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[Odyssey 1.1] Medium Rail, Beam and Artillery rebalance

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Naomi Knight
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#361 - 2013-08-10 06:10:37 UTC
Aglais wrote:
Heyer Vitally wrote:
I Like it

Caldari have always been a joke at PVP when flying anything larger than a frigate

- slow ships,
- missile travel time
- anemic DPS from Rails

with this, hopefully the Moa and the ferox might actually see some use


1. Caracals. They're very good despite missile travel time, and they're actually rather speedy.

2. The Moa is already used as a blaster platform in certain roles. The Ferox is a subpar battlecruiser to almost everything in nearly every way save for tank. It's pretty much the new Prophecy in that regard.

3. These changes will not incentivize the fitting of railguns on Caldari hybrid ships. The railguns that will fit on the Moa without absolutely ******** smashing of your defensive and mobility modules will still be doing crap damage, AFAIK. With WORSE TRACKING. You'll want the 250mms and nothing else, really, and even then they're a nightmare to fit- this aspect of railguns, their absolutely anemic performance for such outrageous fitting costs, was never really addressed.

yeah ccp take the lazy way and instead of looked at every rail size and ammo they just buffed everything the same way :I
-dual 150mm still completly garbage
-200mm only good if you want to fit a tank it has lame optimal
-longer range ammos still crap

i love how lasers got nearly the same boost and less tracking nerf , while they already had the best tracking and little nerf on that is not realy a loss
then nerf the rails already bad tracking by a huge amount :I
Mag's
Azn Empire
#362 - 2013-08-10 06:28:53 UTC
Rail tracking nerf of 15% is OTT, please reduce this.

Oh and any chance at a small reduction in fitting costs of rails?

Destination SkillQueue:- It's like assuming the Lions will ignore you in the Savannah, if you're small, fat and look helpless.
Aglais
Ice-Storm
#363 - 2013-08-10 18:17:12 UTC  |  Edited by: Aglais
Naomi Knight wrote:

yeah ccp take the lazy way and instead of looked at every rail size and ammo they just buffed everything the same way :I
-dual 150mm still completly garbage
-200mm only good if you want to fit a tank it has lame optimal
-longer range ammos still crap

i love how lasers got nearly the same boost and less tracking nerf , while they already had the best tracking and little nerf on that is not realy a loss
then nerf the rails already bad tracking by a huge amount :I



The other hilarious thing? CCP says in the beginning of the thread here that medium rails will still track ~17% better than battleship neutron blasters.

Are you JOKING? That kind of tracking, on a ship that moves WAY FASTER, against TARGETS that move way faster? Literally the ONLY way you'll be able to hit ANY target is if you're at some obscene 70-120km optimal. That's it. Massive pigeonholing into a stupid engagement envelope nobody uses. Battleships can get away with poor tracking guns because they're slow, and their main target is slow. Cruisers and battlecruisers cannot.

Dual 150s can't even track things at optimal if you're moving at top speed in anything but the same direction as your target, from my experience. The tracking hit will make them even worse.

EDIT:
I did some playing around with the various sizes of railguns for numbers- dual 150s already have low stats and as a result won't benefit much from these changes at all. Problems? Dual 150s are the easiest to fit by an idiotic margin, and are the only railguns that will give you both tank and three mag stabs (that will be important in a minute).

200mms are a sort of middle ground but still extremely PG hungry. Their optimal, like dual 150s, actually doesn't seem all that spectacular with CM Antimatter. ~12km, I believe. You need to downgrade tank by a fair amount to fit them on, with three mag stabs. However, 200mms give you the most DPS as well. Roughly 330 DPS from guns alone, ~380 with drones too.

Now, let's look at 250s. They're overwhelmingly grid hungry and an RCU is mandatory for having both these guns and poor tank. So you lose a mag stab. 250s in this configuration do the LEAST DPS of the three.

