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Gallente (+Some Caldari Lovin)

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Kai Lae
Karmunism Limited
#121 - 2011-10-18 12:15:10 UTC  |  Edited by: Kai Lae
This means that a muninn will do 18% less gun DPS, and a zealot will do less than 9% DPS than a deimos will. However, the gun range of the other 2 HAC's compared will outrange the deimos from between 15% to 25%, while the muninn can select the lowest resist to attack the deimos therefore increasing it's effective DPS. The range difference means that application of the damage from the deimos is delayed by 15-25% - or that the DPS from the deimos is 15-25% lower than on paper due to the fact that it will normally have to close range to begin shooting at an enemy target while he opponent of the deimos is not constrained by this factor. If longer range ammo is considered the effect only becomes much more extreme, especially when the ability to rapidly change crystals that the zealot has is considered. What this means is that the actual DPS of the blaster ship is not that superior over any other close range ship, and in fact, may be inferior.

Next is another big issue, mobility. In order for blaster ships to attack successfully, they must be able to close to the correct range envelope and kill the enemy ship. This of course requires that they be faster than their quarry, otherwise the attack will fail. However, this does not mean that they have to permanently be faster than the opposing ships; just fast enough to web/warp scramble/warp disrupt them to make avoidance of the blaster ship impossible. This is a key point. Minmatar also live on the concept of mobility - however, correct tactics for minmatar require sustained speed advantages to take full advantage of their longer ranged falloff weaponry. Gallente in contrast do not require sustained speed - they require high burst speed, short sprints of very high closing velocity to catch and then kill their opposition. Gallente are dash sprinters, minmatar long range runners. Taking this into account, currently the situation is frankly horrible. Mega or hyperion blasterboat maxes out at less than 1k/sec for example, and after platings/armortank/rigs 800m/s is a closer top speed. This is easily outmaneuvered by just about anything other than an amarr BS. Smaller classes are better off but not much. Gallente ships just don't have the dash speed required which is why, combined with insufficient blaster damage if they somehow stumble into range, they're so unpopular. Ideally, the MWD overheat mechanic would provide the required ability, but in practice it just fails. Reasons for this are:

a. Since everyone mostly is fitting a MWD, they can overload at the same time and maintain range. In fact, if they're shield tanked and not speed ******** by their tank, they'll open distance normally with you at this point, almost certainly leading to the blaster ship being destroyed.
b. Even if overloading did close distance, the time that you can keep a MWD on overload is very small, resulting in very short burst distances. The result is that currently, unless the target starts out close to you to begin with, you won't be likely to reach him.

If you can't close with him, you can't shoot him. If you can't shoot him, you can't hurt him. Meanwhile, almost certainly the reverse is not true of your opponent, who can and will be effectively attacking you during this time. The result will be your death and the subsequent aggravation of people seeing your killmail and asking why you bother fitting blasters on your ship.

