Shadow of Cerberus EVE Community Forum

Logistics V

As almost everyone knows, skills in EVE are arranged into pyramids or tiers.  Most often, training two lower tier skills both to level V unlocks the next tier skill.  Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the Spaceship Command skills.  Train the lower tier skills of racial frigate and Electronics Upgrades to level V and Covert Ops are unlocked.  Train the lower tier skills of racial frigate and Evasive Maneuvering to level V and Interceptors are unlocked.  Lower tier skills of racial cruiser and Signature Analysis and Recons are unlocked.

It's not quite that simple, of course: there are usually lots of levels to the pyramids.  Recons, for instance are actually two steps up the Level V pyramid because you have to train the prerequisites for Covert Ops first.  This is something that CCP has promised to change when they get around to rebalancing the first tech 2 ships hopefully before late next year.

Still... today, train the lower tier skills of racial cruiser, Long Range Targeting, and Signature Analysis to V and Logistics are unlocked.  But to be useful, you pretty much have to train Logistics V.  Flying a Scimitar is all but impossible without it and flying a Basi or Guardian under any sort of neut pressure at all is, too.

Logistics was the very first tech 2 ship skill I trained to Level V.  I trained Logistics V before I trained HAC V, or Recon V, or any tech 2 frigate skill to level V.  It was entirely a practical choice on my part, coupled to my inclination to play support roles in PvP while I learned how to do it properly.  The practical part was that I figured logis were useful anywhere.  That didn't turn out to be completely true: in early wormhole play, logis were shunned.  But everywhere else there was usually a place for them.

At just shy of a month, it was my first truly long skill train, too.  And now for the next eighteen months or so, it's going to be all but useless.  Remember how I said that CCP could nerf single role ships and I wouldn't be too concerned because they'd still be good within those roles and the training time loss wasn't that big of a deal?

Yeah.  I might have misspoken.  Take a look at this:

[Scythe, AB Larges]
Damage Control II
Capacitor Power Relay II
Capacitor Power Relay II
Capacitor Power Relay II
Capacitor Power Relay II

10MN Afterburner II
Sensor Booster II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction

Large S95a Partial Shield Transporter
Large S95a Partial Shield Transporter
125mm Gatling AutoCannon II, EMP S

Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Semiconductor Memory Cell I


Don't bother putting it into EFT yet.  It won't work.  This is a Retribution-era Scythe.  If things stay as they are, when Retribution drops on December 4, this ship will be flyable.  It won't tank like a Scimitar.  It won't move like a Scimitar.

But it will rep about 40% better than a Scimitar will, and it will do it at longer range: 92.4 kilometers.  With no gang links, a standard Drake receiving three Scimitar large reps can tank 818 DPS.  The same Drake receiving two Scythe reps on December 4 will tank 1141.

Let me say that again so as to be completely clear: on December 4th, two Scythes will be just as good as three Scimitars at repping a fleet, and will be able to do it from 20 kilometers further away.

The hull cost of a Scimitar is 140 million ISK and requires Logistics V to be trained to use it properly, plus two lower tier support skills also at level V.  The hull cost of a Scythe is 4.5 million ISK.  Skill needed?  Minmatar Cruiser V.

Hang out at a planet.  Wait for the fight to start.  Manually set your warp-to range to 90km.(1)  When the FC calls you in, right-click the FC on your watch list and warp in.  Lock targets at 93km+.  Start repping.  Things will head for you but ha, you're 90 kilometers away.  Light your afterburner and make a significant finger gesture in Local.  Warp off if you want, or you know what?  Don't.  That's OK too.  Your ship cost 4.5 million ISK and was insured for pennies.

Somewhere in Iceland, someone sat down and apparently thought, "Guys, you know what this game really needs?  LOL-T1 cruiser fleets with reps.  Way better reps than you can get off a T2 ship."  The beer in Iceland must have been very good this summer.

Before you ask, yeah, the Osprey is going to be very nearly as awesome.  The Exequror and Augoror are also impressive though they suffer a bit because of the lack of maneuverability of armor ships.  Still, who cares right?  Hull cost of an Auguror is 4.4 million ISK.  High-end meta reppers drop at rates undreamt of a year ago.  Large S95 Partial Shield Transporter?  400k.  Large 'Solace' Remote Bulwark Reconstructor?  700k.

I take it the idea here is to make the T1 logistics cruisers "attractive alternatives" to actual Logistics ships.  I'm also completely convinced that the hidden idea is to make brand new players just as valuable in fleets as players who've been in New Eden for years.  Problem is, the Scythe is not an attractive alternative.  It's a replacement.  It turns all that time training the actual Logistics skill into wasted time and is going to put 75 million SP characters into T1 cruisers.

Why not?  Sell one Scimitar.  Replace with 30 Scythes.

This is a really good idea.

My thanks to my alliance-mate Namamai for doing much of the :scary math: for this post.  Thanks, Nam!


(1) Right-click the "Warp" button in your Selected Item dialog.  You'll be asked to set a default warp distance.  Set it to 90000.  Click "OK".  Remember to set it back to 0 when you're done.  Any time you select "Warp to" by right clicking on the Overview or a celestial, instead of warping to 0m, you'll warp to 90000m.

Mon fraise...

Wenn das stimmt, dann wäre das wirklich fail 

habs im zug bereits aufm handy gelesen....leider war das ja schon lange der klang hinter den releasedetails "t1cruiser ueberwiegen den t2ern solange diese nicht nachgearbeitet sind" ...baem... dass es SO krass ausfaellt... oha oha... ich als einer mit logistic auf IV bin heilfroh so langsam zu sein, denn logistik 5 stand auf der todo fuer dezember ^^... also wird erstmal noch was anderes geskillt und geschaut was bei rumkommt

Kann mir irgendwie nicht vorstellen, dass das so Live geht. Entweder nerfen die das noch ein wenig, oder die T2-Logis bekommen noch einen Buff.