Ships & Modules

If you're looking to buff the Nightmare in PvP (which might not be completely insane), I think a neut/nos range bonus would be both appropriate and flavorful.

Whether it's justified or not is an open question, though.

Boost speed and agility by, say, 15-20%. Atm it is clumsy as a bear. I'm a firm believer that any faction/pirate battleship should be better in terms of speed/agility compared to its regular counterpart. Vindicator comes to mind in this regard - it gets awesome agility for no apparent reason.

Nightmare uses 4 guns instead of 8, means you have 3 utility slots, instead of 1 on the Machariel. For PVE, it's also a pro, less ammo consumption. Try using faction ammo on a PVE Mach, you'll sink your bank account in a few missions.

You also have 7 medslots. Which means, it owns when it comes to shield tanking, even though the Machariel have more base shield HP. Tell me what kind of PVP ship have 7 medslots. The Rattlesnake, ok. The Scorpion ? Yep, he have 8, but it's not really a combat ship like the Nightmare. The Widow ? Who cares about this one except for his look. Anything else ? Rokh, Maelstrom, Raven, they all have 6 medslots. In my humble opinion, the Nightmare is one of the best active shieldtanker PVP ship around, along with the Maelstrom. But, it can actually fit stuff in utility slots, the Maelstrom can't.

5 lowslots, so it's still decent for Heatsinks, DC and TEs.

Droneday isn't übergreat, but hey, 75m3 is a set of meddrones, and a set of lights, which is usually what you have on a Machariel anyway (except that you have an additionnal meddrones stack, in case you loose the first one).

But I agree, it's slow as ****.

The Vindicator probably gets a bonus to agility because getting into blaster range quickly is basically the only way it'll be able to do the ludicrous close range damage it used to be famous for. It's still not as good as it used to be.
As for Sansha ships, keep the 100% bonus to laser damage in mind: you see those bonuses on Marauders, and this is a much smaller ship. The Nightmare seems to bulldoze through level 4s, but it suffers cap problems. I'd be interested to see the Nightmare as a PvP capable ship, but I feel the same - SHOULD it be is another question.

Succubus is a sad, sad little ship. It really needs help. Built-in shield resists, or a much larger capacitor, a 5th mid, a 3rd low, neut/nos range bonus, something. It needs something. It just doesn't have the tank, gank, speed, or ewar capability to make it a good PvP frigate. It's so AWESOME looking, it's a true shame that it performs like utter poo.

I may know a thing or two about pirate ships.

The best pirate battleship for pvp is the nightmare. No question here. The best hands down!

Rattlesnake would be the king of pve.

Sansha Ships are awesome. Use their bonuses intelligently. The normal cookie cutter setups do not work with them, but the right setup means that ANY sansha ship will own any other ship in the game! Sansha needs no buff compared to the other ships. But by all means buff them for me. Then I can bust 50 man gate camps instead of only busting 30 man gate camps.

At least we agree on the Succubus and the Phantasm.

Angel ships OPd? perhaps
Nightmare bonuses equal 10 unbonused large laser turrets
Mach bonuses equal 11.67 large unbonused projectile turrets.

Falloff doesn't change with ammo, the mach has about the same optimal+1 falloff range as a pulse laser has optimal with radio crystals. The difference is the mach uses high damage ammo (EMP/Phased plasma/ Fusion), whereas the NM uses a crystal that starts doing about 40% of the high damage crystal - so what the Mach loses to fall off, the NM gas already lost from the start.

Oh, and at lvl 5, the NM only has 7% better tracking.
And of course, its cap cant handle firing the guns, its slower, less agile, larger sig radius, smaller drone bay.


The nightmare isn't a bad ship, it just fails to wow me. I don't think going to lvl 5 skills from lvl 4 will change that.
It will still have the same DPS as an Abaddon.

Lets look at its tracking bonus... do you really need it farther than 30km out?
Look at the Bhaal - same double large laser bonus, and it webs 28-30 km out (because you should be using a faction web on a ship that expensive - so assume true sansha or fed navy web)
It slows its target to .4 or .45 its former speed, so the target transversal is slowed likewise.
After the target is slowed, the effect is the same as if the ship had a +120% to 150% tracking bonus - and it makes it easier for the rest of the fleet to hit (if there is a fleet) as well.
The Bhaals' web bonus is clearly better than the NM's tracking bonus.

Personally, I'm in favor of giving the NM an 8th mid - this can be used to improve its somewhat lackluster (its supposed to be shiny- ie losts of luster : ) tank. Or the mid could be a cap recharger, to improve its lackluster capacitor, or an afterburner to help with the lack of speed.

Of course I wouldn't complain if its base speed or shields or cap recharge was increased. It would also help if it could field at least 5 heavy drones, or if its sig radius was decreased, or its agility increased.

It just needs... something, because I don't see a role it performs that some other faction BS doesn't perform better.

nvm

Lay off the crack-o's in the morning.

Didn't we just re-do all the pirate battleships a while back? I seem to remember tons of Mass testing on SISI where dev's repeatedly doomsday'd us all.

Either way, the nightmare is OP, perhaps you don't understand how to fit a ship? EFT warriors often have trouble with their "OMFGBBQSauce this fit is the best!!111!!" in real gameplay, especially when in PvP.

Also, what does cap regen matter when you're running a cap booster. (You do use that in PvP right? or did we all start using passive regen and no one told me?)

You seem like you have absolutely no idea what are you talking about. Sad.