Ships & Modules

I'll try to bullet point some stuff that people have been talking about and be more concise in my own points:

Projection notes:
-All BS sized weapons can hit out to point range without range modifiers and still be within Effective-combat-range*.
-All cruiser sized weapons with range increasing modules can hit out to point range and still be within Effective-combat-range*
-Kiting ships have generally low EHP/Tank/Damage/All of the above to compensate for their range advantage**.
-kiting ships generally have higher speed than close range ships to maintain range***.

*Effective combat range is defined as Optimal + falloff or missile max range *0.9. This included the use of T2 Ranged ammo in achieving these numbers.

**The main issue with this is that within point range, the lower DPS of a kiting ship with longer range is equal the higher DPS of a brawling ship with no range bonus. This means that if you can keep a point on a target you can DPS it and kill it, but if it's faster it can leave the fight. This isn't an advantage for just the kiting ship - it effectively grants immunity to brawlers if they fit enough projection to scare off a kiting ship (without link and faction gear behind it). Results? No kills, lots of fights with a boring outcome. (from personal experience i know both brawlers and kiters will stay committed to a fight, regardless of if they are in structure or not simply because they both know they can get a kill. If the kiter doesnt get caught, it wins. If the brawler slignshots well, he wins. Brawlers projection damage this well scares kiting ships off and fights dont go anywhere).

***Maintaining range is pointless (hohoho here we pun again) if you gain no advantage from it.

Is a shield thorax with no web or scram a brawler? The thorax is arguably gimping his own tank to fit neutrons by using 2 pg rigs, is this not an option to fit 425's to the stabber? The thorax is also slower, and the damage projection graph doesn't show the disadvantages of the thorax's heavy reliance on drones at that range. Now, I don't mean to say that a shield stabber should be able to consistently beat a shield thorax on pilot skill alone.

I agree that the thorax looks like a stronger ship in the 1v1 you've proposed, but so what? Some ships can beat other ships. A 'brawler' thorax as I would imagine (800 plate, web) won't be able to touch the stabber you've proposed. A shield thorax fighting an armor thorax would have similar trouble that the shield stabber has fighting the shield thorax. The shield thorax would lose his drones and do low dps to an armor thorax (because damage profile skews more heavily towards close range than the stabber), and faces certain death if it strays within 13km. At least the stabber has a chance to escape vs a shield thorax, since the proposed shield thorax has no scram or web and its naturally 20% faster.

Now, Liang or someone else may jump all over me and say that its an invalid comparison, and it may be. But that's exactly what I'm saying about Maelstrome's comparisons. If you have two shield tanked ships rocking dual TE's, why would you expect one of them to dominate the other?

Lets look at this by hull class:

Frigates: Completely fine, there are room for long-point kiters, brawlers, and scram range kiters that specialize in 8.5km engagement range.

Cruisers/BCs: Ships that don't fit tracking enhancers can be reliably kited. OP's stabber could have kited an armor cane. Shield ships with 1-2 TE's and largest available short-range turrets can project sufficient dps at 24km to make kiting ineffective. Shield ships with TE's are popular because they do not automatically lose to specialized kiting ships. This in-turn makes brawlers more viable as not everyone in space is flying a hard-counter to them like a vagabond.

Battleships/tier-3 BCs: TE's and t2 ammo give these ships extreme range with short-range turrets. Largest-in-class turrets can still do significant dps at 24km with appropriate ammo with no TE's fitted at all. Kiting really only works with other tier 3's or machariels with some kind of 24km+ tackle.


The problems so far seem to be that the Talos cannot be kited even if its armor because large turrets can hit at 24km with null, and that its difficult to kite anything that fits shields and TE's in the cruiser class. Increasing point range would address the talos while making all the tier 3 BC's better in the shield/TE/kite role. Increasing point range would be a big help to the vaga, cynabal, hugin, rapier, loki, curse, and nanopest (?), which (apparently) are in desperate need of the ability to get kills off of shield brutixes and shield canes.

