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Hello

would it not be cool if blasters had a small splash dmg ? similar to shotguns.

this would give them advantage over smaller ships/drones

Arty megathrons out dps rail megathrons (yes they loose all bonus but they do more dps, go figure)

425mm Brutix kicks ass (shield is far better)

The ones I've tested and are clearly better, In brutix case is the ability to apply dmg from far distances and select dmg that makes it better than blaster option, but for gank mackinaws sure go with blasters.


Edit: also 425mm AC Myrmidon kicks ass and you should try the shield brutix with rails+AM full lows of TE's MFS's, of course the armor rep is very useful on a better ship with shield tank than armor

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CCP, if this is the case, you really need to wake up. hybrids need either a serious buff (10x what youre doing now), or a complete revamp.

This.

And, why do we need the penalties at all? Energy grid rigs don't come with a penalty.

Currently ships with bonus for active tank is at a disadvantage due to the massive dps people can dish out with ease thx to tier 2 battlecruisers and a massive influx of players the last few years.
In my opinion it is long overdue to boost the hitpoints repaired for all shield boosters and armor repairers. Today you will have to use a serious amount of pricey modules and make sure to only fight very few ships at a time. And then you also have to be carefull about neutralizing which has become rather common :-)

I believe the active tank bonus is the main reason people are not using Hyperion a lot for pvp. The Maelstroms are used as alphaships in 0.0 warfare and only rarely used as intended in lowsec and for otherwise only for carebearing.

Also the poor performance is why super capitals neglect the capital reppers and get an insane RR-tank instead...

If anything, I take this as a call to reduce the remote repair power of Logistics and Non-Triaged Capital ships! Individual tanks cannot and should not scale with incoming DPS, as it would be game breaking... though I wouldn't mind seeing the repair potential of Logistics and Carriers/Super Carriers (non Triage) pulled back a little to increase more pew pew, death, and destruction while encouraging less turtle tactics.

Using a dedicated "healer" or "repairer" is a force multiplier, allowing for more EHP and the ability to repair faster. For those who understand resistances over raw hitpoints, some truly nasty combinations can be fielded which makes for a very challenging time to kill even a single hostile ship (see Hellcat configuration for Abaddons).

Gallente/Minmatar both lends themselves to active tanks, while Amarr/Caldari lend themselves to passive tanks. Is it no wonder why the latter two are better fleet ships? If Caldari weren't so married to missiles and/or hybrids weren't as gimp as they are, they'd be used a lot more in fleets (for now, Tengu/Drake armies are the primary fleets running Caldari). Amarr are obviously used in the AHAC and Hellcat arenas for their tanks, and Minmatar are primarily used because of their weapon system AND their ability to fit a reasonably high shield buffer tank in their high slots combined with plenty of damage/speed/range mods in the lows. Gallente don't have the slot layout or weapon system to run a fleet setup using shield buffer tanks, and when they run armor buffers their usefulness falls below that of most Caldari gunboats (drone boats being an exception with very large tanks AND very reasonable DPS, but game mechanics make Drones marginal at best for real PvP outside of empire - most notably due to pursuit and recovery time of larger drones because of their speed as well as drone size availability reductions - Eos/Myrmidon/Others? - some years back).

A "dash" bonus for blaster boats wouldn't be too bad of an option if implemented reasonably across the board (very similar to the capacitor reduction bonuses for Amarr gunboats). It accomplishes the same thing as the agility idea a few pages back, without introducing too many game breaking mechanics (like insta-align).

I'd rather see blaster boats have their weapons revamped rather than just push a massive damage multiplier, but something like you said where blaster boats have a "+15% bonus to the speed increase of MWD per level" would do rather nicely. With MWD penalties already in place via the modules, it might be interesting to hold off on a penalty and give Gallente pilots the option of having long burn with the right fits, but slower if not burning. With tracking on blasters the way it is, and generally only blaster boats receiving this bonus, Gallente will need to slow down once in their targeting envelope to land hits due to the close range of their weapon systems and the potential for traversal to play a much greater role. This would also push Gallente away from afterburner fits, and make cap stability a challenge to balance with active tanking and capacitor usage on guns.

10% of 600 is what? Not 630... lol! Also, if that is added to base damage, once bonus multipliers are added it gets even larger.