How do you fix this issue? If you make the wrong buffs and make gallente like minmatar, what you'll end up with is gallente with the same kind of sustained high speed that minmatar have - which would make the avoidance of a point blank engagement nearly impossible. This does not work, as gallente then becomes a I WIN button in small scale combat. At the same time, minor changes to mass, acceleration, and so forth will also not work. Either the change will be too much and make them into minmatar lite, or will be too minor to make a difference. What is needed is to make the ideal case reality - a mechanism that gives gallente the ability to rapidly sprint to a target to put DPS on it, without giving the sustained speed that would literally be gamebreaking for balance. Under this ideal system, it should be possible to outmaneuver gallente by taking advantage of their limited sprint endurance as a potential counter; you know he's got a "charge" in there, but he can't sustain it for long, and based on this you have options. The question then becomes how to achieve this goal.
Kai Lae
Karmunism Limited
#122 - 2011-10-18 12:15:23 UTC  |  Edited by: Kai Lae
Based on the above my idea is to do the following. The best idea to fix the mobility issue that I have to make this work is to forge ahead into the new territory of new options and new gameplay. What I believe is that all gallente ships have the ability to activate a toggle to a MWD that, when engaged, allows a massive boost in speed of the module, but after a certain time - say 60 seconds for purposes of our discussion here - it automatically disengages. In addition, it then cannot be activated for another 60 seconds, just like if someone had a warp scrambler activated on you. In effect, it would be a script that would be able to be engaged, but instead of being carried in cargo, it would be inherent to the design of the ship. This idea works because of several reasons I think. First and most importantly, it does the job. Second, while a script that you could carry in cargo would do the same job, the problem is it would do the same job - for everyone. Any ship that comes under a blaster attack could potentially throw this in and attempt to extend and escape from any blaster attack. While there should be counters, the counter I believe should never be "do exactly what the other ship is doing". Especially since shieldtanked ships would end up - since they don't usually have speed retarding modules fitted to enhance their armor - being able to out accelerate and outspeed the gallente attacker using this method, making it basically useless against them. Fourth, it is superior to any other concept that I can think of that would accomplish the same thing. Any other idea that would do the same thing - primarily a bonus to gallente ships on MWD overloading - has significant problems with it. Such an idea for instance would require skills that are only generally present in veteran players, or would need the replacement of bonuses on gallente ships. If bonuses are replaced, which ones? Since this mechanic is a necessity to restore viable blaster attacks, are only some ships blaster ships? If they are doesn't this, if the bonus is applied only to them, isn't this effectively limiting the fittings that only these ships can utilize? This is a bad gameplay decision I think. If you go the other way, and put a bonus to MWD overheat on all gallente ships, then what about ships like the vexor, which use drones as a primary armament? Again, this is a bad gameplay decision, and best if it was not considered. The fourth reason that I think this is the way to go is that it opens up a whole new area of potential gameplay, because you can not only take this concept and apply it here, you can apply it to amarr, caldari, etc. The idea of adding racially flavored activated boosts to the design of ships - inherent technical advantages that are unique to each race - is a pretty interesting idea in of itself, which could be used in a variety of ways. You could have faction and officer gallente MWD's for example have more time before requiring cooldown when boosted, as just one idea. The only thing else that I'd suggest would be that any "boosted" module could not, while undergoing a racial "boost" be then overloaded on top of that. Otherwise, you'd end up with the ability to overload the boosted MWD (call it a gallente MWD supercharger) and this being routine.

The second issue that needs to be addressed is DPS. Once you actually catch the target, it's useless if he just laughs at you and kills you. Once in range you have to apply that facemelting™ damage that gallente are supposed to have. There are 2 things I'd like to see. First is obvious, and that's a damage increase. I'm reluctant to put an actual number to this as I'm well aware that if overdone that too much could cause overpowered issues - dramiel mkII as it were, but much less expensive. The amount would likely require extensive testing and should be exactly determined by the experience gained during this time, but I'd take a guess at somewhere between 15-25%. The second thing is to look into the tracking of the weapon itself. Blasters, by nature, are extreme close range weapons and therefore will see the highest possible bearing rates of targets being engaged (this means target transversal velocity reaches maximum possible in game). However, lasers have better tracking. Blaster tracking rates should be adjusted so they can easily engage targets at this range without concern of not being able to hit them, given normal conditions.

If the above is adopted I think that not only will blasters become a viable weapon again in eve, but that the gameplay of eve will deepen due to the emergence of new tactics and counter tactics because of it. As far as I'm concerned, this in of itself is a good thing.

3. Slot configuration issues. A properly equipped blaster ship *requires* 4 midslots, for anything effectively over frigate size. The reasons are simple. The typical attack pattern of a blaster ship is dash to target, catch target - which means tackling it - kill target. The gallente ship must always carry it's own tackle gear, because if you complete the dash but the target then moves outside blaster range, your death will rapidly follow. What this means is that almost without exception, blaster ship midslot arrangement will be the following:

A. Microwarp. Don't fit it, don't catch anything, can't win an engagement.

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Kai Lae
Karmunism Limited
#123 - 2011-10-18 12:21:59 UTC  |  Edited by: Kai Lae
B. Disruptor and web. Disruptor to prevent them from warping off when they realize they're the target of your overrun attack and are likely to have their guts stomped out in the next 60 seconds or so; scrambler is a bit on the shortranged side I think, but may be subsituted. Web to ensure that after you're in range THEY STAY THERE. Scrambler doesn't cut it for this purpose because for all you know they could have fitted an afterburner and you'll soon be waving at their rear as they pull out of range, which as noted usually means you might as well initiate self destruct. A blaster attack is an all in proposition, if you're going all in you better not assume that they can or can't do something, you basically have to assume worst case scenario and be configured to counter it. Or you die. A lot.
C. Injector. Microwarp use + tackle gear + capusing guns + possible rep use to attempt to rep the damage he's done to you on the way in for your attack while you couldn't fire at him yet = lots of cap used. Since in many circumstances targets also may pack neutralizers, you must consider this and have some sort of counter fitted or you'll, once again, die horribly. Otherwise, no cap means no guns and no tackle gear which means he'll own you. The only possible counter to this is a cap injector, which since you must assume worst case, pretty much becomes a required mod to fit.