Also, this entire discussion has felt like "blasters are too good at doing what autocannons do, which is killing you effectively at all ranges. Boost point range so that gallente ships can be free kills (again) regardless of how they're fit" Where do lasers fit into this?

All the Minmatar ships drew the short end of the straw. They're pretty much universally bad. :-)

-Liang

Balanced? It's a pretty brave statement, given how they provide 30% falloff bonus, exceeding the one of corresponding rigs, which is not the case for optimal range boosting. 15% optimal bonus is balanced, so is the 9.5% tracking one. 30% fallof is plain stupid.

Realistic value is somewhere in between 0% (which was the reason why they were not used much prior Dominion) and current 30% (which is the reason they are used way too much). I'd say, 15% falloff bonus will be pretty good.

While I agree with this statement, it's worth mentioning that a very high falloff number gives the ability to project damage even further than the optimal based setup. It's not substantial damage, but it doesn't have to be really. I think the nano Talos does a great job of showing that.

-Liang

To be fair though when you do 1000DPS within 7km and you loose 60% of your damage up to 25-30km you still do 400DPS. If the base number is really high, then even a percentage of that is a solid real number. And we all know that 400 DPS will overpower msot active tanks and make mince-meat out of light buffer fits. That's more to do with a heavy weapons system than TE's though...

On the other hand amarr ships have lower DPS - but 100% of that is used due to all their range being pushed into optimal.

How comfortable it is to present fits that support your argument. But hey, this is easy! Let's look at the fits when both use one fitting rig:

[Stabber, Stabber 425's 2xTE 2xGYRO]

Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Tracking Enhancer II

Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I
Warp Disruptor II

425mm AutoCannon II, Barrage M
425mm AutoCannon II, Barrage M
425mm AutoCannon II, Barrage M
425mm AutoCannon II, Barrage M
Light Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Light Missile
Light Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Light Missile

Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Ancillary Current Router I



[Thorax, Thorax Ions 2x TE 2xMFS]

Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Damage Control II

Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I
J5 Prototype Warp Disruptor I

Heavy Ion Blaster II, Null M
Heavy Ion Blaster II, Null M
Heavy Ion Blaster II, Null M
Heavy Ion Blaster II, Null M
Heavy Ion Blaster II, Null M

Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I


Hammerhead II x5


Now Stabber starts outdamaging Thorax before 15km. Nerf ACs!


What is really interesting about this whole discussion is the motive behind OP's posts. Earlier, before blaster boat buffs, he could kite every blaster ship without any sort of skill, simply because of the massive speed/range imbalance. This lead him to believe that "I'm better than the brawlers, therefore kiting requires more skill".

Now that it's not easymode anymore, he maintains that keep-at-range kiters of the old are ~elite~, but demands that CCP changes the mechanics because his "superior skill" doesn't give him guaranteed risk-free kills any more.

Simply a double fallacy, and still illogical conclusions.

Here's a tip- it was never the idea, that kiters can simply run circles around everyone else without taking any damage at long point range. That was horribly bad game design, and it has been properly fixed. Now is time you start really practicing your skills and stop being a whiny bear.

Yeah, lets give it a 5/5/5 slotlayout, really fast, really low mass, 4 turrets, 1100 base grid, 10% damage and falloff per level and heck why not add a 25% role bonus to rate of fire. Oh and a 50m3 dronebay kthx.

People are so busy slating amarr that they forget that they are amazing. And the raven, when flown PROPERLY (e.g. not by a bear) is one of the most formidable BS in the game. It always has been. There is a special place in my hear for the geddon, for all it's faults it make sup for it in raw aggression and tank.

I wasn't aware that things had to line up perfectly on your spreadsheet and work towards your biases before it was considered good game balance. It is trivial to see that a 1:1 relationship between optimal and falloff is not correct.

-Liang