Winter is Coming

Winter is coming, and with it many changes.  The most important change as many players are concerned is the tiercide of the remaining Tech-1 frigates, as well as all Tech-1 cruisers.  For starters, I have to give it to CCP Fozzie (and Friends).  He has shook up eve, in general, for the better, ever since he started using the moniker Fozzie. Technetium, was appropriately nerfed.  Partial Frigate tiercide left me feeling with a "well these ships are almost flyable" feeling, without them feeling overpowered. T1 Cruisers, which were initially not expected to be tiercided until next year, have ALL been added to the 2012 Winter expansion.  Judging by the frigates from tiercide part 1, one thing that appears to be clear from the expected changes to cruisers is more slots, more functionality, more of a role purpose, all of which will make T1 cruisers more apt to be flown, and getting a ship class, which is mostly ignored, to be flown, is a good thing.  So, why then, am I starting to feel pessimistic?  The answer is because virtually all actions have side effects, and Fozzie's many, swift, and well intentioned actions have side effects as well.  Side effects, that will open up a Pandora's box full of unintended consequences.

So what damage could a buffing tiercide of t1 cruisers really do?  It can hurt both large scale nullsec corps/alliances and smaller FW corps/alliances.  But how you may ask?  The answer, dear Watson, is elementary.  You see, the general idea behind tiercide, is that certain ships are better than other ships, and that this must be fixed so that differing ships have different roles, but a more expensive ship is not "better" than a less expensive ship.  To a certain extent, I believe this necessary: HICs have their roles, as do tacklers, logistics, DPS ships and EWAR.  Yet, tiercide attempts to make the cheapest cruisers, viable against more expensive ones.  The problem with making cheap ships viable, is that nobody will pay a 40-200M premium for a faction/tech 2 cruiser, when a tech 1, is virtually as good, if not better in some instances.  When was the last time you saw an Osprey Navy issue or an Eagle in pvp?  The reason you rarely see them is because the cost to value ratio is heavily skewed towards the negative side.  What the winter tiercide will do, is make the Zealot, Cerberus, Vagabond, NOmen, and SFI (etc.), into the red-headed stepchild, that nobody wants to fly because they are only marginally better (if at all) than their tech 1 cousins.  With demand WAY DOWN for these ships, who will be hurt?  Anyone who makes iskies by bringing these ships to market.  Tech 2 Moon Goo based alliances will watch their wallets slim down faster than a Victoria's Secret Model.  Faction warfare players with investments in faction blueprints will be hurt by this as well.  Those, that have LP to spend and have the whits to avoid Faction Ships, should be mostly unperturbed, however, as they can spend their LP on investments that wont sink

Don't Fret, all is not lost, however.  You merely need to stay tuned, as our next blog post will feature ways to make iskies from this upcoming shakeup.  Buy, when there is blood in the streets :)