Problem is that several gallente ships - deimos, catalyst, etc - don't have four midslots. They have three, sometimes two. As noted, this is totally inadequate. Gallente ships that do not have enough mids should be looked at to see if they could be added/rebalanced without causing balance issues.

4. Rig balancing/design severely penalizes gallente ships, as currently implemented. As currently designed, armor rigs provide a boost to armor, at a 10% reduction in speed per rig fitted. This can be reduced to 5% for each rig fitted if the applicable rig skill is at level 5. This means, if 3 armor rigs are fitted to a gallente ship, it, at a minimum, will be 15% slower. This is a killer penalty. For reasons discussed above in depth, for any blaster armed ship, there are 2 key points - being able to catch the target and then having enough firepower to destroy it, once caught. A speed penalty inhibits catching a target, which makes anything else irrelevant. Without enough speed there is literally nothing you can do to the target other than try to run away - which obviously is problematic if the target is already faster than you are. On the other hand, for amarr ships this is not much of a big deal, since they can hit out to mid ranges using scorch. This of course creates an imbalance where gallente ships cannot make liberal use of armor rigs while amarr ships can (and do). Additionally, outside gallente balancing issues, having armor rigs ****** speed means that any ship that relies on a form of speed tanking also cannot employ armor rigs for the same reason, as instead of improving survivability of the ship, it arguably reduces it. This also goes with shield rigs, where large shield tanked ships could care less that rigs increase their already large sig radius, but interceptors and other small targets do very much care. The obvious solution to this problem is to change the penalty in what I would call "tanking rigs" so instead of penalizing speed in the case of armor rigs, and sig radius in the case of shield rigs, that they penalize instead the untanked attribute of the ship. Meaning, that armor rigs would apply a 10% reduction to the shields of a ship that they are applied to, and shield rigs would apply a 10% reduction in armor to a ship they are applied to. This penalty would not advantage or disadvantage any race's ships or any class size of ship unduly; it would be equally "fair" to all kinds and types of ships in eve, and would be a far better solution than anything that is currently present. For this reason I would recommend that attention be brought to this area as soon as possible. Of course, this proposal does not address the obvious overall need to totally rebalance rigs beyond armor and shield rigs that is also an issue, but that goes beyond the scope of this document.

5. Railguns need to be looked at. Since blasters are very 1 dimensional, there needs to be viable alternatives when you don't want to ride that road. Arguably more of a caldari issue than gallente, the problem with rails is that they aren't good at anything. They're average at everything - range, damage, etc. They don't have the range of lasers, they don't have the falloff of projectiles nor alfa of arty; the defining characteristic seems to be that they're not horrible. Problem is, anytime you can currently think of a situation where you could use rails, you could frequently choose another race with a different weapon and come out ahead for the expected engagement instead. The best idea that I can come up with is to change rails so that they become the fitting equivalent of autocannons of the long range world. If rails had light fitting requirements in terms of PG and CPU, this would allow easier fitting of the guns to ships without the use of fitting mods. In turn, this would then allow greater customization of the gun by allowing additional damage mods, tracking enhancers, etc. In short, the gun itself has no defining characteristic but allows you to modify it much easier than other weapons with fitting modules. I'll admit that there's probably a better idea out there than what I've considered - in the case above, the question then becomes why use the lower size railguns - so suggestions in this particular area is welcome. I'll note that if perhaps there wasn't a huge difference in range between the guns, as is the case in autocannons, that perhaps this would address this problem however.

