Player Features and Ideas Discussion

With the railgun rebalance incoming, it seems like the right moment to share some thoughts on the current meta and weapon systems post-patch. Racial flavour is still my not so hidden agenda.

AC vs Artillery
With the slight nerf to tracking enhancers the incentive to fit tracking computers and switch to artillery for kiting has now arrived. While kiting with medium ac is still possible, especially on fall-off bonused hulls, once you go above point range artillery is the undisputed king. AC have the tracking and better close range dps, artillery have the alpha. Cool.

Maybe a slight boost to the damage of medium and long range minmatar ammo and the balance may be just right. It doesn't make sense that at medium ranges the medium range ammo has equal dps to the short range ammo (regardless of the better tracking).

Blasters vs Railguns
Blasters hit hard up close and track well. Railguns.. well.. rumour has it they will receive a significant damage boost. So blasters vs railguns in the future is range vs tracking, not so much range vs dps. Sounds good to me. Just make sure not to boost railgun fall-off and possibly even nerf optimal somewhat? The idea here is that a thorax could hit for neutron blaster damage with 250mm II railguns at 15km (assuming it can track well enough), but that a switch to slightly lower dps ammo is worth it to hit well at 24km.

Pulse vs Beams
I have 0 experience using lasers, so don't feel qualified to comment on their meta.

Rockets/HAMs/Torps vs lights/HMs/cruise
Missiles seem more problematic.. there seems to be a tendency to make them more like guns with a difference in dps and range only.

Short range versus long range I see as high theoretical dps versus average applied dps. This used to be the case, but somewhere along the way this idea got lost. In other words, compared to guns, short range missiles would have blaster-like dps, assuming the target is stationary and big enough. Long range missiles would have lowish dps compared to long range guns, but their damage should be harder to mitigate. This could use some work.. Heavy missiles could do with better explosion velocity.. Cruise missiles could do with less DPS but better explosion velocity. Light missiles could do with slightly less dps but better explosion velocity.

Summary / Racial Flavour
AC: close range average dps, decent tracking, some medium range flexibility with barrage
Arty: medium to long range average dps, high alpha, horrible tracking

Blasters: super close range high dps, awesome tracking, little to no range flexibility
Railguns: medium high dps, average tracking, high range flexibility but with loss of dps at range

(For Amarr just a suggestion, don't take it too seriously.)
Pulse: close to medium range high dps, mediocre tracking, high range flexibility
Beams: medium to somewhat long range high dps, good tracking, low range flexibility

Short range missiles: high dps, bad damage application, short to medium range
Long range missiles: mediocre dps, high damage application, medium to long range

On Artillery vs AC's
i think they should be an extension of AC's so 90% falloff based with a higher ROF and less Alpha based
Also projectiles should use some cap to help balance the other guns no cap is a big advantage and should be unique to missiles
Also consider reducing the reload time down to 7 seconds.. missiles should take the longest to reload being the bulkiest.

On Rails vs Blasters
looking at that twitter pic 40% increase of dps seems a little high too me can you imagine how much dps the 250's with javelin will do? the only selling point of blasters is the distinct advantage of high dps if you make javelin on 250's do better damage than blasters with null you are doing something wrong CCP.
You got a little heavy handed with cruises don't do the same with rails...

On Beams vs Pulse
definitely look at the high damage crystal a -75% range is pointless on the range guns it needs to be more consistent with missiles i think fury is - 25% range....
The overlap with scorch and beams needs to be removed there must be a discernible difference in range same goes for all range vs short range guns.
Also lasers need their buff... tracking must be better for the slowest race with the worst ability to control range and speed of opponent and for christ sake they need to use less cap combined with less ROF and more alpha

Says Scorch is useless, wants to have more falloff (ON LASERS).

You have obviously never used a T2 Laser in your life. Stop trying to make "improvements" to a weapon system you don't understand.

Also:
I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

AC got heavily hit with the last TE nerv. They should get their fall-off raised by 10% to compensate.

Sorry for the snippage but... why on earth would anyone ever use blasters ever again if the underlined bit was the case? A Heavy Neutron II has a 2.25km optimal with antimatter...

Nothing should come even close to the 'paper' DPS of blasters let alone the applied - the range is far too gimped compared to other weapon systems.

EDIT: and let's not even get started on the point about blaster tracking not really compensating for the higher angular velocities up close - because when designed, they were designed with 90% webs in mind...

AC's - Arties: Mostly fine, the fitting difference is to great though.. If you give a ship enough fittings to use arties it can fit the entire world with AC's.

Rails - Blasters: Small and large rails are winmachines and medium rails are getting a buff.. mostly fine although i think null could use a slight range nerf

Pulse - Beams: Scorch is the biggest offender in the t2 ammo being overpowered thing. Scorch basically outperforms beams at any relevant range. Scorch needs to be nerfed for beams to be a viable weapon system for anything other than sniping.

Missiles are all fine.. FINE I SAY.

Why does nobody think of the children? ... erm drones... I meant drones.

I would like to see small and medium sentries.
Why? Every other weapon system has a long-range and a short-range variant. Except small and medium drones.
As the large drone bracket allready does, you trade the mobility of these guns with shooting range and a much worse tracking.
Would they make sense? In terms of consistency it would. Those drones should be able to outtrack a ship that is 2 tiers higher (small-drones outtrack cruisers and so on) at the optimal range distance.

I was a dedicated amarr pilot for 3 years before I branched into missiles and autocannons on this and other toons. My experience with with lasers thus far is that
1) Scorch is the only reason medium pulse lasers are usable, in my experiences. why? conflagration's tracking penalty is really bad when considered against the laser's already mediocre tracking. All the folks I know use INM instead of conflagration.
2) beams are impractical on BC and smaller hulls at the moment for powergrid, tracking, cap use, and usability when compared to scorch crystals on range-bonused ships.

Amarr aren't good at dictating range (well, better than gallente perhaps), even though their the crystal swap suggest they should be. Quite a bit slow, armor buffers are.

And Ronny, Lasers operate almost exclusively in optimal, not falloff. Autocannons and even blasters use it, but on lasers? Nope. it might as well be a hard limit at the end of optimal.

medium Beam lasers are currently operating in the gray zone where both rails artillery have better range, and beams only have better tracking. (base weapon stats, not using applied hull bonuses. E.G. thorax tracking bonus makes 250mm's with spike have nearly identical tracking to HBL's with aurora on an omen. t2 hulls swing it towards beams because of the zealot's range bonus. e.g. no range mods: zealot, HBM II aurora= 81+10, 250mm railguns, spike on deimos= 65+23, but i would never see a sniper deimos so it's really a false comparison. ) take it or leave it, just my 2 cents.

tl;dr: beams are overshadowed by arties and rails. maybe even scorch on range-bonused hulls.

All else being equal, in optimal range, the gun with the highest falloff does most damage. It also compensates a bit for slow tracking.