Ships & Modules

Mostly this. The armor slowness isn't helping aswell as even ships with as low as 4 mids will be shield tanked. Long range (including rails) is dead except for artillery and the short range of blasters, while very good, doesn't scale will to big fleets. Active (armor) tanking doesn't scale with bigger fleets aswell, combined with the fact that armor tankers have less overheating possibilities than shield tankers.

It's interesting to note that the Merlin (which is a pure hybrid boat aswell) has made its entrance in the top20, while the new Incursus (with a ridiulous active tanking bonus) hasn't.

This.

Which also lead to the conclusion, as in most threads here lately, that the best way to fix things is to introduce more corporation-level content.

This game have gone completely overboard in it's big fleet perspective. I don't mind the existance of large fleet engagements, coalitions, empire building or big politics. It's one side of EVE that has always been there. However, it is one side. It needs to be balanced. There need to be alternatives and they need to be able to interact with each other - not disconnect or polarize into instanced theme-parks. That's what's gone missing in EVE over the past few years (the task Dominion set out to handle, the daunting task our upcomming winter-expansion still trembles in front of).

It doesn't matter if we discuss core game design, grid mechanics, corporate tools or ship balance. Most of these things were not made with current scale in mind. The, for close to five years now, ongoing patch-up, band-aids and postponing just make the sucking chest wound so much more challenging to deal with. In order to achieve balance and mend the ecosystem all these things need to enter into a circle of life (queue cartoon lion coirs).

Instead of making Gallente adapt to big fleet, make sure there are tangible, lasting goals that involve what Gallente are good at. The amusing thing is that it isn't a very narrow niche they are good at. It's easily misunderstood. They are good at what most gangs, corporations and alliances manage on their own accord. The only thing they're not ideal for is coalition-wide scale, and very few things are ideal for that. It's a small aspect of the game that has obscured all else.

We can't make everything a 'Drake' and the Drake itself isn't the problem. We need to make alternatives to the number game eligable again, yet still interactive in the same world. Not worlds separated by tedium, discouragement or inaccess.

If you deal with that you fix not only Gallente, but everything else that is tied to scale - which by relation essentially is, everything.

If there are incentives and encouragement for smaller to interact with larger and vice versa, people will begin to do things which will create more content. Spontaneous and emergent content where Gallente have a better place.

I'm sorry Pelchan, i assume most people here have reached the age of 13 and passed 6th grade primary- or secondary language classes.

In short, like Seishi said, EVE has changed into a larger scale. The best way to fix Gallente is not to adapt them to that scale. It's to make sure all smaller things have a place in the world. It's not really a question of solo/small either, while just an estimation, i'd say Gallente are perfectly fine until locals begin spiking well above 100. Let's say, you have 50 Gallente ships and you meet 100 other ships, your Gallente ships are still perfectly viable.

It's also important they do not get their own isolated place. We don't want to divide the sandbox (which is what CCP is doing; with WH, with FW, with "Empire should be it's own world" - it's also what the community is doing by creating havens like the lowsec hotspots or enclosed NPC-null areas where likeminded only interact with their own). This game is a single-server MMO where everyone are meant to be able to interact with each other. That's how content is created here.

Currently, not enough content is being created in EVE-online. It's evident looking at how more players gravitate toward larger alliances, leaving fewer alliances in the game; and definately fewer alliances who make their own decisions and form their own policy. While in those large alliances pilots tend to play other games and wait for something to happen these days. Going out and doing something small-scale and spontaneous have no lasting impact or tangible goals, thus isn't encouraged by the game. When that is fixed, Gallente is fixed.

That's the TLDR.

Yeah but is that really true.

Yes they would be used more often to a degree but it would be the Hurricane that would be used more for the most part.

Probably more then the rest of Gallente combined.


Noisrevbus master of the 3 Paragraph TLDR.

Could not be a better example of what I am talking about bringing up the best Gallente small gang ship currently.

The Taloscane.

That is what it is, a slightly less accurate Shield Hurricane with a bigger focus on DPS over tank. Not many people are flying them Armor. Its Hurricane like speed and Null range mock every other Gallente ship that can not pull a Talos.

In fact I was going to mention that there would be a slight increase of Talos use along with the Cane hampered by the 120mil fully fit out price tag and player nervousness over glass ships but an increase none the less of the Minmatar like Talos.

The issue isn't the Talos, the issue is that all other Gallente Ships can't and should not be Taloscanes. I want the Talos to be as good as it is now with an Armor tank so it can actually be a Talos and not well you know...

