Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I never said the vaga was weak, i said it was bad as a kiter due to acs beeing **** at kiting.

Medium Acs always were crap as such, they were non crap due to blaster having zero range (before the buff) and bad dps, and due to amarr cruisers simply beeing garbage (again, pre buff), atop of rlmls beeing crap as well (so no cracals and co).


So while scorch M in theory was amazing there were fewer ships in game actually able to use it, null still did very little dps at range so nothing really could project, this is why the vagabond of old times was good, there simply wasnt much that could do stuff at range, afs were huge slow deathtraps (prenerf, again), t1 frigs were all kinda crap and ceptors are, well, ceptors.

Acs in t1 hulls are noncrap at brawling due to the ships having double damage boni while all the other ones had single ones, this works reasonably well on t1 hulls, look at a thorax/omen/moa for example those all have a single damage bonus, the rupture in turn has 2. And again, look at the cane, that has 2 damage boni while the brutix/harbi for example only have 1. So while this double bonus idea works well (sort of) on t1 hulls, it gets problematic on t2 ones when all the other ships get 2 boni too, its at that point that acs beeing terrible really shows (muninn, vaga)

Take a ship with 8 turrets and no bonus to any medium sized guns to see what i mean (a maelstrom for example), with 2 damage mods (gyros/mag stabs( and 2 trackign enhancers you are looking at 439 dps at 0 with emp and 233 dps at 20km with barrage with 425s. The same ship with neutron blasters is doing 599dps with antimatter at 0 and 177dps at 20km (the point at which the acs do less dmaage is at about 18km), beyond that neither do any meaningfull dps.

So for kiting both are bad, yet quite similar.

So for t1 your are looking at some sort of balance, acs have better projection, blasters better dps. Once you introduce t2 however this goes a bit bad, a vagabond loses huge gank potential compared to a deimos and yet its projection isnt anywhere near as good as it should be, this results in the fact that a sheild deimos outdpses a vaga to the edge of point range. This alone means that the null has caught up, weakening the vaga, then you have rlmls beeing amazing, 300 dps with rlmls doesnt sound like much but it outdps the vaga from 28km onwards, it also has no tracking and can be used when caught.

Now when you look at the 450dps a cerb does with rlmls you make the vaga (and ac kiting in general) look even worse.

And now enter lasers, they dont only have more pure damage then the acs with 489 at 0 with multi, they do 390dps all the way to 30km with scorch at which point they outdps the ac nearly by a factor of 3. In the old days this wasnt very relevant, there were about 3 ships who actually were any good with medium lasers, the oni (wich has cap so bad it was amazing), the zealot (slow, no frig defence at all) and the harbinger. Nowadays you have a lot more ships which are viable with them, this again weakens the vagas ability to compete.

Again, for t1 the crappyness of acs gets cured with a double dps bonus while nearly all other t1 cruisers get only a single 1, with hacs where most hacs get dual boni as well the badness of them gets shows, blasters win at all ranges due to the incrtedible dps which means that even with worse range they do more dps far away, scorch m simply is amazing and missiles outrange and dps the vaga anyways. (which btw is the reason the muninn is crap)

TL:DR

Long ago blaster were crap and had 0 range, missile ships were bad, there were very very few ships that could use medium lasers due to amarr t1 lineup beeing garbage, this all meant that the vaga was boss. Everything else got buffed, vaga got nerfed slightly (te nerf) which results in the poor state t2 minmatar cruisers are in at the moment.

I agree, W0lf has explained his concerns well. I agree that the vaga will face more challenges than before, and I still think that this is a good thing. A heated vagabond will do 4000 m/s. it is by any normal measure uncatchable.

on the downside, it's dps is un impressive.

note that when it's doing 4000 m/s, the damage it will take from heavy missiles is almost nill.

it is a ship which has a powerful tactical advantage, rather than a solo pwnmobile.

I think this is true of all the hacs, and again, that's a good thing for the game.

Sigh. Vaga is fine. Test server results show that it is a bit more vulnerable than before but still very effective when flown right. I think people are wanting the vaga to do everything. Be fast. Have dps to take down a resistance bonused HAC. Enough EHP to be alpha resistant. It's not supposed to be that. It's meant to hit lighter targets fast and get away or harass gangs that don't have the speed to catch it. People really want to turn this ship into another Cynabal, and that ship is all of those things and OP.

I wouldn't be surprised if they end up between T1 and T2

Stop with your pitiful whines about your precious vaga. Fly what you want. Fit what you want. I've welped a number of these hulls already on the test server and racked a number of kills with them. I'm going by what is happening in practice. If you can't fly your vaga well enough to hang with the pilots racking up kills in them, that's your problem. The hull doesn't need a boost to make up for your shortcomings. EFT warriors. I swear.

This dude complains about the kiting aspect of the vaga yet fails to mention that it has very formidable brawling capabilities... Maybe not quite on par with the other hacs, but still dude... It's not a pure kiting ship like it use to be (although it's better than it was) it's a "hybrid" kiting ship with robust brawling capabilities compared to similar ships.


My only gripe is that the fitting should be modestly increased to allow for 220s w/o excessive compromise on a dual prop xl asb setup.

I have flown the vagabond on Sisi. On an equal footing with any other HAC (links and implants-wise) the vaga can choose the engagement range and choose when to disengage.

That does not mean it can beat everything in a 1:1, nor should it be able to. But it needn't die to anything, and it can pretty much tackle anything it wants to.

This is not the case for any ship which is slower. i.e. all of them.

Each of these ships, as I see has a specific advantage. That one advantage alone is not enough to win every fight.

All of the ships have changed and this is requiring that we all change tactics a little.

For example, on TQ I use a dual rep brawling ishtar to solo-kill wormhole visitors - this will no longer be viable because the ishtar no longer has the right slots to maintain a DR tank. So I'll change tactics. I'll use a deimos for that role now, and use the ishtar as a skirmishing sentry drone platform, with 5 ogres in the drone bay just in case anything gets close enough that I can drop them.

I probably won't ever use the ishtar solo any more, but that's ok. I'll happily make that trade in return for a more diverse game.

I can't see that there is a problem.

Start reading for once, i have been saying for ages that the vaga is going to be a very good brawler (maybe even to good).

So you know it's a good brawler but want it to be an amazing kiter as well?

So in short you want it to be OP. I'm glad we're on the same page now, thanks

It's already a good kiter, sure, there are better alternatives for pure kiting, but please don't sit here and claim that the vaga is bad at kiting...