the blockade runners are all much more similar now.
ReplyDeleteI did the math on the Prowler changes and it looks like the align time went down very slightly (7.57, down from 7.62). It's just that the Viator had its base align time dropped down a full second (from 8.5 to 7.49) so the Prowler look like it took a nerf.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it looks like a small nerf but I'm guessing putting a nano in the extra low will more than compensate for that resulting in align times a bit better than now.
DeleteThat extra low will allow fitting 2 nanos and a DC-II which is something I would have loved to be able to do with low skills alts while I was training up my fleet of Prowler pilots.
Plus we'll gain some fitting flexibility since we can always put something else in that extra low too.
Aren't you doing it wrong if you're getting cargo scanned in a BR anyway?
ReplyDeleteIn high sec I mostly fly on autopilot... Usually on 2 or 3 characters in different regions at the same time. The fact that they can't see what my prowlers are carrying protects them from gankers.
DeleteIt's been about a year since I got my first prowler pilot, now I have 25. I fly them everywhere in high sec on auto most of the time and I haven't lost a single one to high sec gankers yet.
I did lose one to a low sec station undock camp once but that's a whole different game.