Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Mournful, out of curiosity… Why weren't you running a Nighthawk? Let me see if I can answer that for you…

Caldari Battlecruiser skill bonus per level:
7.5% bonus to Heavy Assault and Heavy Missile Kinetic damage

Compare: 5x T2 HMLs, 3x T2 BCs, V skills. No drones - just missiles.
• Nighthawk: HML, 341 DPS; 1347 volley, 62.9km range, 78.7m ER / 122m/s EV
• Damnation: HML, 320 DPS; 2020 volley, 94.3km range, 105m ER / 122m/s EV

DPS is marginally less, but the Damnation outranges the Nighthawk by 50% - and volleys are 50% greater also. The Nighthawk gets a nice kinetic bump (not included here), but that's pretty easy to counter… Damnation also gets 50mbit/s drone bandwidth/100m3 drone storage compared to the 25mbit/s drone bandwidth/25m3 drone storage on the Nighthawk. And since the Nighthawk can use rigs and Slave implants for tank, it can actually run 2 drone damage amplifiers if so desired.

I have a wry smile on my face at this point, as only 24 months ago I was lamenting how badly armour tanking sucked in comparison to shield, and how it was not possible to fit any gallente ship to stand a real chance in pvp. Really, at the time Gallente ships were the laughing stock of the pvp community. They were overwhelmed by shield tanked drakes and hurricanes.

It seems that the wheel has turned somewhat since then, or is it that in Eve we all assume that our chosen ship is the worst in all engagements?

Could it be that there is bias in our recollection, in that we have stronger memories of fights lost than fights won?

I would still not consider taking a myrmidon or brutix to a fight - their capacitors are not strong enough to allow them to survive. I would take a drake, but only with logistics available. But a cyclone... now that's a hell of a ship - even solo.

Solo, the deimos and ishtar shine in a way that other hacs cannot. Having said that, I have 1v1'd a well-fitted cerberus in an ishtar and was unable to make headway into its tank. Eventually (we're talking 20 minutes here) he managed to kill all my drones and start working on exhausting my cap charge supply. Of course this kind of fight can only happen on SiSi. On tranquility, 20 minutes of non-stop pvp may as well be an eternity. It won't be a 1v1 for long...

I've also had a lot of success with the sacrilege, and friends of mine swear by the zealot. The vagabond is of course without peer for kiting blaster ships, particularly now that its capacitor is so strong it can MWD permanently.

I think there are a lot of options in Eve right now. Many more than there were 2 years ago. It's not perfect, but it's light years ahead of where it was. In those days you flew a drake or a hurricane or you died in a fireball.

And as Rise has said, we have missile damage application mods to come. When they arrive, shield missile ships are likely to start to outperform armour missile ships. Particularly the nighthawk!

I would say that this is starting to look like a natural and normal evolution of your experience in Eve.

I think very often people are advised to start the game in caldari and gallente ships - they are after all the kings of PVE, to be later drawn either towards the brash elegance of the shiny imperial death bricks, or the guerrilla-style minmatar death traps.

In a fleet fight, i'm always happy to have amarr ships around me. I can rely on them still being there on the next server tick...

Depending only on what becomes available ofcourse. Armor tank is still Better then shield, and on current mechanics a ham Sacriledge is scary if you use ahac principles in a fleet. if like guns they get the equivalent of tracking computers, and thus can opt to increase the damage application (short range small targets) or increase the range vs larger targets the sacrilege can become a truelly terror to bigger sig radius ships (battlecruiser and battleship blobs) due to sig tanking ahac mechanics.

Improveing damage application on Ham, HML and Torpedo's is a must; allowing more flexibility to the fits (or even in fights) with range / damage application altering mods is a must as well.

so missle application mods where would we place those:
lows - would need to saccrifice BCUs so we would need to go with some damage rigs and sacrifice 1-2 tank rigs - seems a bad idea
mids - so this one looks easy just kick the tps and replace but wait shield tanked ships tend to have 0-2 tps at best rest is tank and webs / points - hmm so we get into 2 problems we make tps obsolete and we get into no space to fit those - seems its time to remake TPs
high - missle ships usualy have 1 spare high slot so maybe those could go in here but that application mod would need to have so absurd stats since it would need to make a difference on the stats with just 1 mod

Lows would be preferable for a ballistic enhancer. I'd even trade a few more mids for lows so I can run an armor tank instead.

In favor of what? Eg Cerberus has a kin bonus, but even with that kinetic bonus its missiles compare poorly compared with other hacs, switching to allround bonus allows more flexibility yes, but it still doesn't improve the fact that it still poorly compared with other hacs in terms of damage application.

Its paper dps, is good, better even then some or most other hacs but its the application of that dps where its lacking severly 1/3rd more paper dps results in 1/2 applied dps or worse.

a single bonus like the caldari missile boats get isn't optimal, but its far from the worst thing thats happening. Look at it this way, if you see a fleet of zealots, you know your going to face EM/Therm damage, if you see Deimos, you know that Kin/Therm is the thing to worry about, and if you see vagabonds its Kin/Exp, seeing a Cerberus and knowing your probably going to face Kin isn't the worst thing, but knowing that if you face cerbs that you only have to take out the tackle to reduce the fleets dps by 50% is!

Missiles do work, just not the way you'd like them to.

The trick in eve is to adapt one's strategy to the tools available. I can assure you that the CCP devs will not make the tools you want, because they know that you (and I) are biased, favouring tools that give us all the advantages and none of the drawbacks.

The way to look at your chosen weapons system is not from your own eyes, seeing your vulnerabilities, but from your target's perspective. What will he be worrying about when he encounters you? Can you do something to your ship that will make his day worse?

Start thinking this way and your fits and strategies, whether using missiles or any other weapon, will become more successful. It's not a natural way to think unless you were born a psychopath - humans are generally not natural killers of other humans. But this is what you must train yourself to do - exploit the weak, and drive home your victory without a second thought.

It's common for early eve PVPers to feel a sense of "sunk cost" in their chosen strategy, fit or selection of weapons - often in all situations. Every opponent is different, with different vulnerabilities and strengths. Missiles are not suitable for every pvp encounter. Neither are blasters, or afterburners, or microwarp drives. Some ships are just so good that no other single ship can defeat them at all. When these guys are encountered, it's not your weapon's fault. It's the fact that your opponent made the better ship selection that day (or you made the wrong call in engaging him).

You have to learn to roll with it.

Just changing it to a standard missile damage bonus would go a long way with damage application. It might even be enough without a ballistic enhancer module.


I'm inclined to leave TP mechanics the way they are, as they're a form of EW. Truthfully, stasis webs are overpowered - and that's part of the problem. They should really have a 20-30% effect (max), because they make it altogether too easy to apply damage. What we really need is a low-slot passive ballistic enhancer that yields -10% explosion radius, +10% explosion velocity and say 5-10% missile velocity (stacking penalized with other modules and rigs, of course). This would then take the place of a third or fourth ballistic controller.


Don't bring a missile to a gun fight, and if you find yourself in a fair fight - you're doing it wrong.


Oh, pretty sure we're already there… the only problem is damage application. Since most Caldari ships need their miss for tanks in PvP applications, a low-slot ballistic enhancer that frees up the use of rigs is the best recourse.

I think if you look at the effective range for TPs they're more suitable as fleet or support tools than active PvP. And it's not quite as extreme as needing 10 EW modules; rigors will trump a target painter and a web will trump both combined.