EVE General Discussion

I would like to throw something out there for consideration.

We all know that it's tricky balancing different weapons systems in EvE, but one method that I think is under utilized is balancing weapons systems around alpha. Currently Artillery is the only weapon system truly devoted to high alpha tactics.

Just for the purposes of clarity, an Alpha oriented weapon systems is one that does a very high amount of damage per volley, but a very slow rate of fire and generally ends up having less DPS (damage per second) over time. They require their own set of tactics to use effetcively. Alpha strike weapons are designed to overpower your opponents tank quickly, and suffer in comparison to DPS oriented weapons systems the longer the battle continues. The also have advantages in fleet battles where large numbers of these weapons can be brought to bear and ideally pop a common target before it has a chance to warp out.

The weapons system that immediately comes to mind would be missiles. I think most people could get behind the concept of missiles in all forms being an extremely high alpha weapons system. It would revitalize missile combat in all of it's forms, generate a new generation of tactics (in both PVP and PVE) to properly utilize them, and might also reduce a fair amount of lag in combat situation.

Now if that has some appeal, but you would like more variety, missiles could be split up between those that depended on alpha capabilities and those that depend more on DPS, and it would not necessarily devolve down to close range variants are always the most alpha oriented.

Example (excluding X large varieties):
Rockets: DPS (rocket spam).
Light Missiles: Alpha

Heavy Assault Missiles: Alpha
Heavy Missiles: DPS

Torps: Alpha
Cruise: DPS

Additionally, this premise could also expand to include turret weapons systems as some are currently considered inferior using current balancing methods.

Example:
Pulse Lasers: DPS
Beam Lasers/Tachyons: Alpha

Blasters: Alpha
Rails: DPS

Auto Cannon: DPS
Artillery: Alpha

This concept could also be applied to our combat and sentry drones and their respective weapons systems (introducing reasons beyond speed of movement or raw DPS in our drone choices). Wouldn't it be interesting if Amarr and Gallante drones had great alpha damage, and Minmatar and Caldari had the best DPS... and the difference mattered depending on the targets you were engaging.

New tactics evolve, RoF and it's corrosponding lag is reduced in many cases, variety is introduced along with another (currently under utilized) balancing metric.

I know a lot of work has gone into balancing weapons systems along side the ship rebalancing effort (god bless em) and there is more work yet to do. That's why I am bringing this up now, as it would be better to examine something like this now rather than later.

I haven't gone into detail about how Alpha strike combat and fits differ radically from standard DPS oriented combat, but those well versed in it will likely offer examples along the way.

If you find the concept interesting, please discuss.

I put it here bacause it isn't anything radical or new. Arty has taken this concept to heart already (with great success).

I was just suggesting that perhaps the existing concept should be expanded into other area's, or at the very least asking why it hasn't.

I had thoughts along that line as well, in fact aside from rails that is how my suggestions ran.

In this case my thinking was that rails provide the (still important) sustained DPS on a long range target that keeps remote reps from being too effective (and the higher rof would mean often rails would end up with the kill mail in the end). While the blasters already tend to follow the concept of a hard hitting shot gun blast in the face, as opposed to a rapid fire sub machine gun for close range encounters. The roles could easily be switched though, but I felt that offered less variety over all.

At the very least Tachs and beams need to be able to do more alpha, as now they are generally inferior to just about everything.

Even if current balancing methods were for the most part left as is (hopefully not for Tach's/Beams) I'd be pretty happy if they just reworked the missile balancing in this fashion.

I suppose I have in my head that in current air combat a plane may take a hit or two from gun/cannon fire and often receive relatively minor damage (unless the aggressor gets lucky his tactic is to send as much lead towards his target as possbile to bring it down).

However with missiles if you get hit it's usually a kill or at least very extensive damage... and then a bit of time passes before the next flight of missiles comes your way (if you survived). The exception being rockets (fired at ground targets usually) which generally are intended to spray an area with smaller explosives.

[quote=Ranger 1 The also have advantages in fleet battles where large numbers of these weapons can be brought to bear and ideally pop a common target before it has a chance to warp out.

