Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Use tracking disruptors on a missile are you serious, they use their own guidance systems. that's why they are built with guidance systems, as for reducing damage that is bad in itself, a missile takes an age to reach a target while all other weaponry does instant damage, this gives people at least a chance to get away and still makes money making time consuming. if anything the range on the missiles should be reduced but certainly not the dps as it sucks anyway.

Fine, Make the ham drake better.

Edit: Or one medium missile launcher with different range amo.

I was following you right up until you claimed that a 36k EHP tank was equivalent to a 100k EHP tank.

-Liang

Fozzie I call you a madman and a hero for reading through all this so I think its only fair I make an attempt at a reasoned response.

all told... I approve of the suggested changes hand over fist and I'm more than happy to accept that caldari WILL be getting better pvp platforms based on the continuing balance changes in the form of the upcoming "combat" moa and the eventual rebalancing of the ferox as well. the cane needed a kick in the teeth I reckon as did the drake and tengu, these changes handle this nicely. after all, just because caldari don't have "viable" pvp platforms now at least by the standards of nullblob types it doesn't mean that they WON'T come these changes, after all its impossible to argue that the merlin isn't by far the most dangerous of the "combat" frigate platforms at the moment and I'm eager to see how the Moa is going to shape up as a possible upgrade of the Merlin hull with 5% hybrid damage/RoF and 5% resist/level.

in compensation however I do agree that slightly more love might be in favour of the heavy assault launchers as they take over the roll as primary "close range" missile platform. while this may be covered by the changes to tracking enhancers and tracking computers I think an improvement in explosion speed might be worthwhile regardless in order to support other ships which will be equiping this weapon, most notably the new caracal which will no doubt be adopted by us RVB types as a 30-40km dps support platform for our gudfights.

its also an interesting point that these changes may leave heavy missile operating ships with little recourse in closer ranges where gun platform ships may switch down to close range ammo to help deal with closer targets. it would seem like a reasonable suggestion then to offer an alternative ammunition type with higher damage but significantly reduced range. the T2 missiles would seem like an easy choice for this though their harder to access nature may restrict them. what I would personally propose would be taking the "fury" missile concept and pushing it to a further extreme with the missile changes fluffed along the lines of "rapid burn" response missiles for defense. much shorter range, higher damage but with a vastly accelerated flight speed (the missile doing a quick short burn then adding its remaining fuel to the payload). some way for the heavy missile equipped ships to defend themselves at closer ranges would be most welcome to a lot of people in this threadnought. cut the range a little bit more, buff the damage but keep a large explosion radius so that fury missiles act as a defense against other battlecruisers (or even cruisers if you've got TE's/TC's to improve ER/ES) but at substantially shorter ranges while precision ammo still acts as the anti frigate option. the T2 ammo types adding versitility to the platform as it were :)

I would also like to propose that with the addition of tracking enhancers and computers now providing the "counter balance" to this nerf that ballistic control systems receive a reduction in CPU cost to bring them in line with the other weapon upgrades. with the dps nerf to the heavy missiles coming into effect I would think that the improved CPU would go a fair way to allowing missile using pilots to equip their ships to adapt accordingly with the additional costs for both tracking computers and tracking enhancers for the "improved" preformance making up the difference, much like fitting 2 magstabs and a TE to a blaster moa it would make sense that 2 BCU's and a tracking enhancer would be an ideal choice for a caracal pilot (at least on the new hull).

as for tracking disruptors I think that your own suggestion for splitting the disruptor into two separate blends, one for missiles and one for guns, would solve a lot of the balance concerns with the tracking disruptor becoming some form of "wundermod". it would make sense from a lore perspective as well as it would make sense that a dedicated missile countermeasure system would be developed to take advantage of a missiles weaknesses, most notibly its internal targeting and navigation systems causing preemptive detonation (missiles exploding at much shorter ranges) or messing with the payloads (explosion radius/speed). of course both disruptor types should be effected by pre-existing bonuses and the idea of TD equiped ships bringing a mix of missile and gun disruptors sounds like a most excellent way to avoid the TD becoming a mandatory module on every hull as you won't always know what the opposition has.


that's just some suggestions however, I'm more than happy to work with what's coming and eagerly wait to see what the masters of fit foo will come up with to fill the void and hope to the gods that I'll be able to contribute to that when it happens :)

TL:DR like the proposed changes, but some more love for HAMS, BCU's and the "split" tracking disruptors seems in order

Glad this is the only one I play.

By making tracking enhancers/computers affect missile range, that's exactly what they're doing. HAM drakes with Javelins (which will have no speed penalty) and a couple of TEs/TCs should hit out to around 45km.

They want the Drake and Tengu to have 25% less range and 20% less damage.

How would you achieve this by nerfing the hull? It's already got a single damage bonus that only applies to a single damage type.

Start removing high-slots? That would just screw up other fitting options and ruin the balance between BCs even more.
Give it a negative role bonus? Needlessly complicated.
Remove a launcher slot? Needlessly nerfing HAM Drakes.

The only way to do this is:
- Nerf HMs.
- Buff unused HM ships.
- Tweak previously overpowered HM ships to work with the new HMs.

In the initial post on wich you replied i clearly stated that these changes to HML will not promote HAM use on ships that have bonuses for HAM RML and HML Takeing in range and damage in consideration RML with these changes allow for better tanks on those ships and are still able to shoot to (extreme) long ranges Also due the light missile vs the heavy assault missile, the real damage difference vs verry fast and / or small ships will be significantly closer to eachother On these ships i don't think anyone would chose for the HAM.

The reference to the drake was only to show what would happen if people were to chose range + effective hp vs damage
NOT to compare the caracal with the drake

You can't use unskilled data because there are a different number of support skills for each weapon platform.

-Liang

I really like these changes to the hurricane and drake. By neutering these beasts it is clear what you are attempting to do with your balance to the tier 1 cruisers. Having to choose between 425's and no medium neut, or 220's and a medium neut is the proper way to go with the balancing in my opinion because AC's+neuts+drones was a bit too powerful. It was a bit ridiculous that the drake can spit out decent and constant dps from 80 km's, thought it was fun while it lasted. Tengu's can always switch over to HAM's for the extra dps at the cost of range, so I don't see it affecting them all that much.

Keep up the good work!