Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Somewhat, yes. However, you caved to the missile whiners and left heavy missiles too powerful and HAMs got a boost. Result, witness the rise of the Caracal and Tengus still walk all over the others for pve. But yes the weapons are better balanced than they have been.

The problem with lasers is that they have no clear advantage to compensate for their shortcomings. Projectiles get either the alpha strike of Arty, or the tracking and falloff adaptibility to range(because in and of itself falloff sorta sucks for dps). Hybrids get dps, and even range advantage on rails especially with ridiculous 10% per level optimals with Caldari ships. What is it exactly that lasers get? Worst tracking of the short range variety but best optimal (scorch). Is that enough? Beams are prohibitively pg expensive and don't really have any redeeming quality.

Conceptually it has always appeared to me that CCP wanted Amarr and Caldari to be lumbering long range bricks. This is over-facilitated with Caldari by giving them 10% optimal bonuse on top of the longest range long range guns. And even though they are traditionally the slowest ships you years ago gave them an overdone agiality buff. So they have the ability to snip and gtfo.

Gallente and Minmatar got speed and agility advantage to go with a preference for short range combat. Of course this is to simplistically ignore the need for each race to have long and short range options. For Caldari with the agility buff and open lows due to not armor tanking added to the 10% per level gun and missile range bonuses you made them able to engage in close range combat. They already have agility, they can get speed through use of lows.

But what does Amarr get. If they are going to be armored cap warfare susceptible bricks where is their range advantage like Caldari have. Beams have worse damage profile over range than arty. It's ok to give lasers a short fallof, but other than scorch on pulses they do not get any optimal advantages. Without that, and being a brick, they are very weak for both long ranged and close ranged combat.

My suggestion is give beam lasers more optimal. A frickin beam of light should have more range in space than a railgun. Afterall a railgun is still having to overcome inertia. A laser is about as instantaneous as one can get. A railgun propelled mass cannot be as fast. Also, give lasers better tracking. The only limiting factor would be the computing power of the turret's guidance system and the mechanical ability of the turret to turn. Tracking (time to target) would impact the hybrid and projectile systems more. Certainly having falloff highest on projectiles makes sense. It is exploding, so it has wiggle room. To be clipped by a hybrid charge is still a kinetic impact. But lasers are eith hitting or not, so a falloff makes no sense.

Anyway, in short, more tracking (pulses and beams) and optimal (beams) for lasers. Then the alpha could be reduced and the dps either stay the same or slightly diminished. But lasers should be a weapon system that is very likely to hit it's target. Then maybe the cap drawbacks and ****** damage type would be worth their use. The range needed especially because you have married these weapons to lumbering brick boats.

Whatever you do, get on it.

edit - people calling for third bonuses, or massivley increasing the cap reserve or cap regen are missing the point. every weapon system should have drawbacks. but conversely every weapon system should have a strength. missiles hav no dps loss over their available range, selectable damage, and also good volley damage. Arty has alpha, ac have falloff adaptibility to range, and both have some selectibility of damage type(s). Rails have high dps from rof in exchange for tracking, and blasters dps in exchange for range. Not going to pretend that blaster boat problems have been solved though. But, lasers really don't stand out for anything. That is the problem.

I think a fix could be found in the ammo the turrets use...
when projectiles got boost all those years ago they got an awesome bonus to certain types of tech I ammo.

but if you compare hybrid and lazor ammo they are pretty much the same just swap em for kin damage.

why not do something similar that was done to projectile ammo but for lasers and energy turrets?

The problem is not just the cap use or Amarr ships in general, the problem lies within faulty EVE mechanics that have not worked properly since the beta, and that only have gotten worse as time went by.

A bit of history, so you can put the current situation into context.

When EVE was designed the races were meant, and in the first iterations even were, vastly different from each other.

Amarr and Caldari were meant to be very expensive, meaning that their ships were supposed to fight numerically outnumbered, Gallente was the middle race that could do everything well, and Minmatar were meant to be cheap-to-replace throwaways.

Conversely with that, Lasers were meant to be THE BEST allround weapon, hands down, no questions asked. Thus they were prenefred with massive cap use and only to be fielded by the capacitor race Amarr, whose ships were slow and expensive, but very tanky and well, SUPERLASERS.

But, we all know that didnt really happen, and over the years all ships , races and weapon systems were pretty much equalized to a point where everyone is basically the same with minor differences. Hell, even the Avatars are a wild racial mix nowadays.. so much for racial diversity..

Thats a shame in my book, but yeah....

Anyway, so as we are now, lasers are exactly en par with the other weapon systems, but they still carry that prenerf for a bonus that never happened, on ships that were never realized as what they were meant to be.

And as if that wasnt bad enough, we are, and always have been, cursed with fundamentally flawed game mechanics.


Tackling (Range)


THAT is the issue, why Rails never worked, beam lasers are for suckers, and why Arties kinda work (alpha).

Because there is no practical way to make a fight happen at range above 25ish km, all weapon systems going beyond that range, are basically pointless (pun).

Arties after many patches became the exeption because of high alpha which meant that you could destroy **** before it could just warp off, and we all know how great of a game mechanic it is when you simply freeze for a second to find yourself in a pod...

GF..... (great work on the tornado btw, REAAAAALLY well balaned and fun...)


