These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Ships & Modules

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
Previous page12
 

Is artillery alpha damage balanced?
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Ralph King-Griffin
New Eden Tech Support
#21 - 2014-01-14 13:09:10 UTC
Sid Crash wrote:
Perhaps they could introduce a 3rd weapon? There's only 250 and 280, 650 and 720, 1200 and 1400. Other weapon systems have 3 options per type, but honestly I'm not fussed about losing the silly alpha because as long as that exists artie won't be balanced seriously (kinda like the old "Caldari sucks and remains terrible because the drake is awesome").

I'd be fine with a "tachyon option" where dps vs alpha would be out of whack and in favour of alpha, as long as we still have 2 viable options for normal dps use.

tachyon's rockBear

Murderers of Negotiable Motivations

=]|[=
Sid Crash
#22 - 2014-01-14 13:47:35 UTC
Daniel Plain wrote:
i once got alphaed by a thrasher in a buffer tanked kestrel. artillery is fine.


Not possible; 280 artie thrasher does not have the alpha to one shot an MSE tanked kestrel.
Kagura Nikon
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#23 - 2014-01-14 14:28:58 UTC
Sid Crash wrote:
Daniel Plain wrote:
i once got alphaed by a thrasher in a buffer tanked kestrel. artillery is fine.


Not possible; 280 artie thrasher does not have the alpha to one shot an MSE tanked kestrel.




NEver underestiamte the power of bad skills :P

"If brute force does not solve your problem....  then you are  surely not using enough!"
Kagura Nikon
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#24 - 2014-01-14 14:29:56 UTC
Ralph King-Griffin wrote:
Sid Crash wrote:
Perhaps they could introduce a 3rd weapon? There's only 250 and 280, 650 and 720, 1200 and 1400. Other weapon systems have 3 options per type, but honestly I'm not fussed about losing the silly alpha because as long as that exists artie won't be balanced seriously (kinda like the old "Caldari sucks and remains terrible because the drake is awesome").

I'd be fine with a "tachyon option" where dps vs alpha would be out of whack and in favour of alpha, as long as we still have 2 viable options for normal dps use.

tachyon's rockBear



2800mm arties... 25 K alpha.. Side effect speed vector reversed everytime you shoot :P

"If brute force does not solve your problem....  then you are  surely not using enough!"
Reaver Glitterstim
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#25 - 2014-01-14 18:21:45 UTC  |  Edited by: Reaver Glitterstim
Yeah, could have one artillery that's very slow firing and has high alpha -- it would be the middle option. The lower cost option would shoot faster and have decent tracking. The higher cost option would shoot faster, track like molasses, but would DPS only a smidge less than railguns.

Another option I had thought of before was to make all three options cost almost the same amount of powergrid and have one with high DPS and low alpha, one med/med, and one with low DPS and high alpha (relatively speaking of course). That doesn't give the option to save powergrid by taking a smaller gun, but it fixes something else.

FT Diomedes: "Reaver, sometimes I wonder what you are thinking when you sit down to post."

Frostys Virpio: "We have to give it to him that he does put more effort than the vast majority in his idea but damn does it sometime come out of nowhere."
Daniel Plain
Doomheim
#26 - 2014-01-14 19:20:16 UTC
Sid Crash wrote:
Daniel Plain wrote:
i once got alphaed by a thrasher in a buffer tanked kestrel. artillery is fine.


Not possible; 280 artie thrasher does not have the alpha to one shot an MSE tanked kestrel.


apparently it does once in a while. it was probably a very lucky wrecking roll, but nevertheless i was so surprised, i failed to even get the pod out.

I should buy an Ishtar.
Reaver Glitterstim
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#27 - 2014-01-14 21:28:04 UTC
You probably got hit by something else too, but yeah shot damage hits high or low sometimes, and sometimes something that shouldn't be able to kill you kills you.

FT Diomedes: "Reaver, sometimes I wonder what you are thinking when you sit down to post."

