Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Rockets > Turret weapons when DPS is not equal.


100 DPS in rockets = 150+DPS in Turrets.

The reason is simple, when **** goes down those 150+DPS turrets really do a lot more like 80DPS. You'll get a critical hit or two that will make up for it, but trust me, go into a fight with a rocket boat with 1.5 times more DPS and the rocket boat will kick your teeth in.

So if you're asking for 10% more on rockets, you're just not going out there and fighting them with rockets and turrets in real situations. Not to mention on most rocket boats you can put a dual web setup and just keep the target pinned and work in FallOFF+ Tracking penalties on the turret which really screws up the turret boat.

Rockets don't really need more DPS.

Light missiles obviously do, but I think the REAL issue with them is that they have a really long cycle time compared to other turret weapons in the same class. This means that despite having a great salvo/alpha damage when hitting, you end up really struggling in the duration to do enough. In 10-12 seconds, a frigate can kill another frigate. Even if you have the higher DPS, you really won't even get your next shot off.

Just wondering, is there an official crusade against having >1 type of hardpoint on ships? First the merlin, now the condor... yes, it's nice to be able to tell new players "concentrate on guns OR missiles" when they start on the Caldari lineup, just like you can tell people starting out with the Amarran or Minmatar ships can be told to concentrate on guns... but that's already somewhat possible and it feels like a lot of the flavor is being taken out of the ships. Are the drone boats going to see their hardpoints largely go away? (for that matter, why do drones as a secondary weapon seem so much like a given, when on-ship secondary weapon types seem so much like they're being written out)

On rocket/missile tweaks-

Rockets are indeed not far from insane on a couple platforms (hookbill seems to be the favorite example), I'd caution against trying to keep those ships in line by knocking hardpoints off though... It would be better to tweak the bonus to leave them in about the same place while making rockets more attractive as unbonused "can't fit a neut" options (assuming we have anything left to put them on that won't have a related bonus...). That way you don't have to worry about grid/cpu tweaks especially if you want to keep Lights a viable alternative (especially if they become an actual viable alternative...), and you're not giving a discount on guaranteed strong damage (33% less cost in launchers and ammo, while not bank-breaking when we're talking rockets, is still a pretty nice boost especially if you're firing faction).

Light missiles... I think I agree with the folks asking for the change to be to explosion radius (they ARE pretty sloppy) and then to light launchers, rather than building a base damage increase into the missile. That way AMLs can get a slight tweak and Light launchers can get a bigger tweak... as people have said, damage per missile isn't the problem, it's the rediculous wait for the next missile that makes them generally unpleasant to use (and is why old-style light launchers were generally for chucking one big missile at someone from your frigate, while light missiles were fired from rocket launchers). And, again, it means you don't have to fret as much about damage-bonused hulls being nudged into 1-shot damage ranges if they aren't changed in addition to the missiles.

I don't know about damage, but rockets need to reload far too often compared to other weapons, same goes for torpedoes. Increase launcher capacity and/or decrease rocket volume.

I don't see anything wrong with giving a T1 ship a fighting chance against other faction/T2 frigs. The new T1s are much more effective than they were but in a straight up brawl the T1 ship will loose to a similarly fit T2 version. Think of a Merlin going head to head against a Harpy. Some of the faction frigs are feeling a bit on the anemic side in comparison, for instance the firetail.

Rockets:

They could use a slight boost to damage, but honestly the selectable damage and no tracking/falloff penalty makes them a pretty under-rated weapon. I wouldn't go much higher than a 3-5% bonus to damage or they could easily overtake other shortrange turrets in desireabliity.

Rapid Light Missile Launchers are actually a medium-sized weapon system that uses small ammunition (light missiles.) They're intended to be fit on cruisers as an anti-frigate weapon. Hence the Caracal's bonus. Rapid Light Missile Launchers are not intended to be fit on frigates.

Here, have this.

The new combat vessels have all a tanking bonus: merlin and punishers have resistances, incursus has a bonus to active armor tank and rifter has a speedtank.
In my opinion CCP is on the right way. It makes all sense: combat vessels with resistance bonuses and attack vessels with speed and bonus for propulsion jamming.
Hope CCP will hurry up with cruisers and destroyers. In PVP I only see Thrashers and Ruptures.

nice link mechael i still think its strange that missiles have such an emphasis on killing frigs all the t2 missiles have a precision variant surely instead of wasting dps on a frig you should kill something your own size the t2 ammo should have the same emphasis as turrets have dmg or range mean you wouldnt see a brutix trying to kill frigs.
Destroyers come to mind that's their purpose is to kill frigs and they will soon have missile variants.

mm.. makes you wonder about drones then maybe they should be bonused in same fashion so lights for frigs meds for cruisers although they might need a bigger bonus or maybe the drones themselves should do more damage and heavies/sentries for battleships.
And the t2 drones should get t2 resists as all t2 ships should even though some don't atm.and maybe extra ehp in general for drones.
perhaps racial drones should be bonused also by their respective races ships so vexor would get bonus for hammerheads only.
It would of course mean drones would have to be rebalanced especially amarr drones they are almost worthless atm, its all about gallente drones mostly.

I'd like to see it set up so that a cruiser is just as concerned about going up against a frig as the frig is about going up against the cruiser. The cruiser should be asking himself, "Does this frig have enough DPS to break my tank before I get enough lucky shots off to kill it?" and the frig should likewise be asking, "Do I have enough DPS to break his tank before he gets enough lucky shots off to kill me?"

Currently, this is only the case at close ranges. At long ranges, the cruiser wins every time without much of a contest.

Edit: Basically, when two ships meet where one isn't a clear counter to the other, it should never be certain who the winner is. Destroyers counter frigs, and so you can be 90% certain that a destroyer will beat a frig one-on-one. Not so with cruisers and frigs.

2nd edit: And in extreme cases, where the two ships in question are of drastically different sizes (a la frigs vs battleships) neither should be able to destroy the other unless they get very luck (battleship has no booster/repper so that the frig can wear it down after a very long time, or battleship gets a very lucky shot or two off, or sacrificed raw damage power in order to bring light drones) This gives frigates their natural role of being pests against large and extra large ships even if they don't directly counter anything in particular.

You quoted my second edit, but did you read it?

And no, faction ships should not equal outright better. Price should not affect balancing to such an extent, but it should provide for more specialized (or versatile in the sense that more options are available, as in the case of T3 or Faction) setups. This way you can pay extra to get a ship that does exactly what you want it to do, even if it will do nothing else.