Player Features and Ideas Discussion

When I can, i will go onto SISI and test the GMP, but from what it looks like so far, the citadel torp is not effected.

As far as firewalls go, how often do you see those fleets. It was one thing in the Ravens and Drakes day, but now it would be ridiculous.

The raw damage. The Nag is fine, but the Moros needs a range nerf (-1 or -2 KM optimal) to put the blasters more inline. Revs need a damage buff (+10%) as well as torps (increase explosion velocity +10% damage)

See DPS Graph - Stationary Archon.
See DPS Graph - Moving Archon.


All Graph represents unfitted ships will all level 5 skills. Fittings tend to complicate and are able to adapt ships to different specifications such as cap stability, range, or alpha.

Phoenix itself isn't the problem for the most part, other than its absolutely craptastic capacitor. It literally can't rep itself for even one siege cycle, and it has a local rep bonus. It can fit a massive shield buffer. But when sieged it can't catch reps. Torp Phoenix has the best on-paper alpha and second best dps of all dreads. But citadel torps can't apply damage for **** and citadel cruises have crappy damage to begin with. Because there are no T2 capital weapons, both have absolutely no flexibility compared to turrets, making the Phoenix a perfect ****-storm of **** modules.

WARNING: MATH AHEAD!

The missile damage formula is a funny thing. It allows for multiple ways to reduce damage as well as a way to compensate for crap application due to high target velocity and small signature radius.

For reference: applied damage = damage * MIN(1;Sr/Er;(Sr/Er*Ev/Vel)^(LOG(drf)/LOG(5.5)))

• Sr = Signature Radius of target
• Er = Explosion Radius of missile
• Ev = Explosion Velocity of missile
• Vel = Velocity of target
• drf = Damage Reduction Factor of missile (citadel torps = 5.5)
• damage = base damage of missile (citadel torp Meta 0 = 2000, faction = 2200)

All 5 sieged Phoenix shooting Citadel Torps at the above all 5 Archon will have Er = 1500m, Ev = 30. As stated above the Archon has Sr = 2920. Velocity needs to always be > 0 or division by 0 and the universe explodes/collapses as required.

We have a nested group of functions that do 3 things. First it sets the maximum damage multiplier to 1x. So you can never exceed 100% of your volley damage. No wrecking hits or other random stuff.

Second, it does a comparison between target signature radius and missile explosion radius. In the case of the Archon, citadel torpedoes have no problem there, as 2920/1500 is > 1.

Third, it calculates a coefficient based on the ratio of Sr/Er to Ev/Vel and reduces that by raising it to an exponent which is calculated by dividing the natural log of the drf by the natural log of 5.5.

The whole drf exponential portion of part 3 lessens the part 3 reduction. The effect decays exponentially the closer the drf gets to 1 from 5.5. Citadel torps have drf = 5.5, so not only do they have crappy stats to begin with, they are subject to the full damage reduction of part 3 as well. They are the only missile in the game with DRF=5.5.

Its nice to know someone was worried about Citadel torps being OP. Unnerf them now, m'kay?

Essentially, the formula ensures that a very small ship will always get a significant damage reduction no matter how slow it is going and a very large reduction if it is also going very fast. But a very fast ship can still get hammered if it is has a signature radius that is sufficiently large enough to offset it's velocity.

Because both size and velocity are considered, one can compensate for high velocity or small size by increasing Sr or reducing velocity of the target. Both will achieve the same thing up to a certain point (see part 2 of the formula, and as velocity approaches 0). If the target is moving at twice the explosion velocity of the missile, 30mps / 60mps, you can compensate perfectly by increasing the target's Sr to twice the Er of the missile.

So in the case of the afore-mentioned Archon, if it is moving at nearly 90mps (3x the missile's 30mps Ev), you can compensate by using target painters to increase it's Sr to 4500m (3x the missile's Er). One 55% TP will do it. (4500/2920 ~ 1.54...)

A target painter compensates for both higher velocity and small size at extremely long ranges. Webs have extremely short ranges (usually) and only compensate for velocity, leaving small ships partially unaffected even at near zero velocity. Unfortunately, painters are a percentage increase. So small ships are again at an advantage because they don't get a significant enough Sr increase to really notice the difference. But large ships are affected to a much greater degree.

Now here is where it all breaks down. Supers and titans are immune to EWAR. Thus you cannot target paint or web them. So the only way to compensate for their velocity is with rigs, implants, and Crash Booster to reduce the Er of your torps. A 6% implant and Strong Crash gives a total 36% reduction in Er, which results in a final Er of 960m, or Sr/Er factor of ~4.58. Thus your Archon from the previous example would need to be moving at 30*4.58 ~ 137mps before it receives any damage reduction.

The problem is further compounded when you figure skirmish links, medium range turret ammo, and tracking computers into the equation. Simply put, a Moros can simply swap from antimatter to iron, turn on a speed scripted tracking computer, and out dps a Phoenix from 14 to 54km, nearly the entire engagement range of the torp Phoenix.

There are no T2 citadel launchers. So the Phoenix doesn't even have the option of swapping to Javelin torps or Precision cruise ammo, whereas all turret dreads can swap between cr/hi-tracking and lr ammo at will.

Give us T2 capital weapons and ammo to start.

Then consider removing the remote rep/EWAR immunity on Siege modules and supers/titans. Compensate by giving massive boosts to certain base hull stats such as sensor strength (+5000) and warp strength (+100), and perhaps a partial reduction to certain forms of EWAR like tracking disruption and remote damps. Add a healthy cap regen bonus as well so dreads can actually self-rep for more than a minute or two without totally gimping their combat fits with cap regen items.