[/quote]



Alpha is good at killing something to overpower logi reps, not lolwarpingout

am I missing something here, or are you proposing something that already exists?


Grouped missiles fired in a coordinated manner ("fleet hold fire, wait...fire NOW!") = alpha

Ungrouped missiles or free-fire (primary, secondary, etc. with no hold) = DPS


In fact, the same can hold true for any weapon system. Yet FC's never call to "ungroup weapons for less alpha, more dps".

Some weapons are more oriented to alpha, some to DPS. Where it really matters is the logistics. Choosing alpha>dps in any engagement with logi is self-explanatory.

Let's look at a theoretical battle.


150 welpcanes = alot of DPS (let's call it 84k DPS) but little alpha (205k) at ~50k EHP

vs.

100 maelstroms = alot of alpha (about 1m alpha) and crap DPS (54k) at over 100k EHP

Say that each side has 30 scimitars for logistics, and adequate ewar to apply their DPS. The logi (ab-fit 4x rep no rep drones) can replace 10k RAW shield hp a second. with the resistance profiles that ends up around ~30k EHP/second for the hurricanes and a little better for the maelstroms (~38k EHP/s)

In theory, these hurricanes have the alpha to one-shot maelstroms easily. So too, can the maelstroms one-shot the hurricanes.

So, in the first second of battle, two maelstroms have died.

In the second second, two more maelstroms die, and they are still locking primary, secondary, tertiary, etc. targets

In the third second, every hurricane that has been locked by 5 or more maelstroms dies. Since 4 have already been lost, and since I like 'canes, let's say that only 10 hurricanes die (this is very conservative).

In the fourth second, two maelstroms die, and another five hurricanes (these are people whose guns never got to cycle on the previous 10)

By the fifth second, another maelstrom dies, but a second one is saved in low structure.

There are still at least 90 maels on the field (900k alpha) who have enough EHP to survive the low alpha, while the logi say to themselves (what is DPS?) as they overheat their reps and start saving every target smart enough to broadcast.

Meanwhile Hurricanes are dropping too fast for logi to lock them, and every ship they lose compounds the situation by reducing their alpha further. The maels could even lose more numbers and still continue to alpha the canes.


Obviously these are some quick numbers pulled from EFT, but this exact situation happened in a fight with IRC/CFC/others (it was not a simple 2-way fight) in a IRC system a couple months ago.

Outnumbered by welpcanes on the gate, the FC chose to jump maelstroms into the canes. Hardly an ideal situation, and many maelstroms died instantly/never loaded/etc. But the canes still melted from the alpha and good target calling, and soon, the maelstroms' logi started pulling them back. The first few seconds were brutal, but once the canes' alpha was lowered, the fight was decided.


LOTS OF WORDS.

meaning? ALPHA>DPS

and yes this situation scales nicely downwards as well, you just have more variables to take into account, since the 'little things" matter more in small-scale combat

The point was that Alpha has not been fully utilized as a balancing mechanic. Obviously other factors would still be present, however with it comes to weapons systems that are designed to fully take advantage of a high Alpha strike capability we currently have only one... artillery.

I would not like all high alpha weapons to operate identically, nor am I suggesting it, but more than one could share the overall traits of high damage, slow rate of fire a typical "alpha" weapon personifies. I don't think you can remotely call that arbitratrilly catagorizing things.

I believe there is room in EvE to have more high alpha, low DPS weapons systems in use... and I believe there is room in EvE for more variables than a we currently see between major weapons systems.

Short range ammo is already an alpha weapon,

Ships are designed now for all gank no tank.
There is already too much of the head shot mentality going on.
Making them even shorter is only going to progress the game closer to a FPS.
Not that to some extent we already have that going on.
End of story.

Erm torps are already alpha. They are what everyone used for alpha (e.g suicide ganking) before arties were changed. the only reason they are not up there with arties now is that the bs sized missile boats have rof bonuses instead of damage. If it had a damage bonus the CNR or SNI for example would do 10k alpha with rage

Wouldn't making multiple alpha weapon systems mean that everything ends up the same, with each weapon system losing its uniqueness?