A Taloscane.

This is where you lost me. What is or has been making it ineffective and what do you think will fix it?

What has caused them to slow there roam and what do you mean up-down scale interaction?

As everything else, it's all related.

up-down scale interaction simply means "smaller and larger groups, gangs or shiptypes etc. interacting".

Today they don't interact very much because there are no tangible goals or reasons to interact.

I use the collective term 'scale' because it's not just "blame Goons and their politics", as some people tend to croak.

Some of this has been aknowledged. The CSM had their "farms and fields" discussions which is essentially one side of the larger discussion revolving around hitpoint-based infrastructure (and multiple-day timers). There need to be alternatives to those, that appeal to smaller groups, smaller gangs, smaller shiptypes etc.

Another example is the "ring mining" idea. Made to put player action in space back on the map. When you do that you simultanously put player inter-action back on the map (interacting a Mackinaw is obviously better balanced between scales than a moon-tower; both in terms of shooting it, capitalizing from that, affording it or using it). Besides Moros and Nyx, Gallente also have much more appealing options interacting with a Mackinaw than a tower. It's different for other races as the common fleet comps of today still interact quite well with towers. It's quite akin to a large fleet grid. It's just as easy bombing a mass of drones off a stationary structure as it is on a clumped static grid.

It's a sluggish Gallente-example, but it's on topic nontheless.

Both of them good ideas, and i know they are said to be slated for upcomming release. I'm just continously toting that horn to point out how it relates to "Ships and modules", and because i'm sceptical. It's long overdue, it's been talked about for ages. Like Seleene has said on numerous occasions: "There were so many things in Dominion that was postponed, to the point that what was rolled out wasn't really Dominion anymore" (loosely cited). I'm also sceptical because they keep pushing back things, they keep introducing peripheral things and they keep discussing other, contradicting, changes (such as ship rebalancing, that will be completely superfluous and possibly even imbalancing if they fix 'scales').

That's how that discussion relates to this forum - because ship balancing is still being done without attention to 'scales'. That's why i keep defending the Drake because they are trying to slay the image of the 'Drake' (the Drake-blob) without any good ideas for the actual ship and they risk just enforcing that image. Thus reinforcing the problem of the Drake-blob (ie., that the ship scales very good and scales are imbalanced, not the ships; BC balance was good, is now worse post-Crucible and risk become even worse). Talos and his brothers may hurt Drakes, but they definately hurt other BC (and HAC) far more. End result, worse balance. Did people stop using Drakes? or did they stop using other things?

Gallente is apart of that too, because the Talos aside, they were hurt much more by Tier 3 BC than 'Drakes' were.

See, it keeps relating back.

It's is extra amusing since it was supposed to be their patch. The Deimos got buffed and then nerfed by relation .

The mentioned Syndicate groups rolling Deimos gangs kinda stopped. Right? The reason is not spelt Tengu, it's spelt Tornado mixed into BC-blobs.

I've made this example before as well: No other ship stood as much to gain from Crucible as the Tengu. We introduced fast, BS-resolution and reach guns, you counter that with fast sigtank (and/or reach). The only popular way to do that is 100mn, at which Tech III excel, that is also why you see 100mn flourish now. Another option would be sigtank (or dualprop) with reach. The Tengu do both those things, it's what it's meant to do in a sense. Now people are complaining about Tengus. So in essence, Crucible hurt most other things (that could counter Drakes outside of cost-efficiency and number attrition), didn't the bother the Drake too much and cemented the Tengu. I said it already before Crucible launch.

It's not the Tengus fault that we keep feeding it by feeding the blob. He also still doesn't like Deimos - unless he can volley through them with his 100 friends over a multi-day TCU timer reinforced by 100 Nyx. Titans have the same problem, as long as we encourage resources in numbers, we also encourage resources in shipsize. It's two examples of 'scale'.

If there are alternative ways for large and small to interact and grief each other you will see groups of players interacting both up and down, both undermanned and overmanned. We need that, because it will make us less hesitant to interact, more entities will likely pop up and contribute to what will become more (player-) action.

Now, bedtime .

Why should you? Gallente is just as great as any race.

I have no real interest in blobby fleet stuff just roaming gangs and smaller engagements. I prefer cruiser class sized ships and interceptors.

Time to start cross training minimitar anyway so I have something if I stumble my way into a big corp at some point, still getting my feet wet.



So I can breath a sigh of relief? I can still fly my blaster/drone boats?