Player Features and Ideas Discussion

And a Caldari pilot who began training to use them ten months ago when they were fixed, would have only barely finished large hybrids a months ago now. He would now, ten months later, finally get to use the Gallente Naga.

In any case, even with the improvement to Hybrids, a Caldari pilot who switches to gunnery would be a fool to stick with Caldari. The Caldari Hybrid frigates are wicked, the rest of the lineup is less than impressive. Given the choice between a complete working lineup of ships, and training for a year to own a fleet of hangar queens, which would YOU select? You want a Vagabond or a Cerberus? You want a Zealot or an Eagle? Would you rather have the choice of one marginal BS, or three great ones?

I faced that choice years ago. Should I abandon Caldari and all the training I had invested, or switch races and fly non-broken ships. I considered sticking with it. I thought surely CCP would fix them. I figured there was no way in hell they would leave them that broken. Fortunately my wife convinced me to switch. Had she not done so, had I stuck with Caldari and continued spending my time and perfecting my skills...

I would STILL be waiting!

Years later, I would be waiting.

And while I waited, I would have gotten to watch CCP devote patch after patch towards making the already good PvP races better. Hell, I would still be waiting for them to remove the T2 ammo penalties that everyone else saw eliminated years ago. Even something that simple, I'd be waiting.

And PvP? The only reason I bother with this game? Up until last year I wouldn't have even had a frigate to use. I would have had the Drake, and every time the name Caldari even popped up on the forums a thousand people flooding the thread saying "Caldari are the PvE race! You have the Drake! Because of Falcon!"

But I didn't have to deal with that. I switched to one of the PvP races. I went with Minmatar, the flavor of the month, only it turned out to be the flavor of the decade. And I have never regretted the decision.

As a Minmatar pilot I might not have the best ship in every class, but it is ALWAYS better than anything the Caldari pilot is stuck with. I don't have one marginal battleship, I have three exceptional ones. My worst Battleship is better than the best the poor patiently waiting Caldari pilot has available. As a Minmatar pilot I have two great HACs, had I stayed with Caldari I wouldn't have any. I have the best cruisers and battlecruisers (and by god I have two of them), the best destroyer, great frigates, AFs, bombers, interceptors, my command ships are epic and my recons are the bane of Strategic cruisers.There are literally no holes in my ship lineup. I have got it made baby! Hell, last year when CCP handed out T3 BCs I actually got one, unlike those poor patient Caldari missile pilots. And all because I didn't wait for CCP to fix the Caldari.

So why should I care about those poor fools who trusted CCP and stuck with Caldari? CCP could delete them from the game and my hangar would look about the same. But I care because I like this game, and I think that there is a limit to how patient even Caldari players will be. I think continuing to #$% with a hundred thousand paying customers is insane.

To max out your skill maybe 10 months but I dont think it takes 10 Months to get T2 large guns.

I did some days ago, didnt seem like the Moa would be hot. If they changed something since my last visit I will check this later.

So, you REFUSED to use HALF the ships of your race, and you still complain ?

Hybrids are NOT gallente weapon, it's both gallente AND caldari. Merlin was always usable you know, but at this time, there was only the rifter in T1. Going to faction, the hookbill was always, or at least from what I can remember in my short EVE life, well rated (though that might be from the rocket rebalance about 2 years ago). For fleet, 2 years may be the birth time of the drake. Drake is on top since my EVE birth in fact, both for pve AND pvp. That is TWO YEARS. 20% of EVE history, and the last ones. There always was the Basilisk too, a great fleet logi. And that's even without ECM ships... And the tengu of course. Now, since last year (even more if you consider the time it was adverted), there was hybrids, and you didn't skilled for. I tend to think it's your fault if you followed the easy path and crosstrained for minmatar.

Stop pretended caldari are stick with nothing, that's pure falacy. Only the closeminded ones are stuck in their fantasy realm where caldari are good for nothing. In real EVE, it's plain wrong. Caldari pilots are *desired* for a lot of things.

Now, the problem IMO is more about your playstyle : you don't have the caldari mindset to use their ships maybe ?

But take the gallente, just to compare : do you want a diemost (yes, that's how it was called in the past) or a falcon ? I won't speek about nullsec warfare, because I would look like a crying caldari pilot.

You cannot say caldari are stick with nothing when you ignore half of their ships. And you cannot ask for missiles to do everything turrets do, and even more. Missiles are not turrets. You want brawling turret ship, caldari definitly don't are the goto race, but saying they have nothing is plain wrong. You just have to open your mind and look at blasters. Oh, and I don't think HAM were that bad, but HML always had been so much better...

Well written post my friend. See I am that Caldari pilot you speak of. When I started EVE I picked Caldari because I liked the lore of them. Missiles sounded cool so that's what I went with.
Some months into the game I start seeing that my choice may have been the wrong one to make.
I would always here how Caldari was not that great and they do not get much DEV attention.