With dual 150s you get the "benefits" of having actual defense, ~290 gun DPS, and barely being able to hit anything with three tracking rigs and a tracking computer slotted in with tracking speed script. At optimal. Unless you're moving in precisely the same direction as your target, really. IIRC, beams still had this sort of issue, but not as badly. It's a poor choice.

200mms will offer you somewhat better optimal and almost non-joke damage at ok-ish range, which means that the loss of tank isn't completely unreasonable.

250mms do joke damage at ranges it's tough to keep the Moa at, require you to either ignore defense entirely or massively cripple your damage with an RCU (which then puts your DPS at ~285 rather than the 290 of dual 150mms with three mag stabs), and also have the worst tracking of the three medium railguns.

I still don't see why you wouldn't just fit blasters on a Moa and try to brawl with it, they're easier to fit, do more damage, and can actually track your targets with the setups you'll be using.

Double edit: clarifying that this is for the current numbers assosciated with rails.
Tobias Hareka
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#364 - 2013-08-10 18:48:40 UTC
Aglais wrote:
Dual 150s can't even track things at optimal if you're moving at top speed in anything but the same direction as your target, from my experience. The tracking hit will make them even worse.


That's why you "keep at range" or manually fly your ship instead of hitting "Orbit 10k".
Aglais
Ice-Storm
#365 - 2013-08-10 18:52:38 UTC
Tobias Hareka wrote:
Aglais wrote:
Dual 150s can't even track things at optimal if you're moving at top speed in anything but the same direction as your target, from my experience. The tracking hit will make them even worse.


That's why you "keep at range" or manually fly your ship instead of hitting "Orbit 10k".


It's like you automatically assumed I wasn't doing that, when in fact, I was doing that.
Zane Ziebold
Repo Industries
#366 - 2013-08-10 22:52:28 UTC
CCP Rise wrote:
Good morning space adventurers!

IF YOU WANT TO CRITICIZE THIS PROPOSAL PLEASE READ THE EXPLANATION BELOW FIRST <3

Okay so I'm going to give you the numbers first, then do some text walling below to try and explain why we arrived where we did.

Medium Rails (all sizes and metas):
+15% Rate of Fire
+15% Damage Multiplier
-15% Tracking Speed

Medium Beams:
+25% Damage Multiplier
-10% Tracking Speed

Medium Artillery:
+10% Rate of Fire
-5% Tracking

So the basic idea is that we're increasing damage by quite a lot for all medium long range turrets, while also lowering their tracking a little bit.

From a high level, the goal here is to make long range weapons valuable enough that people are able to use them for both PVP and PVE without being laughed at. This is hard to accomplish without stepping heavily on the toes of either large weapons or short-range medium weapons. We felt that a large damage increase was absolutely necessary for there to be any chance of seeing increased use, but the higher damage goes the more pressure gets put on other weapon systems. By making tracking speed a bit worse we preserve a lot of the advantage that medium short-range guns bring, while also making medium long-range guns a great choice verse large guns in many situations.

To understand why that last part is true, its VERY important that you understand how tracking works in EVE. I want to use an example here to help illustrate:

The tracking speed on a standard Neutron Blaster Talos with Null loaded is .0794
The tracking speed on a new 250mm Railgun Deimos with Antimatter loaded will be .0304

It looks like the Talos tracks 3x as well as the Deimos. In reality, because of the role Signature Resolution plays, the Deimos will actually track moving targets about 19% better than the Null Talos.

A real tracking number that combines tracking speed and resolution would look like this:

Real tracking on standard Neutron Blaster Talos with Null loaded is .0001985
Real tracking on a new 250mm Railgun Deimos with Antimatter loaded is .0002432

If you want to make this kind of comparison for other ships and situations, divide tracking speed by the signature resolution of the gun and compare the resulting numbers. If you want to see an awesome in-depth explanation for tracking, I recommend reading THIS BLOG by Azual Skoll.