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Kai Lae
Karmunism Limited
#124 - 2011-10-18 12:23:45 UTC  |  Edited by: Kai Lae
6. Active tanking needs looking at. This is not just a gallente issue but extends to the shield boosting bonuses that minmatar use. Everyone who has any kind of knowledge about eve knows that in today's enviroment, passive tanking >> active tanking under nearly all circumstances. Since gallente active armor tank this leads to problems with their ships, in that they have a bonus to a weaker tank method (if used) or if the choice to passive tank is taken, you give up a bonus with regards to most other ships (an effective disadvantage). I believe that the best way to go about this is two fold; first look at grid requirements of reps vs plates (or shield extenders for shield tanking, though there it's mostly CPU, but this then heads off into the direction of what should be a separate thread). For example, a single 1600mm plate is 500 grid while a large armor rep II is 2300. In short, what eve is saying is that a single LAR II is more effective than 4.6 1600mm rolled tungsten plates. This is utterly false, as anyone can tell you. While it's true that plates only last as long as they have armor in them, and theoretically a armor repairer can be run forever, giving more and more armor for as long as it runs, in practice this theory is false. First, the capusage of the armor repairer or shield booster makes this extremely impractical, as I will shortly cover. Second, the amount of armor given by the plates far exceeds the effect that the repairer will provide in any kind of normal engagement. The amount of buffer provided by four 1600mm plates is 16,800 armor for example, and when hardened this gives quite a bit of protection to both small gang warfare and in large scale fleet fights. The same cannot be said for a single large armor rep. I believe that fitting for repairers should be looked at, with perhaps as much as a 50% reduction in fitting requirements. This would bring the actual value of the repairer/booster more in line with what actually exists in game.

The second would be to not only give a bonus to rep amount on ships with bonuses to reps, but to give them a cap bonus to rep usage. This would allow them to more easily use them; they're not generally very cap friendly as the astute can tell you. For example, with perfect skills a hyperion battleship can run a LAR II for about 7.5 minutes, if it was running it only by itself. What this means is that for any fight that would last less than that time effectively the LAR would supply armor throughout the engagement. However, this of course is a condition that would only occur on paper. In an actual engagement - one where guns were being fired, the repairer was on, and the MWD was engaged attempting to close with an opponent - the time until the ship runs out of capacitor is slightly less. To be more precise, it's 77 seconds - an 82% reduction in time. This of course, assumes that the hyperion in question is not also being neuted by it's opponent - hardly an uncommon situation. This of course means that the entire engagement must be over in 77 seconds or the hyperion will cap out and, most likely, be destroyed for reasons stated previously. While fights that last over 7 minutes are not that common, most fights last longer than 77 seconds in my experience, meaning that you will, barring a cap injector, run out of cap. Generally, the issue can be stated fairly easily - on ships that are designed around reps as their defensive module, usually the reps in question will either be the most cap using module or the second most cap using module. This fact means that running the module that the ship is designed around usually results in capacitor problems. If the enemy is using neutralizers the heavy cap usage of these modules means that neut use is effectively like turning an off switch on for them, rather like a warp scrambler does to a microwarp drive (though admittedly not instantly under most cases, but soon enough). The solution to this problem is to change the bonuses to ships with bonuses to reps so that not only is the bonus amount applied to the amount repaired, but also to the cap used. This would allow for much easier use of the repairers that are mounted to the ship in question as well (and probably more importantly) making them much more neut resistant. Application of these solutions I believe is key in restoring some level of balance between passive vs active armor tanking, which would help gallente out defensively greatly.

7. T2 ammo for hybrids, and specifically null, are underperformers. First comparing the short range T2 ammo between races shows that scorch takes the long range of the laser and boosts it by 50%. Barrage is the same with falloff. In both cases it boosts range by a large amount when compared to T1 ammo. In contrast null ammo increases both optimal and falloff by 25%. The bigger the modifier, the bigger the change, and bluntly 25%+25% does not equal 50% in terms of actual effectiveness. Throw in the fact that 25% of that is blaster optimal - which in the case of small blaster is about 1.5km - and the range increase in this area is almost not even noticeable. For small electrons in fact it's 300m (without character bonuses) for example. Even recognizing that if you go out to the largest guns you get a range that tops out at 26km using null (33km if you're a Rokh). The effect of this is that in comparison to scorch or barrage, null is very much a poor man's ammo.

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Kai Lae
Karmunism Limited
#125 - 2011-10-18 12:25:01 UTC  |  Edited by: Kai Lae
How to address this problem? In my opinion the answer is NOT to either go 50% on falloff, or go 33% to both optimal or falloff, or some combination of similar numbers. I think the range bonus should stay like it is; otherwise you'll could end up pushing blasters to mid range with caldari gunboats, which should not be intended design. What should happen is that unlike the other 2 ammos, the tracking penalty should be eliminated. Problem with blasters frequently is that the very short engagement ranges create tracking issues where it's hard to hit the target under certain circumstances. Because of the tracking nerf, currently a potential null user usually has this thought process:

"I could load null in these blasters, but if I do, tracking will be crap, and as I close in it probably will cause a problem in hitting this guy. The range increase isn't that great anyway, and that coupled with the reload time to switch to antimatter once in optimal means that I'll be wasting a lot of potential DPS. If I don't switch, I'll either end up missing him a lot or if I do hit him the damage decrease from null vs short range ammo again means a lot of wasted DPS. I think I'll just load fednavy antimatter and close as fast as I can, so I won't have any concerns".

