Player Features and Ideas Discussion

first

good start,but :
Not enough with the battleship guns. Currently the massive cap need for these guns is keeping amarr battleships from being used again. Amarr already suffer from having completely predictable and easy to tank damage types ("they are forming a-hacs? just tank em/thermal, gg we win").

But the battleship guns cap need almost make amarr concepts unviable. I know that a lot of people have always mentioned how the amarr are at a disadvantage because most of their ships are missing a bonus (10% reduction in cap need for guns, where instead they could have a useful bonus like every other ship in every other race). The truth of the matter is, you just can't run an Amarr concept without that bonus, unless you make serious fitting decisions to reduce the cap need of your guns.

The most popular amarr concepts of the past 3 years have been Zealots, Abaddons, and Armageddons. Zealots and Armageddons both get a -10% reduction in cap need for guns, and even then, I can tell you from personal experience that the Armageddon still ran out of cap boosters quite quickly in any fight lasting longer than 5-10 minutes. Then you have the Abaddon, for which the most successful iteration of this concept had to use TWO TECH 2 RIGS just to make the guns cap need managable, and make the ship last more than 5 minutes.

[Abaddon, PL hellcat]
1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Armor Kinetic Hardener II
Armor Explosive Hardener II
Damage Control II
Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II

Prototype 100MN Microwarpdrive
Heavy Capacitor Booster II, Cap Booster 800
Tracking Computer II, Optimal Range Script
Tracking Computer II, Optimal Range Script

Mega Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency L

Large Anti-EM Pump I
Large Energy Discharge Elutriation II
Large Energy Discharge Elutriation II



Without the rigs, the Abaddon just eats through cap boosters in 5 minutes or less, turning the abaddon into a small gang ship at best. There are times when the ship would work without the two gun rigs, but usually it was just because alliances or FC's were using it inefficiently and not firing their guns all the time.

The fact of the matter is, there is a huge upswing in cap need for all BS sized modules compared to cruiser sized modules. Look at the difference between a 10mn microwarp drive and 100mn micro warpdrive. The 10mn MWD takes 13.5 cap per second, while the 100mn MWD takes 54.1 cap per second. Most BS get double the cap recharge rate of their cruiser cousins, but many BS modules take 3-5x the amount of cap as cruiser modules.

The main point is, the abaddon shouldn't need two rigs dedicated to reducing their gun's cap need just to last more than 5 minutes in a battle (including cap boosters). It's terribly unbalanced and it's part of the reason people have stopped using hellcats.


Bump.

To update this I'm going to point out the problem with Amarr battleship guns using more numbers and maths.

Using all level 5 skills, a Neutron blaster II uses 2.2 cap per second (shooting antimatter), while a Mega Pulse Laser II (shooting multifrequency) uses 6.5 cap per second. That's essentially 3x as much. With the proposed 10% reduction in cap use, they will be using 5.85 cap per second. On an abaddon, a full rack of pulse lasers shooting either multifrequency or scorch (the only two crystals they use) will still take up 46 cap per second after the proposed changes. Shooting just it's guns, WITH NO OTHER MODULES ON. If that Abaddon has an MWD fit (giving it a -25% reduction in cap, a standard fitting choice though) the cap on that abaddon will last for 3 minutes 14 seconds. How long does it last now? 2 minute and 42 seconds. Congratulations, you have given a ship 35 extra seconds of just using it's guns, not counting any other active modules.

The cap requirements for amarr battleship guns are absurd, and are not fixable by just a 10% reduction in pulse lasers. The change needs to be significant. A realistic change would be bringing the cap requirement for mega pulse lasers down to just above double the neutron blaster requirement (which would take up 4.4 cap per second with all level 5 skills instead of 6.5 cap per second). If i'm correct, that means bringing the base cap requirement for pulse lasers down from 40 to 25 cap, or a 37.5% reduction. I know that sounds like a massive reduction, but the amount of cap used is still huge, as with a rack of 8 guns, it still will take 35 cap per second to just run it's guns, which is a good bit more than it's natural recharge. But at least, with decent cap booster management you can fight for longer than 5 minutes.

tl;dr:

To sum up both posts. The cap requirement changes for battleship sized lasers are pathetic and don't do anything. Amarr battleships suck because they either need a -10% cap reduction bonus to function(a wasted bonus, basically any ship with this bonus only gets one real bonus), or they need to make massive fitting decisions to reduce cap need for their guns. Specifically I'm focusing on pulse lasers, as they are the most used guns for Amarr. You need to have a significant reduction in the cap need for Pulse lasers, 37.5% is my recommendation, because it brings mega pulse lasers to just above double the cap requirement of Neutron blasters, which is their closest cousin. Anything less than 35% is basica

This is awesome :D

Way less cap need? bring on the abaddons!

Rise!. I love you (not as much as Fozzie though). Marry me or else...

*cheekily*

Maybe 15% bonus on powergrid reduction for Tachyons?

FOZZIE? FOZZIE?!

:Smug:

Medium and small beams are still not at all viable

(Mainly because scorch is lol though)

LIKE!!!

What about medium railguns ? :-(

Given that I am arguing seperate points in my singular reply, I can see your confusion.

This is an excellent place to start testing, to see if any further tweaking (on an individual basis) is necessary, and dovetails nicely with the laser fitting tweaks for mediums size already introduced. Hopefully it will be on the test server soonish.

I know you are trying to take care not to make lasers easily mountable on other hulls, so this may get a bit delicate (I also appreciate that a Tach fit on anything other than an Oracle is supposed to be an all or nothing thing).