Player Features and Ideas Discussion

While caldari\minmatar don't push it with the cap, her dps sucks big time till a certain skill level(setups with artis or 3 BCUs require a lot of compromises in the fitting for newer players). This counts double(or even triple back in the days, given how painful it was to fit rail setups) for gallente. The reason I know this is that I started with minmatar fluidly running L3(and some of the easier L4) in the cyclone till my first corp advised me to train into gallente, and I found any hull before the domi utterly terrible at pve(with the exception of the Incursus I loved the damn thing and there was nothing like it before you had proper skills to use a mega, myrmidon wasn't introduced, Vexor couldn't fit real guns and Brutix plus rails was impossible, even if possible still terrible). For gallente you need tons of gunnery skills, drone skills(maxed out sentrys) and still required tons of faction mods just to get around cpu problems till you look into a effective setup(and comparing 50M SP Kronos vs 10M SP Abaddon, performing quite close was hilarious).

Amarr can gank pretty good early on(I had my first slicer after 4 days and it was god damn good) making the setups run as smooth as other races takes a bit longer. Beams are hard to fit for new players, but you can gain a lot by fitting locus rigs and TCs on the hulls with puls, a lot more than other players can at this stage and a ton more later on. That's my take on it.

While I did know how to play eve as I made my amarr char, I didn't know a thing about amarr and retrospective it was pretty much straight forward, gaining basic fitting, cap and tank skill and after that starting to big thing(gunnery tree). Technically, amarr is the turret race, since most hulls are clearly defined by her turret performance(especially the T2 and T3 hulls, where you have zero drones and utilize lasers at ridiculous ranges).

A low skilled minmatar ship with artis needs to do big compromises in the fitting and got bad dps at 60km.
A low skilled caldari hull can't utilize enough painters or damage mods, resulting in bad dps at any range.
A low skilled gallente hull is utterly terrible at any range outside point blank, since it takes a ton of SP till rail + sentry platforms actually get ok results.

The grass isn't this much greener on the other side(was there done that) and 60km with to little drone skills and bad gunnery's give you crappy results with any kind of race, even if the capacitor problems can make this even a bit worse with amarr.

If you look into split weapon platforms(drone/rail/missiles) it takes a ton of sp to make this work, they are not newcomer friendly ships(I fitted medium artillery on the domi, before fitting guns on it was popular).

It is probably a good idea to invest in 2 BS for L4 early on for amarr(one beam, one puls, apoc vs abaddon comes down to personal taste after the patch, at least in my opinion), with the changes you can fit beams even with low skills and a fitting mod/rig what gives you the option to chose and learn the advantages\drawbacks before you chose your preferred "one size fits all setup". I actually prefer the tach Paladin over the puls Abaddon, not because it is vastly more effective(it is not, I actually was disappointed with my first Paladin at the start), but because you can do the same stuff with less effort(range, cap and ammo management).

Once you are at a point where you can utilize the full potential of amarr hulls, it mostly comes down to personal preference, at least in my opinion.

We may just have to agree to disagree. Using EFT with Odyssey changes and sub-level 5 fitting skills and meta 4 fits (even faction), the Phoon/Raven/Thron pilot has to face a lot less tradeoffs in fitting and cap than a pulse baddon or apoc. It gets even worse with beams that I stopped trying.

No minmitar pilot I know uses Arties for missioning, you waste too much volley damage and the RoF is too slow when pot shotting cruisers. AC's plus a prop are more effective, and yes you'll be in falloff as you're closing but choosing your damage type more than makes up for it. With Odyssey Cruises will probably be the easiest low-SP option for Min/Caldari.

Doing missions with non-Scorch pulses is not fun at all especially outside of Navy MF range and trying to fit and fire beams long enough (even with the new change) with any kind of non-buffer tank or prop is an ass ache. I think it'll turn off many new pilots from Amarr.

I think that is a pretty big logical fallacy, that you keep bringing up time after time after time. But yeah, I will explain it one more, and probably the last time, since I'm getting tiered by the way you spin around this nonsense page after page.

To use your nice worst case example:

At 60km a auto cannon hull will do zero turret damage with low skills. While most new players prefer auto cannons, they are actually doing very poorly with them(since the effective range is 20km or less, before falloff mechanics kill your dps) in combination with a slow hull like the maelstrom. Newer players are actually better off with artillery, even a corp mate didn't believe me, till I demonstrated him how to properly utilize artillery(what means fitting at least 2 tracking rigs and TCs and use the better rof of the 1200mm version to create more rail like behaviour instead wasting truckloads of dps to low tracking and to much alpha) and how much more effective dps you get with them on the target outside of pure brawling style missions like damsel. Outside of hulls like the Tornado, Vargur or Mach with falloff bonus or fast things like nanoed up Tempest auto cannons do a lot worse than puls lasers. Also beams >>> artillery big time when you want applied dps.

At 60km a rail + sentry platform will do very low dps. Because rails do less dps and track worse than puls or beams, the abaddon got more effective turrets(10 vs 9,3 and 9) and the apoc got a optimal and tracking bonus. It is impossible for any gallente hull to beat a laser hull in effective turret dps outside of point blank or at extreme high ranges(at any skill level). You need sentry's to get competitive results, the Mega don't got a slot for a drone link(reducing the sentry range to like 30-40km with low skills) while the hype can fit one, it only got 9 effective turrets and no tracking bonus, what means it scales far more with both turret and drone SP than amarr hulls do and with low skills in both areas you look a pretty poor performance overall(similar to the old rail domi).

