Ships & Modules

Did anyone actually try the torp Naga when it was on SISSI? It sucked hard. The tier 3 BC only have about 30k EHP. That's enough to roll up, shoot a few times, and then GTFO. The rail Naga was the best choice.

Not sure if serious.

The rule of sniping is that if you miss, you are dead. That is exactly what the Tier 3 BCs are. If they can't kill what they are shooting at quickly then they are dead. Generally speaking they can usually kill what they are shooting at before their target is able to return fire. Plus the Naga has a pretty good tank from what I've seen and can still reach near 1000 DPS under ideal circumstances with it's tank.

What EVE have you played for the last two years? open the old forums and find me a couple constructive threads that mention PVE and a gunship not named dominix, mach, or be some kind of marauder.

Hell, look at the drakemonths that recently ended, where even in nullsec land they were the only ship in space.

I was talking exclusively. Many people train gun/drones or gun/missles very few focus on missle/drones.

I'm also talking about as main dps sources not just enough skills to squeze on the item.

Just... no. Missile boats are a "perk" for Caldari, not the sum total of the Caldari design philosophy. Yes, the "theme" has been watered down a bit but it isn't because there's *too much* useful hybrid access, it's partly because of not nearly enough and partly because they've never figured out how to handle the whole "superior electronics" idea they had (especially when the answer to "crap we screwed up when we added the Falcon" was "screw up ECM even more"). Boo-hoo, you HAVE to use a Caracal hull for cruiser-size missile-based anti-frigate. Well, assuming you mean long-range T1 cruiser-size missile-based anti-frigate with light missiles, because you should be able to cause at least a little bit of concern with an HML Blackbird, and a good bit more if you move up to a Rook. Sure, the Cerberus does it better, but does CONCORD come out and pod you for not using one?

Also, as far as I can tell, *nobody* can use "suicide gank torps," or at least nobody seems too keen on whatever it takes to make it work. You do realize suicide ganking has existed for a lot longer than the T3s, right? How many "suicide torp" Ravens have you heard about? Maybe caracals back when *they* could throw (much more effective) torps at an indy and hope they land but...

I'll let the drone pilots comment on getting drones to do what you want, since apparently I haven't figured out whatever magical button I need to press that will automatically spit out replacement drones and tell them to all go to new targets... or are you talking about a couple PVE missions? The ones where all the drones do is save you hitting 'F1' a bunch because even the idiot drone AI can't screw the triggers up?



... you don't say...

This thread could use some blue light.

We have to admit creating the Naga was possibly one of the most challenging ship balancing task we had to tackle so far. Not only because finding a proper role for it without overlapping with the Talos too much, while still remaining effective was crazy difficult, but mainly as we knew that no matter which kind of direction we picked it would still generate a heated debate among the community.

The core problem here lies with the Caldari combat philosophy, or at least how it is externally perceived. Some believe Caldari to be missile based, other hybrids based. And to be honest, that is quite a logical assuption to do so, as most of the Caldari hybrid hulls are quite underused (or were before Crucible), and the most popular ships remain missile based (Caracal, Drake, Raven).

As designers, we can tell Caldari have three main points going for them as a race and that is, missile, hybrids and ECM. To be an all-rounded Caldari pilot, one must realize all aspects have to be considered and learned, just like, for example, a pilot has to consider training for hybrids, drones and dampening to master most of the Gallente tech 1 ships.

However, we are players as well, and we can freely admit only having one side of the coin for a new expansion is indeed frustrating. Favor the Naga as hybrid, as missile pilots feel shafted. Make it missile based and hybrid users will hunt your family down with torches and pitchforks. It is, in essence, a no win situation, no matter how much you try to please the player base.

The first iteration of the Naga attempted to please all interested parties by having both missile and hybrid bonues, but as the feedback quickly shown, it was quite a failure, as it was not achieving any specific role and lacked a purpose.

So, in the end, we had to go for the option that made the most logical sense. Tier 3 battlecruisers are supposed to be mobile, heavy damage support for fleets and hybrids were the most appealing to reach such goal. Torpedoes are too short range based for a hull that frail, while cruise missiles have their own issues for long range combat.

It is not to say cruise missiles are fine and that we don't want to tweak them, but the Naga is, and will remain a hybrid ship as it best fits its role. The issue with missiles in general needs to be and will addressed, but that is a separate discussion altogether, that we will happily discuss with the player base when we come down to it.


Crap, made a wall of text Well, hope that helps a bit no matter what.

I'd say that you are reading things into the OP that aren't really there, and that including the failed Naga design in any commentary about missile ships does nothing but muddy the issue. Basically:
- With regards to the Naga: Ytterbium more than adequately explained why they chose a turret based ship.
- With regards to missiles: Ytterbium promised more upcoming dialog for addressing the deeper issues relating to missiles.

I'm really curious how they plan to address some of the underlying issues with missiles.

-Liang

Your original post (before massive editing) rather strongly implied otherwise. "On the contrary, that's exactly the problem we're discussing".

-Liang

Ed: BTW, I'm just pointing out why I construed it the way I did. I'm done now - no need to belabor the point for either of us I think.

Part of the problem is that Missiles are a huge tree for something someone is supposed to train alongside the huge gunnery tree. If someone wants to cross-train Caldari... they essentially have to retrain every weapon support skill from scratch. Conversely, for Gallente, drones are used by everybody as they fulfill an essential role in PVE and PVP (even if you're not flying a dedicated drone boat). So really, all a pilot has to do to cross-train Gallente is work on Hybrids and Damps.

In practice, most players only train 1 type of weapon: turrets or missiles because of the way the skills are set up that they do not benefit eachother in the slightest. However, turret users have far more options. Pure hybrid-users have access to all of Gallente and half of Caldari, while pure missile users have access to half of Caldari. People who have both skills have access to everything, but that leaves out new players.