Player Features and Ideas Discussion

There still is the kestrel to revamp ; and all these ships seem designed for some kiting : they don't have the tank of the combat frigates but their speed or their bonus allow them to do it. The cap reduction cost clearly show this : warp scrambler are not very cap hungry, but warp disruptor are. The role bonus allow them to use this mod without cap problem so they can keep it while running their MWD.
Then, be it their bonus or weapon, they can attack from the range they can keep with their speed.

Combat frigate were fast assault frigate. These are heavier and slower combat interceptors.

Just look at the crow : this condor is a slow but robust crow, no more, but no less.

Missile bonus is a little less for all missiles instead of a little more for kinetic only : this is versatility.

I guess the kestrel will be a tougher version of this one, with one more missile hardpoint but less speed ; it would be able to kite, but not as well as this condor. That's may seem to force role, but you cannot balance things if you don't give a purpose to them, and yet these change keep them very versatile compared to their T2 versions so IMO it's a very good work.

i like it when caldari ships have 10%/level to kinetic missile damage and +5% to em/exp/therm missile damage. in this case, the ship only has +5%/level for kinetic. i assume the reasoning behind not giving it +2,5% on em/exp/therm was that it brings the damage types to close together.

dear CCP Y .... stop screwing this game ..... like u did to fw


..... thnx


and yes I had no constructive comment .... as it will be just another mindless remap of ships >>> gank to nano >>>nano to tank >>> tank to gank >>> some rp bullshit >>> gank to tank etc. etc. ... it just help to show custommers something is happening and CCP employees deserves some rl isk ... in fact they should come with fixes (like they did in crucible).

I suppose one thing we should consider is that beyond ridiculous range sniper layouts (such as the 100km caracal and 250km ravens you occaisonally see) missiles... well don't NEED range bonuses. particularly for light missiles and rockets.

faction rockets will typically fly out to 9-10 KM on a non range bonused hull, this outstrips all the other weapon platforms except scorch pulse lasers by a significant margin. blasters and autocannons can only scrape out to there with a mix of bonused hulls and long range ammunition (barrage/null).

standard missiles take this even further with at least 40km on most standard fits, outstripping all of its counterparts for consistent long range damage application outstripping unbonused counterparts such as 150mm railguns with spike, 280mm howies with tremor and medium beam lasers with gleam by a good 10km, thats essentially 25% of more reliable (if lower) damage over the other races long range options.

It kind of begs the question why people are suggesting the condor should have a range bonus? sure its a caldari ship and its meant to have longer ranges than most, but simply the fact that the condor is a missile platform gives us that. the 10% range bonus only stretches the ranges to relatively speaking little gain for the average pilot.

The extra range on rockets “might” let you fight outside web range on some opponents, but without the ability to web your opponent in place you'll often find the rockets just falling short due to the travel times and relative speed of the opponent, you'll be pulling under 10km or so against opponents to provide tackle and make sure those rockets make consistent contact with the enemy. potentially you could use the "range" T2 rockets to stretch that out to effective "ceptor tackle" ranges but then you take the speed penalty for the javelin rockets defeating the purpose :(

much the same can be said for standard missiles. if i'm fighting at 40km its highly unlikely that fighting something at 60km will gain me much other than lower transversal for an opposing sniper or perhaps outrange an opposing LM frigate... who can then just warp off :(

I suppose what i'm saying is that why give range bonuses to what is already the most reliable "long range" weapons you can have at the moment in the frigate arsenal? caldari are meant to be long range sure, but simply having access to missiles in such availability has already made them the longest ranged choice of all the attack frigates by a good 10km for standard missiles and a good 5-7km for rockets. Surely bonuses to make those missiles more effective would be a better way to distinguish caldari missile platforms over their foes? Perhaps an explosion radius bonus on the more “attack” oriented hulls while the “combat” hulls get a resistance bonus? Something to make me want to dig my teeth in as it were :)


honestly i'm lobbying for the condor to get a little more love. the slot layout? awesome. the fitting and stats? excellent. its just that range bonus which niggles me. I did my first ever null/low roam in a condor and it was a wonderful experience. please give me a real reason to fly the condor again :D

yes its same with Cerberus 220km with heavies why? give it a damage bonus something useful missiles do have better range then they ought too considering they do good damage as well maybe reduce range on all missiles as default and then the ships roles could decide if they should have good range bonus or more emphasis on damage like turret ships do.
Also t2 missiles have ridiculous penalties rockets lack dmg to begin with then add either sig or speed penalty to the ship using them why?.