A missile hull, while it looks good on paper will need a truckload of slots and fitting to get near to the on paper levels of dps on the target, since you need a lot of BCUs and painters or even a web to utilize the full effect of missiles. That is only doable with very good fitting, missile and tanking skills, since you need to reduce the number of tanking slots to a minimum and need good painter management. Before you got this down, you will do bad dps against most sub BS sized targets, what are the majority in most pve content. While you can reach 60km with CMs from the get go, you will not be vastly more effective at this ranges as turret hulls, before you get your sp training and fitting done.

If you frequently need dps at 60km then use beams(that are fitable without AWU on a apoc or abaddon) or utilize a workaround with locus rigs and TCs, like I did. Amarr are actually the quickest way to get some ok dps at 40-80km and even without scorch better than the other races at this with low SP, they just need a bit longer to make the rest work properly. With other races it is basically the same, just the other way around(you will tank and handle the ship more easy, your dps will be bad for longer).

If you still feel that other hulls are better, for gods sake train those I never had much issues with amarr at low sp levels, since in a fair comparison they are not much worse at low sp levels as other races and most issues come down rather to bad fittings instead of problems with amarr hulls or lasers.

I am nearly dead to read so much demagogy in your fairy tail, at listening at you we must NERF the powerful imbalanced Amarr. All is fail in what you said, because you always compare things in no fitting or/and role context, and without the drawbacks, or you just speak about the drawback that are pleasant to you.

So boring to even try to answer, you have won, let's nerf Amarr and all continue to fly Mingallente.

I'm not sure you know what a logical fallacy is but I'll respond to your weapons in kind with actual numbers instead of just making it up:

ACs - Not sure why we're focussed on the 60km number so much, most L4's spawn in the 30-40km range. Even out to 60km, yes AC's won't quite reach but that's why you have the cap to fit an MWD and have the mobility to begin with. When you can close at near 900m/s, 60km versus 40km doesn't really matter. The falloff is bad at 50km (half dps which is around 300 dps for low skill) but gets a lot better as you close with an MWD and you'll be applying near all of that damage based on the resists of the mission. The fit I just whipped up has level 3 skills and 570 turret dps out to 4.5+44km with EMP L plus drones. Minmitar would be better served to go Cruise Missile before high gunnery skills though.

Rails - Not sure where "very low dps" comes from, can you define it? Yes Rails do slightly less dps than beams, they get additional range (tracking difference doesn't matter in missions). A similarly capable Megathron level 3 fit to the AC example has 451 turret dps out to 50+60km plus drones. This is far from "very low dps" and ignores contribution from larger drone bays.

Missiles - In missions the dps on cruisers and frigates is secondary. With minimal fitting you'll be doing full dps to BS's which is what matters in L4's. A single TP for cruisers is just fine. An Odyssey level 3 Raven fit gets 495 missile dps out to 150+km with selectable damage (plus the option to add a little more dps with turrets in the utility highs). The dps gets even more silly with an Odyssey Phoon. This is by far the best choice for low SP pilots.

Beams - To fit meta 4 mega beams you need a PG mod just to fit guns at level 3 engineering. Only Arties have this tradeoff this early in fitting and they aren't used for missions but are vastly popular in alpha fleets. Ignoring fitting issues, my level 3 fit has 521 dps out to 40+37km which is nice if you don't remember that it will cap out in 2m9s just from firing guns. The fitting and cap get that much worse with a repper and forget about a prop. This is by far the worst choice for low SP pilots and will hopefully become more of an option in the laser rebalance.

Pulses - Significantly better fitting than beams but you pay for it. In order to get to a similar range as the ACs you need to use Ultraviolet which has 465 turret dps out to 35+18km and caps out after 6m47s with nothing else running. This is comparable to the AC example but you don't get to pick your damage type and you cap out far sooner especially if you run a repper or AB.

The conclusion I draw is that except for Odyssey Cruises (which I fear might be OP), they're all pretty well balanced in the range/dps/damage type arena more or less, but the Amarr options get an additional burden of fitting and huge cap issues which aren't counterbalanced by a large advantage anywhere that I can see.

I especially love that I tried contacting every member of the CSM about these issues about a month ago, and the best response I got was from the majority of them which was no response at all... the few who did respond simply said "this is too small of matter for us to deal with."

I think the geddon is a very nice compliment to the apoc myself its not very traditional amarr its more of a T2 school of making like a curse without the TD i think thats where a lot of the dislike comes from ... more the concept at a T1 level.
The abbadon is the one that loses out with nothing but a nerf to its name when its really needs more of a makeover like the Hyperion got although even the Hyperion lacks cap really but it got something out of this the abbadon and Rokh are literally untouched besides the nerf.

Personally, I actually rather like the new 'Geddon.

Can you please expand on why you think it's so good? Does the neut range really make that big a difference? How do you plan on using it differently than a Curse or Bhaalgorn currently is?

The issue I've had mostly revolves around the Apoc. I still remain unconvinced that the tracking bonus will prove effective against anything but cruiser size ships. Maybe you fight full fleets of T3s on a weekly basis, but pretty much anyone who ever used the Apoc before doesn't. It was the PvE boat. Yeah, now it has some usefulness in PvP, sweet. I in fact plan to try and use one myself.

But what it did before, it flat out doesn't do now. "I'll have to change the way I use it" is more "it's pointless now for what everyone used it for prior". So people who do have it (mission runners), have to reship, one and all.

Because a tracking bonus is less effective damage than a damage bonus (Apoc vs Abaddon), against every ship class size but cruiser.

I've never really had any issues with the new Geddon, aside from wanting to see the Navy retain it's old feel. But I believe the Apoc was changed with nullsec colored goggles on. And I don't like design direction based on only a subset of the game.

(also, anyone complaining about the geddon, is crazy. Yeah, it's a pain to not have the old lightshow Geddon, but as I celebrated, the Navy is there for that. The new Geddon is beast.)