However, if you remove the tracking nerf, now you don't have to worry so much about tracking being a problem. You now can go one of two routes:

a. Load null and open fire sooner. You'll put DPS on target sooner and this is good. However, when you get in real close to him you will be forfeiting potential DPS because of the lower damage ammo. You can of course reload, but is the delay in DPS it worth it?
b. Scream "RAMMING SPEED!!!!" and load antimatter, or maybe void (which will probably still be quite inferior after CCP gets done with it) and try to close fast. You apply DPS later, meaning you lose out on some DPS on the start of the engagement, but you are hoping to make up with superior DPS on the back end.

The key is that now you have options that you can consider. Unlike with barrage or scorch, you can effectively hit a target at extremely close range, because it doesn't nerf tracking. In general, eve does not lose when there are more tactical options, which makes this a good idea I think. The only viable objection that could be applied as far as I am concerned is that if you take away the tracking penalty, why have tungsten/iridium/lead etc? I don't think this is an issue, since I've never heard of anyone loading those ammo into blasters anyway. You lose DPS, for very little range increase; recall that changing ammo only increases optimal which is quite short for blasters in any case. The only time that non short range ammo is loaded into blasters that is not null is when the ammo is being fired to save capacitor and make the ship more cap stable - and this is very uncommon in my experience. At any rate I believe that removal of the tracking penalty to null would be key to making it more effective as a ammunition when compared to scorch or barrage.

8. Drones require looking at. There are several issues that require attention. First, is that due to the way stacking works, all other electronic warfare drones other than jamming drones are useless. The problem is that each dampening, painting, etc drone is counted for stacking purposes as a separate module. This means that if you have 5 non jamming drones loaded in your bay, the first does full effect, the second and third less and less, the fourth nearly none, and the 5th has basically no effect at all. Since the effect of the drones themselves is much smaller than a ship based module, this means that as support for any non caldari EW ship they are completely useless, since the drones will count for stacking purposes and may make the modules you have fitted on your ship completely useless, depending on where they are counted for stacking. If they are counted - because they're say the first, second or third module - the drones themselves are then useless due to stacking and you would have been better off if you had carried any other kind. In short as currently designed they are useless. Jamming drones do not have this problem because each drone counts as an individual jamming attempt; there is no stacking.

The easiest way to fix this is for the game to add up the combined effect of the drones and act as if it was a single module for stacking purposes. This would then allow more than 3 to be carried and have an effect, and it would allow them to be used with EW ships without either nerfing the effect of the drones or the ship itself.

The second issue is that drone specialization skills have no effect at all with respect to sentry drones. This has been a longstanding issue with these and should be corrected. Sentries are not more useful than normal drones overall and there is simply no real reason why the damage of T2 sentries is penalized when compared to normal drones.

The third issue is the imbalance that exists in normal drones, with respect to drone types. Simply put, there is basically no reason to ever use either amarr drones, and to a lesser extent, caldari drones. The reason is that for any situation you could consider the speed of an amarr drone being useful, a minmatar drone is not only faster than the amarr drone but does more DPS. In the case of the caldari drone, it is not sufficiently faster than the higher DPS gallente drone to make a real difference. This results in only 2 types - gallente and minmatar - basically seeing common use.

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Kai Lae
Karmunism Limited
#126 - 2011-10-18 12:25:35 UTC  |  Edited by: Kai Lae
The way to fix this I believe is to change drones so they are similar to fighters. First make them so that they all do the same speed; light drones all go one speed, medium all go another (slower) speed, etc. Next make the drones all do the same DPS. You could for example make minmatar drones have a higher damage mod but slower ROF, but they should all do the same damage over time. This will equalize drone usage and provide more appropriate tactical options for drone users, which is a good thing.

The fourth issue is the fitting requirements for drone modules. Having a drone link augmentor take 50 CPU is frankly ridiculous on tight CPU, gallente ships. The very high fitting requirements greatly limit the usefulness of this module and the others in it's class. In addition, not having T2 variants also limits the usefulness of these modules.


