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This goes to what CCP Ytterbium was saying with regards to blaster fittings in PvP.

The bottom line is that if Gallente ships are supposed to be faster than Caldari and Amarr ships (but not as fast as Minmatar) then their weapons should have better range than Minimatar ships. The idea that blasters must be super short range seems to be locked into your heads, and perhaps you should disabuse yourself of that notion and extend their range considerably - make them function in-between AC's and pulse lasers in terms of damage and range.

Don't mess with armour plates and agility/mass penalties when the problem lies with the weapons. The same goes for Gallente ships; they're basically fine, its the blasters themselves that are at issue. Increase their optimal a lot and their falloff a little, reduce tracking and damage a bit and see how the numbers add up. Blaster boats won't need to be as fast as Minmatar if they have better range, and I think that works better for Caldari ships too, if they want to use blasters for a change (blaster ferox is pretty decent) since they're usually slower than Gallente ships, but finally their hybrid range bonus will make up that difference.

Another thread about this? Jeez...

Stop, take a breathe. Now consider CCP will never give blasters more range or falloff, since this is just turning blasters into projectiles.

It's been stated thousands of times before, what Gallente needs is:

- Bonus to MWD on blaster boats (more speed, but cap penalty) to make those ships quickly burst into blaster range (but not kite forever)
- Un-nerf sensor dampeners so Gallente can once again negate range from kites and force them into blaster range

Don't need to change slot layout. There are enough mid-slots on all blaster boats to appropriately fit MWD + sensor dampeners. Sensor dampeners should be common sense, just like webbers on Minmatar boats, NOS/neuts on Amarr boats, target painters on Caldari missile boats... they are the modules that complement the weapon system, but currently are forgotten.

Same goes for Caldari today: ECM should be the natural way to negate close-range from enemies on a railgun boat. That's why they are mid-slot modules: to compete with shield tanking. The problem is that ECM got nerfed so hard back in the day that now it's just a niche tactic. Ironically, today you see more use of ECM drones since they work without requiring a ship bonus, which only 3-4 ships have in the game today (when all rail platforms should get a ECM bonus one way or another).

That's all.

If Blasters were as long range as Autos, how are you ever supposed to be able to kite a blaster ship? It's impossible to kite Caldari and only possible on Amarr with bonuses. Gallente is the one race reliably kitable, but at the same time the one race you don't want to get close to, or you pretty well instadie.

You have a lot of tank and a lot of damage, you should have problems getting into range of your weapons, or Gallente would be very op'd.

Um, no, he doesn't and neither do you. Considering damage mods are low slot items Gallente ships have either a lot of tank or a lot of damage. And by a lot, it's just average compared to ships in the other factions. And on top of that Gallente is slow as crap, and has more fitting issues than most. And to top it all off it's possible to fly Caldari with range and tank or Minmatar with damage and tank and speed.

Considering rails are supposed to be the longest of the long range weapons, it seems really weird that blasters are the shortest of the short when the other weapons systems line up in the order of their long-range counterparts.

so you're saying you want all ships to be like minmatar? go away, that's not what we sunk SPs into gallente for... we invested in gallente because we wanted unholy blaster DPS and aggressive point-blank range slugging. we signed up to be flying ships with a weakness to kiters. so, tbh, don't go saying that should change when what we need is a good reason to fly the ships and run that risk, not the removal of that risk. we also need better fleet viability and active-armor bonused ships that are easier to make effective. ie, we need blasters to just **** harder and be easier to fit, rails that are better for fleets, uber agility wouldn't hurt tbh, and then the active armor ships are a complicated question... frankly, we may have to wait for the hybrid buff, see what it does, and THEN start talking about the active tanking gallente rebalance from there... although i will say that i would love it if they made armor reps cycle at the beginning and not the end on time for winter... not that that's all that needs to change...