One of the discussions we had with the CSM on this topic (there were a lot) revolved around a situation where you get to choose which ship to bring to a fight where you will be shooting at Talwars. Do you want a new medium long-range gun ship, or an Attack BC with large short-range guns. So I made a DPS graph here showing three fits: a 200mm Rail Thorax, a 250mm Rail Deimos, and a Neutron Talos, all of which have 2 tracking enhancers fit. The situation shown would be if the Talwar has MWD on and is moving at full speed at an angle of 60 degrees (hopefully fairly average, though it will vary a lot). You can see what that looks like here: DAMAGE GRAPH

There are of course a lot of other reasons to bring medium long-range ships over large like price, speed, resilience, and the option to shoot to much longer ranges. Overall we are still a tad worried about power creep here, but hopefully this will put medium guns in a healthy place in relation to their competition.

Be sure to check out the HEAVY ASSAULT CRUISER REBALANCE as well as many of those ships are affected by this change and vice versa

As always, looking forward to feedback.
CCP Rise


dumb question, why are you comparing medium guns to large guns.
Scuzzy Logic
Space Spuds
#367 - 2013-08-11 00:42:24 UTC
auraofblade wrote:
I don't know if someone has already mentioned it, but...

Does anybody find it weird that Short guns with Long ammo have (approximately) the same DPS and Range as Long guns with Short ammo, but the Short gun still wins in terms of Tracking, Fitting and Cap Stability even after the ammo penalties?

There's simply no debating it here - unless your target is going to die on the very first volley, there is no reason to fit a Long gun with Short ammo because all you end up doing is gimping your everything for negligible gains. That's also why T2 Short Gun Long Ammo is considered the de-facto choice, well...across the board really. Sure it's a DPS loss compared to the -50% and -75% optimal ammo, but after considering damage projection and fitting requirements it's simply the best possible choice unless you can guarantee that you're literally on top of your target as soon as you warp on the grid.

Even if you consider Long with Long, there's still the other issue of the minimum warp range being 150 km, meaning that after a certain point you actually DON'T want to get further away even if your ship and guns would support > 150 km optimal. And while I'm a bit of a noob and only really EFT warrior it, it's ABSURDLY easy to break 150 optimal on anything that has a +Range bonus, and even easier if you're using Long ammo. This ends up making the -50% Optimal the ammo of choice of Long guns, simply because it's the highest DPS and alpha, without kissing the 150 km threshold nor gimping the range so hard that it drops to T2 Short Ammo.

In all honestly I'd much rather see sweeping AMMO balance changes instead of trying to fix the guns.


This makes a LOT of sense.

Beside, I haven't seen small gleam ammo being used, like, ever. I have seen medium fit twice for POS shooting.
Fronkfurter McSheebleton
Horse Feathers
CAStabouts
#368 - 2013-08-11 01:02:45 UTC
Zane Ziebold wrote:

dumb question, why are you comparing medium guns to large guns.


Because large guns on attack BCs occupy about the same ranges as LR guns on other medium hulls.

thhief ghabmoef
Aglais
Ice-Storm
#369 - 2013-08-11 01:10:28 UTC
Fronkfurter McSheebleton wrote:
Zane Ziebold wrote:

dumb question, why are you comparing medium guns to large guns.


Because large guns on attack BCs occupy about the same ranges as LR guns on other medium hulls.


It would've been nice to also see how the cruiser long range guns compare with eachother, too, though. Like actual hard numbers, in this thread. Because I don't feel like digging through all the data right now and then trying to slap on these changes with this sinus headache raging in the background.
Leskit
Pure Victory
#370 - 2013-08-12 00:32:51 UTC  |  Edited by: Leskit
the page ate my formatting, sorry for all the dots!

Finally got around to plugging in some numbers:

on a legion, using INM ammo, and 3 faction heat sinks, beams will actually do more dps than heavy pulse lasers. heavy beams will do more dps in a gleam/conflagration comparison also.damage/range mods listed below (navy on legion, t2 on others). No implants. all lvl V character
I'm aware that you would be much more likely to fit TE/TC to a beam ship, but let me run the numbers before you object please.