I never said that was an advantage. I said Slasher was better in ways that make a major difference. Even with its lock range, the Slasher will be better than the condor in both Fleets and Solo.
Range: Was referring to Weapon Range. Long Lock Range is simply not worth the tradeoffs in other areas.
Drones: Because Precision Rockets Totally Exist
Speed: You seem to be mistaken as to how missiles actually work. Direction has absolutely 0 effect on damage taken, only speed and sig. You would take the same damage moving directly to or away from a Condor, and at the Slasher's speed, that damage would be next to nonexistant.
Sig: Makes a major difference.
Condors tank will be worse when PG use of ACs vs Rockets is compared to PG of condor vs. Slasher.

I would like to comment on the Tormentor alone for now, as CCP Ytterbium welcomed it in the first post.

Short version of this post: Make the Tormentor more tuned to operate as a long-range drone boat (think Arbitrator?), or turn it into a dedicated sniper boat built for Beam Lasers (Think Zealot), ensuring a decent optimal range bonus.


When I first tried out the new Tormentor on the test server, I noticed it had two turret slots. This made me feel like everything that wasn't a "main combat" frigate would, with Inferno tier changes, still have no more than two weapon slots, which is pretty much how it is already with all the existing (pre-Inferno changes) frigates; exception being missile frigates that have had three to four launcher slots.

However, I did end up realizing it had a 10m3 drone bay. I guess it would resemble a micro-size Arbitrator at that point, but found it hard to utilize it as a drone boat engaging from range, especially when trying to complement that with higher-PG beam lasers. Before I noticed the drone bay, I tried using the Tormentor as a sniper. That resulted in the ship feeling like a slow scout frigate that snipes with two turrets. My fault there, but it did give me an extra idea.

My first of two suggestions would be to enhance the Tormentor in some way to become more specialized as a drone boat, akin to a small Vexor or Arbitrator. Give it a way to engage at long-range in some way. To this end it'd be a tech-level 1 Ishkur, but I'm only suggesting this because you put drones on it already, and there is the existing arbitrator, so there is a complimentary spot for a Tech-1 Amarrian drone-boat frigate, in my opinion. I suppose the only improvement I could suggest is to give it a slightly larger drone bay (two racks of three lights, 15m3 bandwidth with 30m3 storage?). This could be complimented with the natural Arbitrator-hull traits as well. Small-class neutralizer and nosferatu bonuses might be really ineffective, and the Sentinel is already in this role. That rules out tracking disruption, too.. hmm. Maybe The Tormentor would be better as a miniature Zealot, which leads to my second (probably more realistic?) idea for the Tormentor:

Perhaps a 3-turret sniper setup would fit the Tormentor? This would remove the drones of course, and would make it operate like a small Zealot or Apocalypse. So long as it has an optimal range bonus and any other complimentary adjustments, wouldn't that work? Most frigate PVP is about constant chasing; or simply orbiting at 500 meters until one person out-tracks or out-DPS's the other. No offense here, just saying that perhaps we can add some flavor to frigate PVP. If you made a full line of sniper frigates designed for jousting and/or kiting (with turrets), it'd make PVP a lot more interesting. I know that'd make things stupid because at longer ranges, two ships will be too far apart to use Warp Disruptors and the losing pilot would warp out as soon as he or she had the chance. However, I would still love to see some sort of Jousting/Kiting sniper-on-sniper frigate battles. It'd give pilots a new ship line to study and practice their technique and skill of manual flight, as well.

That is all I have to offer right now, but I hope you find this to be a good read and a good brainstorm. Thank you for reading~

Question for the floor: could a range of sniper frigates (turret optimal/missile flight time bonuses) be a viable thing or is 'sniping frigate' a concept akin to 'chocolate fireguard'?

Destroyers come to mind here :)

thank you sir! i got tired of explaining to him how the condor wasnt crap. i guess this means we'll be seeing a T2 interceptor buff down the road cause the condor does the crows job better lol