But I did think hey this is an MMO and there is no way they will always be out of balance, no way will we sit on the bottom and continue to be bullied and kicked around, I thought man if I stick with this by the time the fixes come along I will be one of the few specialized in these ships and at least for a short while I could have some fun times while everyone scrambles to catch up and it would be GREAT.

But those changes never came I would not see this ever come to be and time after time I see nerfs or changes that will not even put me on the grid. Unlike you I didn't have someone to talk me into a different choice I wish I had.
This was a very well written post the replies I have read on it are complete crap, these people know there is truth to this they will never admit it how ever they don't want the Winmatar to be nerfed.

The Minmatar, pilots have to be best at all lvls the drake held the top spot with HML Minmatar, held about everything else.
But I would love to see a nerf to Minmatar pilots and their primary weapons systems I would bet everything I own not one of them would be on here saying "yeah we had this coming it was a much needed nerf and it's about time the Minmatar got brought in line with the other races"
That would not happen you would have people just like me on here fighting tooth and nail for the changes not to happen
It would be me X1000.

This was a great post and about as truthful as it gets. I know if this nerf hits to hard there will be my 3 accounts and an other 3 friends who will stop playing EVE at least until CCP stops favoring one race and brings balance into the game.
The flinching dog analogy posted earlier was pretty fitting also.
You know you here all these apologetics here defending this nerf all while saying Projectiles are perfectly in balance is almost mind blowing. While the exception of a very few people it's almost like you people can't come up with a rational thought between the lot of ya.
Trying my hardest to not bash here but omfg some of you people can't really believe what spews out of your brains and onto these forums. You are confronted with factual number and yet you deny these numbers.
I understand the numbers are of your side but really post like this one that I have quoted are far and few

I think what Noemi was getting at is that Caldari lacks good missile boats, thus if you went missile skills first (and later found out how few viable options you have), and tried to get into gunnery, its a long and painful process. On the other hand, if you started with hybrids/projectiles/lasers then you can far more easily cross train among the 3 turret classes and honestly, I can't think of a role that a gunboat can't do just as well or more often than not, better than a missile boat in our current environment. So if you started with turrets and cross-trained into missiles....I'm sorry but you're doing it wrong.

I feel this cause when I first started I basically trained missiles only as recommended by some vets as they said missiles are the best for PvE and good for getting your income started. So I trained up to a cruise Raven then a Tengu for L4s and yeah, missiles were really forgiving and good for PvE, but as mentioned, I found myself with not many PvP options. However now that I'm further down the road have Minmatar/Amarr trained, I found out that gunboats are better at damn near everything (traded my Tengu in for a Mach and its way better), and going from Laser to Projectile didn't take me long at all and right now, I don't feel the need to fly any missile boats (except maybe the dual-TD condor lulz) over gunboats.

However I still support the HM nerf (as it seems they overcompensated by making HAMs amazing) and the new Caracal/Bellicose looks pretty amazing with HAMs so it's not all lost, but I can see where Noemi is coming from.

Beam Harbinger?
Beam Prophecy?
250mm Ferox?
250mm Brutix?
250mm Myrmidon?
720mm Cane?
720mm Cyclone?

Only cruiser/BC that can use medium long range turrets effectively is Zealot.

Could be a good boat but it's not missiles.

The 720mm Cane is actually very viable and used all the time actually but that's because of alpha win, the rest are pretty much never used yeah, but that can also be attributed to the tiering system which kinda gave the shaft to the Proph/Ferox/Brutix. The Myrm doesn't get a hybrid bonus so that's a no-brainer and the Cyclone suffers similar tiering problems which means its hard to shoehorn arties on it (although it's still amazing with ACs). Yes HMs being good is probably part of the reason why these ships never made it into a fleet doctrine like the Drake but the reasons I mentioned also contribute to the fail of medium LR guns. Also, if I'm not mistaken the Zealot is usually run with Pulses that can hit to 40km with Scorch.

Yeah, gunboats don't beat missile boats in medium long range weaponry, but I said I agreed with the HM nerf, their damage was definitely too good (my Tengu out ranged and out dpsed my Navy Raven which is ridiculous) but don't forget there are other reasons medium long range weapons aren't used other than HMs being better. I feel a big one is that LR weaponry at the medium/large level pretty much needs to be a fleet thing as the SR versions of these weapons tend to be able to hit out to around long point range which is the range where pretty much all non-fleet battles take place and the lower fitting, better tracking, damage etc means that you'd need to be outside that range to make LR weapons worth it, at which point you need alot of support (you need to be in a fleet) to make them work.

So yeah my point is that yes, HMs are unbalanced relative to other LR turrets, but on the whole LR turrets are ******.

All correct what you said here. Actually I dont wonder Jorma doesnt know this, because he seems to be an EFT-only warrior ..



Its also the reversed fitting reqs for HAM-HML in comparison to LRMT-SRMT -> short range needs MORE grid for missiles, thats why people stay a bit away from it (and until now HAM are also not that good - hopefully will change, although I am not yet convinced ;) ) . The other way round would make so much more sense - if you dedicate to long range you could afford to drop tank. If you have to get close and personal it sucks if you have to.