Player Features and Ideas Discussion

PREFACE: I'm not 100% sure this is the right place for this post. It's not so much a complaint, I have some observations about Amarr ships and I wonder if other people share those views. If so I would like to see some changes to the Amarr fleet.

INTRODUCTION:
I have been flying Amarr ships for almost 7 years now. I don't consider myself an expert, but I have noticed some subtleties of the Amarr ships that has left me wondering if we might be flying with a bit of a handicap in New Eden. I am not trying to start an "ZOMG MINNIES ARE OP!!!1!" thread here. I am just trying to open the dialog a bit and see if my observations are noticed by other Amarr pilots and if so offer some suggestions on how to address the issues.

AMARR SHIP PHILOSOPHY:
Some general guidelines of the Amarr fleet. These are not all encompassing and there are Amarr ships that do not fit this model, but as a whole they seem to operate under a few basic concepts.

1. Armor tanked
2. Slow
3. Focus on energy turret weapon systems

I don't think this will surprise anyone. Just by looking at the bonuses of a lot of Amarr ships you can see that this is how a lot of our ships are focused. I don't think any of these listed items is cause for complaint, but when you combine all of them together you run into a few problems.

Let's start with the armor tanking. Armor tanks are fun. Each plate you slap onto your ship slows you down, but it's a lot of fun to fly a slow heavy brute of a ship right into the thick of it! The main problem with armor tanking is the modules for armor tanking are in the low slots. This means when it comes time to fit a ship I have to decide whether each low slot is going to contain tank or a weapon upgrade module. Shield fit ships don't have this problem. They can max their mid slots with tank and still fit a number of weapon upgrade modules. I'm not saying it's broken, but you see a lot of Caldari and MinMatar ships with higher dps and tank than the Amarr counterparts that have to pick one or the other. They also repair you at the end of the cycle, which is just mean and leads to many a heart attack of they Amarr pilot. The armor rigs and modules also slow you down quite a bit, which is a problem I'll get to in a minute.

Next you have the laser turrets. Lasers are the bomb I love 'em, but they have some serious drawbacks. For one, they're the only weapon in the game that can't change damage type. This is a HUGE problem! Why can every other race choose their damage type but us!? I realize lasers should do EM and THERM damage from a logical stand point, but it still seems restrictive and I haven't been shown any statistics on how ships are more vulnerable to those damage types than others. Energy turrets are also a big cap drain which is another big problem. Hard to keep those armor reps going with the lasers blasting away through the whole fight too. But again, they're lasers so they should use cap right? At least they have really good range on them, even if the tracking isn't great.

That range bonus means you would ideally stay out of the optimal range of your opponent who is hopefully using blasters or auto cannons. But with all the armor modules you've fit on a already slow racial ship, you really don't have much hope of dictating that range. What you're left with is a ship that should be a range fighter, but can't keep out of range because the armor modules you've fit, which means you have a lower dps since you couldn't fit weapon upgrades, are slowing you down so much anyone can catch you.

So I don't know. Are these legitimate complaints? Are there other pilots out there who know of ways to work within these constraints? You almost never see people 1v1 around in lo-sec with Amarr ships and I think these factors have a lot to do with it. Again I would love to brainstorm how to address these issues, but I don't want to get ahead of myself. If there is a significant population of players that agree with what I've outlined I'm happy to move forward with this. If not then I'm happy to hear counter arguments. Let the dialog begin!

While I (as a main gallente pilot) share most of your concerns, I miss the point where lasers are the only weapon system that cannot choose dmg-type. In fact lasers and hybrids are the "fixed" dmg types.
This is why I like drones of different dmg types (EM and EX) to complement my portfolio of dmg.

But don't forget about the shieldies downsides:
- EWAR-Mods are a pain to fit for them (in that light a Falcon looks like a hard to fit ship)
- armortankers are more fun in pvp (low sig, in gallente case: facemeltorblastas)

In sum i'd say, we all share the fait of trading advandages for disadvantages.

pros of amarr laser ships
-projection of damage is the best of turrets
-low slot advantage over minnie or gallente mean they can fit heavy buffer tanks
-mids for tackle mods

cons
-low speed
-low agility
-cap vulnerable to neuts
-low tracking
- needs cap booster

so certainly more cons to amarr ships .. but some can be fixed mainly lasers
- buff tracking
- reduce cap usage
-build a utility slot into ships to allow for a NOS which is getting buffed soon... navy augoror should be the way forward.
- reduce mass on either plates or ships.
-maybe some amarr specific mods for lasers .. they need more pros clearly.. heat sink switch ROF for an OH bonus and increase damage bonus.
-perhaps buff cap batteries as a more permanent solution to cap boosters for amarr laser ships.
-missile range of rockets and HAMS need to be halved this will help lasers advantage of range.

well compared to missiles atm there isn't much difference besides battleship range ..
but scorch is the only issue for range being a little OP ... in regards to the long range turrets well... the massive range reduction on the high damage ammo is the problem really.. as scorch and gleam tend to overlap .. 75% is crazy where as missiles only have 25% range nerf on furies.

