Ships & Modules

Not so much popular as well-travelled, though.

Well, considering it's the only BC in the most common ships by ownership Top 20, I'd say it's the by far most popular. Only other combat ships in top 20 are Kestrel and Rifter. Rest are shuttles, indies noobships and gift ships. Jump stats are imo a better indicator of actual usage than ownership, but there isn't really much to dispute- this is Draeks Online.

29.47% of active accounts own at least 1 Drake, #7
18.69% own a Cane, #24

No other BCs in top 30.

Same source.

Drake
Missiles = PVE goodness, not to mention it's versitility, cheap, very capable tank, yeah the drake is good, but so are several other ships the biggest one for me is that it spews missiles which makes it a good PVE ship, same with a lot of people.

Tengu
Chances are you already trained for Drake so you have a head start on this, quick training time for what you get, versitile, easy to fly don't have to worry about tracking/optimal/fallout etc just hit F1 and you done assuming you grouped your weapons. Good tank, dmg, sig, etc like a lot of the T3's but missile platform once again, as well as being versitile like all T3's ohh and missiles = pve goodness.

That's an interesting conclusion.

Ship A is popular - we can't have popular - must be nerfed.

A gang of 500 Goons in Drakes jumps a gate.
A gang of 100 PL in Tengus jumps a gate.
A solo Loki flown by a Hydra Reloaded pilot jumps a gate.

What ship is the best ship?

I think the better option is to balance the game, that way popularity will sort itself out as a balanced game imply weight and counter-weight to the scales. In an ironic stroke of wording: The single most imbalanced aspect of the game at the moment, is scale.

Want to do something about Drakes, Tengus or perhaps Heavy Missiles?

Support and press for changes to the SOV and infrastructure systems; as well as the insurance-system (nothing prints ISK and cause inflation [both in terms of economy, political life and gameplay] as much, in a game where cost-efficiency have become king). What we have now singlehandedly promotes numbers on grid and staying-power. Single-minded tank-spank platforms (such as the fleet buffer Drake and Tengu) become popular in such an environment - where they can draw on all their advantages without having to deal with any of their drawbacks.

Want to nerf brick-tank, group-huddled missile projection?

- Support small-gang warfare; give it tangible goals, provide incitament to spread wide and thin over the map.
- Support time-based infrastructure interaction over hitpoint-based, that do not suffer the same scaling issues.
- Support balance in size, growth, numbers and scale; on grid, in standings and at organisation mechanics.
- Support cumber in various aspects of the mechanics (spool-ups, fuel-scaling, mass, timers).
- Support intricate mechanics and go against streamline, dumb-down and simplification of existing mechanics.
- Support mechanics that requires several sides of individual execution and multifacetted PvE interaction.
- Remove powerful mass-control tools such as fleet-warps, revert the bomber decloak changes and so on.
- This streamlining keeps trending: just look at things like fuel blocks etc. It's all done to automate PvE action.
- POS interaction may be mindnumbingly boring, then make it better - don't remove the actual interaction.
- An abandoned castle could be climbed with a simple ladder, maybe not razed but definately entered and held.

More people will always be better in an MMO with PvP - but numbers don't need crutches that amplify them when interacting PvE (and force scale-race beyond PvP).

I don't mind numbers being good, it should be an asset - though there need to be more incitament to play without them, and you shouldn't need them to interact solely with the environment; on any level or scale.

No crutches. Balance. That's incidentally also how you balance blobs of HML-spam (by balancing blobs).

ed. Note: when i say PvE i simply mean Player versus Environment (not only limited to: running missions or making ISK; rather interacting with the gameworld as a larger concept). It can be a multitude of things, beside shooting NPC ships, for example: interacting with an unmanned POS, SBU, TCU or jumpbridge in an empty system.

It doesn't work like that Alter...

The statistics have little to do with the viability of systems and everything to do with trend at the largest scale. That's what i implied with my little Goon-PL-Hydra gate-jumping analogy up there.

For example, you will see Rokhs steadily grow in the statistics. They may not be there yet, but they will likely come.

It may lead you to belive it has something to do with the Hybrid buffs in Crucible, and by causal relation it does.

However, the real reason you will see their popularity grow is because PL have picked them up as a centerpiece concept, and that mean it will begin to see profile in high-volume gameplay.

A smaller group may have picked up on it and began using Rokhs as their mainline "doctrine" as early as december last year, right after the expansion. Other groups may already have used Rokhs frequently before Crucible, in spite of upcomming improvement to Hybrid turrets. Yet the statistics will react now, when a high-volume, high-profile group will begin to churn out the numbers.

Another reaction to that is that more high-volume groups will begin using them when they see a high-profile group using them. Thus further pushing their statistics. Look at the Tengus. Everybody does Tengu now, two full years after their profileration in small-medium scale and initial appearance on the large-fleet scale.

Statistics will always only be statistics, they can say everything and nothing all at once. What's important is how you use them, wether they support and make your statement or argument solid: validity.

The OP's conclusion isn't valid.

The whole situation ressembles the Paladin problem in World of Warcraft. They too like Tengus and Drake were counterable, nevertheless the majority of players played that single class. The problem was more so exogarated on unofficial servers were up to 80% of entire server population would be Paladins.

This is a problem and it was solved in World of Warcraft. Blizzard made FOTM but those were "FOTM" and not "Standard for the past X years".

No, because they'd be outperformed in every TQ situation by T2 pulse.

Tengus are extremely versatile. Kings of PvE, with some configurations also being über in PvP. So much, that I bet they're the T3 cruiser that gets more kills in PvP.

Drakes are very easy to train for, and the problem is that they might provide too much of a bang for that kind of buck. The way that thing thanks while keeping acceptable DPS is ridiculous.

I don't give a damn about overpowered ships, because this is not WoW. A Paladin is a Paladin, but I can fly as many overpowered ships as I want. Still, I do think that the Drake should not be able to tank that much, but oh well.

Nerf missiles? You know they are only good in pve?

Seriously go **** or something..

You've never seen Garmons video of him absolutely pwning an fleet of about 10 ships [cruiser/BC/tackle] on his own in a missile Legion then.....

Missiles are perfectly fine as is the Drake and Tengu.