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pretty much. time for some re-evaluation of hybrid ammo, ships, and their bonuses.

honestly, i would be happy if blasters didnt even exist, and if railguns resembled a cross between autocannons and current iteration of rails - high range, high rof, high tracking, low alpha. on top of this, slight drone improvements. and there...a new gallente.

as a few others stated, i dont think CCP has the balls to bring about sweeping changes to hybrids (which are desperately needed). this means re-inventing ships, nerfing autocannons, etc. it's a very complex problem and i hope theyre beginning to realize this occurred only because they allowed the game to regress into derping with dramiels, drakes and canes.

i appreciate that you, along with many others, trained all other races. but it's not "oh well"....some of us would like to fly gallente ships in pvp without getting laughed at.

OP did not really articulate WHY blasters are bab and armor active tank needs to be fundamentally readressed. Here is my understanding of the issues, in case anyone (cough CCP Tallest cough) were oblivious to the matter(s) at hand:

First, a note: Eve was a very different game when it was first made, and so blasters and active tank being bad is the byproduct of years of systematic changes that have frowned on them.

1. the change in NOS mechanics meant that utility highs do not lead to the cap necesary for active tanking if you run one and pushed more people to neuts, which make it so people's cap gets ****** harder than they did years ago and when people utilize a neut over a nos they are damaging their own cap. less cap in the modern pvp environment means less viable active tanking.

2. While triple-rep myrmidons and hyperions are viable, people generally prefer their myrms with no guns or at least no blasters, and prefer their hyperions shield tanked. This says something about active armor tanking: it could be good, and some people understand the terror of such ships, but active tanking is like hybrids in general: the game devs treat it like its epic and uber and make it hard to fit, while buffer is easier to fit and often gives you better statistical survivability.
a. Active tanking in general needs a buff to make it worthwhile at all for small fights, and it will still struggle for the reason listed above (#1), it still will not be viable for fleet fights, etc. If we want to maintain ship diversity active tanking needs to be buffed with small-gang PvP as the target audience.
b. Ships with active armor bonuses, namely the Hyperion, need better resists. More resists would make the active tank on the hyperion better and also increase its EHP, giving it more leeway to have its tank overcome in small-scale fighting. Moreover, the hyperion would be better suited to fleet warfare with a buffer fitted, while still failing to out-buffer the abaddon.
c. Buffers inherently give better surviability (in terms of seconds) if you are taking ridiculous DPS and epicly better if receiving reps in all but the smallest fights. I do not think we should fight this. We should make it so active tank ships are uber for small fights, in the interest of maintaining ship diversity. In my humble opinion, we should NOT extend the active rep bonus to incoming reps...
d. ...but should instead buff active tanking with smaller-scale fighting in mind while making the Gallente ship-line in general more viable for big fights. It should be a shipline built ground-up for being a DPS-whoring ******* on lowsec gates and stations, while having enough viability for big fleet fights to not be gimped while also not trying to take turf away from already existing powerful ships. If we attempt to make it too similar to either minmatar or amarr, then game balance will be reduced to simple statements of which are better or worse. If guns and ships are too similar, one will always become strictly inferior or superior. Ships need to we weird and diverse for underdogs to have a place in the game. I think this attitude is most important for addressing active tanking than anything else.
e. it is just downright excessive to make armor reps cycle at the end not the beginning... that's just insult on top of injury.

3. Nano nerf ****** blasters for small gang/solo. The end.

Sadly this is true. However much I may use blasters, I limit them to three ships: Proteus, Vindicator, and Moros.

Off topic: Rail fix is easy, simply change warpable distance to 250 or 300 km. Problem solved.

I like ship diversity, so i like the dps idea. sadly, right now, you need vigilant/vindicator damage bonuses plus bonused webs to be effective. I think all blasters should be made scarier, and those two ships should have smaller bonuses, rather than being virtually the only effective medium and large blasters ships. (that's an overstatement, I know, but you get the point)

There are some decent points made above - specifically with respect to how fleet fights tend to favour range set ups, passive or buffer tanking and the changes to nos set ups back in the day.

Something i havej not seen suggested ( beyond applying new bonuses to gallente ships ) is applying new bonuses to the ammunition itself..

For example has any consideration been given to hybrid ammo slowing a target as it applies damage? Or inflicting damage to a targets capacitor pool? There are alternatives to just adding more dps/range.

C.

Mate I do understand and would love to fly blaster ships too. But this has been an issue for years and I just don't have any faith in CCP.

Im no expert, but the more people write about this, I think ultimately the simple fixes are the best. Other fixes, which might be better, are just going to be too complicated for CCP to implement. So, a summary of the simple ideas that will help are:

1. Increase blaster damage and tracking to obscene levels. + 50% at least.
2. Increase speed on all Gallente boats. They have to be the fastest (or close to) if they have the shortest range.

It doesnt fix our tanking or drone issues, but it makes our ships feared again, at least in their limited roles. No one will want to get close and if they do, they will be sure to pay. Its something at least.