If you actually bothered to read all of this my thanks, as it took time to write up as I'm sure you've guessed. Please feel free to post comments about it below, as constructive feedback would be appreciated.



Anyway, wrote that last year, some stuff is now outdated, and I should update the whole thing. Still it's pretty much IMO the gallente laundry list of woe. And no, a TL/DR won't work as the issues are too complicated. My apologies for taking up that much space, and for not reading the thread (I don't have enough time before I go to work) however.
Gypsio III
Questionable Ethics.
Ministry of Inappropriate Footwork
#127 - 2011-10-18 13:22:15 UTC
RSD. You need to be wary of comparisons with the Rook/Falcon. Gallente recons also have the very valuable disruptor/scrambler range bonus, so direct comparisons of their shutdown-ability are unwise. And powerful ewar capabilities is a Caldari racial theme anyway, Gallente should not be as powerful. The old powerful damps were too good - close to being better than ECM at being ECM at that point. I remember killing a Deimos in a triple-RSD Drake, I was able to keep range at ~8 km and it couldn't lock me, it was kinda lol. That said, there's a case for increasing their strength on the recons, but 10%/level seems a bit too much, 7.5% might be more appropriate.

Blaster mobility.

Quote:
If you make the wrong buffs and make gallente like minmatar, what you'll end up with is gallente with the same kind of sustained high speed that minmatar have - which would make the avoidance of a point blank engagement nearly impossible. This does not work, as gallente then becomes a I WIN button in small scale combat.


I flat don't buy this. Currently, Minmatar has the mobility to keep at range and the falloff to apply DPS. But, if they so choose, they have the ability to close to blaster optimal and apply near-blaster damage with ACs' high tracking, selectable damage types and favourable slot layouts. The point is that AC boats already have the ability to make it nearly impossible for an opponent to avoid a point-blank engagement if they so choose. The overpowered situation that you fear already exists, but with ACs! So why do AC boats prefer to hang in falloff? Because going to close range involves going into web, scramble and med neut range. It's dangerous and one ship will die.

Now, imagine if we nerfed ACs by, say, reducing their falloff to blaster-levels. This would undoubtedly be a nerf - but it would be a nerf that reduces ACs to the level of the boosted blasters that you fear! They would be high-DPS, close-range, low-falloff weapons on mobile ships - effectively blasters on fast Gallente ships.

I think your over-concerned about the power of blasters in point-blank engagements. People are, in general, afraid of point-blank fights. People avoid them if they have a choice - you get tackled and will dies if things turn sour.
X Gallentius
Black Eagle1
#128 - 2011-10-18 13:47:02 UTC
Everything points to Gallente hulls needing to use afterburners to work correctly.


  • Active Tanking: Active tanking is more feasible on ships fit with afterburners.
  • Close range tracking: AB-fit ships are harder to track at close range.
  • Vulnerability to scrams: AB-fit ships aren't at extreme risk from getting scrammed and blobbed.


Proposed change:

Buff afterburners. Increase their baseline speed so they can be effective (but still less than MWD), decrease their mass signficantly.

This would make AB-fit ships quicker rather than faster like everybody wants.
Pattern Clarc
Citeregis
#129 - 2011-10-19 00:13:32 UTC  |  Edited by: Pattern Clarc
@Kai Lae - We can't boost EW. Why?
1) We shouldn't consider ECM as the benchmark. No, I don't believe all recons should be able to *lock down* multiple targets. The Amarr recons haven't, Minmatar Recons certainly don't any more.

2) Gallente have bonuses to warp disruptor/scrams. In combination with damps is probably the best set of bonuses available on recons. The ships get used quite frequently in practise as out of the top 20, the only gallente ship to make it there was the lachiesis.


I wouldn't recommend give one race a special hack with no equivalent for the other races. I've thought about the concept of racial bonuses, like a separate, rank 20 skill that improved a specific racial line of ships... The catch would be that a single character would only be able to train one (or train one to level 5). CCP Tallest, is this possible?

But then again it would be easier just to give certain ships a 3rd bonus. I mean, if is what's necessary then why not? However it would probably better to find a more elegant solution.


Your rig changes are pretty good. I may steal them.


