Jita Park Speakers Corner

Half of the point of the frigate and cruiser rebalance was to narrow the gap between T1 and T2 hulls so that T1s are actually worth flying. There's little point doing that if next they're just going to buff the hell out of HACs to restore the old gap.

This is getting a bit too detailed now and perhaps sliding a bit offtopic with that, but...

I've always enjoyed the warp-speed dynamics and that it's not tied to acceleration and deceleration (regardless wether that feature is performance-based or not, where discussing it could be moot).

It made stretching and splitting pursuers (or chasing runaways) more difficult in smaller systems, which made the choices you took with regard to routes more important and gave a variety over systems (eg., "this is a dangerous system, here we can be overrun" or "this is an ideal system for closing the gap" etc.).

If the mechanics rested upon the acceleration rates as some sort of "double alignment" factor you would lose those dynamics and get a much more predictable timing on various ships and gangs. Too streamlined for my taste.

I also provides differentiation between ships that align well and ships that warp well. A notable example (while CCP seem to be out to wash away racial traits on the whole) would be considering Caldari as a race with alignment as a racial trait and how that affect larger hulls with slower warp-speeds; ships that could align fast to escape grids but not warp fast enough to shake pursuers or catch smaller hulls when spanning multiple systems. That "goddamn Caldari hull a weightclass above that would always align as fast as you did off the gate, but whome you could always catch in warp to give you further chances to catch him on the next gate, and the next...". It is (or was) part of the traits, balance, and the charm. It was especially pronounced and interesting in the first few patches following the nano-nerf when alignment-speed was still a bit overblown. It was... an interesting environment.

The Cerberus obviously needs some tweaking just to bring it in line with the other HACs. But not turning it into what you called a 'super-Caracal', that would invalidate the point of the Caracal being improved in the first place. Following the design philosophy that T2 is more specialised than T1, not outright superior across the board, the new Cerberus will outperform the Caracal in one specific aspect and be broadly equal or maybe even slightly inferior in the others, as will the rest of the T2 range relative to its T1 hull type.

The last update ruined missile legion.... it need to be reviewed...