Ships & Modules

I get the distinct feeling that you dont / havent flown a golem in a looong time.

My golem has 3 republic fleet TPs with proper painting skills to complement them ... still it doesent change the fact its terribly micromanagement heavy ship ... slow ... fitting is restricted to the only viable "range rigs + 3 tp" to even make it work.

And by working I mean "making it usable" ... not making it great .. or awesome ... or superb ... or even same line with other turret marauders .. not to even wasting time comparing to pirate BS that just absolutely devastate it.

Surely on the missions where the rats get in your face from the getgo you can feel like a king and blast away ... but if you were in any of the alternatives you would feel the same. Nothing unique there.

For the skill investment / isk .. you get very lackluster payback. Compare how usable are T2 torpedoes (mandatory) as weapon system for other purposes and ships. Stealthbombers ... mm ok.

Then look at turret ships ... yeap.

Agree that entrie class of marauders must be slightly buffed.
Looking forward on CCP rebalancing plans, i hope that they will return all classes to their roles.

This. To make Torpedoes even usable in the Golem, you need Maxed out Missile support skills and Tech2 Missile rigging. With the Turret-based Marauders, you don't need so much support skill investment.

Compare that to the Paladin with Pulse Lasers OR Tachyon Beams. Paladin with Equivalent Weapons (Pulses), Ammo(Scorch), and Rigging(Locus Coordinator II) has an Optimal Range of 63km, Falloff 10km. It instant-hits, while with Javelin Torpedoes have less range (60km) and ALSO take up to 10seconds to hit their target. Let me remind everybody that the 'superior' range of Missiles comes at the price of Flight Time to Target, so how can this be if Range is inferior to certain other Weapons anyway?

Now somebody try and tell me that Torpedoes don't need a range boost and they are 'working as intended'. Because it really won't stand up to scrutiny.

Golem is fine; short range missiles need a buff

(Let's imagine that Motion Prediction skill didn't apply to Blasters, Pulse Lasers and Autocannons)

The micromanagement issues on the Golem are hideous, and they do lead to significant inefficiencies.
Those inefficiencies are aggravated by the issues with Torps but just fixing Torps won't solve the inefficiencies.

Torp damage projection is certainly short of where I'd like it; I have maxed skills in both Missiles and the Golem and yet, even with a 152% painter there's still a significant loss of damage on Battleships due to their orbit speed. This is particularly true with Angels but having run a few missions last night with a friend along in a Loki I realise how much it's true even on Mercs. I know I can two volley a Merc Overlord, the one in Silence the Informant moves obligingly slowly, but once they get up to speed they're a three volley kill. They're the size of a small moon with my painter on them but still they avoid almost one third of my damage unwebbed.
It may sound odd but I didn't really realise just how much I was losing until I was getting targets webbed well in advance and with a chance to slow down before I engaged them.

The painter itself is another issue, as someone else has already said, with a ten second cycle time on seven second launchers plus flight time you end up needing to cycle ahead with your painters. personally I'd like painters to end cycle immediately they no longer had a target, you'd still have to manage them but at least it would happen at the same time as you're switching launchers onto the new target.

Then there's the necessity of being relatively static. You make a "bait ball" of wrecks around you and tractor them in when you have a moment but I'm almost always killing quicker than my tractors will bring in the wrecks and again there's the wait for them to finish cycle and then for the salvager to free itself up.
This is a significant problem on some missions and again I had the perfect example last night. Serpentis Admirals as the trigger in The Blockade...
Serp Admirals like to orbit at 51km and they're the only rats in the mission I can't reach with T1 or Navy Torps so it's a ten second reload to launch four volleys and then another ten second reload to go back to the shorter range ships. If they weren't the trigger I'd leave them to last and blow them all up on a single reload... On the other hand if I weren't constrained by the "bait ball" I'd be in a position to burn a bit and bring them into range.

But it's the EWar effects which waste the most time. TDs don't effect me yet but as I understand it I'm soon going to hate Sansha missions as much as I do Serp and Gurista missions now. Since Guristas started permajamming (yes, I know they used standard jamming maths before despite what the patch notes said) the Eliminator who once got a twenty second reprieve from my attentions now gets so many jams that I've had to call in a friend to kill jammers for me it was taking so long.
And ECCM doesn't make all that much of a difference, after one such event I brought in an alt I was training on a Guristas Assault and fitted his Myrm with two top named remote ECCMs. The sheer number of jam attempts meant I still spent a good twenty minutes unable to engage with anything but drones.
Serps are almost as bad with their damping cruisers mostly orbitting outside the measly lock range they've nailed me down to...
That is perhaps a question of mission rebalancing rather than the weaknesses of the Golem but certainly its low sensor strength is a significant factor.

One thing that's always struck me though is that all of the marauders are short a highslot. If you fit two tractors and a salvager you're forever waiting on the salvager, two salvagers and a tractor and your salvagers are idle most of the time waiting for wrecks.

imo, the only buff marauders do need is to boost the tractoring/salvaging part to compete with the awesomeness of the noctis to a larger degree.

also, torps can use a bit more velocity just enough to give it 10km more in range (so a pimped out golem using T2 javs to reach 70ish km max range as example). launcher reload time needs to be cut in half down to 5 seconds. and fix the cycle for target painters. they really can get on your last nerves.

so yeah that will help the golem, but more so a fair fix for all missile whores out there.

I really enjoyed the Golem prior to the changes and the need of Target painters. Before I took a break from game I could 1-2 volley Battleships and Battle cruisers. Now it takes like 5-6 I don't remember with a couple target painters. I prompty sold that sucker and never looked back.

I loved torp ravens back then fun stuff, I feel that the grouping of the hardpoints took a lot away from it only showing one torp slash graphic. Prior to weapon grouping when you fired the entire grid knew it! I hope they rework the thing and the graphics, would be cool.