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On the topic of railguns.

Railguns are designed to be long range weapons, but, as pointed out many times in the thread, they often have more range than necessary in typical engagements (especially on Caldari hulls).

What about nerfing some of their range, but increasing the raw damage to compensate?
For example:
-20% to optimal/falloff
+x% tracking (since you now use them at shorter ranges)
+20% damage
?

That way, Caldari hull bonuses are more useful in typical engagements, while the Gallente get a more powerful weapon at medium ranges.

Oh man.
Fixed

i think this is what we'll end up seeing ultimately. it's the simplest solution, and the community seems to not mind it. it's super boring though. cant wait to see how theyve incorporated player suggestions into the next iteration.

Agreed.

a thought I've been cooking up:

a solid rocket booster of sorts.

- uses oxygen for fuel
125-500 units per second, 10 second reload time, total fuel capacity can vary dependent on size and meta level. no more than five seconds worth of boost.(1 cycle)

- no cap usage.

Oxygen's actually pretty big at 0.38 m3, 125 would be 47.5m3... it'd be a conscious choice whether to pack reloads or ammo/cap booster charges.

- Must be used in conjunction with MWD/AB for an additional 100% speed, with massive acceleration, but throws agility into the dirt via a mass multiplier penalty for extreme straightline speed. would negate the chances for kiter abuse, and lead to some interesting options. does not function independently.

or just swap the thorax's 5% mwd cap bonus to a 5% mwd speed one, and mirror it on other blaster platforms (brutix, hyperion both come to mind). the boats are designed to be in-your-face brawlers. let them get there.

I think Void is fine.

I think Null should focus more on falloff; Tracking Enhancers make a MUCH bigger difference when affecting falloff than optimal, and this is telling in the fact that there are few to no reasonably long-range blaster fits, even on ships that have a falloff bonus to hybrids.

I think that hybrids, blasters in particular, would like to see a slightly bigger boost to tracking. From what I hear in the 3TBC feedback thread, most people think the Talos can't hit jack up close. Maybe they are using it wrong, I don't know.

I think the general hybrid-ship speed adjustment could be amplified a bit. I do NOT think that hybrid ships should EVER be made faster than Minmatar, or every blaster ship ever would be basically a cheap Adrestia, running down Vagabonds and tearing them to shreds.

I think that making Gallente ships in general use Afterburners like others use MicroWarpDrives is a terrible idea. Either they would be slower than they are currently, or they would be immensely overstrong in small numbers and escape ability (re: 100mn AB Tengu trend), or even both.

On a side note, I think that the disadvantages of Gallente's active tanking bonuses need to be looked at. I think that the Brutix and Hyperion hulls, as well as the Deimos, need their bonus increased to 10% per level. Currently the 7.5% per level bonus yields a 37.5% advantage over base, with no effect on buffer and remote repair; meanwhile, Amarr's predilection for resist bonuses gives those ships a 33.3% bonus to active tanking, AND buffer, AND remote repair. Currently, the Megathron has an equal or better active tank than the Hyperion when fully outfit for tank (due to an extra low slot), while many Hyperions sacrifice their seventh gun for a neut anyway, and still have no tracking bonus like the Megathron does.

I would love to see more Hyperions, if not in fleet fights; and more Rokhs (with better tracking and falloff on their blasters) would make my day. (edit: the changes to Javelin, Tremor, and Gleam are awesome -- I really like the change in trends towards a long-range game in this patch!)

Just a bit of brainstorming...

People have suggested that Gallente get an AB bonus which is on the surface a terribad idea simply because ABs are slower than MWDs. However, what if the gallente had the ability to fit oversized ABs and got acceleration bonus along with it. That would give a HUGE straight line speed boost and mitigate damage on the approach. It would solve cap usage problems. It would still leave Minmatar the most mobile race because an oversized AB is a pain to turn with.

THis along with a decent damage and tracking buff would fix blaster boats overall.

Yes I have played with oversized ABs. I never thought they would work as they do currently... As stated previously, it would require a fast acceleration bonus and be used for short straight line bursts of speed. Yes, an agility boost would be needed and you would not be immune to incoming damage. It would be mitigated. Taking too much damage on the approach being on of the prime problems with blasters after all.

Read the first line of my post... "Just a bit of brainstorming..." then take a deep breath and have a cup of tea. Tailor your responses in a reasonably toned fashion. We are all trying to work on this problem together.

As a solution to the non use of very long range weapons like rails and cruise missiles, I suggest increasing the minimum warp distance to 250km although even 200km would be nice. This would prevent probers from allowing an on grid short range fleet to warp to the snipers.

I don't think that the extreme range is an issue, as you can switch to certain ammo types (such as antimatter) which have a negative range bonus anyway (solves that problem). What i would like to see is the ability to pull off alpha strikes similar to the mael. So possibly an damage increase for them, I would personally settle for the ability to alpha. I also believe that this will put the Rokh on the road to reclaiming it's former glory.