Player Features and Ideas Discussion

It's just sad because CCP is doing nothing in this direction.

I haven't used Laser ships for like 3-4 years because I see no reason, other ships perform much better with less problems.

Also pure Thermal damage crystals won't solve every problem, especially in PvE, but at least it will allow you to choose.

1. Nerf scorch
2. Make gamma the best all around ammo type because blue lazors are pretty.

Any other ideas regarding changes to crystals?

crystals are crap.
i fly amarr 90% of the time and have been since i mined in my apoc with miner II's.

scorch is a lil OP simply because we have no other crystal. conflag tracking penalty is stupid. it was conceived when they didnt want to make things OP. the whole game has grown OP in comparison. regular crystals need balance. if we had better choices of damage types (between more em or more thermal), we could tone the scorch down a bit. but just using conflag is like someone having a tracking disruptor thrown at us. 25%???? c'mon

riddle me this, batman...
how can adding a crystal to a laser change its tracking? the crystal sits inside the laser. its not fired, its not launched. the only thing it does is changes the focus and the wavelength.

there should be no tracking penalties OR bonuses from crystals. minie get tracking bonuses from certain bullets (which i can see because some fly better maybe. but crystals? all we do is shoot light through them.

this conversation came up about 3 weeks ago.

t2 missiles got their penalties removed and rage got a 35% bonus to damage. nice...but why does t2 ammo (especially crystals) still have its penalty other than "we dont want it to be op"? you do more damage with navy multi than conflag and it shouldnt be that way.
and why do navy crystals burn out?
i can see t2 crystals burning out...maybe because during the process, they change something and it causes heat. who knows? but typical crystals should not expire (to include common navy/blood variety).

1. get rid of all tracking penalties for crystals.
2. stop all but t2 crystals from being damaged (navy crystals change hands a lot due to ships being blown up).
3. change damage types from heavy em to a mix of em/therm like on minie ammo. (close range em/therm, close range therm/em, long range em/therm, long range them/em)
one could even go so far as to say em/therm crystals get the +35% cap savings of UV/microwave while the therm/em doesnt get a cap savings since we are charging the crystal differently or something. if wanna choose something different, then you have to pay the price...
4. rebalance crystals as a whole.

The ability to more flexible chose between more EM or Thermal based split would be nice. Standard should remain as -/- for range and -50% cap need, since standard sits at a desirable range and the extra cap saving can be handy sometimes. It wouldn't be a big thing simply to add another crystal for the +20% range. I would be extremely careful with increasing damage on the higher range crystals to not create just a new scorch with a lot more tracking and beams with considerable more punch and tracking at long ranges. If scorch would have a lower optimal bonus and a bit less base damage, the faction ammos actually would be pretty comparable up to the +20% range bracket.

As for removing the tracking penalty on conflagration, I think this would be to much. The main reason for this is that most of the time when you use conflag you have a well tacked target and on ships with the optimal bonus it tracks far better than other T2 ammos at optimal. A legion for example can push conflag range up to 17km optimal and can use it with full damage against nearly anything beside frigs(without the tracking penalty it would be better for this to) without using a web(against bigger targets than frigs). Conflag as it is, is already a pretty good ammo, since it doesn't just gives you more on paper dps but also reverses EM\Thermal what further improves the performance against nearly any omni tanked armor target compared to multi.

I would actually not like to change the crystal swap mechanic, because the ability to adjust ranges would get a considerable hit, even if you don't want to utilize more thermal heavy ammo.



I would totally love blue lasers. Make it so!



While it is annoying with gurista missions that combine high EM resistance with high orbits, Angels and Serpentis are hardly a issue. A 1400 DPS pulsgank Abaddon or 1300 DPS Tach Paladin hits them like a truck, because you have very high tracking at optimal and next to no falloff dps reduction. Outside elite cruisers or high end BS you hardly notice any difference to hybrids(beside the non laughable optimal of puls and the better dps of beams). Outside of gurista missions, lasers are very effective for PVE or at least on even footing compared to other options.