Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Let's give this a go. I'm not trying to troll here, I just recognize the hardships the devs and the community are going through balancing this weird weapon system. Below is an amalgamation of ideas I've picked up from others players reading the forums over the last week or two, and a few of my own.

The Blaster Predicament

No matter how you buff these guns, they will always be inferior to pulses, AC's and missiles, which are balanced well. Instead of mucking around trying to change each blaster boat, or nerfing the other three weapon systems, try this.


Rail Changes

- Rails become an energy pulse "autocannon": high rof, high tracking, high range; extremely low close-range damage, low fall-off, adjustable optimals via ammo
- Rail damage evens out with other weapon systems as the range increases (for example, 500dps at 80km or something)
- Low fall-off supports an existing mechanic: kiting in order to maintain the ideal optimal range, maybe like arties and lasers? (instead of wildly spraying the space in front of you like AC boats do)
- Rail range and damage ratios are adjusted through hybrid ammo: 80/20 kin/therm, 50/50, etc.
- Blasters are removed. Completely. **** them in the ass.


Drone Changes

- Drones do the blasting. give drones some love, add/modify mods and rigs to give players the freedom to customize drone tracking, damage and speed; Gallente ships innately have the space to use them
- Only the combat drone range of operation is drastically reduced; they are only to be released to supplement the rail damage up close. As the distance increases (i.e. the Gall ship is being kited), rail boats will gain gun dps, and will never receive drone damage bonuses or be able to use combat drones over longer distances. players can choose to load sentry drones instead to increase damage at longer distances, or medium range (20-30km)
- if someone tries to kite the drones, rail boats will gain an increase in gun damage as distance increases, and drone boats can use bonused sentries
- i dont know what the dps formula would be for these rails


Specialized Ships

- Eos, Domi, Ishtar unique bonus: Sentry drones move at 20/40/60/80/100% of ship speed per command ship/BS/HAC level.
- the above ships will never be able to fit a full rack of rails, or even come close to it. nerf PG if needed.
- things like drone bandwidth would need to be buffed for the Eos


Conclusion

- you dont have to muck around nerfing AC's, pulse lasers, etc.
- you dont have to muck around trying to make the baster philosophy and its boats viable
- you dont have to introduce new weapons(maybe some drone rigs, and change the mods)
- you dont have to mess around with webs!
- you'll revitalize a dead race



TLDR:

- Rails become versatile turrets that are extremely precise, but have low alpha; they would require micromanagement of ammo and/or distance to maintain optimal range; disadvantage: rails only do a portion of their damage up close (adjusted by optimal range);

- combat drones become mobile blasters modifiable by tracking and speed mods/rigs that only have enough dps to supplement rail damage once the opponent commits; turret-based boats can choose to load up sentry drones to maximize ranged dps

- specialized drone boats gain mobile sentry drones and drone damage, while having less PG and less turret slots

nope, this covers all the bases pretty much. care to elaborate?

okay, decrease ROF, increase damage modifier. it's a rail gun again. no problem.

fall off is low, so it's not really like an AC. a cross between laser and AC, or laser and artillery; whichever.

cant we just nerf Hungry Eyes instead?

it would take less effort.

Neither of your statements here are true.

So blaster theory is broken, because they can't catch ****, so instead you want to take the slowest race and have them kite?


What happens when they are just faster than the drones that have any chance at killing them?


The Eos doesn't have the bandwidth for a full set of sentries, it would stay useless. Domi needs its grid, **** off.


You don't have to muck around nerfing ACs or pulses to fix blasters, you just need to do that to balance blasters without homogenizing the weapons.
Yeah, you have to muck around trying to make an entire race viable instead. Happy days.
Don't have to introduce more stuff to balance blasters.
Don't have to much about with webs to fix blasters.

yeah, thats when i flew my maxed out mega. what were u doing then? were u here when lasers, AC's and missiles got buffed beyond recognition, beyond what was conceivable back then? when agility was nerfed?

this is 5 years later. i assume we dont wanna go BACK, so the new iteration of blasters and rails needs to be done according to what we're presently facing.

i actually felt this was not the case, which is why i posted yet another suggestion. the best proposal ive seen on these forums is the adjustment to hybrid ammo (different kin/therm damage ratios and range), and i actually included that in my summary. this does not resolve the issue of homogenization in any way though.

while my proposal for the rail turret does involve some homogenization, used in combination with highly modifiable drones, I feel Gall would gain a unique flavour to them.

but as i mentioned, if you dont like it (and dont wanna discuss it), just let it die. stop posting troll-like statements and bumping a thread you dont support.

There are plenty of good sugesstions that have been made of not only how to fix blasters but also the intertwined problem with gallente hulls – some of these sugesstions are even coming from people who fly these ships on a regular basis

To take one of many: The removal of the speedreduction side effect when armor rigs are fitted.
This one would in itself alleviate some of the problem blasterboats face by letting them getting in range much faster and easier. Now granted this change would not be a guarantee for gallente hulls to actually get within tackling range of faster ships (and there shouldn't be such a guarantee) – but it would make easier and gallente pilots would not heavily penalize their ships by fitting a proper armor tank.

This is one of many sugesstions that have been made. Why dont you either respond to them in the myriad of blaster/gallente balance threads out there OR list the most supported ones here and explain to us why they can't be implemented.





Troll-like statements as in disagreing with your thesis and asking for arguments to back up your claims?

Its ridiculously easy to close the distance between ships bigger than cruisers, takes a little bit of pre-thinking and about 5 seconds. And if you think 800mm AC and torps are anywhere near the same level...

They're still significantly slower than Minmatar, and a bit slower than Amarr, and you specifically said "they would be kiting ships"(paraphrasing of course)




Obviously Cynabals never fit autocannons and will totally be caught by drones other than Lights.