............................heavy beam laser II ---------- Heavy pulse laser II (dps) @ (optimal) + (falloff)
ammo:...................................................................legion
short range t2.....................770 @ 11+10 | 775 @ 11+5
INM......................................758 @ 23+10 | 694 @ 11+5
INS ................................... 506 @ 45+10 | 463 @ 23+5
t2 long range .....................440@ 81+10 | 553 @ 34+5

zealot
short range t2......................635@ 11+10 | 639 @ 11+5
INM ......................................626 @ 23+10 | 573 @ 11+5
INS......................................417 @ 45+10 | 382 @ 23+5
t2 long range....................... 362 @ 81+10 | 456 @ 34+5

Omen Navy Issue (not including drone damage)
2 heat sinks, 1 TE
short range t2...................406 @ 12+12 | 409 @ 12+6
INM....................................401 @ 25+12 | 367 @ 12+6
INS...................................267 @ 50+12 | 244 @ 25+6
t2 long range....................232 @ 89+12 | 292 @ 37+6

Omen (no drones)
2 heat sinks, no range mods
...........Focused medium Beam Laser II ---------Focused medium pulse laser II
short range t2................. 367 @ 6.6+7.5 | 393 @ 6.8+3.8
INM...................................371 @ 13+7.5 | 353 @ 6.8+3.8
INS...................................247 @ 26+7.5 | 235 @ 14+3.8
t2 long range...................215 @ 47+7.5 | 281 @ 20+3.8


Beam lasers are out-damaging pulse lasers of the same class at nearly every ammo type! If you're hitting at the same range on both weapons, it gets even worse.
Does anyone else see anything wrong with that? Add the difference in tracking on pulses is 2.73 times better than beams (any t1/faction ammo: HBM: 0.037125 HPL: 0.10156).
To me, this shows how weak pulse lasers are as a weapon. Huge cap needs, and only scorch makes it usefull, blah blah...
There's a serious problem with laser weapons right now, and this isn't making it better. I can't offer a good solution, but these numbers are very disconcerting! I want to fly amarr, but we are--and have been--the beaten up, let down faction for a really long time (and don't go pointing to the archon or damnation, those are 2 ships of a whole race!)
Im at a loss for what needs to be done.
Jack Miton
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#371 - 2013-08-12 03:20:58 UTC  |  Edited by: Jack Miton
Rail Proteus is go. +1.

To all those complaining about the tracking nerf, it's 1 tracking mod to compensate for it. given how huge a damage buff theyre giving us, you can drop a damage mod for a TE and track the same and still have more DPS.
This is a flat buff of SIGNIFICANT proportions.

There is no Bob.

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Alex Tutuola
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#372 - 2013-08-12 17:47:49 UTC
Aglais wrote:
Naomi Knight wrote:

yeah ccp take the lazy way and instead of looked at every rail size and ammo they just buffed everything the same way :I
-dual 150mm still completly garbage
-200mm only good if you want to fit a tank it has lame optimal
-longer range ammos still crap

i love how lasers got nearly the same boost and less tracking nerf , while they already had the best tracking and little nerf on that is not realy a loss
then nerf the rails already bad tracking by a huge amount :I



The other hilarious thing? CCP says in the beginning of the thread here that medium rails will still track ~17% better than battleship neutron blasters.

Are you JOKING? That kind of tracking, on a ship that moves WAY FASTER, against TARGETS that move way faster? Literally the ONLY way you'll be able to hit ANY target is if you're at some obscene 70-120km optimal. That's it. Massive pigeonholing into a stupid engagement envelope nobody uses. Battleships can get away with poor tracking guns because they're slow, and their main target is slow. Cruisers and battlecruisers cannot.