They do need to reduce the insane T2 resists and make them more omni tank resists after-all why would you ignore 10% explosive hole just to improve an already strong em or therm resist?

I suppose you could try to compare a turret system to missiles, despite being an apples to oranges comparison.

Missiles have their drawbacks. Each ammo type for a given launcher is pretty pigeonholed for what it hits, and with that 10s reload that can get painful, especially if you are also trying to find a resist hole. Add to that the possibility of missiles getting firewalled and their generally poor performance in larger fleet fights and turrets tend to come out on top.

What the huge optimal on lasers allow is not only superior damage projection compared to other turret types, but the use of higher damaging ammo at ranges that the other short range turrets cannot even reach. People like to downplay that range advantage on pulses... but seriously, when your short range turret is coming out as a reasonable contender compared to the longest range long range turret in the game, you need to respect that.

I will agree that projectiles are too good. Capless operation is a tremendous advantage. That it comes coupled with average range, average damage, and selectable damage type is just a bit OP in my opinion. Both missiles and drones have selectable damage, but both of them also suffer from being vulnerable to destruction in space. Projectiles get that benefit along with the capless firing and it's just too much, especially when you add in their long fall off and alpha advantages.

But the overall Amarr combat philosophy is pretty clearly set up so that each ship performs as part of a fleet rather than an independent operator. Space ships out so that they are at the edge of each other's optimal, Cover their cap weakness with the somewhat amazing ability of their logi to generate cap and leverage those tough buffer tanks with remote rep

I won't speak to if this works in PvP in modern EVE warfare, especially for those that want to do things solo, but it seems clear this was the philosophy at the design phase, and the ships look like they would work well that way..

Will this be the next topic about how amarr are less competitive due to flawed laser turret design? There was more than 200 pages in total about this in threads regarding odyssey changes to amarr BS and large laser turrets.
Basically everyone except for a few gallente trolls agreed that while the concept of counterbalancing advantages with disadvantages is much more fair than for example what we get with missiles now, current disadvantage mix of lasers is making them subpar. Also, not even amarr ships have enough cap to compensate for laser cap drain, which is not good because this was ignored when the ships were rebalanced and in forces many amarr ships to fit cap rechargers in their mids as a no brainer, thus showing a sing of bad design.

Regarding lasers:

They aren't the only weapon system that can't change damage types: Hybrids have it worse.

Lasers can modulate the amount of EM and Thermal damage. Faction multifrequency does 58% EM damage, 42% Thermal. The most popular, Scorch, does a whopping 81% EM damage.

So if you're engaging a Gallente or Caldari T2/T3 which have Thermic resists out the wazoo, Scorch could actually be a higher-damage option because it does more EM damage.


The issue of cap usage is responded to by the damage/range multiplier. You do a much higher amount of damage at medium and long range than any other weapon system. Also, you consume almost no ammo, which must be taken into consideration.

I've flown every race of ship, and hauling 16 crystals every other day is a hell of a lot easier than hauling 20,000 projectile ammo, 12500 hybrid charges, or 10,000 missiles.




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They aren't all sitting ducks, either. The Oracle, Omen, ONI, Zealot, Slicer, Curse, Harbinger (yes, even the harbinger) can be shield tanked and nanoed to some impressive maneuverability. The Sacrilege isn't a slow potato either.

Lol. Lol, and again lol.

Vaga has a better tracking, much better speed, better agility, more range and almost the same DPS.
On top of that the EM resist is over 90%.
This ship is immune to Zealot.

Either way you are a poor troll or just have no idea how to fit Vaga and play it.

I'd like to see Lasers (all of them) get a straight 10% buff to damage. No other changes needed. Lasers have a pile of disadvantages, and their main advantage was supposed to be that they do more damage.

Take more fitting? Check.
Use more cap? Check.
Have bad tracking? Check.
No falloff at all? Check.

Make up for that with higher damage? ... Um... guys?