So, tl:dr

**** you, read that **** i wrote and demand ccp to finally introduce long range tackle of some sort, and the associated (re)introduction of essential mechanics.

the weakest dps of all turrets?
falloff mechanics?
longest reload of all turrets?

As a brainstorm idea:
Beam lasers should have [a lot] more DPS than appropriate pulse variants, while range and tracking proportion should remain mostly as it is now. It would give an interesting and unique flavour to lasers - you dont choose between DPS and range, you get both. But fitting them would be a nightmare, and dont forget a cap-booster to actually shoot them.

Nothing matters in large fleet engagements except EHP and DPS, so taking them as a metric, we should all just be flying dreads and titans anyway.. (who knows, atm we are heading there..)

Sure you mentioned the gallente recons, can can longpoint to some 65 km effectively. BUT, remember how ONLY Gallente have that? Only two fully dedicated ships non the less? Does that seem balanced to you?

And what about ranges above 70 km? or even 100 km?

Furthermore, bubbles? Sure, if youre a nullbear and get off at sniping pods, bubbles are your friend, but lets just cut the crap here. bubbles were meant to hinder fleet movements, not to set up ****** gatecamps all over null.

Which again brings me to my initial conclusion, without adequate long range tackling, long range has no practical use over short range drps and full tackle.

Other maybe than a one hit one gank tornado.


What I am advocating for is not a 100km warp scrambler, but a way to to make a fight happen at longer range. Matter of fact I'd much rather see warp drives that needed time to spool up or something, and/or points that dont hold tackle indefinately but rather give people the option to either commit to a fight or dedicate everything to escaping.

You know, no more ****** ganks everywhere, but a serious trade-off for both the attacker and the attacked, where their actions can determine the outcome, instead of it being decided long before they enter a situation.

Are you trolling me?


Yes you are.


For even longer points - use warfare links.
And yes, it seems balanced to me. Because of a falcon, if you know what I mean. But there are not only 2 dedicated tacklers. I mentioned about ceptors as well and told you not to under-estimate them. And bubblers - they are still tacklers despite your despite.


They do happen at longer range. Deal with it.


Crappiest BS I've read on this forum in a while. Please consider revising.

As for lasers having no standout stat, that is pretty much wrong, laser optimal is amazing and it makes a big difference andto say that lasers have no other stand out stats also cuts both ways. Yeah lasers don't have anything that grabs your attention right away but there is also no glaring weakness aside from maybe falloff which is largely mitigated by carrying the right crystals and zero reload and cap usage. This is exactly why the cap usage bonus should not be rolled into the weapons themselves. Doing so would make only the falloff an issue at all and you then run the risk of seeing them on faster and more agile ships because they're optimal makes their projection fantastic.

Laser tracking is the worst of the short range guns?

It better be. Having the longest optimal by a considerable amount means that when fighting at optimal transversal is less of a factor because your speed has to be that much higher to get your transversal up, so they should track the worst of the short range guns, but make no mistake finishing 3rd in this regard does not translate to bad.

Laser falloff is bad?

Yeah ok, it is. Lasers have zero reload time though so try this. Fly with Conflag, Scorch and Imp Navy Multifrequency as is commonly seen. Now add to that a set of T1 standard and radio and here's why. Your bad falloff can mean that an enemy can sit out of range of conflag/multifreqency and close enough that scorch does not land well (~15km) you will apply damage better with standard at that range not that you'd set up your ship for it but it can be forced on you sometimes. Radio has the same range as scorch, so you take it because it doesn't suffer the tracking penalty. While at that range tracking is not so big an issue but radio for me has tracked a target that scorch could not when tracking disrupted. You can faction these crystal sets if you want to but as they are not cheap and you don't really want to use them, they are to make the most out of a sub-optimal situation T1 sets can work out fine.

Cap usage?

Training and the typically superior capacitor on Amarr ships goes a long way to mitigating this as a problem. At this point I have all level 5 skills with respect to anything involving laser usage and/or capacitor and I don't even worry about it anymore. On any ship where I have more than lasers and MWD/point I will always be cap injecting anyway. Yeah you might need to pay attention to your cap but that's not a huge drawback and the desire to die on 40% cap with no injector by never using your cap always strikes me as odd. That's more just me but cap usage never causes me to shy away though my SP may give me an advantage in this regard.

Damage?

As Fozzie said, nothing lacking here and very little to explain.

Projection?

Nothing short of fantastic. Tell your friends because it is worth writing home about.

Basically, while many of the stats on lasers look mediocre and in gun terms they look a bit like the jack-of-all-trades you need to remember that a jack-of-all-trades may be master of none but there are still a lot of situations in which he is effective. As an overall package I like lasers a lot and the more SP I accumulate the more I like the

it may get that range but it barely scratches ships compaired to medium long range lazor dps

People fit AC on their ship when they don't care about their weapon. And you cannot avoid a weapon taking this place. If AC have this place, it's because of easy fitting and no cap use, which make them the most basic weapon you can find. There will always be an easiest weapon to fit, and there will always be a lowest cap cost weapon. But on unbonused hull, AC are worse than almost anything else : even dual150mm railguns have the same dps at 4km than 220mm AC, and Quad Light Beam Laser have more dps at all range and almost the same tracking. So there it is : AC only have their low fitting cost and no cap use, because the second you want something more than the cheapest garbage, you're better with a real weapon, but that come with a cost.