Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I agree with you - RLML are OP to the first one or two frigates, before they hit their period of inactivity, crippling the ship for 40 seconds. It has nothing to do with light missiles or deleted RLML being OP. Besides, how many pilots can say they are flying Cerberus (or Caracal) with perfect skills and adequate +3 implants? I bet not many.


LOL really, large ancillary and an EM hole.

Its just a big table of names and then numbers.

You do realise that is a shifting hardener? Have you tried projecting the effects it would bring against your Incursus?

It takes the tank up to nearer 200hp a second once shifted and that isn't its peak shift. Your little Incursus can only do 115 DPS with its blasters - and it can't reach me, because you are webbed and out of their tiny range.

Lets say your little mate comes in to pew pew me with his ship. After resists he does around 30-40 dps to me a second. I have 12,000 hp he has to chew through.

I have realised that I can remove the tracking enhancers and use two DPS modules instead.

I am now hitting your Incursus for 544 DPS, accurately and without fail. Your Frigate is space dust and your in your Pod in less than 30 seconds, probably around 15 seconds if the fight starts with you coming in at me.

Is your mate and his epic DPS going to break me in that time? I don't think so.

Then I web him. Then I burn away from him. Then I shoot him in the face and laugh very hard indeed.

My alt is a couple of weeks from getting almost perfect armor tanking, at which point I will be taking these out in Black Rise and having myself a good old Incursus burning

If any Caracal with Rapids is Stupid enough to try to get me, I can do more than twice his DPS and pray that my tank holds. It will be close, but fun. EDIT - I should say - Close until he hits the 40 second reload, at which point he dies.

PS. If you want to see it in action, I will happily show you on SISI. Free to test it anytime today. Send me an e-mail and I'm there.

That is the DPS of the guns hitting a kiting frigate which only has less than 1500 hp, which means its dead in 15 or so seconds after resists. I don't need to use a Vexor.

But you're right, it might even be more powerful that the Thorax. *eck!*

At range, against an normal frigate, coming in at me from range, or using an AB to close range, The guns will do 335 DPS alone. If he is orbiting at Disruptor range, my guns with Uranium faction can hit a normal frigate for 148 dps. An AB fit one for 122 (But I can also potentially get them inside of webbing range if I fly nicely). Very few pilots fit a disruptor ranged frigate with an AB, so I'm pretty safe there.

That is without drones.

The role the tracking enhancers give is actually quite interesting. Basically all you get is a smoother overall DPS application - the curve rises and drops smoother. If you really know your ammo range and capabilities, its better to fit DPS modules. The ammo range isn't as smooth, but it does more damage overall. So... fit DPS mods.

Once anything is in web range, its basically going to get full DPS.

Outside of that range, you're basically saying guns are useless. You're wrong. Bear in mind, the Condor etc is basically a T1 Interceptor and much faster than other frigates, even if they have a MWD.

The other thing you're suggesting is that this Thorax is now far to light to tank something like a Caracal cruiser.

Lets say, I DO have a fight with the new Caracal. Hitting my Thorax with the new RLML (or the original). Chances are the Caracal pilot is going to be flying with Precision Missiles, he can't reload when I warp in, so he's stuck with them (I will later show the damage if he had everything setup perfect to fight you).

He can shoot my Thorax out to 33km. Lets say he wants to make sure his missiles reach if you're burning away from him. That means he's going to sit himself in an orbit of 29km - well outside of his point range, but lets suppose he's there.

He does 189 DPS on average with the new 40 second reload. While he's active he will do 285 DPS with the burst damage. After resists then, that is going to be something averaging around 50% against me, so doing 143 DPS (I rounded up for you to be kind). I can actively repair for well over that, for the length of his burst damage, and reloading the nanite paste while he does so. Then I can turn my tank off and get cap back while he's doing nothing but sit there idly waiting for his reload to finish.

Meanwhile.... I've reloaded my best ammo for the range (in this case Uranium Faction). Wait five seconds. Then hit F1.

I am now hitting him for 411 DPS. With my fit on the Caracal, Overloaded, I have 66% resists against that damage, reducing it to around 185 DPS.

There are various ways to tank the Caracal, but if I go with the ASB - I can clearly tank that sort of damage - while the charges last.

And there is something very very important to remember in all of this. The Thorax doesn't stop shooting for 40 seconds. It is constantly doing damage.

The Caracal is not. While the Thorax can recover cap and reload nanite paste because his opponent stopped shooting, the Caracal doesn't have that luxury. Once he hits the 60 second reload for the ASB he's going to die.

