Ships & Modules

After discussing with a corpmate about rapid launchers and thew new rapid heavy launchers... I made the observation that other weapon systems... particularly hybrid, projectile, and laser, do not have a similar module... which is great and fine since missiles should really have their own flair and be more relevant in pvp...

But the topic of each weapon system having their own signature came up and I'd like to propose a new concept for lasers and see what everyone thinks. Since lasers, hybrids and projectile all operate within similar concepts while retaining uniqueness... what if we made lasers more like... well beams of scorching heat.

How about treating them as burst weapons where they operate as continuous beams of dps that can really apply pain like no other but will continuously drain your cap... so much so that you cannot possibly perma run a laser system. The overall dps could be slightly less than projectile or hybrid over time considering cap recharge and time not shooting but when the lasers are actually active it would be far more dps than the others.

This could go hand in hand with the tendency for Amarr ships to buffer tank, so their cap could just be centered on bursts of high power streams of lasers and would add more emphasis on player cap management.

It could be tricky to balance but I think would add a refreshing take on pvp and pve in eve especially with a race that can often be considered more bland than the others.

Curious on your thoughts

Interesting feedback... definitely lots of things in play with this... perhaps it may not be as hard to balance the ticks though

Lets go with the 1 second damage ticks you proposed. I like this idea, have a set cap usage per 1 second tick... which would have to be less than it is now but not proportionately less if we are making the dps while firing greater. So in effect it would lower the first alpha strike considerably but say the damage applied over a 10 second period of time would be greater.

Those 10 seconds of firing would chew through more cap because of the 10 ticks instead of say 3, but would do lets say twice the dps. Then you would reasonably have to wait 10 seconds before you could apply another 10 second burst and keep up with that pattern.

Alternatively lets say you want to apply a 15 second burst but would drain your cap completely, that would give you the option to put that extra pressure on your cap at risk of capping out and having to wait even longer to fire again. So if your enemy survives these bursts then you're in trouble. It would truly allow you to choose when to apply pain and when to let off.

The biggest problem I am seeing with this proposal I am having are cap boosters... if someone is using cap boosters they could in theory keep their guns firing continuously and really wreck it up!


How about the concept of a scaling cap usage. So the longer your beams are firing the more cap per tick they will use to limit the advantage of cap boosters... yet this is another new mechanic that would be untested but would add huge combat dynamics to pvp of both small and large groups.

The numbers I were throwing around were just generalizations... I dont know all the complex math behind it but they sound rightish to me... :P

Also about the tracking and what not, I think that would definitely apply the say way. If you're not tracking the target your beam is missing.


This proposal though would be a complete restructuring of lasers into something as different from hybrids and projectiles as say missiles are.

I replied in the new thread, so now you can pick it up there.
You may want to turn the OP into a summary of the points from here for ease of reading.

Here are a few issues to consider:

If you reduce lasers Cycle time to 4 seconds (four seconds because that's what drone RoF was increased to because shorter caused problems) with a four second animation, and reduced the damage and cap use accordingly... All that would result would be a laser which is really good at getting final blows...
If, somehow, a "true DoT" damage tick weapon were to be devised which didn't cause issues with the server... It could gain no benefit from Controlled Bursts, Rapid Firing or Gunnery and would therefore lose considerable DPS compared to current - which would have to be compensated...
Another consideration is tracking, how does such a weapon track targets? Most systems which use this sort of weapon don't have an analogue for tracking and therefore the impact of a "Targetted DoT" weapon is minimal - while in EVE it has the potential to be very severe indeed.

Increasing the resulting DPS significantly by the way (at the cost of reduced Alpha) is not an option.

Slicing ships in 2 with a lazor ... +1
Trying to balance it into Eve ... eek!

Homogenization will be the death of EVE.

Just throwing it out there. mining lasers cope with continuous firing just fine and calculate the amount of damage [ore mined] they do proportional to the amount of time they're active.

I like the idea though, I envisage it being useful for finishing a target off. Just for example. target gets hit with 1400's; now at 15% armour. Lasers hit it until it dies whilst 1400's cycle to hit the next. No dps wastage whatsoever.

I like it....I do believe they have a similar weapon system on Dust. The longer you hold the beam weapon on someone the more damage it does.

it would be overpowered on ships that could reasonably/easily fit a cap booster, and bad on things that could not. The existence of the cap booster as a module kind of ruins this concept.

Furthermore, this concept would make laser ships be completely and utterly ****** by neuts.

Huge balancing issues. But as CCP always seems to introduce a Overlord Weapon system with each balancing pass:

YES, I WANT DEATH RAYS!