Per turret, Rails do more damage than all but Tachyons and whilst having way more range, it's just unworkable given instant on grid probing. There are so many things we could do to improve rails, but the fundamental problem is that it is really hard to boost the weapon system enough to be viable on caldari hulls without them becoming OP on Gallente. At the moment, i'm suggesting significant increases to the DPS of Spike and Iron so that damage reduces less at range compared to other turrets. But this may change.



Active tanking is indeed an issue. Thank you for acknowledging it. We can't mess with the fitting requirements much without specialised bonuses on a ship by ship bonus, or else we mess up the fittings and balance of PvE ships and promote the fitting of oversized mods (which may or may not be terrible/awesome).



Don't necessarily agree with removing the tracking penalty to null. If your using it at it's designed ranges, then tracking isn't as big an issue.


EW drones should be looked at, but it's probably beyond the scope of fixing gallente. Same goes with the other drones, although I don't think they should be homogenised.

Ex CSM member & Designer of the Tornado. Gallente - Pilot satisfaction
Saul Perry
Doomheim
#130 - 2011-10-19 04:14:20 UTC  |  Edited by: Saul Perry
Regarding rails...

It's tough to fix rails using conventional strategies of increasing Damage or Range. So while some tweaking in that regard may still be a good idea, I propose a change that will affect rails in a more role based and fundamental way:

Adjust standard weapon range upwards to current max range levels on ships getting a range bonus then replace optimal range bonuses on ships like ferox or rokh with a signature resolution reduction instead.

Missile users can currently snipe better than rail users as heavy and cruise missiles currently have longer range and more damage than their rail counterpart but also benefit from skills like guided missile precision (which reduces the radius) whereas gunners have no way to reduce the sig res.

In short, Rail ship bonuses should be railgun RESOLUTION bonuses, with the optimals brought up to account for the change.

Edit: to be clear, the sig res bonus should be large enough that it will exceed a (say) flatly applied 5%/lvl damage bonus on targets with small sig radius (ie- cruiser sized). In this way, it's both better and worse than a simple damage bonus. It's better on small ships but no bonus at all against bigger ships. And, in this way, rails will become good anti-support weapons with a more subtle and specific role than if you just boost damage.

one other thing, not that it needs mentioning... lower PG reqs obviously. As of right now, PG reqs for rails are laughable. Fitting a ferox is nigh impossible without multiple PG mods/rigs
Gypsio III
Questionable Ethics.
Ministry of Inappropriate Footwork
#131 - 2011-10-19 08:47:25 UTC
Saul Perry wrote:
In short, Rail ship bonuses should be railgun RESOLUTION bonuses, with the optimals brought up to account for the change.

Edit: to be clear, the sig res bonus should be large enough that it will exceed a (say) flatly applied 5%/lvl damage bonus on targets with small sig radius (ie- cruiser sized). In this way, it's both better and worse than a simple damage bonus. It's better on small ships but no bonus at all against bigger ships. And, in this way, rails will become good anti-support weapons with a more subtle and specific role than if you just boost damage.


Sig resolution bonus = tracking bonus. Thanks for contributing though.
Saul Perry
Doomheim
#132 - 2011-10-19 11:38:59 UTC  |  Edited by: Saul Perry
Gypsio III wrote:
Saul Perry wrote:
In short, Rail ship bonuses should be railgun RESOLUTION bonuses, with the optimals brought up to account for the change.

Edit: to be clear, the sig res bonus should be large enough that it will exceed a (say) flatly applied 5%/lvl damage bonus on targets with small sig radius (ie- cruiser sized). In this way, it's both better and worse than a simple damage bonus. It's better on small ships but no bonus at all against bigger ships. And, in this way, rails will become good anti-support weapons with a more subtle and specific role than if you just boost damage.


Sig resolution bonus = tracking bonus. Thanks for contributing though.


What?

edit:

meh, nevermind

I'm confusing the turret mechanic with the missile mechanic.
Pattern Clarc
Citeregis
#133 - 2011-10-19 12:27:12 UTC
I think your confusing the missile formula with the turret one. Stationary targets are hit the same by guns of different tracking speeds or signature resolutions.

Ex CSM member & Designer of the Tornado. Gallente - Pilot satisfaction
Saul Perry
Doomheim
#134 - 2011-10-19 13:28:31 UTC
Pattern Clarc wrote:
I think your confusing the missile formula with the turret one. Stationary targets are hit the same by guns of different tracking speeds or signature resolutions.