Frostys Virpio: "We have to give it to him that he does put more effort than the vast majority in his idea but damn does it sometime come out of nowhere."
Fronkfurter McSheebleton
Horse Feathers
CAStabouts
#28 - 2014-01-17 04:13:02 UTC
Of the long range weapon systems, artillery has the shortest overall range, lowest dps, and IIRC the worst tracking...you gotta give it something to work with.

thhief ghabmoef
Reaver Glitterstim
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#29 - 2014-01-17 05:10:10 UTC
Actually beam lasers and artillery are pretty similar in range, how they measure against each other depending largely on how much you like falloff. Beam lasers have more optimal, but only a little more. They have almost no falloff at all. So you'll get maximum DPS with artillery at a bit less range than beam lasers, but you can keep getting some DPS for quite a bit farther. The way I see it, beam lasers effectively have the shortest range of all long range weapons, and it makes sense because they have the highest DPS. Railguns beat artillery in DPS, range, and tracking though not by wide margins in any of those. Artillery, on the other hand, have high alpha damage, better ammo space saving, a wider variety of damage type choices, and they don't reequire capacitor to fire.

FT Diomedes: "Reaver, sometimes I wonder what you are thinking when you sit down to post."

Frostys Virpio: "We have to give it to him that he does put more effort than the vast majority in his idea but damn does it sometime come out of nowhere."
Fronkfurter McSheebleton
Horse Feathers
CAStabouts
#30 - 2014-01-17 07:24:27 UTC  |  Edited by: Fronkfurter McSheebleton
If you add in a couple of tracking computers, the range difference between arty and beams/rails becomes a bit more apparent. It's well into falloff by the time the other two run out of optimal, and with long range ammo as a factor, struggles to even remotely compare to the other two in dps at longer ranges. At 180km with LR ammo and two tracking comps, arty is doing something like 65% of rails' dps, and 80% of tachs'. It doesn't even catch up to rails at extreme distances...it stays lower right out to 250km. Tachs only fall behind it at 195km, and at that point they both have abysmal dps anyway.

Individual hulls may change that around a bit, but as far as base attributes go, arty really does fail at everything that isn't alpha and picking damage types...and IMO that's not a bad thing, looking at how well it still holds its own in pvp.

thhief ghabmoef
Gregor Parud
Imperial Academy
#31 - 2014-01-17 08:36:55 UTC
Fronkfurter McSheebleton wrote:
If you add in a couple of tracking computers, the range difference between arty and beams/rails becomes a bit more apparent. It's well into falloff by the time the other two run out of optimal, and with long range ammo as a factor, struggles to even remotely compare to the other two in dps at longer ranges. At 180km with LR ammo and two tracking comps, arty is doing something like 65% of rails' dps, and 80% of tachs'. It doesn't even catch up to rails at extreme distances...it stays lower right out to 250km. Tachs only fall behind it at 195km, and at that point they both have abysmal dps anyway.

Individual hulls may change that around a bit, but as far as base attributes go, arty really does fail at everything that isn't alpha and picking damage types...and IMO that's not a bad thing, looking at how well it still holds its own in pvp.


That's the point, Personally I'd rather have a bit less alpha and more projected dps.
Reaver Glitterstim
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#32 - 2014-01-17 13:30:15 UTC
I want to thank you all for the replies, I have decided on a model for the attributes system that I am drafting up. It's remarkably simplistic, yet fits so perfectly:

Now I have all base weapons and mount sizes with three variants, one costing a reasonable amount of powergrid to use up the better portion of what its ships have to offer, one that costs twice as much, so a gunship needs a powergrid upgrade just to fit them, and one costing half as much powergrid, for easy fitting. They normally vary with the higher powergrid ones having more DPS and less tracking, but with artillery I have left the DPS the same, and only changed the rate of fire and tracking.