Giving gallente a FAST specialized web drone that is actually useful may be helpful too. If we have good blaster damage, we can spare drones for projecting a web...

Personally I think the Gallente should be reworked into closerange combat monsters-- their ships' gimmicks should get bonuses to afterburners (let them do MWD-speeds with ABs so they're effectively scram-immune), scram range (already a thing with their recons), and web strength. Make them fall somewhere between Minmatar and the other races in terms of absolute speed, but with great agility and let them do it with ABs to they can go into fights at close range while maintaining some degree of GTFO factor.

Also, increase blaster dps so that it scales in proportion to the amount of range they give up. Currently Caldari have long range, capless weapons, but they don't do too much dps and they take time to hit a target, Amarr have long range weapons that sacrifice some DPS and cap use for great range, good tracking, instant-hit and fast reloads. Minmatar have mid-ranged weapons that have ****** reload times and pretty high dps, excellent tracking, damage selection, good effective range, and don't use cap. Gallente are stuck with cap-sucking weapons (less so now, I know) that track a lot like autocannons but do about the same dps with massively gimped range and with limited damage types and terrible reload times.

Caldari: ranged, medium dps, flexible damage / target applications (equivalent of tracking)
Amarr: long-ranged, medium dps, fixed damage types, good tracking
Minmatar: medium-ranged, high dps, flexible damage types, excellent tracking
Gallente: ultra-short ranged, marginally higher dps than ACs, similar tracking

I do mostly small gang work, so here's an example of ship selections I actually choose between on a daily basis that I think exhibits the problem pretty clearly (numbers are approximate and based on my eveguy with LG snakes and shieldtanked, nano fittings [since armor fits are more or less suicidal]):

- Cynabal: 20-30km optimal engagement range, ~350 dps in that range band, 3.1+ km/s, super agile, will track frigates and larger, fits a nice tank (all around fantastic skirmish ship), fights outside scram range
- Navy Omen: 20-30km optimal engagement range (scorch), ~450 dps, 2.4km/s, fairly agile, tracks frigates and larger, fights outside scram range
- Machariel: 20-45km optimal engagement range, ~600-800 dps in that band, 2.4km/s, cruiser-level agility, tracks cruisers and larger (will kill frigates outside ~30km as well), fights outside scram range
Pulse apoc: 30-90km optimal engagement range, ~450 dps, slow, fairly fat, tracks cruisers and larger and doesn't need speed / agility since it can snipe, fights out of tackle range period

...and then we have blaster boats:

- Vigilant: 5-10km optimal engagement range, ~300-600 dps in that band, 2.6km/s, super agile, will track frigates and larger, extremely low EHP (~18k total-- 4k ehp less than a Vaga, ~10k less than a Cynabal), fights in scram range
Vindicator: 5-15km optimal engagement range, ~550-900 dps in that band, ~2km/s BC/nano-BS like agility, tracks cruisers and larger, fights in scram range

I'm not even gonna talk about other blaster boats since the Vindicator and Vigilant are pretty much better than them in every way. As you can see, in terms of usefulness, there is literally no reason other than novelty value that one would ever choose to fly a blaster boat. With the exception of absurdly well-fit active tanked gimmick ships (the deasdspace-fit, dual-rep injected vindicator, deadspace-fit 100mn AB strat-cruiser fits, etc) slow, armor tanked setups are near-suicidal due to their lack of speed / inability to disengage from fights. Only shield / nano fittings give blasterboats the speed and agility they need to get *into* an engagement properly (though not the ability to get out if it goes south), and to achieve these levels of speed and agility they must sacrifice nearly all their tank or their ability to tackle (sometimes both-- look at the Deimos). Then there's the fact that all these blaster setups need to engage inside scram range, which means that in all but the most controlled situations (say, a small gang with ECM support engaging a lone hostile ship) you're pretty likely to get tackled and die horribly.

In contrast, look at Minmatar ships. Minmatar ships trade a little bit of dps (10-15%) in exchange for greater speed, greater agility, bigger tanks, slot layouts that favor usable setups, capless weapons, what equates to "the same or better" tracking when you consider the different optimal ranges of autocannons, and, most importantly, the ability to do full damage from outside scram and web range (or in the case of the Mach, outside tackle range of any non-recon ship). The comparison between the Mach and the Vindicator is particularly instructive-- when you look at the fits I usually fly (which involve using one highslot for a utility module), the Vindicator actually does *less* dps than the Mach (with 8 guns it only does a hair more-- ~1050 dps as opposed to the Mach's 900-something), has drastically shorter range (it can't do much dps past ~20km), has to fight in scram range, fits a smaller tank, has worse scan res, and is about half as fast / agile. The slightly increased damage output is simply not worth the massive risk increase of having to fight in scram range in a slow, fat ship.

remember mimatar ships do half the dps when in falloff range.

I'm not saying blasters don't need more damage, but it needs t be balanced with range and speed mechanics.