Worse is the fact that, to show the talos tracking worse in their example, they used ammunition with a tracking penalty. So the rails DON'T actually track better.
Aglais
Ice-Storm
#373 - 2013-08-13 00:30:59 UTC
Alex Tutuola wrote:
Aglais wrote:
Naomi Knight wrote:

yeah ccp take the lazy way and instead of looked at every rail size and ammo they just buffed everything the same way :I
-dual 150mm still completly garbage
-200mm only good if you want to fit a tank it has lame optimal
-longer range ammos still crap

i love how lasers got nearly the same boost and less tracking nerf , while they already had the best tracking and little nerf on that is not realy a loss
then nerf the rails already bad tracking by a huge amount :I



The other hilarious thing? CCP says in the beginning of the thread here that medium rails will still track ~17% better than battleship neutron blasters.

Are you JOKING? That kind of tracking, on a ship that moves WAY FASTER, against TARGETS that move way faster? Literally the ONLY way you'll be able to hit ANY target is if you're at some obscene 70-120km optimal. That's it. Massive pigeonholing into a stupid engagement envelope nobody uses. Battleships can get away with poor tracking guns because they're slow, and their main target is slow. Cruisers and battlecruisers cannot.



Worse is the fact that, to show the talos tracking worse in their example, they used ammunition with a tracking penalty. So the rails DON'T actually track better.


My sides are in orbit.

I'd expect these sort of hijinks out of an April Fools devblog.
Naomi Knight
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#374 - 2013-08-13 06:56:19 UTC
Zane Ziebold wrote:


dumb question, why are you comparing medium guns to large guns.

cause he compares everything to the null blaster kiter talos
even transport ships are compared to talos when he balances them

this is called balancing by talos, the talos is n the middle of all the other ships
and other ships speciality lie in how they differ from the talos
so a med rail ship cant have much better tracking than his talos , as that would conflict with the talos above all paradigm

I bet the measuring system is also soon be talosized
every ship base stats will be changed to this formula:

for speed so instead of 2000 m/s you get 1.2 talos/second
700 dps/s will be 0.9 talos/second
and evidently med rail tracking will be 1.15 talos/second

I hope now you will understand that you have to argue that med rails should have at least 1.5 talos/second tracking
Tobias Hareka
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#375 - 2013-08-13 07:18:47 UTC
Naomi Knight wrote:
I hope now you will understand that you have to argue that med rails should have at least 1.5 talos/second tracking


You want medium rails to be better than large blasters because you lost your 800+ dps 120km heavy missiles 8 months ago?
Cassius Invictus
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#376 - 2013-08-13 09:51:05 UTC
Fal Dara wrote:
I'm Down wrote:


Are you seriously comparing cruiser close range dps to bs long range dps to make a really bad point? BS top out at 1200-1500 dps with CR weapons Cruisers top out at 400-550 dps with long range weapons. Get your facts straight.


No, i'm not...

i suppose it would be battlecruisers... you're looking at 700 dps or so from rails in something like an astarte, and 750 from rails in a navy mega...

any t2 ship, with a double damage bonus, makes about BS level damage with those guns. On some ships that arry 7 guns, and also have that, they match a BS in damage.

so what i'm saying, is that BS's need more than just the 25% more damage than mediums.

SO HERE is the answer.

a deimos gets 2 damage bonuses to guns--TWO.

a naga (just for ccps sake, that is what they used to compare), gets ONE damage bonus to large guns.

therefore, the mediums KEEP UP. it's the double bonus that's making it SEEM like mediums are keeping up with a large--when in reality, the base for the large needs to go up, to distance itself from the mediums.

to give another astarte example, i never mentioned it having blasters--but for your sake lets do that. it gets 1100 dps. large blasters on mega would get 1200. that's LESS than 10% difference...

the battleship should get more. every time. a LOT more. without having to put in faction gear.

the base of a battleship gun needs to go up 20% or more... because there are medium platforms with bouble damage bonuses, and CCP is using those to compare with single bonus BS ones. BS's dont get double damage bonuses. THAT is the problem.