Okay....... I've actually resubbed via hours for PLEX to put a PLEX on my account to be able to post on the forums. Daft that I actually have to have an active Eve account to post on the forums after years of subs but meh...... I want in on this debate.

Right. These initial balances are a step in the right direction. A baby step but it is at least in the right direction. I also want to thank CCP for making a concerted effort and listening to the player base for feed back.

Now.... Onto balancing these damn guns!

TL;DR:-
Nerf Pulse tracking. Nerf AC damage and increase fitting reqs. Buff Blaster tracking and damage and reduce fitting costs.
Rework Ammo to be useful for something other than Damage or Range

First off. We have to accept that the whole turret system is pretty borked. Pulses and AC's work at close range and in some cases outperform Blasters because of certain problems with hulls. Pulse lasers can track far too well at close range. AC's simply deal far too much damage.
In order to fix this issue we need to give the weapons highly defined roles. To put it bluntly when talking about short range weapons only:
Pulse should be the king of "Long Range"
Blasters should be the king of "Short Range"
AC's should be the king of "Versatility"

Basically speaking in a rock paper scissor environment:
Pulse Laser boat should always try to out range it's target where it has the damage advantage.
Blaster boat should always try to get within very close range where it will out damage its target (vs AC's) and speed tank it's target (vs Pulse)
AC boat is always going to choose to out range vs Blaster or get under the guns vs Pulse in order to out damage it's target.
These weapons systems should never ever outperform another weapons system inside of that weapon's operation zone. AC's should never out DPS Blasters at close range or out DPS Pulses at long range
Pulses should never out track Blasters or AC's at close range.
However, currently some of the above is true. AC's simply do too much damage overall and Pulse lasers simply track far too well at close range. Blasters (at present) can't deal enough damage or track their targets well enough within their optimal ranges.
So:
Nerf Pulse tracking, Nerf AC damage, Buff Blaster damage and tracking.
Another problem with turrets (Hybrid & Energy) is their ammo.
It's simply too unilateral in you choose either short range hi dmg or long range low dmg. This idea basically makes 6/8ths of the ammo availible to each weapon redundent as people will always choose either close range (AM/MF) or long range (Iron/Radio). The other ammo types need to be appealing to use for different hulls and situations. To that end I would change Hybrid and Energy turret ammo's into something like this:

Multifrequency (short range EM) : Remains as is except high EM low Thermal
Gamma (short range hi RoF) : +50% RoF -50% Damage -50% optimal
X-Ray (Short Range hi tracking) : -50% optimal +10% tracking low dmg
Ultraviolet (Mid range Mid dmg) : +25% optimal
Standard (V.Low Cap Use Mid Rng) : +25% optimal -50% cap use -20% damage
Infra-red (Short rng Thermal) : As MF but with hi thermal damage
Microwave (Sniper/Alpha low RoF) : +50% dmg -50% Rof +40% optimal +15% Cap use
Radio (Extreme long range) : +60% optimal

Antimatter (Short rng Thermal) : Remains as is High Thermal low Kinetic damage
Uranium (Short rng Hi RoF) : +50% Rof -50% dmg -25% optimal -25% falloff
Plutonium (Short rng Hi tracking) : -25% optimal & falloff +10% tracking low dmg
Thorium (Hi falloff low optimal) : +50% Falloff
Lead (Hi optimal Low falloff) : +50% Optimal
Iridium (Short rng Kinetic) : As AM with hi kinetic low Thermal
Tungsten (Sniper/Alpha low RoF) : +50% dmg -50% Rof +40% optimal & falloff +15% Cap use
Iron (Extreme long range) : +60% Optimal & fall off

The idea behind this is that certain hulls will favour RoF over damage due to hull bonuses and because these weapons are locked into EM & Thermal (Lasers) and Thermal & Kinetic (Hybrids) the short range ammo at least has a bit of a choice between the two, similar to projectile ammo which has a choice between all damage types.
The idea behind the "Sniper/Alpha" ammo is to give these ships a realistic Sniper option as alpha is king in sniper roles. This won't however deal greater alpha than Arties but will have a decent volley damage.
The idea behind Hybrids getting one ammo for falloff and one ammo for optimal is because of Gallente and Caldari having the differing bonuses but using the same weapons.
**All numbers are just for example purposes and are subject to change to satisfy balancing**