The other point to consider is that the Caracal cannot remain cap stable with a MWD on without a Cap Booster or even more Capacitor Rechargers - which gimps the mid slots - or rigs... or whatever you want.

The Cap on the Thorax is also at a premium, but given it can stop its tank for 40 seconds, its in a far stronger position.

If the Caracal is within webbing range its absolutely dead, I can overload his tank reload and hp very quickly and I can STILL tank his damage throughout.

The RLML is useless. It cannot beat a well tanked Incursus. It cannot beat a Thorax with rails and a relatively weaker tank.

If the Caracal started the fight with Faction Lights, then the DPS he can do on average is 212 before resists, with his burst damage at 367. Again after resists - The thorax can tank that and reload nanite inbetween bursts, with only a 20 second window of not being tanked.

Its very tight, but if you get within point range, which solo - the Caracal has to do or I just warp off etc - then I can hit him for 460-480 if he has perfect transversal. If he doesn't I can reach full DPS. Again, he's taking consistent damage, once he has to reload the ASB - which won't take that long to run out at this rate - he's in all kinds of trouble.

So what would you honestly rather fly? The RLML cannot kill a well tanked Incursus, and cannot kill enemy cruisers that have even pretty sucky tanks on, and cannot actively tank while fitting TP etc and burn cap with a MWD and Active tank so lose a mid slot to a cap booster. That leaves an ASB that has a 60 second reload time, and a passive fit tank which boosts the signature up. *Sigh* where are you trying to go with this Buoh? I'm not sure what else you can invent to demonstrate how terrible Gallente are and how epic missiles are.

And there you have it: This clown is trying to tell people that shoot frigates every damn day with missiles and rails that HML are as good as rails.

Wow...just...wow, bro. You really really really are just talking out of your ass and have never used HML in your life. Heavy Missiles cannot even hit cruisers well enough to be viable in PvP.



The take home message for anyone with their eyes open is that both of these dedicated frig killers cannot remotely then take a well tanked cruiser. If any standard fit cruiser shows up on the field they are going down. If they engage each other it is gonna come down to piloting, imo. And most of those standard fit cruiser have little to fear from frigs, even if they don't project a dedicated anti-frig role well.

And that is precisely why the pigeonholing of the Caracal into a marginal role only for killing frigs has me annoyed. Yes, the new rapid launchers make the ship better at participating in a group gank (that is a welcome *option* when gank is the order of the day) but they gimp it for all around use and I feel for my PvE brothas that are just starting the grind.

It was really hard to tell a new player doing level 2 missions that he had to train HAMS for 2 weeks now that PvE in a Caracal was completely gutted and made more boring. I didn't even think that was possible.

For a game that really struggles to get new players through just about the worst first few months in MMO gaming I simply think it was a bad idea to not give us options.

RLMLs are viable for solo play (at least the first 50 seconds, anyway). Tracking isn't the problem: it's the combination of ammunition capacity and 40-second reload time.

I see no problem with rapid launchers. These are larger launchers that fire smaller missiles, which is why they had such a large charge size, equivalent to the dual 150mm or dual 180's that can shred frigs. They couldve simply removed that range bonus that the caracal, the only ship that uses rapid lights, had

I agree with some of what you are saying. As for those who were suggesting that td's effect missiles, no. They shouldn't. Td's effect the actual turrets, missile launchers do nothing but house self guided projectiles. Two entirely different systems. There is already a way to disrupt missiles, but its trash. Defender missiles are utterly useless. They use up a high slot and in addition most likely need more than one to effect any incoming damage. Instead, there should be a mid or low slot flare system that would have a 20-30% chance of diverting incoming missiles.

Long term:
There is a larger problem here. A problem missile systems above lights, and caldari ships above destroyers have in general. HM's a terrible outside of high sec pve. Anything with an afterburner will receive only 20-30% of the damge you dish out. For some odd reason ccp has not only one, but two factors that reduce HM damage output. 1, Explosion radius, fine a smaller radius mean better applied damage like the sig radius on turrets. 2. Explosion velocity. Anything moving faster than the 150-170m/s explo velocity will not take any damage.Meaning the only thing you can really apply damage to is bs's and freighters. Plop on an ab and its over.
My suggestion:

1. Ties explosion velocity with velocity of missile. If you target is moving faster than the missile plus the explosion velocity, then you would see a damage reduction. The guy doing 4k /sec, away from your missiles will take reduced damage.

2. Increase HM velocity, decrease flight time so that range in the same. Why, in the 10-15+ secs it takes you missile to reach the guys your shooting at from 30-50+km he will not be there, and thus your missiles disappear into the great black wilderness. Which is why people mostly use hams, trading terrible range to actually apply damage.