Buff citadel torps a little will ya? Just a 10% boost to Explosion Velocity would up their applied dps to moving targets noticeably. Bringing down the DRF would lessen the double ass-shafting that citadel torps get by their already crap application stats. A combination of the two might be best. Er is fine.

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*dies*

You're right about the rep bonus. I"m not sure where I got the idea that it did. Maybe I had Golem on the brain. But it still can't rep for anything even remotely close to a single siege cycle without severely gimping its tank for cap modules and/or filling up its cargohold with cap boosters, which on a dread are not just of dubious value, but take away from cargo for stront.

Torp Phoenix gets 10039dps using meta launchers, faction ammo, and 3x BCS II. Nag using meta AC, 3x T2 gyros, and AA EMP 11058dps. Right you are.

I never said Archon was a super. But I acknowledge that how I wrote that part made it seem like it was. I did try to fix it. But I guess that didn't come through. My bad.

Citadel torps get a damage reduction to anything moving faster than 30m/s or smaller than 1500m unless you have fit application rigs to your ship, have a GMP implant, or are using crash boosters. Due to the way the damage formula works, if the ship has Sr = 3000m it could be moving as fast as 60m/s before you see a damage reduction. But since caps can and do move faster than that, you most likely will see that reduction, and it is significant.

The Phoenix can put out over 10k dps. So I disagree that it is a potential dps problem. Citadel torps have problems hitting anything moving. Turrets can fit to compensate for tracking whereas citadels cannot. Also see: EWAR invulnerability for supers, titans, sieged dreads, etc. preventing TP and webs from being used on them. (Pro-tip: Bring Strong Crash)

"High-tracking" would have been better stated as "higher-tracking". Some of those ammo types (not just lasers/hybrids) have penalties or bonuses to tracking. The point was that I want capital pilots to have the same ammo choices as subcap pilots. I also want Caldari cap pilots to have options when it comes to their ammo range and/or damage application. Currently there are quite literally none except for choosing damage type. And for the Phoenix and Levi, that means screwing yourself out of a significant damage bonus.

The obvious and easiest solution is to introduce T2 launchers and missiles for cap ships. Since it wouldn't be fair to turret users if they were left out, they should get their T2 weapons and ammo a well.

just double capital missiles dmg

You might want to recheck your calculations… With all V skills, three Citadel T1 cruiser launchers with Scourge Citadel cruise ammunition and four T2 ballistic controllers will hit a moving battleship for 7% in Siege. This increases to 14% with T2 rigors and 22% with T2 rigors and a pair of T2 target painters. That's basically as good as it gets. What is the actual DPS you ask? 1133.25 for all 3 launchers in Siege mode.

Base damage application against Carriers and Dreadnoughts is 67% and 70%, respectively.

This overall suggestion is meh, because it greatly changes the role of the phoenix compared to other dreads. And I believe that it is possible to balance it while still letting it be a DREAD.

However. Thanks to OP, now i WANT TO FIRE VOID MISSILES DAMIT !!

Unrealistic assumptions for the capitals, as already discussed, leading to misleading results.

Also sort of unrealistic for the battleship, because you've assumed no support. In reality, anyone attempting to blap stuff with a Phoenix will have support. Let's assume torps, no Rigour, standard Crash and two 60% webs and two 37.5% painters - so a standard Phoenix fit with a gang capable of tackling the target BS for a dread to shoot it. Let's take a trimarked Dominix as the target.

Dominix speed is 23 m/s (after it's slowed down, ofc!) and sig is 848 m. With Crash, the Phoenix does 70.7% damage. Pretty good, eh?

Well, not really. The problem here is that a Moros or Naglfar shooting that same Domi would normally be hitting even more easily. While you can get the Phoenix to do the blap thing against caps (and with Rigours, 90% webs and linked bonused painters you can start thinking about whacking T3s off the field!), the fundamental problem is that the Moros and Nag simply do this better and more easily, requiring less specialised support. Conversely, there's a balance problem in that if the Phoenix does become able to reliably apply DPS to small stuff, there is basically no escape for a target when being shot by, say, three Phoenixes. The nature of missiles makes it a tricky situation to balance, hence my preference for focusing on the anticapital role.

While i like the idea of dreads being able to one shot or kill battleships with ease, there needs to be a line.

Seeing dreads do better out of siege, and then (maybe) re-adding a tracking penalty to siege-mode would be awesome.This and reducing the power of capital remote reps by adding a stacking penalty would be a good balance for the first tier of capitals IMO. This Repping stacking penalty would apply only to capital reps as their rep yield is so god damn high as it is. This would mean capitals would not be able to hold tank as well unless some carriers commit.

the explosion radius (sig) is okay, but its the explosion velocity that's the problem when talking about damage application. All capitals and above are susceptible to torps and cruise missiles except if they are moving. A carrier moving at top speed with max transversal still receives more than 70% of base damage from turret dreads, but with torps its about a 50% reduction (even more if they are running sig reduction).

When speaking of raw Damage, again capital missiles are lacking. People say the moros is great only because it has not received a blaster range nerf yet (which it deserves). Pulses would then fill the gap between blaster and autos.

If my proposed change of explsion velocity were to happen, then see the following:

TL;DR Math : 500 sig bs @ 120 m/s vs Cit. torps (changed for GMP)= 13.7% base damage

Base damage * [ (500/ 1500) * (50 / 120) ] ^ 1
Base damage * [ (0.33) * (0.415) ]
Base damage * (.13695)

Currently it is: TL;DR 8.25% of base damage with current torps

Base damage * [ (500/ 1500) * (30 / 120) ] ^ 1
Base damage * [ (0.33) * (0.25) ]
Base damage * (.0825)