Ships & Modules

for the L size its not what it used to be in the first glory days of artillery, but its good enough to give arty and all its drawbacks a reason to be used.
for the M size it was decent but it lost a bit of it niche since all the others M long range turrets got their alpha boosted recently and arty only got a rof boost.

Once in the last year,
[ 2013.10.15 21:17:00 ] (combat) 28733 to True Power Mobile Headquarters - 1400mm Howitzer Artillery II - Penetrates
Usually around 15k.

So, no? Waiting 15.5 Seconds for this or something potentially embarrassing seems fair, for structures they are fun but the drawback (10s Reloads) makes them not nearly as easy as beams and AFK tower bashing.

Small Arty alpha is OP as ****. The rest seem fairly balanced. So yes Thrasher insta gib gangs are quite viable, insane alpha and insane tracking.

Frigates have little enough EHP that it can be impossible to disengage when an arty thrasher lights you up. In gangs, there's the absolutely expected outcome: instapopping frigates left and right. It has always been this way.

-Liang

Ed: FWIW, I believe small artillery is strong, but balanced.

The amount of alpha put out by a 280 thrasher is about 1800 or so. DPS is low, but TBH we don't care about DPS...we only care about the almighty alpha.

There are hundreds of ways to use them. One example is when we were fighting a corp of several thousand people with 5 or 6 of us. We would warp into the undock of their station and gank a tier 3 or t1 cruiser and warp out (with about 50 of them sitting on the undock), sure you might lose one but it's worth it. When they would relocate to the stargate we would get warps ins on tier 3's , logi, ewar and such. Warp in, gank, warp out, troll in local, rinse, repeat.

I have been solo and had entire frig gangs jump into me on a gate and managed 6-7 kills before going down or the rest run away. It's an amazing little tear collector. We ganked a vigilant the other day with two of them, have killed Tech 3's with two or three...etc.

Great alpha, great tracking, selectable damage type, instant lock, 280 arty thrashers are the ****. Larger arty have tracking issues and because of that are harder to use and hence seem more balanced.

For how incredibly effective they are, not a lot of folks use them. Ofc in our area they are quite prevalent if only because we use them so much. Check out our KB for more info, I'd say a good 20-30% of our kills come from them. You can see our fits there as well. We call it the "cockbag". Also T1 throw away versions make great attrition ships.

Weapons are balanced to PVP. THe alpha striek is there because is useful in PVP

PVE HAS NO PLACE ON BALANCE OF PRIMARILY MADE FOR PVP SHIPS AND MODULES

when i occasionally run missions on my vargur I use arty on around half of the missions. arty mael fleets are popular in big pvp. I use arty claw to good effect and arty canes and nados are great in wormhole space. I even run arty loki when running c3 solo.

Thanks for all the replies, guys!

What if they got more falloff? As it stands, artillery can hit at top ranges, up there with railguns, even though its best damage happens at more like beam laser ranges if not less. Giving them more falloff would let them technically hit farther than railguns, though railguns would still have better damage projection out at the end of their range. Would keep artillery unique.

What if the larger version kept the high alpha and the smaller version which already fires faster got a powergrid cost increase and a DPS increase, such that it costs only marginally less powergrid than the larger and actually did significantly more DPS, but also with a bit less range?

i once got alphaed by a thrasher in a buffer tanked kestrel. artillery is fine.