3. INCREASE EXPLOSION VELOCITY AND DECREASE EXPLOSION RADIUS SO THAT HEAVY MISSILES, WHICH ARE MEDIUM CRUISER WEAPONS CAN HIT CRUISERS!

4. Give them better agility so they wont spiral out of control trying to hit something. or better yet make a new skill specifically for that.

Also, buff caldari ships above destroyer. Caldari BC's and battleships are outclassed. No one in Caldari Militia uses them. We all use Amarr, Gallente and Minmatar in that order, except maybe a sniper naga. The scorp is an ecm boat, weve got a blacbird for that. the Rokh is laughed at by the megathron and friends, and the raven is a pve ship. sorry. The drake is a slow tug boat usefull only in high sec. Ive been in fw for over 6 months. Ive only seen drakes on 3 occasions: hub bashing, at that was 4 months ago. The ferox is utter trash. It has a hybrid range bonus oooooooh. most people i know that have flown the ferox just pop 425mm autocannons on and call it a day. these shield ships already have the potential risk with cap, so adding hybrids with a ****** bonus doesnt really help.

Buff shield ships.
Buff Caldari ships in general
Less penalties for shield extenders.
More HP for shield Extenders, they should approach 1600's
buff cruise missiles. We should be able to hit all bs and bcs at full damage, and hit cruisers at half. Should be equivalent to other turret based ships.I
I
I P.S, give us a pvp caldari battleship, not faction, that has 8 launcher hard points, 7 Mid slots, and 4 Low slots :) and 50Mbit drone bandwidth
must have exposion radius bonus and a rate of fire bonus, if you un nerf rapid heavies, then i'll take rof and a shield resist or something.

oh yeah, nerf CM range by lets say 20 km if you want.

Sorry about that, was a bit late and after thanksgiving dinner so my apologies for the typo.

I would disagree with you there. It was a designed test with ideal situation. It clearly shows that Turrets out-damage missiles for anything within what is generally considered engagement range. The only time that missiles out-do turrets is when you have something orbiting at 3km/s. Which really would mean that you have bigger problems at that point.

Hyperion has a sizeable drone bay and bandwidth. Therefore, this ship really wouldn't be hurting too bad in the worst case. The domi is built around drone damage. Properly fitted the domi will pulverize that rifter at just about any range.

For the raven the applied 79-DPS is still too low to break any decently fitted PvP frigate's tank. No matter what you argue. That is with precision CMs too. Now I am not saying that CMs should blap frigs with one shot. Yet, it definitely points out a major disparity between the turret's applied-damage and the missile. According to EFT and EVEHQ and EVE the missile had the higher volley damage (~2x the turret's volley damage). Yet, it will lose over 90% of that damage on a freaking frigate heading right at it using a MWD, with a sig-radius the size of a 'cruiser.'

This problem is glaringly obvious for all T2 Precision missiles that are larger than LMs. This would include the HMLs that we have all been complaining about now for over 3-months. Anyone that uses missiles outside of PvE will very rapidly learn that their damage application is crap. It doesn't matter if my volley damage is higher than the turret-ship if I lose 50% or more. That is even before counting in the resistance of the target's shields or armor.

The bottom line is that if CCP Rise used EFT like he claimed the issues with HMs, CMs, HAMs and Torps is obvious. My 6yr old can even see that the missiles are broken. This is a kid in the 1st Grade that is doing simple arithmetic (adding/subtraction) in school. Once again, I am going to state that CCP and their employees have no damn excuse for not realizing the issue.

Keep in mind that EFT estimates on a best-case. Thus EFT values are always higher than what the reality will be on the EVE servers. It is the same thing for the EveHQ software as well. However, EveHQ attempts to estimate at what the Eve-actual value will be.

Is the point I was making clear now that I have expanded it?

*Note: Derate the EFT values by 10-25% you are much closer to the real values. The real value will be between the 10% and 25% deratings. But it is easier to run the derate calculations with those two numbers. Both will give a good estimation of the real dps.

My understanding is that Kenshi is showing the vast disparity in the application of damage of 3 different battleships in a best case scenario against a smaller target to highlight to problems underlying missiles as a whole and not just RLMLs.
The test shows the reason that Caldari pilots are often exasperated and told to cross-train to be useful outside of PVE, missiles don't aren't as flexible as they appear (or as Bouh would have us believe). But since I am not Kenshi, I could easily be wrong about the full intent of the test and am not trying to speak for Kenshi.