Ships & Modules

Personally, I think they should lower the Drake's damage and let it keep its role as a tank. Caldari has enough missile DPS ships already. That role is already covered by other ships, whether they need their own tweaks or not. If the Drake deals too much damage, then reduce or outright change the damage bonus to something that fits a role that Caldari ships currently do not have.

What damage? You mean the 510dps @all lvl 5 with hobgoblins and t2 scourge fury (**** the new names)? In reality it's more about 350 - 370dps and that's not really something that should be nerfed.

Ok this thread is TL: so I DR all of it. I touched on this a bit in a post I made but I'll post again here since this thread obviously has more staying power than the ship it's about.

Why not just knock 1500 - 2000 points off the Drakes base shield amount to bring it inline with the others? Once you have BC 5 to get the resists up to make the tank more meaningful, you would have more reason to push for a Nighthawk. Speaking of the 'hawk, why not change it's damage bonus to a flat 5% across the board like the other ships in it's class instead of just a kinetic bonus? Also, flip the link bonus between command ships and T3's, 5% for CS and 3% for T3? While we're mucking about, make command ships the only combat ships that can fit more than 1 link. The CS's make the point of saying they can fit 3 links in their descriptions, why not make that actually mean something? Let the T3's mount 1 or perhaps 2 links if they must. Perhaps tie it into the cloak sub for when they're flying cloaked with Black Ops and Bombers or providing overwatch for Deep Space Transports and Recon ships. T3 is supposed to be a special ship, make them be the command ship equivalent for the cloaker freaks. I'm sure Haffer would approve.

My view, fwiw, on changing the Drake to a missile speed bonus just makes me think the drake blobs will engage with heavy missiles from much farther away, thus keeping their newly fragile tanks out of harms way a bit. I have never flown in a drake blob so maybe this isn't the case. Odd as it sounds, this reminds me of another class of long range, fragile tank ships that I heard about, but anyways here's a bit of math I came up with. My head hurts and it's been a long day so maybe it's right and maybe it isn't, but since when has that ever stopped anyone from posting anything

My drake pilot gets a 12.6 second flight time and a velocity of 5250 meters per second for heavy missiles according to evehq, this gives a range of 66150 meters. Bumping up the missile speed 40%, since I have BC 4, would give a new speed of 7350 meters per second and a new range of 92610 meters. A more conservative 20% boost, 5% per level, would yield a 79380 meter range.

Again I'm only speculating on how the range issue would play for the drake blobs since I haven't flown in one. I'm not at all sure what the ROF versus the kinetic damage bonus would look like in actual numbers, but it seems to me it would be a bit less damage for flat kinetic and a bit more for the other types of damage so I see it as a general buff as well. I think it would make running lvl4s a bit easier as there have been a few times I wished I had more range to work with.

cheers

2 better words

Ham Sammich




Sorry couldn't resist, but on topic my Drake pilot gets 15802 meter range with heavy assaults now. A 5% bonus would extend that to 18963 and a 10% bonus would be 22123 meters. Hmm think my math is failing me on this one...
Then again I haven't used assault much so .. meh

I'd have to find a new cheap ship to tank Dread Guristas Fleet Staging Point with. :<

Not to mention T3 gang boosting apparently stomping, urinating and defecating and loling all over the Command ship role.

edit: rationalizing changing one ship to make another look better is just fail, btw. Leave the Drake as is.

The Ferox is a Gallente ship pretending to be a Caldari ship. A missile/shield Caldari would take months longer to max out gunnery skills and fly a Ferox than it would for a Gallente pilot to train Caldari Frig 4/Cruiser 3.

The problem has allot to do with the grid however has even more to do with the slot layout. The Drake ( a tech 1 bc) has 2, yes 2 more slots than the nighthawk (a tech 2 bc). Yes rigs DO count as slots for all those out there thinking I can't count .

What's needed is either a buff to Field commands through a very serious balance comparison with the inevitable addition of slots and fitting or a significant nerf to all tier 2 BCs other than maybe the Myrmidon. I'd of course choose a buff to Field Commands.

Oh, and to necro my point posted in a now dieing thread. Give Field commands the same level of resists as their Fleet Command Brothers... Enough of these half assed "t2" resists that they currently have.

holy ****, i link you this thread pointing at the op and you're just to dumb to read it.

That's largely to due with command ships being based on tier 1 BCs. Every command ship, both field and fleet, gets 1 more slot, more cpu, and more powergrid over their tech 1 variant. The nighthawk is the sole exception as it gets less powergrid rather then more. A whole 1/3 less over the Ferox.

Also these drake changes will break another pattern in eve: Every tier 1 and teir 2 BC has one bonus that is the same. Active armor rep bonus for Gallente, Projectille rate of fire for Minmatar, Energy weapon cap reduction for Amarr, and of course shield resist bonus for Caldari.

But hey if CCP doesn't want to play with patterns anymore, why not throw the table and fix those needing a buff like the prophecy and some tech 1 cruisers.