Warfare & Tactics

What are they loosing? Arrows?

Had me a pretty little Stiletto once, Fast and nimble she was. She could throw rocks and dent paint jobs pretty good to. Till a damn Oracle warped in at range and shot her dead in 2 ticks of the clock. Pondered this awhile I did, till I found out the scumsucker used an OGB T3. Dirty cheating somebodies. But such is the way of EVE, we go on to be pulverized another day.

I still love my ceptors, with the fleet ceptors all being useful in mid size engagements if flow correctly. I mainly stick to the taranis for smaller gang and the stiletto for mid size but I have few problems. I was in a 35 on 35 man fleet recently and managed to tackle all the primaries and not die, even with 40 drones on me. I say these ships are still fantastic. If you are dying, you are not flying it right. Also if you want more dps, fly an assault frig.

Thus the problem with multiple ship types and tiers and classes and races -- and all this in a PvP game.

An interceptor is a specialized ship. In the right situation nothing is better. In the wrong situation, the wrong location, the wrong foes, it's a wasted pilot at best and an expensive loss mail at worst.

Several problems present themselves. The first, and greatest, is that all too often fights in Eve take place at static locations. The enemy isn't leaving that station, they are hugging it like little kids clinging to the side of a pool. Or the fight might be at a gate, and that's where the enemy plans to stay. In static fights like this the interceptor's speed is irrelevant -- you could as easliy drive up and tackle them in a hulk.

The second issue dovetails with the first. Unless the fight is taking place in null sec or against a war target in high, the "infini-tracking" AI wipes out your interceptor for your enemies.

Finally, and most important, interceptors suck at pretty much any job other than (as the name suggests) intercepting the enemy. They have no tank, they have no dps, they have no ewar, yet despite this they are not really particularly good at doing that -- and certainly not when compared to other options. They have a bonus to sig radius, but it's not that much better than an AF. They have a bonus to point range, but it's not so good that the interceptor doesn't need to get in danger-close to do the job.

I'm sure that one day CCP will get around to looking at them again, but it will most likely be years from now assuming the game is still around.