Well, I didn't believe it at first, but after playing around with the formula

Hit chance = ((1/2)^((((Transv/(Range*Tracking))*(Sig_Res/Sig_Rad))^2) +((max(0,Range-Optimal))/Falloff)^2))

...you are right. with stationary (transv=0) I'm getting a hit chance of 1 no matter what

I assumed the mechanic worked similar to how missiles work, with a damage scaling to smaller sig rad targets (even when stationary). Or actually, I thought that damage didn't scale - I assumed that for turrets the hit chance scaled. In fact, this is how it's often presented on a lot of 'guides'.

Oh well, so much for my idea. Thx for the clarification
Gypsio III
Questionable Ethics.
Ministry of Inappropriate Footwork
#135 - 2011-10-19 13:35:51 UTC  |  Edited by: Gypsio III
Edit - unnecessary post since you've figured it out.

re-edit. It actually means that the value of "turret resolution" is completely unnecessary and serves only to confuse people, as the information could just be incorporated into the value for turret "tracking speed". That's CCP, I suppose.
Tanya Powers
Doomheim
#136 - 2011-10-19 19:21:33 UTC
@Pattern

@Kai Lee

Excellent job, some points I'll may have a different opinion specially regarding tracking.

Tracking IS dps for rails/blasters so reducing this stat on T2 ammo is reduce the +dps that ammo is supposed to give you, and since those silly +numbers are negated by that tracking penalty + opponent transversal, that's not reasonable to use it vs faction ammo since overall you win far more dps than half hitting/missing your target with supposed higher dps ammo

Also:
- Active tanking arguments, excellent explanation of what it is right now.

-OP distance for blasters, since at their closest optimal range AC's have far better dps than blasters due to higher tracking (after fittings+ammo) AND have higher distance for dmg application because of that silly fall off.

Why not completely remove fall off from blasters (blasters dps in fall off is so ridiculous that 0 at least would help you not waste ammo for peanuts), increase optimal range to scram/web range like 13km large ones? +other dps/tracking/fitting tweeking options you've mentioned.

This would keep blasters the closest range weapon by all means but higher dps in their FULL engagement envelope, no more 100dps at 25km and 1k+ (when your opponent is sleeping or afk) at 3km, you need to bull it and blast if or gtfo.
X Gallentius
Black Eagle1
#137 - 2011-10-20 02:56:00 UTC
Why should blaster hulls be as fast as Minmatar hulls? Because when blaster hulls get in range they'll just get neuted anyways.....

Kaaeliaa
Tyrannos Sunset
#138 - 2011-10-20 05:44:00 UTC
I don't agree with everything on there, but I support the basic idea. We don't need more ships, we need more choice within the ships we've got. I trained for Gallente as a young'un and I'd really like to be able to fly them without feeling a little underpowered. I feel like someone didn't think hybrids all the way through. Shortest range weapons on some of the slowest ships? Long-range weapons that aren't markedly better than artillery (in most situations) but still use cap? Hmm. The first tier battlecruisers definitely need some help, and some of the fairly useless cruiser and frigate hulls should be revamped or just scrapped outright. I know that each of the races has their own unique style, but as it stands there's basically one good frigate and one good cruiser hull, outside of some special situations.

More ammo types would be great, too. They feel a little too copy/pasted at the moment, at least for hybrid/projectile ammo. Two long range/low damage types, two middle of the road types, two short range/high damage types. Yawn. There are plenty of variables to play with.

"Do not lift the veil. Do not show the door. Do not split the dream."
draconothese
Independant Celestial Enterprises
#139 - 2011-10-20 08:39:05 UTC  |  Edited by: draconothese
bravo i loved the text wall read it all i love all the ideas not sure about the drone part and the gallente t2 short range ammo still has tracking issues cant even hit a ship in licking distance


i really like the idea of a burst of speed button for gallente ships i dont think adding anything to that extent or any changes to add a unique ability like that to the other races would be good though as it is all the other races have a unique thing about them amarr have the high resists mimatar are all around good fast ships and caldari not sure what they have other then shields or whatever

but the ability to give you a breef boost on a cooldown to catch a ship along with a buff to blasters would be great gallente also need a tank increase like you stated to be able to get in range
Pattern Clarc
Citeregis
#140 - 2011-10-20 20:05:48 UTC
This thread may not leave the first page of this forum.
May post with some additional comments and reasoning later.

Does anyone have any questions? Want a summary? Want to learn how your race fairs against the current iteration of Gallente?

Ex CSM member & Designer of the Tornado. Gallente - Pilot satisfaction