Player Features and Ideas Discussion

removing just 1 turret would hardly be a nerf because ppl would start to get smart and fit a neut there actually improving the ship
removing 1 high would be a different story but still not enough.

imho keep the old mobility/speed give all the attack bc 6 high 6 turret and ofc reduce the fittings since they would have 2 less gun to fit. after that give them 1 extra low or med to compensate the loss of highs

this way the would still have plenty of dps and damage projection for a Medium hull and the mobility/speed for solo or small roaming and they wont mess so bad with the BSs on the heavy hitters role

Generally speaking, if I have a concern about Attack BC's, it is their ability to kill smaller targets rather than their ability to stay alive. They are fragile ships already, that didn't strike me as much of an issue.

The larger balance concern I have is trying to close in on one of them while flying a cruiser or frigate and wondering if I'm going to survive the first volley...

How about a role penalty to reduce the effectiveness of their large turrets against smaller classes?

Also, why does the Talos get drones when none of the others do?

To me it looks like the naga is working as intended. I've been the guy in the caracal who was almost instantly vaporized and I have no problem with this. It's just life in new eden.

Don't forget that battleships are due to have major rebalance and reevaluation soon. Personally I hope that battleships become dps monsters with huge ehp. It will make them useful again, the answer is not to nerf what already works well but to improve battleships to the point that they make an equally attractive choice prior to undock. When that happens we will have balance.

I may be wrong but im confident that TRACKING and projected damage contribute most to Talos success. Tracking on said vessel is noticeably superior to all attack battlecruisers. There were situations where I was not able to track certain vessels with the second most effective attack battlecruiser solo (Oracle). Even a Tornado has bad tracking comparatively.

Drones dont help much when a frigate disables you. In fact drones explode quickly.

In fact when I start engaging a large group of frigates I do at 50 - 70,000m when possible. Outside the locking range of most frigates and a good counter to engaging tracking disruptor and sensor dampener on said vessels.

The damage to non-signature radius bonused vessels is noticeable and frigates often pop.


- killz

No, that was me politely trying not to make fun of you for telling me that losing a few km off your joke of a fit really doesn't matter and that maybe, just maybe your fit is trash, mostly because the whole 100mn AB all the thing is laughable. The ship has the 5km worth of range to give up, with ease, you're choosing not to.

The issue starts with how their speed combines with BS guns and how that combination stacks up against their cruiser counterparts. Their speed with a few cycles of heat allows you to kite almost anything and match transversal or pull enough range transversal becomes insignificant on just about anything smaller than you. Cruisers down may have some small advantages in some areas, but its really not enough to set them apart.

However, i'm not entirely convinced their ability to project damage is 100% of the issue or if it also ties in with how is how cruiser down long-range platforms struggle. Large guns seem to be fine because they can overcome tracking issues with range, while small guns go on ships that can negate some of the tracking issues with speed. Medium guns for the most part are just kind of bad. With close range ammo, you're better off just using close range guns and with long range ammo you either pick between doing no DPS or struggling to track.

Ammo
A short range ABC fleet wins the midgame and ranged damage projection battle in almost any configuration. Note, I want to focus on the damage projection aspect, not EHP or agility since those will likely be tweaked some. T1 long range ammo for medium guns on anything other than Minmatar just kind of underperforms, I don't know if its that the way the DPS scales is so low or what. T1 medium range ammo is decent, but the long range ammo is just kind of bad to the point that an ABC hitting at almost optimal+50% falloff is doing more damage than your perfect hits.

Sure, there is the sig radius difference, but anything close either has it's MWD off so no transversal or has it's MWD on and has a huge sig.

Next, theres the T2 ammo, which has such a bad tracking penalty that even on bonused ships it struggles to justify itself against an ABC. For example, 1400 Arty Nado with 1 TE and tracking ammo gets very similar range and tracking as a Munnin with two TEs shooting Tremor (a ship with bonuses to optimal and tracking) and still manages to have enough DPS advantage that even if you get a bad hit due to sig, you're either hitting just as hard or doing more damage anyways.

Fitting
There really isn't enough grid to ever use the largest size, long range, medium guns, and if you can fit them you're forced into a glass cannon, fitting mod-laden fit that suffers even more from having a weak tank than the ABCs do. The smaller size, medium guns are just kind of bad despite reduced fitting.

tl:dr ABCs are generally fast enough to overcome the large gun issue. An ABC in long range or short range configuration is better or at least competitive than most long range cruisers. Yes, I know there are certain hard counters that work, but for the most part smaller ships struggle due to medium gun limitations when fighting ABCs which are helped by oversized guns which seem to lack much handicap. Getting tackle, I don't see as that huge of a deal when catching a solo or a small gang of ABCs is doable, and in large engagements you're losing not due to tackle but due to damage projection.

I see a lot of this of this changing with Fozzie's faction cruiser pass, but i'm unsure if having a handful of cruisers that can fight ABCs, is a band aid or if it fixes some of the more glaring issues with the Cruiser-down vs ABC matchup as a whole.

Tornado: .01478
Munnin: .01121

Sig is 400 and 125 respectively, but like I mentioned earlier in the post, at longer ranges either they have their MWD on trying to catch you and keep transversal so they have a huge sig or the MWD is off and they don't have enough transversal for sig to really matter much, so anything a Munnin can hit at the limits of it's range a Tornado can do just about as well. Obviously a 1400 Nado won't outperform a Muninn at close-mid range, which I'm not sure comparing an AHAC was fair, I was trying to point out how cruiser sized ranged guns lose the matchup against ABCs and generally get outclassed against ABCs in almost every category.

Basically, in regards to the ABC's ability to fight cruisers, long range cruisers can't really hold up against ABCs and have nothing in their favour that would allow them to at least put up a decent fight against ABCs.

Think of it from the cruiser perspective. If i'm in a gang of cruisers, it doesn't matter if i'm fighting long range or close range ABCs, i'm not really competitive. I was suggesting that there could be another side of the coin in addressing the problem of ABCs being too strong could also partially be that long range cruisers are too weak due to their weapon systems and ammo.

Obviously, power creep is a bad thing, but in the context of tiercide and making things with glaring faults useful, it's food for thought at least.

1400 Tornado with tracking ammo tracks better than a Muninn with Tremor, which is what I said the inital post that you quoted. I'm not saying anywhere that the 1400 Tornado can do the same things a Muninn can, nor am I saying they provide the same role in your fleet.
They're two very different ships.

I'm talking about how cruisers get dumpstered by ABCs in almost every way.

Short range cruisers die to close range and long range ABCs. This makes sense.
Long range cruisers die to long range ABCs. This makes sense as well.
Long range cruisers engaging at any range but their max using non-t2 ammo don't even stand a chance against close range ABCs, because with the exception of a couple combinations, they're terrible.
Long range cruisers engaging at max range using T2 range ammo can do ok against close range ABCs, but if you're engaging at that range a long range ABC would probably be more effective.

Effectively you need to divide the tracking value by the weapon signature if you want to compare them. Munin stil ltracks like 3 times better effectively.