No. You need a need T2 pvp battleship with t2 resists and t2 damage. Also the problem is that prices of T1 BS's and T2 BC are largely the same, so a bs with its slow speed and higher sig is obviously less preferable than a Command Ship BC. Don't know if maruders should become pvp kings or do we need a new type of BS, but I agree that T3 and T2 BC doing the same dmg and having bigger tanks than BS (including sig, speed, etc) is silly and stupid.
elitatwo
Zansha Expansion
#377 - 2013-08-13 15:52:58 UTC
Last night I could take a look at a rail Eagle with the changes to railguns, shields and the ship and I am not quite happy with that tracking nerf.

I think is needs to go, like outside and take a oneway trip to neverland..

In addition to that, spike ammo needs a tiny (I repeat tiny) squeeze up in damage, maybe in the range of 5 - 10% and we might have a winner here.

And here is my "but",
I can be creative with fittings and rigs help in that department but I cannot make any viable fitting that carries 250mm rails on any cruiser hull.
I am very sorry but I can't see that happening.

And even someone makes it work somehow with a very weak tank or any tank for that matter, you propably wouldn't want to fit them because they track even worse than 200mm rails.
So the only gain for them would be more range, but in 7 years of forum reading I never saw anyone complain about range being a problem for railguns.

What I like to see for them would be a change on the change on heat.

Railguns get a 15% rof bonus on heat for railguns but the current buff makes that "bonus" a dimishing return for that matter, so I would propose that you give railguns a damage bonus on heat which they would benefit more from on heat than any rof bonus.

I can't tell a tale about beam lasers because I haven't trained them yet, so my apologies for that.
But I care for them too.

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This is the law of ship progression!

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Lunarstorm95
Godless Horizon.
OnlyFleets.
#378 - 2013-08-13 19:11:35 UTC
Mmmmm the tears of former drake/tengu pilots....

HMLs are now on par with long range turrets mabey a hair bit lower but its little in return for them being as OP as they where for the longest of time

Im sure ull do fine dispite the fact you can no longer out range and out dps MOST ships in its repective class

“You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.” ― Robert A. Heinlein "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance." ― Confucius 
Jerick Ludhowe
Internet Tuff Guys
#379 - 2013-08-13 19:14:55 UTC
Lunarstorm95 wrote:


HMLs are now on par with long range turrets mabey a hair bit lower but its little in return for them being as OP as they where for the longest of time



I'm sorry, but we don't need affirmative action in eve. Medium long range guns being better than HML is not justified in any way shape or form. Poor balance in the past does not justify poor balance now...
Roime
Mea Culpa.
Shadow Cartel
#380 - 2013-08-13 19:23:30 UTC
Alex Tutuola wrote:
Aglais wrote:
Naomi Knight wrote:

yeah ccp take the lazy way and instead of looked at every rail size and ammo they just buffed everything the same way :I
-dual 150mm still completly garbage
-200mm only good if you want to fit a tank it has lame optimal
-longer range ammos still crap

i love how lasers got nearly the same boost and less tracking nerf , while they already had the best tracking and little nerf on that is not realy a loss
then nerf the rails already bad tracking by a huge amount :I



The other hilarious thing? CCP says in the beginning of the thread here that medium rails will still track ~17% better than battleship neutron blasters.

Are you JOKING? That kind of tracking, on a ship that moves WAY FASTER, against TARGETS that move way faster? Literally the ONLY way you'll be able to hit ANY target is if you're at some obscene 70-120km optimal. That's it. Massive pigeonholing into a stupid engagement envelope nobody uses. Battleships can get away with poor tracking guns because they're slow, and their main target is slow. Cruisers and battlecruisers cannot.



Worse is the fact that, to show the talos tracking worse in their example, they used ammunition with a tracking penalty. So the rails DON'T actually track better.


1) tracking comparison between medium rails and large blasters is relevant because of long point range
2) faster ships can get away better with poor tracking because they can actually control transversal (the whole strength of Talos, Deimos will be better)
3) Null is used for comparison because large AM and Void don't hit hard enough to the relevant ranges discussed in this thread

Sig resolution + tracking = true tracking

.