Large artillery variants have a 10s, 20s, and 40s base duration. Medium have a 5s, 10s, and 20s base duration. Small have a 2.5s, 5s, and 10s base duration. The alpha on large and small artillery varies slightly more in my version, but so does the EHP between frigates and battleships. A full-rack artillery gunboat will not be able to fit a strong tank along with the high-alpha artillery variants, as they will be too short on powergrid, but the middle variant leaves a decent alpha that can still be used to blap ships if you have enough peeps to do it. Given it has the same DPS, it may find use comfortably in larger fleets, allowing more tank to be fit. Finally, you can mix and match different size variants in my version because they don't vary by range much. You could fit 4 of the middle-size battleship artillery and 4 of the bigger ones on your Maelstrom, and wind up with an alpha somewhere between the two, along with a re-fire small alpha that serves to add more DPS onto a surviving target.

Another difference between my version and what's live on Tranquility is that I put the medium (cruiser) artillery exactly intermediate between frigate and battleship, whereas on live, the cruiser artillery hits for a bit less alpha. The approximate base firing durations are 10s (small), 17s (medium), and 40s (large). I don't know why medium is behind the curve, and based on what I'm hearing from you guys as well as my own experience, I get the impression that it does not need to be so. Nobody here has yet said that hurricane artillery hits too hard, and I have seen on more than one occasion someone laughing at a hurricane's "pathetic volley", or saying it "hits like a wet noodle". In nullsec roaming fleets, artillery hurricanes make good instalock ships because of their Minmatar scan resolution, but they're still mostly used to blap small ships. Medium stuff still needs to be pointed and whittled down by everyone else. I have flown with a couple of instalock artillery Hurricanes in a nullsec fleet more than once, and I noticed that almost nobody in fleet got a chance to shoot at any frigates we came across, they would be dead already. But the same could not be said of cruisers and industrials. Since Thrashers apparently are quite able to blap frigates already, I think medium artillery could use a buff.

I'll continue to read your replies here, and I'm still interested in hearing your thoughts on artillery balance.

FT Diomedes: "Reaver, sometimes I wonder what you are thinking when you sit down to post."

Frostys Virpio: "We have to give it to him that he does put more effort than the vast majority in his idea but damn does it sometime come out of nowhere."
Reaver Glitterstim
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#33 - 2014-01-17 13:50:27 UTC
Fronkfurter McSheebleton wrote:
If you add in a couple of tracking computers, the range difference between arty and beams/rails becomes a bit more apparent. It's well into falloff by the time the other two run out of optimal, and with long range ammo as a factor, struggles to even remotely compare to the other two in dps at longer ranges.

That's because the long range ammo variants all have a +80% optimal range bonus and no falloff bonus. The tracking computers have nothing to do with it and in fact help to reverse the effect. Since tracking computers and tracking enhancers both increase falloff by twice as much as optimal, they help artillery range by a bit more than they help railgun or beam laser range.

For what it's worth, I have fixed this in my version. I have optimal and falloff bonuses adjusted for tech II ammo based on its weapon ranges, so that all of them have proportionally similar ranges. I also have the optimal and falloff bonus swapped on the tracking computer; it gives more optimal so is preferential in some ways for lasers and rails, while the tracking enhancer is preferential in some ways for autocannons, with artillery and blasters doing great either way.

FT Diomedes: "Reaver, sometimes I wonder what you are thinking when you sit down to post."

Frostys Virpio: "We have to give it to him that he does put more effort than the vast majority in his idea but damn does it sometime come out of nowhere."
Zarnak Wulf
Task Force 641
Empyrean Edict
#34 - 2014-01-17 15:03:03 UTC
The arty Thrasher is very susceptible to tracking disruptors. The Beam Coercer or Rail Cat can switch to a longer range ammo very quickly if hit with optimal range disruption. The Thrasher pretty much has to ride the horse that brought it. The rail Cat with it's high DPS and ROF (as well as speed these days) is great for strafing - something that the arty Thrasher 'Hold till you see the whites of their eyes' can't pull off very well.

In short the arty Thrasher's success depends on being lost in a crowd-
Previous page12