Player Features and Ideas Discussion

That is true.

You do still find those that refuse to add a web because "more tank is better".

Drake is fine against short range BSs (well hellcates are an issue for them), against long range BSs, yeah its a massacre.

...and for reference you use Drakes against BS's so when you get dropped you can GTFO, because if you are in BS's still with Dreads and Titans on the field you are going to get your ass handed to you, and it doesn't matter how well you play.

Drakes can burn out of the bubbles a hell of a lot faster than brick tanked battleships.

nighthawk and cerberus eh? well personally i wouldn't mind the cerberus being brought up to scratch as a "mainline" HAC. one of the larger problems i personally see with the caldari hac line is that both hulls are build specifically for long range sniping combat. based on its description the cerberus is certainly intended to act as a missile launching monstrosity and currently that's represented by huge range and fairly reasonable damage. perhaps the solution then is to gear this a little more towards damage dealing rather than damage projection?

its a fanciful image of course but the idea of a cerberus litterally spewing endless waves of missiles into targets gives me a nice warm feeling and anything we can do to encourage that is a good thing. perhaps rather than a pair of missile range bonuses the cerberus could be more focused towards messing things up? the 2nd range bonus (flight time I believe) could be altered to give the cerberus an explosion radius bonus, something the nighthawk admittedly already has. while 3 "damage" bonuses might be a little... much... it would more than certainly lock the cerberus in as an anti "fast stuff" platform using hams or heavy missiles to pursue and engage particularly fast opponents and provide meaningful dps support to a gang its a part of.

its not a perfect suggestion of course, another idea would be to outright change the "hac" bonus to a huge ass 10% RoF bonus and have it REALLY churn out the fwoosh, range comparable to a caracal but with the advanced systems needed to coordinate more missiles in flight and reload its launchers? sounds fun to me.

in turn, much like the caracal, I believe the cerberus could use some fitting love to help push it a bit more towards the combat role while the eagle can most certainly remain as a huge ass range sniper (though in turn that needs some love to give it some reason to exist as opposed to the naga, probably tracking love ^_^ ).

as for the nighthawk.... thats a lot harder to say. the biggest issue I can kind of see with the nighthawk is that the drake is just as good... in pretty much every way. the nighthawk's bonuses are kind of made redundant as generally speaking the drake has just as much tank, speed and ability to hit smaller targets at only a marginal loss in performance.
a lot of it i think has to do with the drake's sheer tanking ability compared to the nighthawk; which only gets an edge over the drake in passive tanking. something not all that useful in pvp due to the consumption of critical lowslots for shield power relays.

while the nighthawk can most certainly sling more ordinance than a drake the overall advantage isn't that great, while the nighthawk has a 2 extra damage application bonuses (RoF and explosion radius) the drake has an additional turret and more freedom of fitting bringing it a lot closer than is ideal.

what i'd like to see to bring the nighthawk up to scratch? TANK.While the sleipnir might be a lean mean dakka machine (though again of limmited use in the grand scheme of things due to cost) the caldari strike me as the kinds who'd want to protect their command assets at all costs. improved fitting, natural shield amount and some juggled slots (5th low up to a mid perhaps?) with the intention of permitting the nighthawk to simply survive harder and longer than its peers would in my mind make it a good deal more useful as a member of a gang, an active tanking bonus "might" work but it doesn't strike me as very "Kaalakiota", perhaps a shield hitpoint amount bonus in place of the missile explosion radius bonus and enough powergrid to sport ham launchers and a strong extender based tank would suffice to bring it up to spec.

just idle thoughts of course but i think but seeing as T2 ships are ment to be "specialised" having a specialised missile damage boat and a specialised tanking command vessel seem like fair suggestions in my mind.

I'm pro-nerf, but not in its current form, because the ships that will be hurt are those that use missiles as a secondary weapon system. Nobody fit missiles in a Stabber's other 2 highslots already, and they're even less likely to after this takes effect.

Missile ships will be fine, ships that have missile hardpoints but no bonuses to them will basically have wasted hardpoints.

Even though no one will read this, I'd like to bring it to your attention (if it isn't already) that missiles are the only weapon system in which the short-range version has more restricting fitting requirements than the long range version. Not only this, but some of the rigs for the weapon system (for some balance reason that I have yet to comprehend) do not apply to the short range version.

A 650mm artillery cannon (the smallest long range cruiser class projectile) uses 200/27
A 425mm autocannon (the largest short range cruiser class projectile) uses 140/24
>0.700/0.889

250mm rail (long range) is 198/38
Heavy neutron blaster (short range) is 179/29
>0.904/0.763

Heavy beam laser (long range) is 250/35
Heavy pulse laser (short range) is 210/33
>0.840/0.943

A HML (long range) uses 100/50
A HAM (short range) uses 120/45
>1.200/0.900 (the only one with a value >1)

I agree with all of the missile changes, but not the the extent the changes are made. A 20% nerf is clearly just balancing them in the opposite direction. Instead of 70% of cruiser class weapons being missiles, 7% will be. That's not balance. Missiles could use a nerf but that deep of a nerf is just plain silly. I can't honestly see HMs being a viable option after this patch for PVE or PVP compared to other weapons systems.

tl;dr
Pulling missiles back in line with other weapon systems is good. Pulling them behind other weapon systems is bad. Doing so incompletely is even worse.

can u show me a fit from a turret BC that does 500dps from 50km+ (not a tier 3 of course) that can also reach 80k ehp?

bearing in mind the drake hits this hard out to 75km and tanks 100kehp

even with the nerf, the heavy missile out competes rails, beams and arties for dps. the range nerf will bring things much closer together though. Ships will actually have an advantage with range bonuses.

That is true, but in most of those cases (unless youre fighting an idiot who is coming straight at you) every ship that mitigates 90% of the drake damage mitigates 100% of the gun damage because guns just cant hit them.

So, heavy missiles are total crap if the ship does not allow for any kind of bonus ? Really ? We are nerfing a crappy crap weapon system ?

The problem with split weapons is that damage mods don't apply to all modules (as in the case of the Typhoon). The additional problem with split-un-bonused-weapons is that you're basically doing zero real damage with your missiles, as in the case of the Stabber.

Missiles are often an option as an unbonused suppliment to damage that you can put in your spare highslots. This once worked because missiles had great base stats. Ships that used missiles primarily tended to have weaker bonuses so as not to make missiles overpowered on them.

This nerf, though it fixes heavy missiles on all missile ships, removes them as a secondary weapon system. Most people probably won't miss them as they were marginally effective at best before, but I feel it's taking away diversity in fitting. I'd rather see missiles receive a buff and have missile ships stripped of their damage bonuses in favor of explosion velocity/radius, range, or perhaps even other bonuses like tanking or ewar.

Choice is good.

Wait a sec .... Did you say that the heavy missile weapon is a bad weapon without bonus and then made the logical decision that the nerf should be on the bad weapon instead of the ships that allow bonuses ???? Really ?