Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Firstly, I think the nag change is lazy. How hard can it be to change a missile hardpoint into a turret hardpoint?

A more important point though is the order of ship balancing. The phoenix is in a worse position than the nag right now because it can't be used to counter battleship fleets (which every other dread can). The phoenix really needs some attention (for example the tracking enhancer affecting missiles).

On an unrelated point, why do dreads do more damage than titans? It's ridiculous when you think about it. Give one of them higher damage and very long lock times (or 1 locked target maximum) and give the other more tracking, more targets but less damage.

Lol, I can see that happening. But again, with the relatively short hop for any alpha mael pilot to get into an alpha nag and with as much isk as some null coalitions have, what happens when they drop a whole alphafleet of 150+ Arty Nags? Goons or Test certainly could. Then you're getting close to the nags being able to 1-2 shot supers and titans. Even if you DD a quarter of them off the field the Titans are then stuck there for 10 minutes while the remaining nags fire off 10million damage alphas every 15 seconds.

I'm not a fan of the blob but this seems like a scary and effective tactic for the groups with the numbers and isk.

Well I wasn't talking about the Ferox. I'll get to it later maybe. I was talking about the Cormorant. And to a lesser extent the Harpy and the missile boats getting 10% range bonuses.

Rails and missiles are already the most range blessed weapon systems. So piling 10% range bonuses on top of them means that the other weapon systems are locked out of a sniping role. About the only thing to challenge is the Apoc, with its 7.5% range bonus. But at the Frigate and Destroyer classes these bonuses and on top of the longest range weapons means that one should not even bother fitting a sniper beam laser frig or dessy, ditto a sniper gallente frig or dessy. If your best practicle range is going to be half that of a comparable caldari range bonused ship then the whole role has been granted to one race.

Now one could say, but what about the short range melt face role? Are Caldari locked out of that? No, and with the very ships that get those range bonuses. So for instance a blaster corm is not a fail fit as any atempt to have a sniper Coercer or Catalyst would be. Anyone who flies destroyers in FW knows that sniper corms simply have no competitor. One can arty fit Thrashers for alpha strike, but the range is actually quite limited. A blaster Harpy or blaster Corm rocket kestrels or Merlins etc are not unheard of. But do you see beam Retributions or Coercers sitting 80-100 off a warp-in beacon and simply killing everything as those other ships try to burn out to them? No.

That is my problem with the 10% range bonuses CCP gives Caldari ships. These are already the longest range weapons. It creates role exclusivity. Not only that though but as I pointed out those bonuses actually aid viable short range weapon systems on Caldari ships. Now it might not be so bad if some range bonuses were distributed to other races as well. Then while Caldari might be the best at it, they would not be so far out in front as to make it ludicrous to try to fit other races of ships for that role.

Ferox, hmm. Well aside from medium sized long range guns simply sucking (i.e. it's not just medium rails, although of course the alpha on 720 arty can find it's uses) Feroxes will probably see more use than the old or the new Harby.

And finally, it has always irked me that the damn laser is not the turret weapon system with the best range. Presumably all the turrets are using similar mechanical, magnetic, or whatever rotation and aiming devises. Forget espionage, such technology would not stay secret very long after a few wrecks were examined. But the computing power translation to turret rotation and attitude v the motion and ability of the target to change course would seem to me to not be the limiting factor on turret range(acuracy at range). It would be the speed of the damage mechanism to target before a change in motion. The desription for hybrid rails has always made me laugh - "Railguns use magnetic rails to fire solid chunks of matter at hypersonic speed" Hypersonic? This is frickin space. Nothing is going to reach its target faster than the speed of light which coincidentally is a laser I do believe.

edit- unless you attach a whole warp engine to a warhead. And if you could do that then who needs a ship puttering about at sublight speeds at a gate or in a belt, heh

So there you have it. My reasons why the Caldari 10% range bonuses are overkill. Will they ever be changed? Probably not soon enough to make the game better. At this time not enough people are pissed off over the role exclusivity for Caldari, the role lockout for the other 3 races, and the concurrent contrary (close range) role ability for the Caldari ships even as the other 3 races can't access the role reserved to the Caldari ships. But if I post this enough, maybe some day enough people will realize just how bad this game design is. And it will change.

Thanks for the reply. I don't really have many strong feelings on it, except that in general if there is a problem, then it's with specific ships (Cormorant?) rather than the 10% bonus as a whole. It may also be a problem restricted to artificial scenarios such as FW warp-in beacons, but if so that's a problem trivially countered by ewar. Certainly there's nothing wrong with the Ferox, Naga or Rokh having optimal bonuses, IMO.

why do you define anything less than Caldari Gunship engagement ranges as something that doesn't count as sniping? Sure, a beam Coercer can't hit out to 100km, but it can sure hit out to 50km and is a damn sight more competitive at closer ranges than the Corm is. Talwars and Coraxes with LMs can hit out to 60km. Why does that not count? Is that not enough? Close-range Frigate-sized weapon systems are normally lucky to hit out to 20km (pretty much limited to range-bonused pulse lasers).


Ranged combat is not a Caldari gunship trait. Of course, Caldari can snipe at longer ranges than other races can, but that's not role exclusivity, that's just a benefit of flying Caldari. It's like complaining that you want to have an alpha-oriented fleet without using Minmatar ships.

If you're referring to the Apoc's 7.5% bonus, well, when people flew sniper BS they normally flew Apocs instead of Rokhs, because the 7.5% bonus meant that the Apoc did more damage at the selected range. That left the Rokh without a role entirely...

What could I do in order to have the Rifter receive an extra +1 or +2 GJ/s cap recharge? :3

Beam lasers do significantly better DPS and have significantly better tracking than rails, and ammo can be swapped instantly. Fast tackle trying to get in range of a pack of coercers would be vaporized really, really fast.


With no damage or range mods, a Coercer with SFBL and Aurora has 40.5 + 5km range, 126 DPS, and 33% superior tracking to a 150mm Corm which has 105 DPS at 73km range. The corm gets a modest increase in range in exchange for a modest decrease in damage and tracking.

I fail to see the imbalance or exclusivity here.

Well I already answered this in my previous post. I'm not seeing cercers being used this way though. They are usually pulse fit and brawling.

If you think 40.5km (maybe 50km with some range mods) optimal is sufficient to use a group of coercers to kite other and probably faster ships in a similar manner as a group of 100km cormorants then have at it. I think you will find that that 50km differnce has a huge practical effect on the length of time you can engage in the tactic, or even survive with it.

All you need is the dread skill to fly a fine phoenix, but I would consider the uselessness of that sp is a fair trade for a fixed naglfar.